The hiding of the control panel is just extra pain for the fun of it. I know it’s the same tool they’ve had for many generations now so they’re hiding it because it’s ugly, but it’s the real way to get things done. Hiding it is just making everyone’s life harder, which is basically the Microsoft approach to OS design.

No, the goal is to sleep in silence. When I’m able to put aside my worries and truly rest I don’t need any noise or background hum to be completely out.

I only use a short video (under my pillow at mom volume so I can barely hear it) to get to sleep and then I’m usually out for a long time.

I’ve always felt that much of getting to sleep and what makes it easy to rest is training to some extent. Changing the ambient noise (especially if you move homes) can really screw things up until you get used to the normal noises of the new location. While that happens I’ll use something to fuzz the ambient sounds, but I’ll actively remove the white nose or background video over time so I acclimate to the new normal.

I consider it a worthwhile goal to be able to sleep without aids, if possible. Most of the real trouble is in my head (or a neighbor with fucking loud music at 2am to be dealt with), so when I have control I seek silence and a mental even keel when possible.

As a kid? Nothing. Just silence.

Today? My tinnitus, quietly humming away.

Now,.if I’m in a very weird mental spot and just can’t spin down to rest, I put on The Might Jingles’ World of Warships gameplay videos. His English voice just puts me out in moments.

Tom’s Root Boot.

One floppy disk, one Linux machine!

I am by no means the right person to ask about music instruments from a critical eye or critical ear perspective.

The one that picked up I got off of AliExpress and it is pretty reasonable for sound and durability. I’m sure there’such better choices for someone who wants to have a nicer one.

I hear you. I’m a ukulele player at times, so we’re in the same weight class.

It’s also very portable and basic ones are very inexpensive. It’s also nice to explicitly see the relationship between music and the notes when you’re learning.

Banjo’s got a general bad rap from it’s portrayal in many movies and shows. It is also a very different sound than guitar which a good number of people find discordant (it’s also easier to make it be loud and discordant, which happens with new players).

Well done banjo is just fine, but there’s a knee jerk negative response to its name.

It’s never claimed to be a democracy. It’s not a monolith, either. Some projects have forms of input and/or voting, most don’t because it’s just a few people writing software that they want to write.

Get over yourself if you think that people working for free should be required to listen to you. Just as in anything else, pay them if you want a guaranteed response.

Otherwise, recognize that the key element of Open Source is that you have the source code. If a project isn’t doing what you want then fork it and build it yourself. That’s the whole point of this community and philosophy.

Discord does provide a .deb, but I’ve never found a repo that carries updated versions. I’ve found plenty of hacks that download the latest one and install it every night, but for whatever reason, it’s not kept in the various Debian repos out there.

The kids mostly use Mint with one Ubuntu machine (driver issues that worked on Ubuntu, but not Mint).

I’ve only barely used steam myself (no time for games: see having many kids), but I know the kids often do have to do various tweaks for games at times. I let them have full sudo on their own machines with a scorched earth policy if something goes wrong. Mostly, it seems to work and they don’t bug me much.

Thank you. I’m very proud of all of my kids (even the Windows user).

I haven’t put anyone on the Arch path yet. So far, apt, video drivers, and Steam have been giving the crew enough trouble.

If nothing else, just keeping Discord patched is getting them lots of experience with sudo and dpkg tools. Why doesn’t Discord have a repo?

The crazy moment was when one kid was about 10 years old and he busted open the terminal without promoting to get something done. He already knew it was faster and more powerful so he just started learning the tools.

I danced a little jig in my head once I realized what had just happened.

That’s the Mint classic option and a great one. It’s an easy mainline go to for users with all the basics baked in.

I’m a die hard Linux user. I don’t spend much time telling people about it outside of actual tech conversations that should include the topic. I did raise my kids with a lot of Linux desktop use on their machines. They uniformly find the Windows 10/11 experience to be horrible, so I guess I’ve managed success on that front.

Mint is my go to Linux desktop distribution. There’s plenty of solid choices, but it’s served me well ever since Crunchbag Linux closed up shop.

I used WSL for a job and it worked fine. It’s kind of a weird VM that doesn’t really integrate with the host OS fully, but it works for many use cases.

Git BASH has more direct system integration and hardware access than WSL, though it’s been a couple of years since I had to look at WSL at all. Hopefully they’ve improved the integration over time.

What?!?

I looked it up and you can. I’ll have that fired up with their docker image in no time. Thank you for the pointer.

If I’m stuck on a windows machine, one of the first packages I try to install is git-scm.org’s BASH.

It’s not actually Linux, but it’s got a command line and enough programs to really help get work done.

It’s strange how that happens when a government starts to consider other options.

Mint is my go to desktop option. It usually does the job.

I don’t usually worry about older packages. Most things run fine. I don’t spend a lot of time trying to make my UI pretty. For me, the GUI is a place for terminals, web browsers, my IDE, and general tools, not some kind of whiz bang thing to tweak all the time.

Debian: good enough and stable. No worries > new features.