For me personally the advantage is that since the editor is opened by your user, it has all of the same config that I’m used to (such as my souped up Neovim config).

Whereas if you sudo nvim /path/to/file then the editor is opened as root and you don’t have the same configuration.

Welcome to Lemmy!

For me the first Linux distribution I used was Ubuntu 8.04 - though I never had installed it on physical hardware, just a VM - VirtualBox IIRC (that didn’t occur till Ubuntu 8.10). I was in my early teenage years and had discovered Linux and found it interesting, I used the WUBI tool to install it through Windows and updated the bootloader to keep Windows as the default (with a one second timeout) since it was the family computer, I think my family would’ve shat their pants if they randomly rebooted the PC and was greeted with Linux heh.

Though a few years later on an old secondary family laptop (it was the “someone else is using the other computer” spare/backup) that was running Vista, it had gotten so buggy and bogged down that I installed Kubuntu for my family and they happily used that until eventually that laptop was retired. It never got them to really look into permanently switching to Linux, but I think that’s more than fine - I’ve never been one to “proselytize” Linux: If it is the right tool for you, fantastic - if not, no hard feelings is how I see it. In the aforementioned case, it was the better tool over the bogged down and buggy Vista.

As for nowadays, its CachyOS on my desktop (I’m not married to it, but its been working alright for me for about a year now), SteamOS on my Deck, Fedora on my secondary laptop (an old intel macbook), and then Bazzite on my ROG Ally. Windows is still installed on a secondary drive on my desktop, but I very rarely have to boot into it.

Ah gotcha, that’s a bit unfortunate - good to know though!

My memory is probably hazy (it’s been a while since I used macOS) or it might’ve been removed but I recall that you were able to hold a key on the keyboard to bypass it as well. You’d have to right click the application, then hold down the key, and while holding it down click “Open”.

Said key I believe was the “option” key

You’d basically have to do the modifications at build-time rather than at runtime, so you’d need to edit the image definition to do so (or effectively, create an “extension” of the image) - at least in the case of UBlue/Fedora Atomic based distributions. Each one has their own system for doing this (VanillaOS for example works similarly, IIRC).

(There is the rpm-ostree layering system, though from what I know the usage of it is discouraged)

This is pretty much why I don’t use atomic/immutable distributions on my main system - they can still be tinkered with, but it ends up requiring a lot of setup in order to do so. The last time I checked, creating custom images based on the UBlue images was quite complex and the documentation left me pretty confused. In theory, I shouldn’t have any issues with it, I work with containers all the time at both work and my own personal projects, but it just didn’t “click” for me at the time.

It’s been a bit though, so I’ll need to revisit it at some point - I just don’t really have the time currently to learn an entire system just to make tweaks to my system. That being said, I’m perfectly happy with Bazzite on my ROG Ally where I don’t need to make any tweaks to the base system (same with my Steam Deck running SteamOS - atomic based distributions are great for these devices/use-cases).

I have also tried out NixOS a few times, but same issue - it requires a lot of time investment to get the hang of the Nix ecosystem. For what its worth, I find the idea of atomic distributions to be intriguing and I see their appeal, but it just isn’t for me at the moment.

If you hit Ctrl Alt Delete very quickly in succession (I believe it’s 7 times in a row) it will bail out from a stop job and proceed with shutting down

Learned that trick because I was so tired of seeing that occur ha. Along that research I swear I recall seeing that it’s a KDE/SDDM issue but I might be getting some wires crossed on that (and thus, don’t quote me/take my word on that 😅)

I get the feeling they meant to put it the other way around, as yeah it doesn’t really make any sense otherwise.

And it also went open source recently too! I was happy to see that, as I know it was a blocker for a lot of people.

It’s almost crazy just how active the dev is, I feel like I’m always seeing the “Summit was updated” screen - it is very clear just how much passion the dev has for Summit and for the Fediverse.

You absolutely do not need AI in order to sound different in one context versus another. I mean, I highly doubt most people on Lemmy speak to their bosses in the exact way that they write their comments here.

Hell, I’d be surprised if they spoke to their friends and family the same way all the time (yes, I’m aware that you can generally be more lax around friends - but there’s a time and place for it, whereas comments on message boards tend to just be lax all the time).

That very concept has been around far longer than “AI” has.

I really don’t think there was any malice intended by them. Pretty sure the intent was more along the lines of"Yes, it has gotten better. Here’s a quick demonstration using the current conversation as context." (which reads very similar to what they said)

They could’ve left it at “Yes it’s gotten better” but I suppose it’s similar to the idea of “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Rather than “Ugh your grammar is terrible.” Of course no one should expect perfect grammar on Lemmy or similar platforms.

(Unless I’m just missing a giant ‘whoosh’ moment here - in that case, I’m sorry)

I did get one of those at one point! Definitely no longer have it anymore, but it was really cool that Canonical provided those for quite a while (from what I know).

Ah, perhaps that’s what I’m missing. I do have a Windows install for playing the odd games every now and then that don’t support Linux, but I don’t actually back anything up since all of my games are via Steam and utilize Steam’s cloud saves for syncing (and these games are usually multiplayer online-only games and wouldn’t need syncing anyways). I know that when I originally used macOS (back during “Mountain Lion” I believe?) Time Machine did utilize an external disk, but I would’ve thought these days it also leveraged iCloud Drive.

I did know about Windows’ File History mechanism, but I also made the assumption that Windows tech would integrate with OneDrive since they’re made by the same company… doing a quick search though seems to indicate that it “should” be possible, but actually getting it to do so definitely doesn’t have a simple toggle like you’d expect.

That’s what I get for speaking about features I’ve not used myself, whoops!

I appreciate that, thanks! There are two big problems that I’d have with self-medicating. Trying to actually obtain medication that is “clean” and not mixed with other bad stuff (while also trying to navigate the legal issues that could come with it - landing in prison would certainly not do well with my condition…) and then despite all of the medical knowledge that I’ve picked up from being in and out of hospitals, seeing various doctors, etc - I won’t pretend that this knowledge comes even close to understanding all of the inherent risks of said medications, and interactions that can come up from other adjacent medications I take. Hell, sometimes the doctors don’t even do a good job at screening this, and it comes down to the pharmacist warning me “Hey, we show that you’re taking X and Z, the new Y medication your doctor prescribed can conflict with this. Are you sure they’re aware you’re taking X and Z?”. It would seem that even doctors who go through the entire process of becoming a doctor can be bad at this particular (but very important) bit pharmacology - so I’m not sure what chance I’d have at being any better 😅

(Of course, I always make sure my doctors are aware of what I’m taking - the list is large, but I keep track of it very well)

So that kinda just leaves going the “proper” route of this, and unfortunately like other controlled substances, doctors (at least here in the US) get antsy if you even briefly suggest it and are quick to then label you as drug seeking. Then the next problem is trying to get a doctor who is even authorized to prescribe you that kind of medication - a lot of the practices over here have rules that prohibit their doctors from prescribing those substances even if they think its in your best judgment. AFAIK this is because of malpractice insurance, the FDA’s tight grip over it, and other factors that are just out of their control. It is something that is probably worth me trying if nothing else than to rule it out as a potential treatment vector, but as it is, I don’t really have a way to explore it sadly (in a safe manner that is).

I’m sure both Linux and (I know) Windows have something similar, but it’s not immediately active and trying to get you to save your stuff.

Funnily enough, Microsoft does try to do this with OneDrive, prompting you during OOBE. A lot of the tech space demonizes Microsoft for exactly this.

Which to be fair, a lot of that does come down to legitimate concerns (such as being far to eager about this even when you say “No” and not offering a “don’t ask me again”) - but at the same time, some of the push (likely) comes from a good place of trying to set up backups for users.

It’s definitely not completely altruistic - companies hardly ever are (cough cough, forced online accounts). But I also don’t think it’s as black and white as “Microsoft is bad for this”. And though even I complain about this, the same goes for Microsoft being aggressive with Windows Updates.

IIRC, flatpaks do work with NixOS so long as it’s enabled (and you’ve installed GNOME Software / Discover / etc - since I assume they’re not using the terminal to install programs, and that’s assuming that they don’t need more than a web browser).

So, if OP already set that up, then if Flathub has all you need, then it would make sense.

Though the Nix philosophy would disagree because that’s imperatively installing software rather than declaratively. You could probably wire up something to dump flatpak list to a file every so often and then load that in from configuration.nix or a Flake, but I’m not well versed in Nix at all haha

I remember back when I was a kid, the only way I was even able to try Ubuntu was through “WUBI” which was pretty cool - it allowed you to “install” Ubuntu via Windows, by leveraging the VHD support in the Windows 7 bootloader. It could also be uninstalled via the Windows control panel as it was registered just like any other program.

As far as I understand, it was discontinued because of inherent technical issues with that system - but I always thought if it could be done again, then it’d help bridge the gap a bit. All you had to do was download the installer, and double click it like any other program.

I had no clue how to write an image to a flash drive, hell I doubt I even had a flash drive to use at the time. 😅

No of course not, then they’d actually face consequences for it.

(Yes, I know there are people who do this to those who aren’t rich and still face consequences but I get the feeling that’s more of “the exception rather than the rule”)

The last time I was on, I still saw it running (even after the API bs).

I’m willing to bet that Reddit granted them an exception because it’s a widely used utility and isn’t a client that obscures what they really want you to see (ads).

Also, if the warnings are meaningless, why display them to the end user?

I mean to be fair, the Windows Event Viewer has zero shortage of warnings that are meaningless to the everyday user as well.

I’ve always seen the event viewer and dmesg to be two sides of the same coin - both of them serve the same (or close enough of an equivalent) purpose to my knowledge, and both are very verbose.

Not to my knowledge, no*. Though it’s been a while since I looked into it.

* Outside of running them inside a Windows VM on Linux, but that has its own issues. Especially if you use any of the CC apps that need GPU acceleration. It can definitely be done, but I’d argue most people are not going to want to go through the effort and rather just use Windows directly.