The interface is a bit bare bones and 90’s but I like it that way. It’s a good and reliable client.

Can’t help you there, I buy CDs and lossless copies from Bandcamp and Qobuz. Those work for me.

“Install Gentoo” is a meme, not life advice. With Gentoo, the installation process gives you good insight in to the internals of Linux systems and compiling (almost) everything from source is interesting, but won’t produce noticeable benefits for average users. Especially since updates take some time, what with compiling the programs again. Gentoo is a great distro with a fantastic package manager, but unless you’re an enthusiast or a serious hobbyist, Don’t Install Gentoo.

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Mandriva was a Linux distribution that went out of business years ago. OpenMandriva is one of the projects that rose from its ashes with some of the same personnel and code base. It is an independent (not a fork) and community run distribution that, I think, does quite a lot with very limited resources.

Corporate backing is a two-edged sword, unfortunately.

I had Windows 8.1 but as the end of its maintenance was approaching I saw the writing on the wall with Windows 10 and especially 11 and I wanted no part of that. When 8.1 was put to pasture I returned to Linux and I have been content ever since. Seeing where Microsoft is taking Windows I’m more and more convinced that Stallman Was Right. I control my software, not the other way around.

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After Thunderbird’s UI overhaul I jumped around a bit and landed on Claws Mail. It’s fairly old fashioned, but I personally prefer that and find it clear and logical. It’s a good client.

If you want Debian with more frequent updates, consider going Debian sid. Base Debian is also fine, maybe with Flatpaks for more up-to-date applications where needed.

Oh man. I’m so sorry for your loss. May your system break at some vague point in the future in a way that is nigh impossible to diagnose and that no one else seems to have experienced. Godspeed, you unwillingly content penguin!

Just go with Debian.

You can install it on any machine. It’s just a terminal IRC client. I run it on a small home server with screen so that it’s always on.

I run irssi on a Raspberry Pi. It has everything I need.

Well yeah, the recent xz vulnerability was not present in the source code at all. Any amount of code reading would not have caught that one.

Always check the package list when updating. Tumbleweed for some reason occasionally wants to install Patterns even if they were not included to begin with. I’ve taken to updating with the command:

sudo zypper dup --no-recommends

to avoid installing packages/patterns I’m trying to avoid. You could probably also mask some packages so they are never installed, but I haven’t looked in to that.

Hope that helps.

Disappoint is a sober word here. I am actually pissed at the casual arrogance of Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical.

I’m actually baffled that this would come as a surprise to people. Canonical has been like this for a long time and you’d have to have blinders on to not see it. They are hell-bent on doing things their way and ignoring the wider Linux community and even their users. That is, of course, their prerogative and to some degree I even welcome their attempts at differentiating their distro from others. As a user though you should be aware of their history and the apparent direction they’re heading.

I just wish they’d stop stalling and went all-in on snaps already, since that’s pretty obviously where they’re headed.

Oh hey, I remember that screen. I have seen it many times. Many, many times. Oh God, so many times.

Back in the day when I was running Gentoo, in the long long ago, Firefox was one of the few things I installed as a binary, since compiling it took hours. Compiling it every time there was an update would have driven me crazy. From what I gather this is still true for most users. Yeah, go for the Flatpak if at all possible.

I hate that Tales of Maj’Eyal is my favorite Open Source game. I hate that a new expansion is coming out soon and I will instantly buy it and play it and hate myself. Check it out!

OpenTTD and Widelands are also pretty cool.

Bring back AltaVista!