At the point of first contact IRL, I avoid mentioning anything even vaguely inflammatory: that I’m an immigrant (that one is hard to hide because my pronunciation of the local language is still quite terrible), vegan, atheist, hold anarchist, marxist, and generally anti-capitalist views. If the relationship lasts longer than just a single contact, as I build up trust and goodwill I slowly start seeping out that info, usually in the order that I listed it in.

For context, I’m using NixOS, not Arch, but it’s a similar enough idea. I have a tiling/tabbed WM configured just the way I like it, and a window switcher thingy, and it makes juggling hundreds of windows really easy and quick. Combined with a terminal-based editor, a custom setup for my shell, and direnv for easy environment switching, I can be switching between a dozen different projects within a single day (sadly a requirement for my work right now).

Whenever I look at how my colleagues with KDE/Gnome are managing their workflows, it makes me appreciate the work I put into my setup a lot.

Also, I have a whole bunch of shell aliases and scripts for tasks I do often.

Sure, you can configure any distro to do that, but things like Ubuntu or Fedora would get in the way. At some point, when you want to choose (or even write) every component of the system and configure it yourself, it’s easier to just build from scratch rather than start with a lot of pre-configured software and remove parts.

My desktop runs nixos, but will be transfered to arch next rebuild.

That’s interesting; any particular reason? I went the other way around (Arch for multiple years -> Gentoo for a year or so -> NixOS for over a decade now), and never looked back.

Is it shown that there are significant performance benefits to installing daemons and utilities à la carte?

No, not really.

Is it because arch users are enthusiasts that enjoy trying to optimize their system?

This is IMHO the most important aspect. The thing they’re trying to optimize isn’t performance, though, it’s more “usability”, i.e. making the system work for you. When you get down to it and understand all the components of the OS, and all the moving parts within, you can set it up however you prefer and then combine them in novel ways to solve your tasks more quickly.

A lot of things break on cars that old, so any buyer has to be a bit stupid to pay that price…

laughs in a 30 year old van, that gained about 40% of value since I bought it 3 years ago

If it was built well, and is simple enough, it’s not too much of a hassle and you can maintain a lot of it yourself. Most new cars are complicated garbage that breaks constantly straight out of the factory, and you have to take it to a mechanic to do anything because of their complexity and proprietary software. Compare that to my van, where I can read the OBD2 error codes on my phone over bluetooth with a $10 dongle, and can do most basic maintenance (oil, ATF, spark plugs, belts) with basic hand tools and a car pit.

Nah they were. Being a nazi makes you a bad person, categorically. It doesn’t mean there’s no possibility for change or reform, but it does mean that while someone holds nazi believes they are a vile piece of shit.

What’s up with approx. 1.8?

I’ll say it’s a 6-9 depending on my mood.

Sure this may sound ridiculous but it’s basic knowledge that studying your opponents viewpoints is the best way to counter them and get new insight yourself.

I don’t think this is necessarily empathy. I’ve read Hitler, Ilyin and Dugin, understood their arguments and point of view. If anything it made me less empathetic to them, seeing their vile hatred spilled on paper like that; but I agree that it is useful in practice to understand people who hate your guts.

To me, empathy means not only understanding the individual’s viewpoint, but moreso understanding how they got to it. This is how I can still slightly emphasize with any awful individuals, from nazis to billionaires: I understand that their viewpoint was formed by their position in the capitalist hellscape we fine ourselves in, and by incessant capitalist propaganda. If I was born in their stead and lived through their experiences, I would likely share similar ideas. This makes me more hopeful in the possibility of reform even for the worst of the worst; if a person was convinced of something, they can be convinced that it is wrong too; noone is born a nazi, and so noone is beyond hope in my opinion.

As for my family, they can be incessantly racist and homophobic, not to mention all the various small things like climate change conspiracies etc. I politely disagree with them and try to nudge them towards more inclusivity and empathy for others; we’ve never had a screaming argument despite holding very different opinions about things so dear to my heart. But yeah at times, especially when I’m in a bad mood, I also just shut down political conversations with them.

With how complex (and unrepairable) modern cars are, in a few years the used car prices will probably shoot up because of flailing supply.

TBH nowadays android is becoming just as guilty of the walled garden bullshit. We need mobile linux and we need it now.

There are moments where the potential payout for a ticket is greater than the value of the ticket.

Has this ever happened in recent history?

In that mathematical moment, buy exactly one ticket.

I’d say buy as many as you can within the amount of money you’re ready to waste. Same as with investing, pretty much.

You can get phone batteries from Aliexpress for very cheap. They are typically not too difficult to replace (as long as the back panel is not glass). Give it a go!

It’s like a clown. Funny to watch it goof about from afar, but when it comes to you OH FUCK OH SHIT THERE’S A CLOWN STARING AT ME FROM THE WINDOW AND PLOTTING A RIGHT-WING COUP

aerc

To this day i still plug my wh-mx10004 … (Or whatever their stupid number is cause sony thinks a ten digit alphanumeric code is the catchiest name for their products…) b/c every time they connect by bt they will ONLY do ‘handsfree’ codec, yknow, the one that sounds like shit for phone calls. I have done everything… pavucontrol, pipewire, wireplumber, blueman, cli system level shit and yes i can force it to proper high def audio after some really annoying steps… but then ill start up a game or something and it suddenly goes “nope! This calls cor handset audio!” And switches itself back.

If you’re talking about WH-1000XM4, they work for me. Sometimes on first connect they only have mSBC codec for me too, but if I just disconnect/reconnect them then all other codecs appear. If I switch to SBC-XQ or LDAC they then work fine until I turn them off (which can be hours and many different playback streams). I’m on pipewire+pipewire-pulse.

I’ve heard about Linux being highly customizable and decentralized OS, and suddenly I can’t define my own shortcuts because there is a list of un-features?

You can customize it to do whatever you want. Heck, you can write your own terminal emulator that does exactly what you need. But some things can be harder to do than others and require skills and experience. Once someone implements those harder things, they become a “feature”. Before then, therefore, they are an “un-feature”. See https://xkcd.com/1349/

E.g. it is probably possible to set up your shell to use shift-selection for the command you’re currently editing, but shift-selection for the output of a previous command will require terminal support. You will have to make sure that the two don’t interfere with each other, which can be quite complicated.

I already have my workflow and I’m trying to transfer it to Linux

Linux is a different OS that, by default, does things differently from others. You can configure it to emulate some other UX, but it won’t necessarily be easy. In the meantime, you can install the micro editor, set EDITOR=micro, and then Ctrl+x Ctrl+e in bash to edit the command in a more familiar setting.

I prefer compose keys because they are easier to remember.

Oh, also, I think GTK apps have that Ctrl+shift+U thing which allows you to enter characters by code. Never really got used to it though.

I think this is one of many un-features in Linux world where

• It would benefit a beginner
• It sounds simple but actually quite complicated to get right (especially if you aim to keep compatibility with things)
• Anyone possessing the skills to implement it neither needs it nor cares about it

As such, for you individually, I suggest just getting more comfortable with tmux (or zellij) and vi-like keybinds for text manipulation. Once you learn those (and set your readline mode to vi), you won’t look back. Oh, also, try Ctrl+x Ctrl+e in bash, it might help.

Or switch to emacs and using it as a terminal emulator. In that case you will have to learn and use emacs keybindings, but the selection semantics in the “terminal” will be the same as in the “editor”.

Also check out Nix. It’s a pretty weird package manager but has a lot of packages. Also allows you to configure your entire macOS install declaratively with a text-based config file, if you’re into that.

Are there any risks or disadvantages to building software from source, compared to installing a package?

Well, compiling from source is the “installing dodgy freeware .exe” of the Linux world. You have to trust whoever is distributing that particular version of the source code, and ideally vet it yourself. When installing a binary package from your distro’s repositories, presumably someone else did the vetting for you already. Another slight risk is that technically you are running some extra build scripts before you can even run the application, which is a slight security risk.

Can it mess with my system in any way?

Yeah, unless you take precautions and compile in a container or at least a sandbox, the build scripts have complete unadulterated access to your user account, which is pretty much game over if they turn out to be malicious (see: https://xkcd.com/1200). Hopefully most FOSS software is not malicious, but it’s still a risk.

If you “install” the software on your system, it also becomes difficult to uninstall or update, because those files are no longer managed from any centralized location.

I recommend using a source-based package manager, and package your software with it (typically won’t be any more difficult than just building from source) to mitigate all of those (as typically source-based PMs will use sandboxing and keep track of the installed files for you).