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Cake day: July 5th, 2026

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  • It heavily depends on your needs, wants, and expectations.

    In simplest terms, Ubuntu is Mac-like and Mint is Windows-like. At least, on the surface. Basically everything else is feature parity, just requires slightly different arrangements depending on which flavor you’re running.

    I didn’t much like Ubuntu as it feels too close to MacOS to me. Primarily because I don’t really like that aesthetic. Ubuntu and Mint were my first forays into Linux as well, but this was also years ago when Mint was relatively new to the scene. While I personally liked the style of Mint, at the time it just didn’t have nearly enough features for what I was into.

    These days I settled on CachyOS which is a fork of Arch. Cachy is aimed at gaming, but comes with a very straightforward installer with a huge amount of customization options to really make the OS your own. That’s ultimately what keeps me on Arch is the genuine ease of customization at this point. Rolling releases don’t bother me as i used to do CyanogenMod nightlies and this is like the big boy version of that, but I also can fully appreciate wanting shit to just work.

    That said, Ubuntu is arguably the most popular distro because of its similarities to Mac and the “It just works” vibes it tends to give off these days.

    The best part of Linux is how easy it is to check out a new flavor and see how you like it. And once you do find the flavor that suits you, the mega nerds in that particular community have probably already figured out how to do that thing you want. And if those folks didn’t for any reason, the folks at AUR* probably did.

    *AUR = Arch User Repository and is an unregulated repository of whatever anyone clever enough to develop for Arch has come up with. Peruse and download at your own risk, but there’s some genuinely awesome and useful tools out there.








  • At the height of the Colin Kaepernick nonsense, my cousin got married to a cop.

    So the reception is going normally when everyone is asked to stand and they started playing the National fucking Anthem. Literally everyone was surprised and taken aback by this, but most complied and faced the flag.

    My Very Conservative Uncle, however, was busy having a conversation with me. Next to my chair. On one knee. During the anthem.

    To his credit, nobody laughed harder about it than he did. “Of course I’m the guy taking a knee during the anthem!” He also was blocking me in and gave me the perfect excuse to do what I’d planned to anyway and remain seated because what the fuck? Are we in North Korea and need to tribute Glorious Leader at every event?

    That was probably one of the last family functions I’ve been to, come to think of it.


  • Yeah, CachyOS has been working just fine for me. And while both of those points raise an eyebrow for me, I have also heard things about the Cachy team that do the same. Perfect can’t be the enemy of good enough. Though to that second point you raised, I just watched a [Veritasium?] video recently on how just such a system-level package was very nearly compromised by what has all the hallmarks of a malicious state actor precisely because it was so seemingly innocuous and open.

    I appreciate the clear and concise explanation. Cheers, friend.



  • The piracy option is by far the cheaper and easier method all things considered. If you like Free Media (Heck Yeah) then just Google those words or even their acronym and you’ll probably be rewarded with all you could ever want. Of course, this isn’t a legal thing I would ever actually suggest anyone do.

    This is how a family could have watched things ranging from entire series to latest it-shows to classic films and newest releases as a family while on a reasonable budget. Of course, mind your local ordnance regarding such things and take appropriate measures when doing anything other than verifying those websites exist for purely educational purposes as governments and corporations are absolutely watching every single byte of data that passes through your pipes unless you actively shield it. You will receive notices about any illicit activity they detect and they would be within their legal right to restrict or deny your access to the internet for piracy and theft.

    On an unrelated note, I’m quite happy with Proton VPN and the services they offer. Being Swiss-based with that reputation for international privacy, I’m reasonably assured my data isn’t at any greater risk of loss or breach than anyone else relying on a single point of failure and have my eggs in a basket that is otherwise entirely uninterested in me outside a subscription to keep their lights on.

    One monthly fee for privacy and a one-time investment in some basic hardware and you’ve got all of humanity’s recorded media on your television. Uh. In theory.

    Edit: word. I swear I English good.


  • Not the specific answer you’re looking for, but the one I’ve got as its the one I use for myself…

    I have a RaspberryPi as the default input for my TV now. Any and all interactions with the big screen happen through mouse and keyboard now rather than the TV remote besides power and maybe sometimes the volume.

    If you’re looking for a cheaper option than that, I believe you can get older chromesasts/firesticks and jailbreak those for more or less the same results I’ve got with my setup, but YMMV depending on what you’ve got and what you seek.




  • Please read all my comments in this thread and provide me examples of my inconsistency.

    System is broken and needs fixing. This guy is trying to fix it. I agree this is a small step, but also believe its a step in the right direction and an example of a politician putting his money where his mouth is, all too rare these days.

    I’m not “blue no matter who,” I’m saying look at the active track record of the political figure in question and then with receipts tell me how this is something actually worth criticizing like a New York Post writer. “His policies are not exactly what I want verbatim so I’m gonna throw a Libertarian-style hissy fit because I’m more right than you!”

    Man is making moves people in one of the biggest cities on the planet actively approve of in ways that ease the financial burdens of working people. If I have to go searching through three screens to tip somebody through an online app then in all reality I probably won’t 9 out of 10 times. Which means more of my money goes to corporations where I never see it again versus into the actual economy where the actual value of that dollar continues to accrue as it circulates amongst the masses.

    Let me reiterate from my top comment here: Perfect cannot be the enemy of good when the system is so wildly stacked against us. Every bit of progress in the right direction is a fight for an inch we no longer have to worry about later. That is how movements build momentum.



  • Burning down the system sounds great until you’re starving in a mountain of your own waste.

    I agree the current system is for shit and needs to be done away with entirely, but society is a little more complicated than Legos; smashing it down to start again costs a lot more than just time and even money.

    Fiddling the knobs to make it manageable, proving he can do something in NYC of all places with all of that inertia, then possibly taking his platform bigger since he is a freshman politician fighting a 250 year old established system?

    I’m not saying he’s perfect or above criticism. I’m also saying we can still be pragmatic.


  • Sure, let’s dump on the only guy demonstrably working to improve the lives of his constituents in whatever way he can in a system designed to concentrate wealth and power away from the people.

    Perfect cannot be the enemy of good when the rest of the political landscape is clearly significantly worse.

    Also, while COL in NYC is definitely not low, the pay at least allows one to actually survive because of the already-somewhat-progressive nature of NYC politics. Compare that to Florida where the pay for licensed and experienced Nurses for example is literally half that offered in New York and there are zero unions and/or worker protections besides, then maybe we can agree that forcing the predatory companies to at least be slightly less shady and let people show monetary appreciation for a job well done when clearly nobody else will is absolutely a lesser evil on the road to becoming something worthwhile one day.

    For super-lefty Lemmy, shitting on the most openly and demonstrably active socialist politician in the country is kinda funny.