The good news is that Russia is only evil and fascist and so it’s always bad to be associated with them. Trust me, I’m one of the good Americans

You fool, you absolute bingus. You have fallen for one of the classic blunders, for I, in my infinite wisdom, know that all states are bad. And all equally so at that. 😎

So there are words I can say that get you to immediately stop listening to anything else I say and make broad assumptions about me and my beliefs?

Talk about being trained

Picking apart the single definition used by one entity doesn’t mean the term itself is completely meaningless.

But fine, I’ll bite, just for fun:

the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo

That’s every country

That’s “whataboutism.” Or alternatively, it’s “authoritarian realism”—a term I just made up which refers to any view that assumes a nation has to centralize powers to exist because that’s how the world under capitalism currently operates.

Reductions from what? The USSR was an increase in all of those things from Tsarist Russia.

So 1. You just gave a counterexample to your first point, and 2. I guess the metric depends on who you ask. It could be reductions from a historical state (as we could say of e.g. the current USA compared to North America’s political systems prior to european colonization), or compared to some standard of liberty (e.g. your use of USSR).

I can agree with your first point and still posit that the term is meaningful: e.g. authoritarianism isn’t a binary state of extistence, but rather a spectrum that different states can be compared on; all states can be authoritarian to some degree, but some states are more or less authoritarian than others.

Or to put it another way, saying “authoritarianism” is meaningless because all states exercise authority is like saying “conservativism” is meaningless because all living creatures seek to conserve resources (to some degree).

I agree that language is an imperfect map for the real world we inhabit—and I especially agree that the language (as with any social tool) gets abused to manipulate people—but I don’t agree that those facts make the terms completely useless in communication.

In most instances, “authoritarianism” is a more rigidly defined term than simply meaning “exercises authority.”

E.g. Wikipedia defines it as

a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.

It usually is this simple for any distro anymore. My advice is mostly tailored to worst-case scenarios so that people don’t get overly pissy when things don’t Just Work™

There’s nothing I can say to convince you Ubuntu is sucky if you don’t personally experience problems with it/have the occasional “I wish I could do this, but I guess it’s not possible” thoughts—spoiler: it’s usually possible, just not with that distro; this is true for all distros though, there will always be things they cannot do that others can.

That being said, my biggest gripe with Ubuntu, besides canonical’s geologic-paced attempts to make it profit-driven (which was what I was thinking of when I mentioned user-friendliness), is Snaps. I understand the motivation behind them, but the implementation was just sucky for many nitpicky reasons that I don’t really care to enumerate rn.

I also just don’t see much value in downstream for my needs. I can basically turn Debian into a Ubuntu clone if I want to, and my packages will still largely be supported by upstream maintainers. For bespoke distros it makes sense, but those are usually ill-maintained or hobby projects that update at glacial speeds.

I’m not saying that Debian >>>>> Ubuntu. It’s better just enough that I’d recommend Debian before I would recommend Ubuntu.

I had very few issues with a GTX 970 and i7-4790k. The only issues I hear about with either any more is the linux kernel not supporting some of the features of newer GPUs (e.g. I know ray-tracing was a pain-point at one point).

I don’t like recommending distros based on such a general use case, mainly because every distro can be tweaked and configured to exactly what you want. Instead, you should research the different mainline distros that have been around for decades—Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Guix, NixOS, OpenSuse, Slackware—and see what they’re about, what sets them apart from others, what the maintainers’ philosophies are, and what kind of package management system they work with. Once one sounds better than the others, look into it and try it out.

#Dos and Don’ts:

Don’t try a niche distro. They are harder to troubleshoot and less likely to be actively maintained.

Don’t use Ubuntu. It’s just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.

Don’t dual-boot with windows. This just solidifies your reliance on windows, especially if you’re the type to give up on problem-solving issues that you didn’t have in Windows. It also can cause issues with making Linux unbootable.

Do try a live usb with persistence before you commit entirely. It’s not exactly the same as a complete install, but it’s close enough to let you know how the OS feels and what hardware will or won’t work with it. Some people say try a VM first, but that won’t have direct hardware access.

Do problem solve the little things. Anything that irks you or bothers you or just slows down your workflow. It doesn’t have to be an actual bug or glitch, just anything that could be better. This not only solidifies the feeling of ownership over your OS—you no longer have to settle for anyone else’s lousy design choices—it teaches you the resources for troubleshooting larger issues.

Do plan around things not being plug and play at first. Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working. This won’t always be the case, but it will irk you a lot less when it is if you expect it. The more you make time for solving these issues now, the less time they’ll take up in the future (either they’ll be gone, or you’ll immediately know how to fix them, or your troubleshooting will be more streamlined).

Do set aside time to learn about Linux “under the hood.” You don’t have to become a computer scientist, but it will save you a lot of headaches, show you cool things you can do, and make your computer a smoother experience. It especially helps if you take the time to learn as they come up: e.g. installer asks you what “bootloader” you want, but you’re not sure what that is, what it does, or why it’s necessary? Now’s the best time to take a little learning detour.

Do ask questions on forums.

Don’t listen to the people who shame you for asking.

Do listen to the people who try to show you a better way of doing things, even if it’s not your way.

What do I think?

I think anyone who claims to know and understand every aspect of the world as it truly is resides at the top of Mt. Stupid on the Dunning-Kruger graph (yes, I know it’s a disproved theory, but it’s still a useful descriptor of the way some people behave).

I also think anyone who believes in phenomena with little to know evidence can never actually end up on the right side of the bell curve meme (a curve that is also the result of faulty science, but still illustrative of some humans’ experiences).

I also think that terms like “ghost” or “magic” or “miracle” have so many connotations and interpretations, that it’s easy for miscommunication to happen if people don’t spell out exactly what they mean when talking about them.

I think ghosts are real in the sense that I believe people experience things they can’t explain, and so resort to blaming invisible sentiences, and I believe those experiences are real; I have many doubts over their explanations of those experiences.

I also think that anyone who enters into a discussion holding my stance, but framing it as “ghosts are real,” is looking more to start an argument than have an actual meaningful discussion.

Time and again, across years and product categories, Amazon has reached out to its vendors and instructed them to increase retail prices on competitors’ websites, threatening dire consequences if vendors do not comply.

Yes, buying from alternative websites is the bare minimum and the bar is so low it’s underground. But that’s beside the point: Amazon is price fixing across the internet.

Credit to Existential Comics

Consumerism! AHHHHH!!!

Stoat and it’s been mostly fine, but they’re already implementing age verification.

Can you elaborate on this? I can’t find anything about it online

Con Te Partirò - Andre Bocelli
遙か彼方 - ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION
アイワナビー - Stance Punks
I Samma Bil - Bo Kaspers Orkester
A 67-Es Út - Republic
Papaoutai - Stromae

Yeah, that was warranted. I was being hostile, which is why i deleted the comment immediately after posting it

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Tried flatpak steam as well as valve’s installer script; nada.

I don’t generally do flatpaks, I just tried it to see if it would remove the issue

I’ll give it a shot next time I have some time, thank you!

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