Well … I first got into contact with OpenSource due to Gratis: OpenOffice, Firefox etc. Combining my knowledge of OpenSource with my tendency to break stuff (Reinstalling Boston for the nth time) led me to Linux which I first tinkered with and soon fully adapted.

I had a short hopping phase where I went from Ubuntu (my starter) via Debian (accidentally tried stable) to Arch.

Stuck with arch on my personal machines now run Ubuntu for my work machine and Debian for Servers.

My favourite distro is the right tool for the job (see above) but I’m pretty happy with Arch

You can … WHAT!?

Wow I did not know that. Incredibly helpful

Two additional commands I regularly use as a Sysadmin are

systemctl status without any unit to list show the general system status (lists units that are running, units that are starting and failed units right at the top) And then systemctl list-units --failed To show me just the failed units and did deeper what the problem is.

On a properly set up system I should quickly be able to ascertain if everything is “up and running” just by systemds status

Well for my laptop which I use 3-5 days a week (for a few hours at a time) I do it only when I’m at home so it doesn’t get in the way when I need my machine. But I also reboot my laptop every use since with framework suspend just won’t work properly (I’ll look into it soon™).

My desktop I try to update every time I use it but with barely any time and my gaming now happening on my steam deck that’s less and less. Also with the archzfs module I gotta wait for the right timing between module and kernel versions so these days I often miss a few updates.

Antennapod does offer that by hooking into the gpodder.net API.ive had varying success with gpodder.net but hosting that yourself (I host it as an app on my Nextcloud) is a breeze

I’ve seen the musical a bunch of times and when I finally managed to read it last year it was a revelation. While I still love the musical the book is so much more intriguing and interesting and just manages to much more perfectly capture the main theme.

Night need to re-read this one soon ;)

This. So much.

The Martian was the first and to this date only book that I’ve read and, when I was finished, decided to re-read right away.

Love all Andy Weirs stuff. I’ve read the Martian four to five times now (lost count) I’ve also read Artemis twice and am currently re-reading Project Hail Mary.

Even when you know the ending the way there is still always fun another time.

Also I’ve re-read the Dirk Gently books since I just love Douglas Adams

Can’t quite speak for the n100 but I got a n305 one of these “China PCs” it’s passively cooled (which was important since it’s running in my bedroom) and seems to have amazing performance for what I need (I put jellyfin on there). I’m quite happy after futzing around with ARM SBCs and external drives this just works so well.

Yeah might have gotten stuck on Debian as well if I didn’t make the mistake to run stable when I first tried it. Choosing stable made sense to me since I wanted a stable os but when I was greeted by “ICE weasel” that was way behind the Firefox I got used to on Ubuntu and other software being terribly out of date I decided to move on.

Well then I got stuck on Arch.

But while it would be easy to say “never looked back” that’s not true of course, these days I tun Debian on most of my machines (only that they are servers) and Ubuntu on some (like my work Laptop) my personal Desktop and laptop are Arch though and probably always will be.

I work in hosting. We mostly use Proxmox for our Hypervisors which is already a step up from “bare” KVM in regards to convenience/ease of use (especially for High availability scenarios and the like) We also run VMWare and while I don’t love the “locked down you gotta do it the VMWare way” nature it’s often so much easier and the HA is mich more convenient. Also it has proper functionality for custom resourcing/access/billing.

Oops guess I didn’t read far enough ;)

An article about tweaking sudo without insults?

Gotta agree with Ozymandias aliases are the way to go.

I’ve set up a few different aliases “search” which is just pacman -Ss “install” (pacman -Sy) “update” (pacman -Syyu) “remove” (pacman -Rns) and finally as to your question about unneeded dependencies I’ve got “clean” which first does an orphan check/clean (pacman -Qtdq | pacman -Rns -) and afterwards also cleans the package cache (pacman -Sc) Also the aliases are automatically prefixed with sudo (if it is installed).

This way I simply run update and afterwards clean and my system is up to date and cleaned of orphans.

I’ve created these aliases back when I was still using 3Distros (Arch,Debian/*buntu, Fedora) so my alias definition comes after a little script that determines the correct package manager and, depending on that, sets the aliases. But that’s of course only necessary if you use different distros and want your aliases to be portable.

Tl;dr: Set up aliases for things you wanna do often. Check the wiki for reference if you only want to do something every so often.

What? How broken are we all that you first thought is “Nice then I can work two jobs” The only way this really works if they pay living wages for 3 day work weeks. And I know they aren’t even paying those now for 5-6 days but this is a point we have to insist on and make them do it. Workers have managed to enforce a 8 hour work day a long time ago. We need to remember our strength and fight for better conditions.

I remember the first time I saw ads on YouTube, I had just set up a new computer and wanted to test everything. So I opened Firefox and loaded a YouTube video. I got a preroll and wondered “wait ad’s, on YouTube?” Then I realized I had been using AdBlock for so long I never witnessed the transition from ad free YouTube to YouTube with ads.

These days I use unlock origin, Sponsorblock and revanced. For now it still works but maybe I’ll leave YouTube soon :/

Yeah they’re using the hell out of dark patterns and then switch them up mid process i.e. clicking the big green “Ok” Button will first be the one that gets you to pay more later you need to hit “Ok” to proceed without additional fees.

I recently went through the process with a friend. Both of us reasonably tech savvy and under 35 and we almost went mad. So it’s not just old folks.

I’ve been using signal since forever. Recently when there was a big exodus from Whatsapp because of their changed data policies was the first time I felt an impact with response time in the app etc. I immediately set up a regular donation. A few months later they came out with there cryptocurrency scheme I decided I won’t be funding any cryptocurrency so I cancelled my donations. I trust signal on the technical side implicitly. But they have lost my trust in the business side :/

Seriously. I’m just wating for a 3,5" form factor SSD where most of the chassis is cooling and inside it’s just a 2230m.2

I had heard about it before and gave it a quick Google earlier. But didn’t know the meme so I guess that joke went over my head :)

What? Linux.