If they are getting valid findings with high quality reports from AI tools already, why would they do that?

Sure, we’ll find workarounds

I’d phrase it as “we might occasionally find workarounds that kinda work sometimes”. I tried running de-Googled Android on my phone for a while, and the only reason I could use it for online banking, pay for public transport, contact health services, etc. was because some people had reverse-engineered Google’s services (i.e. microG). It also stopped working every now and then when something changed, and to my knowledge Google could also shut it down instantly if they started encrypting their APIs. I wouldn’t bet on there always being workarounds if this push to lock down operating systems and online services continues.

Someone else posted something interesting/alarming the other day… With AI becoming more advanced and also more accessible, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to keep spam, scams, etc. at bay. If the mainstream computing world ends up in this gilded cage trap, even if a minority choose to maintain and use forks that stay outside the system, it might be quite difficult to keep for example a forum functional.

And services can choose to only allow operating systems which don’t lie, have anti-tamper mechanisms, and authenticate themselves cryptographically. It has definitely been easy to spoof your identity in the past, but OP is talking about where we might be heading in the future. Since the laws about OS:es having to partially identify the user is so obviously useless in its current form, don’t you think the corporations and politicians who are pushing for it are going to keep expanding it when they get the opportunity?

Then he said Arch Linux should implement it anyway because the law requires it. archinstall PR #4290

Well, it’s not “the law”, it’s your local law. To most people on the planet, it doesn’t apply any more than for example North Korea’s laws. As far as I can find, Arch Linux is not owned by a foundation or similar legal entity (i.e. which could have been located in California), but the lead developer appears to live in Germany.

Have you tried Vivaldi? Co-founded by one of the Opera Software co-founders, so perhaps not a surprise that it feels a little bit like classic Opera. I liked it a lot, but I have since switched to Firefox because I want to support the non-Chromium options while they exist.

Can’t remember if it was Gnome 3 or Ubuntu Unity, but I think at least one of them had the intention of creating a unified UI for all types of devices.

Very important. I spend a lot of time at my computer and my desktop environment is like my home. I want it to look in a way that I find aesthetically pleasing and it mustn’t try to force me to change the way I work because some UX designer decided that their way was much better than everybody else’s. Perhaps you can guess where this is going :D but I’ve tried to like Gnome 3 since it was first announced. I’ve given it multiple chances but it just doesn’t work for me. It feels like they’re going down the same road as all “modern” UIs, where only the most basic features are visible and everything else is either dumped into the “advanced” category or removed entirely. On the other hand, I have a coworker who only uses his PC like a tool, and he thinks Gnome is the best DE ever and can’t understand why anyone would want something else.

Currently I use KDE and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s highly configurable, and I’ve made it look and feel the way I want. I used mainly Xfce for a long time but now I prefer KDE.

It’s funny if you know that it is parody, but it’s so widespead in this day and ago so I tend to unconsciously filter it out. Tbh I probably wouldn’t have clicked the link if I hadn’t seen your comment, since I thought this was the original title of the video

I think a new Linux user shouldn’t have to choose a DE, so starting with a distro which makes this choice for them is most likely better. Unless the CachyOS installer does a good job at explaining what a desktop environment is, there’s a risk that a new user thinks they’re just selecting a skin for the OS and don’t understand how it will affect their desktop experience. If they for example choose an extreme light weight DE for their brand new gaming PC, their first impression of Linux might be that it looks dated.

Having a DE chooser built into more distro installers could be a good thing for us more experienced users though.

These aliases for zsh I use all the time. It’s part of the prezto configuration framework.

setopt AUTO_CD              # Auto changes to a directory without typing cd.
setopt AUTO_PUSHD           # Push the old directory onto the stack on cd.
setopt PUSHD_IGNORE_DUPS    # Do not store duplicates in the stack.
setopt PUSHD_SILENT         # Do not print the directory stack after pushd or popd.
setopt PUSHD_TO_HOME        # Push to home directory when no argument is given.

alias d='dirs -v'
for index ({1..9}) alias "$index"="cd +${index}"; unset index

Type d and enter to list all the directories you’ve recently been in, then type the number at the start of the line followed by enter to immediately cd there.

Not sure if latest bash can do it the same thing, but some years ago I wrote a script to implement it there too. IIRC it might’ve been the automatic removal of duplicates in dir history that was missing.

Current workplace: Windows computers with all development being done in Linux VMs. Management and a few younger devs are pushing for WSL, while several older devs are demanding Linux-only laptops.

Previous workplaces: One more with Windows + Linux VMs. One with Windows + X remote desktop to development servers. One with Linux PCs.

I have been exclusively applying for jobs that promised Linux development though.

IIRC their web site used to make it sound like it was a paid product but it was always possible to get it for free. Can’t remember the exact details, perhaps something similar to those “name your price” softwares that have a pre-filled recommended value but it’s also possible to choose €0? I checked what it looks like nowadays and the Pro version does come up first if you go to downloads, and then there’s a free Core version below it.

I’m not up to date on hardware, so I’ll refrain from recommending specific components. I went with AMD Ryzen CPU and Nvidia GPU (using closed source driver) last time I upgraded my PC and it usually works fine, though I know many recommend AMD GPUs nowadays for Linux. If €1000 is your total budget, it might be worth considering a second hand GPU. For example a used RTX 3080 goes for around €300 and they are still quite capable, though someone else will have to say if that’s enough for the flight sims.

One thing you might want to look up is if the game uses hardware raytracing, and if that works on Linux. Out of the games I play, World of Warships looks worse for me than what I see on youtube, despite that I have set all graphics settings to max. Maybe it’s possible to fix by configuring Wine/Proton/DXVK etc. I haven’t really looked into it, but just so you’re aware of potential issues.

I used this list for help when choosing a power supply, but I think that becomes more important if you buy a high end GPU.

I use Steam for almost all my gaming, and it makes running (most) Windows games a breeze.

If you specify a budget then people might be able to give some recommendations, if you like.

As for aesthetics, Fractal Design offer a few cases which look really nice, if you like the Scandinavian design style. The overview shows all cases with glass or mesh sides, but there’s usually an option to get an opaque door if you don’t want LEDs from the electronics shining through

My friends are currently throwing a tantrum because I won’t “just enable Secure Boot and run Windows” to play Battlefield 6 with them. But I’ve never felt that I must play a specific game, so the few ones who are incompatible (usually due to bad anti-cheats) have been easy to ignore. There are plenty of good games I can play on Linux.

Offline updates is one of the things that annoyed me most back when I was using Windows, and somehow they’ve managed to make it even worse in Fedora. Luckily you can turn it off in F41 by going to the “Software Update” section in system settings, and then changing “Apply system updates” to “Immediately”. Haven’t upgraded to 42 yet but I hope the setting is still there.

I’ve got a MSI MAG Tomahawk wifi which has had a lot of issues, but nothing related to Linux

If I, a humble computer hobbyist can figure out Nix, why don’t more users do so, and why is Nix so niche?

My guess as to why this isn’t a more central feature of Linux distros is that this is not something most users need. If you need to reinstall the OS because you broke it, then a full system backup is probably more convenient, even if it’s less than optimal to back up packages which you could download. If you need to reinstall the OS because you want a clean slate when upgrading to a new version, then your package list for the old version could cause a lot of conflicts as maintainers regularly remove and add new packages.

I have backed up my zsh, vim, tmux, etc. configs and written a few shell scripts which install them and download vim plugins etc. If I ever need to reinstall the OS I would use these. However, in the last 20 years since I ditched Windows I have reinstalled Linux exactly two times: Once because I was an idiot and didn’t have a proper backup when I accidentally formatted the wrong HDD, and once when I switched from Xubuntu to Fedora in which case a package list wouldn’t have been usable.

I use Fedora (KDE) and game a lot. While I mostly like it, I’ve had some problems with it that were non-trivial to solve, so if you’re a Linux beginner I would not necessarily recommend it to you.

Perhaps Bazzite would be a good option? It’s based on Fedora and created with gaming in mind. I got it recommended here and installed it on a friend’s kid’s computer and he’s very happy with it so far.

There’s also Nobara which builds on Fedora to create a gaming-focused distro.

Paper GTK theme is a little bit similar, though with more vibrant colours ofc.