Linux Mint

Linux Mint is often recommended to users coming from Windows, so… Kubuntu, Pop!OS and OpenSuSE are maybe also decent for that use case.

Manjaro isn’t recommended. They made lots of weird decisions and mistakes in the past, maybe still do. Wouldn’t trust them. Endeavour or Cachy are the current recommendations for “easy Arch”. If you’re able to install and maintain vanilla Arch, I’d recommend Arch though. Cut the middleman.

I’m only a little bit familar with the TUI browsers. I’m also not sure about gemini and gopher support so you have to look that up on each project page, but I can give some general directions:

• Lynx is basically the oldest TUI browser, so probably not the best and no modern choice, but still maintained I think
• ELinks started as a fork of Links (and Links started as an alternative to Lynx, so both ELinks and Links are newer than Lynx). It has a lot of features and is actively maintained, so it’s decent I think. Probably better than Links (and Links is probably better than Lynx)
• Links2: no idea, just know that it exists. If it’s still actively maintained I would suggest comparing it to ELinks because they’re both probably similar (both related to but newer than Links))
• W3m is the one I’d recommend, it’s powerful and can be integrated more easily into other applications. For the classic TUI browsers, it probably comes down to the choice between w3m and elinks
• There’s also a modern project called Carbonyl which is essentially Chromium running in a terminal, so this one might be “better” than all of the above in terms of features and modern website compatibility. But again, it depends on what you want out of a TUI browser - if you only need something basic this is probably overkill. But I didn’t try it out.

The gullible/naive ones. Right-wing extremists are generally quite good at promising simple (but wrong) “solutions” for complex problems that lower-educated people can easily follow and then feel like they’re on the correct track. That’s also why they produce so much easy-to-digest propaganda on the web.

But it’s all lies, accusing others who have nothing to do with the real problems, not making anything better except for the elite, and causing unnecessary cultural wars within the population instead of necessary class wars.

The elite generally wins when parts of the population are in-fighting against other parts of the population. Right-wing extremists love that and regularly pour more oil into that fire due to their general dividing and hateful nature towards all kinds of cultural opponents and minorities, and the elites love watching us fight each other while enriching themselves further and eating popcorn, because they know that when we’re busy in-fighting, we aren’t fighting for more equality or to change things in any meaningful way.

Jep, kein Geld mehr und (möglichst) keine Daten (= Geld) mehr. Im Kapitalismus ist euer Konsumverhalten bzw. wem ihr Geld gebt im Prinzip genauso wichtig wie eure politische Stimme. Vote with your wallet.

In more or less random order:

• Org-Mode is one of the most amazing packages for Emacs. Some people use Emacs only for that. I personally use it for second-brain style note taking, TODO lists, simple presentations, PIM, Wiki-like articles, writing docs (and then exporting it to other formats), and even some simple integrated spreadsheets/tables including some simple calculations
• Magit is a really good Git frontend. Some people use Emacs only for that.
• Use “use-package” to install/configure packages. Streamlines configuration a lot, compared to the old days.
• Use the “no-littering” package to move a lot of randomly generated files into centralized directories
• Use winner mode to undo/redo window configuration changes
• Use which-key to show a popup of available keybinds when typing something
• Use the integrated “time” package to create a world clock view
• Use the integrated modus-themes for highly configurable themes with a nice contrast (since I’ve spent some time configuring that theme, I’ve stopped using any other theme)
• Use hl-todo package to highlight keywords like “TODO”, “NOTE”, “WARNING” or “DONE”
• Use doom-modeline for a nice modeline
• Use nerd-icons to add nice icons to many views
• Use avy to quickly jump to specific locations, lines or characters using different keystrokes
• Use eshell for a quick shell (which works the same on every Emacs, regardless of the OS) and/or either vterm or eat if you need a full-fledged terminal emulator
• Use embark as a “context menu” when cursor is over anything (bind embark-act to e.g. “C-.”)
• Use editorconfig package to specify/load different editor configs per project
• Use treesitter and eglot (or lsp-mode) for modern syntax parsing using language servers
• Use neotree (or treemacs?) as a file tree viewer, but dired is also cool if configured well
• Use org-modern package to beautify org mode display
• Use org-appear to hide formatting characters unless cursor is directly next to them
• Use Unicode characters to beautify otherwise ugly or bland default characters, e.g. set " ▾" for org-ellipsis
• Use gcmh or similar packages or config settings to improve general Emacs UI responsiveness
• Use packages which improve the minibuffer, buffer switching, completion, and basic things like that. There are several good ones and you can’t really go wrong with any, I just think the newer, more well-integrated ones like consult, vertico, orderless, marginalia, and so on are “nicer” than the older less well-integrated ones like helm, ivy and so on
• Bind “goto-last-change” to a nice keybind
• Bind “quick-calc” to a nice keybind
• Bind “org-agenda” to a nice keybind
• Bind “toggle-truncate-lines” (line wrapping) to a nice keybind
• Bind “kill-this-buffer” and “kill-this-buffer-and-window” to nice keybinds (e.g. C-x k / K)
• Bind “consult-line” (or something similar) to e.g. C-s
• Bind all window and buffer cycling/management related commands to nice keybinds
• If you want an easier entry into Emacs and are already a Vim user, try the Doom Emacs distribution. If you want to start with Vanilla GNU Emacs but want a decent but minimal default configuration, try emacs-bedrock.

I was like that ~20 years ago. But since around ~10 years ago I realized that Emacs basically includes Vim. And much more. Yes Emacs is hard to get into and has a weird language, but it’s immensely powerful, extensible and also extremely reliable and future-proof. No you probably shouldn’t do everything inside Emacs. But several things are powerful, well-integrated and efficient.

Vim is still great though, I use it in the terminal for quick random config file edits or over ssh sessions (haven’t gotten around or used to trying tramp mode in Emacs). It’s great because some variant of it basically exists on every Unix-like system. And I also highly recommend learning modal editing with the Vim keybindings, which works inside Emacs as well of course. The default Emacs keybinds are unergonomic at best. But it also includes a mode for using Vim keys, and that mode is basically just as powerful as Vim itself. Not half-baked at all, which you might assume in such cases.

Probably, but it’s still much-needed actual retaliation against the regime. Doing nothing besides complaining helps even less. Wars aren’t being won in an instant but as a result of many cumulative small victories.

8BitDo Ultimate 2C Wireless here (but only using it wired, on PC, Linux). Good Xbox-style controller.

Microslop Crashpilot

I’ll always call it Microslop from this point on. Although that term, while true, also detracts a bit from the other problem this causes: 100% surveillance by Microsoft and 0% ownership of your documents/data. Personal and business alike. But anyway, it’s a term that Nadella doesn’t like so please keep using it.

This behavior is to be expected since the EU is heavily vulnerable to blackmail due to its many hard dependencies on US-based software and services. I suspect that many EU leaders can easily be bullied into submission by the current kleptocracy in the US.

This behavior is to be expected since the EU is heavily vulnerable to blackmail due to its many hard dependencies on US-based software and services. I suspect that many EU leaders can easily be bullied into submission by the current kleptocracy in the US.

Kassen sind knapp? Kein Problem! Hier z.B. ist das fehlende Geld zu finden: https://cumex-shredder.de/

Alternativ/Zusätzlich: Überreiche effektiv besteuern.

Außerdem beißt sich dieser Bullshit-Talking-Point “wir müssen alle länger arbeiten” mit dem anderen Bullshit-Talking-Point “Durch KI brauchen wir viel weniger Arbeitskräfte in naher Zukunft”.

Denke ich auch. Auch damals kurz vor dem Nationalsozialismus wurden Straftaten verübt die dann “den Linken” zugeschoben wurden, obwohl sie von den Rechten durchgeführt wurden. Soll natürlich nicht bedeuten dass es keine linksextremen Straftaten gibt, aber das Timing spricht stark für eine False Flag Operation der anderen Seite (zum noch effektiveren Machtausbau) und davon abgesehen sind linksextreme Straftaten im Vergleich zu rechtsextremen Straftaten ein Tropfen in einem See.

Frohes neues Jahr 1930 an der Stelle.

Just remember that correlation is not causation. Yes, such things distract from the Epstein case and that’s a welcome effect for the US dictator. But he’s not thinking “hmm I really would like to have a distraction from that so that’s why I’ll just commit another war crime or atrocity so they’ll all be distracted”. He commits new atrocities anyway, and it just so happens that new atrocities automatically distract from older ones. He is causing way more problems than we are capable of mentally tracking.

Congrats.

Yes, desktop Linux is generally very usable for the majority of users these days. This was already claimed to be the case in the late 1990s, which is probably why many non-IT-professionals had a bad first expression with desktop Linux. But this has changed since (very roughly) about 10 years ago or so, and for gaming in particular it has changed since very roughly about 5 years ago. This is also the reason why desktop Linux was at like ~1% market share all the time but has suddenly grown to ~6% within the last couple of years already. And with higher popularity comes more developer interest and support. Furthermore, Windows is becoming worse over time because Nadella is more interested in milking his user base instead of nurturing it, and many want more independence from US-based proprietary software due to the current political situation, and so it’s very likely that desktop Linux is going to keep snowballing upwards. The trend is looking very positively for desktop Linux, it will probably reach MacOS market share within the next couple of years. For gaming specifically, it’s already #2.

The most important thing about the Linux ecosystem is of course that most of it (at least the core components) is free/open source software and this is necessary to have digital sovereignty.

Other users interested in making the switch can make their transition easier by doing it in 2 steps: first, replace all important applications you’re using on Windows with Linux-compatible applications (for example, no MS Office, no Adobe), then adjust to the changed workflows while still using Windows. Only after that, install Linux as the primary OS (or set up dual-boot, but it has disadvantages. Best is to physically disconnect your disk containing Windows (so you still have a backup in case you desperately need it) and use another disk for Linux). That way, the culture shock is a bit mitigated because you’ll have at least some familiarity (the applications you need) inside an otherwise unfamiliar new OS environment. That way, the change will feel less overwhelming.

If there are still dependencies which can’t be worked around, there’s also the emergency solution of using either wine or a Windows VM on Linux. In the latter case it’s probably best these days to use winboat, which allows running Windows-only applications which then run inside a specific Windows VM or container on Linux. Or you just use a full regular Windows VM on Linux, with a shared folder between both systems for exchanging files.

Unfortunately it wouldn’t change much. The current fascism is structural and enabled by many actors, companies and institutions, not tied to one particular person. When he dies, Vance will just continue doing the same.

The only thing that could initiate real change would be the majority of US citizens revolting (but the majority are currently brainwashed by fascist rhetoric on proprietary social media and Fox News) and/or retaliation from other countries.

Yes, and it won’t get better. There is no effective regulation against this kind of stuff. US big tech companies are basically (not theoretically/legally, but in practice) allowed to steal everything from their consumers what they want these days, just like AI companies violate copyrights on a massive scale.

In the EU, the US big tech companies already managed to pull off a regulatory capture of the Irish Data Protection agency, the one responsible for all US big tech companies operating in Europe, the one that is theoretically supposed to ensure data protection. Because that agency is being headed by a former Meta lobbyist. That means there will be effectively zero repercussion for US big tech breaking copyright, privacy, data protection or other such laws in the EU, despite the EU having some of the strongest data protection laws in theory. They will all be not mostly, but fully, ignored. There were never many repercussions before, and fines had symbolic character at best, but now they can all go completely unhinged, and on top of that the US will also add political pressure on countries which dare to hold US-based companies accountable under local laws. Since many EU countries and/or UK are essentially digital colonies of US tech companies I don’t think there will be much resistance. There are tons of self-inflicted painful dependencies on the US dollar, on US-based credit cards, on US-based cloud providers, on US-based payment providers, … for the EU, the US turning rogue is massively painful, but this outcome was already predictable decades ago, yet nothing was being done about it.

And so MS will absolutely enshittify Windows even more to harvest more and more data and feed their AI models, and there will be zero repercussion, except that Windows will continue to slowly decline and desktop Linux will continue to slowly climb up. It’s just a matter of time. It’s just sad that MS gets away with all that crap. The people who value data protection or privacy have already left the MS world long ago. The rest will simply get looted - all your personal and work life (including a lot of your customers’ data) belongs to MS (and, by extension, to the US) if you continue to use their software and services.