Small thing: There doesn’t (to my knowledge) seem to be an easy way to manage mountpoints/fstab with an easy gui interface.

So what do we call these? Cordslop?

I’d say if the version is the same, go with the Debian packages and then fall back to the Flatpak one if it doesn’t work.

The 260MB of storage for Flatpak is a bit misleading though. If you have other flatpaks installed, it’s smart enough to deduplicate the files and share them.

Another thing to consider is xdg compliance. If you’re really picky about having a nice clean home directory and the program likes to vomit files into it, Flatpak keeps that contained in its sandbox. Not something to worry about for most people though.

Ah! Seems it does, but not at Tier 1 or 2. So I guess it could be buggy?

Got curious and looked into it. All the architectures officially supported by Debian are also supported by Rustc.

• https://doc.rust-lang.org/beta/rustc/platform-support.html
• https://wiki.debian.org/SupportedArchitectures

I guess if you’re a fan of GNU/Hurd it might cause issues?

What do you mean by the “Title Bar”? The thing at the top that says the window name? Not sure if there’s a way to remove that, sadly.

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong (I’m only half remembering), but don’t you also need as much swap as you do RAM to hibernate?

Vibe management? Is that what they mean by “edge” computing?

Ignoring the fact that nowadays ssds generally outlive their typical use times, how do immutable systems and Flatpak cause more wear compared to regular software updates from apt or whatever?

Users are going to need to tweak and modify system files. You can say as much as you want that they “shouldn’t”, but at the end of the day they may have to tweak something because they have exotic hardware or want to run a specific app.

And the benefit isn’t really that great, imo. A random user isn’t going to go poking around /etc and modify files randomly. And if they do, something like timeshift will save them.

My go to recommendation is Mint. When things go wrong or the user needs to do something complex, there are a lot of guides out there for Ubuntu which also work for Mint.

My main desktop is Mint - I feel like most of the random pieces of software I find myself wanting to run are built for Ubuntu or at the very least a lfh distro.

My server and random devices run NixOS, and I’m acrually considering combining all the config into a monorepo…

My Raspberry PI I think runs Raspbian though. I should see if I can nixify it.

Tweaking my various Nix configs feels good and satisfying.

… When it works, that is.

For the lazy:

• Nextcloud
• Jellyfin
• Immich
• Vaultwarden / Bitwarden
• Uptime Kuma
• AdGuard Home
• Homepage
• Monica
• changedetection.io

Seems a decent selection.

Semitransparent backgrounds for terminals are the worst. I don’t mean to kinkshame, but it, imo, should not be a default.

I think the whole “XYZ Distro is faster!” arguments are overblown. Most distros will be fast enough on reasonably modern hardware, and any performance gains will usually come with compromises and/or lots of tinkering. Generally speaking a standard arch install (that is, you’ve not manually configured anything) will be roughly the same speed as a more beginner friendly distros like Mint and Fedora (which is still more lightweight than Windows).

To answer the question in the title: Yes you’ll survive the CLI. Just give yourself time to learn the fundamentals and treat it as learning a programming language. More user friendly distros generally don’t expect you to use the CLI, which is part of the reason they are recommended.

My condolences - I’m in the UK as well and wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

If I may offer an alternate perspective: Politicians don’t actually care about any of this, they just want votes. California’s system allows them to say “Look, we solved child safety!” without having to deal with people complaining about privacy. If there’s an existing system in place, it’s easier for politicians to say “we already solved this!” and ignore those voices.

It also puts the guilt on parents. If this system in place, and you complain about your child seeing tiddy online, the question is going to be “why didn’t you set the age correctly then?”.

… Of course this might be me just being optimistic. I really hope we, as a species, grow out of this new age puritanism and government overreach.

It’d be stronger than that, since kids shouldn’t have admin rights on their pcs and couldn’t claim to be over 18.

Sure. But at that point distros can just say “no use in California lol” and enjoy the free market share from disgruntled totally-not-californian Windows users.

I can see the slippery slope argument, however it overlooks the fact that countries/states are already willing to implement the non-privacy systems.

If these systems take off, it will give privacy advocates the ability to point at California’s system and say “look, they have a system that is as effective as the strong assurance stuff but without the people sending you angry emails.”

I see it as almost a “reverse slippry slope”. A way for people to push for less strict verification.

Agreed, but at this point I think it’s worth taking what we can get.