monkeysuncle

joined 1 year ago
[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Problem is if older Chromebooks are used for Linux in an educational environment there would be nothing stopping a student from whipping up a bootable USB and dumping another distro (bypassing restrictions). I’m also not sure if there is a enrollment mode equivalent Linux (there may be but not sure).

They could just disable booting from USB drives in the bios and password protect it. They could install something like Fedora Silverblue, or even customize the image used to include whatever modifications they want. Any changes they made to the image would be propagated through autoupdates. Kids wouldn't have root, so they couldn't forcibly install a different OS. Of course they could install flatpaks to their home directory, which is probably something administrators would want to prevent, but a knowledgeable student can always find ways to do what they want.

This of course requires schools/districts to hire people to manage that stuff, which could be a problem.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When I was 16 I was working at a grocery store and another worker around my age talked me into trying it out. I had heard of it from a high school class I had taken, so I figured I'd give it a try. I called him on the phone and he talked me through installing Ubuntu Dapper Drake on my laptop. The biggest issue back then was getting the WiFi to work, which required ndiswrapper to used the Windows drivers. We eventually got it working and then played Tremulous together.

I dual booted for a while, occasionally got angry at Windows and nuked the partition to go fully Linux. Occasionally got angry at Linux and nuked the partition to go fully Windows. Eventually settled fully on Linux. I did have a separate drive with Windows installed in my desktop at one point to play around with VR, but I'm not much of a gamer so the only time I use Windows now is in a VM if I need to interface with some device that only provides Windows drivers. Pretty rare at this point.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Weird. I've been using my MX Ergo for years and haven't had a single issue. Maybe they've changed something recently?

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

The EFF's How to Fix the Internet is an interesting podcast which talks about various issues with the current landscape of the internet and potential ways to improve it.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I listen to Linux Unplugged and I also am not a fan of the crypto stuff. I remember they actually addressed the whole crypto thing in an office hours episode, which I found incredibly disappointing as Chris essentially said crypto is a scam and we hate it, except for bitcoin. He talks about how long he's been using bitcoin and how you should trust him because he knows what he's talking about. It was very patronizing, and I took a break from unplugged for a while because of it.

I still listen to it because it's the only free Linux podcast I'm aware of, and I understand the need to make money so I can deal with the boosts for now.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't worry about the command line too much, you'll learn what you need when you need it. I've been using linux for over 15 years and I still have to google even simple commands sometimes because I don't use them often enough to imprint. The important ones will come with repetition.

The thing about using the command line is that once you get comfortable with it, it becomes faster than using a GUI for some things. That being said, on modern user-friendly operating systems you can probably get by with never using the command line.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I just use freetube. I can subscribe to the channels I want without an account, use sponsor block to block sponsored content, and even use invidious to proxy connections if I want. No ads, not even in-video ads.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Beehaw is a pun of yeehaw, the thing cowboys say. Hence the bee with a cowboy hat as a mascot.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago

Exactly. Especially a subreddit whose entire purpose is posting pictures, why would reddit care if all those pictures are of a single celebrity.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What does it mean for the money to disappear? Can I just not spend anymore or would it disappear from whoever I bought from. If the latter, I couldn't in good conscience buy anything. I wouldn't mind if say Walmart lost some profit, but thousands of dollars worth of cash suddenly going missing would cause people to lose their jobs.

If the former, I'd buy as much electronics as I could from Walmart and then buy a bunch of scratch offs and lottery tickets. Those are the only two placed open around here at 11pm.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The most basic benefit of immutable OSes like Fedora Silverblue is that you are prevented from messing up your system enough that you are unable to boot into it and fix it. This isn't strictly true, you can always go out of your way to screw things up (say deleting required partitions), but in normal usage you will always have a backup to boot and fix whatever you messed up. It also makes it extremely easy to undo things even if they aren't errors.

It's possible to do this without immutable OSes using btrfs snapshots before you change anything system-wide, in fact I believe MicroOS uses btrfs snapshots for their immutable system, but that adds cognitive load as it requires you to remember to create a snapshot. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed provides snapshotting automatically and adds entries to the bootloader for previous iterations, but it isn't immutable because you can still go and modify your root partition without taking a snapshot. MicroOS, however, has a read-only root partition so it becomes a lot more difficult to make a change without a snapshot. You can still do it, but you have to go out of your way to do it.

[–] monkeysuncle@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago

I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea if the punishment fits the crime. I'm sure republicans are going to claim favoritism or something like that, and that probation is not enough, but I have no idea how stuff like this usually pays out.

The only frame of reference I have is Wesley Snipes who had 3 misdemeanor tax charges instead of two and got prison time, but Snipes' case was a lot wilder and more money was involved. Snipes didn't plead guilty though and didn't have a plea deal, so it seems reasonable enough to only get probation when you did plead guilty.

 

Most of my creative writing is handwritten. I usually use legal pads, or more preferably wire bound legal pads. It's easy to write on both sides of them and for some reason the yellow just does it for me. Every once in a while I decide to by a fancy notebook. In the past it was Moleskines, more recently it was ones from etsy made with Tomoe River paper. I have a (cheap) fountain pen, so I figured I'd try some better paper.

The problem I run into is that I never use the fancy notebooks. The paper is better, and the ink flows smoother. It has a better tactile feel to it. But it is a fancy notebook and it should only be used for the good stuff—the stuff I want to look over a decade or two from now and be proud of.

So I'll be very careful and take my time to write in the best handwriting possible. I'll last for a few pages before my handwriting gets sloppier, or a have another idea that doesn't fit, and I abandon that fancy notebook. I go back to the spiral bound legal pads which contain a chaotic jumble of non-linear thoughts. There are notes and poems in the margins, things crossed out all over the place, and handwriting that becomes only legible to me if I squint real hard at it and pick it up from context.

So how do you feel about fancy journals. Are you able to treat them as the paper they are, or do you too put them on a pedestal?

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