I’ve got plenty of human touch, I’m touching myself right now!

I use Nobara with KDE for my gaming computer, Mint with Cinnamon for pretty much everything else.

Mint is the closest to a “Just Works” experience for me. Cinnamon is rock stable, especially on Mint Debian Edition. I don’t remember the last time Cinnamon crashed or had any major bugs for me.

I use Debian for most of my servers, stable and simple. Arch on a junker Thinkpad to test and mess around with new programs and window managers.

~50x

My policy is double my download, minimum. But I almost always hit much higher than that, my average is probably between 5-10x

All my torrents are public sites, and I only torrent pretty common stuff, so I don’t feel too bad about killing a torrent after a week or two. I figure 5-10x average on easy-to-find, mid quality media is plenty in the karmic sense lol.

As far as I am concerned, always give better than you get, even if that’s 1.01 but try to aim higher.

Of course, if you’re seeding a rare or otherwise hard to find piece of media, then you should keep it alive for longer. I am in the process of upgrading my torrent machine, and once that happens, I will be able to hold far more active torrents, and my average ratios will be significantly improved.

Happy sailing!

Flatpaks are pretty great for getting the latest software without having to have a cutting edge rolling release distro or installing special repos and making sure stuff doesn’t break down the line.

I use Flatpaks for my software that I need the latest and greatest version of, and my distros native package for CLI apps and older software that I don’t care about being super up to date.

My updater script handles all of it in one action anyways, so no biggie on that either.

Flatpaks are the best all-in-one solution when compared to Appimages or Snaps imo.

Remember, it’s all or something, not all or nothing.

For me, I look at each major category of things in my life a few times a year and ask myself how I can improve the ethics of my participation.

So for food, I have been vegetarian for years now, which is good, but lately I have been trying to cut out most processed foods. I also have started shopping more and more local, getting as much of my food as I can from local co-ops, individual sellers, and small local grocery chains.

For software, I’m FOSS everything as much as I can be. 100% Linux on my computers and servers, and I have replaced almost all my programs with FOSS alternatives. Even my phone doesn’t run stock Android.

For work, try to find places to work that roughly align with good principles. For instance, try to get a job at a credit union vs a traditional bank, or try to find an employee-owned establishment vs a traditional top-down corporation.

If you have to work for a corpo, try to pick one that has a good reputation with unions and workers, like Costco, vs Starbucks or Walmart.

Capitalism is a machine that grinds us all down, so don’t feel guilty about not being perfect. But do the best you can to reject it, little steps at a time. Always be improving, bit by bit.

RustDesk, it’s by far the best remote desktop software I’ve used on any platform.

Tons of great features, open source, self-hostable, easy to install and configure, works on all major platforms including mobile. Cross platform works like a charm.

Looks pretty clean as is, I would need to see without picsto fully know, but looks good as is imo.

Hell yeah! Love seeing old hardware like this still running a modern OS.

With Linux, if your hardware is a decade old, you’ve barely even reached middle-age.

Meanwhile Windows 11 won’t even allow an official install on hardware that’s 4-5 years old.

Long live Linux & FOSS ✊

This is the way.

Well over a decade now, married for about 10 years.

Cool!

Oh no. You either die the hero, or…

In my early teens, I got really into computers, built my first PC when I was about 13, started learning Windows batch scripting and using GameMaker to make goofy PC games.

Along the way, I found Trinity Rescue Kit and was also introduced to Fedora Core by a nerdy guy who worked at my local YMCA.

I didn’t actually enjoy it too much back then, so I left it alone for years until about 5 years ago when I started to get back into the free software movement and related interests.

I’ve been 100% on Linux for about 4 years now and never looked back.

It’s designed to be more compatible with MS’ .docx formats, less weird formatting issues when converting between them. But the actual features it has is less than LibreOffice.

Two different focuses, LibreOffice is designed with more powerful features and uses the .odf file format by default.

OnlyOffice is lighter weight and designed with MS Office compatibility first and foremost, although both suites support both file formats and in my experience, both work great with either file types and for basic users, have all the features you would need.

I’m constantly shocked how poorly Windows 11 runs on brand new high end hardware.

My current company uses brand new $1,500 HP enterprise grade laptops and they frequently freeze up, stutter, and get really hot from basic office work.

My old Debian servers I used to have there were running butter smooth with KDE Plasma on 12 year old hardware.

+1 I used LibreOffice all through university, wrote dozens of papers, did class presentations, résumés, etc. Never had a problem. I use it at work too and collaborate with O365 users often.

Such an awesome piece of software. I used OnlyOffice as well, really nice if you don’t need the fancier features that LibreOffice has.

Sure as hell feels like it!

Read “A Mathematician’s Lament” by Paul Lockhart, it’s free online.

He lays out a brutal critique of the modern mathematical curriculum in the Unites States but in summary:

We teach mathematics to children as a huge set of rules to memorize and use to get good scores on standardized tests so that they can “get into good colleges.”

We don’t treat mathematics with any reverence or care, like we do with the arts. Math is taught as a bunch of arbitrary brute facts that old wise men came up with centuries ago and we spend all of elementary and high school relentlessly drilling them into students heads no matter how much pain and suffering it causes.

There is no actual exploration of mathematical beauty, or mystery. There isn’t any discussion of the underlying philosophy of mathematics, or how any of the rich and fascinating history of its development as a field. It’s like if we taught music as just a way to write notes on a page in certain time signatures and keys, but never actually let students listen to a piece of music or discuss the great composers or cultural movements of music through the ages.

Of course that seems ridiculous to people, but for some reason when we do that exact same thing with mathematics, nobody bats an eye. In fact, people think it would be strange to do it any other way.

I’ve been using KDE for over 4 years on over a dozen different machines and 5+ distros and I’ve never had major problems with crashing.

I do experience small bugs fairly often. Maybe once every month or two, little glitches or odd window behavior. Nothing huge, but they do happen. To be fair, I like to modify and customize KDE quite a bit, so that is probably causing some of my issues.

In my experience, Cinnamon is the most stable DE I’ve used by far. Least amount of random bugs, simple but stable. I don’t think I’ve ever had Cinnamon crash on me actually.

Wow, $5,000! That’s almost 3 whole months of daycare! That’ll cover the cost of a new child for sure.