I eventually decided on openSUSE Tumbleweed for a few reasons: rolling release, because I like to stay up-to-date; non-derivative, not a fork or dependent on other underlying distros; European, for (perceived) privacy reasons; a relatively well known and large distro with a decent community, for troubleshooting reasons; backed by a company, though that has both its ups and downs; lastly, support for KDE Plasma.

I actually had trouble finding a distro that suited all my criteria at the time, but openSUSE is good enough for now and I am pretty much satisfied.

Evacuation in my ass? Sounds about right.

I can sometimes see auras around people. It’s fascinating stuff, but the strain of it can cause debilitating pain.

Western medicine calls it “migraines”, but what does science know?

Thanks, now I’m depressed.

Honestly, guys, gals and others, Microsoft is making it crystal clear they don’t want you to use their OS. It’s not your OS, it’s theirs. Stop trying mangle it into something it is not. If you need registry edits just to make the OS usable, it’s not worth it. It’s not for you. Please, please, please look at alternatives that respect you, your intelligence, your privacy and your data. One day Microsoft will push an update that will lock you out of your machine unless you create an account. Jumping through these hoops is just delaying the inevitable. Using an OS is not worth all this effort and stress.

The president of the United States of America is angry that starting a trade war has started a trade war. I would be appalled, if this wasn’t just par for the course at this point.

I landed on Claws Mail myself. It does look a bit dated, but the UI is functional and the client works. I’m content with it.

Hey, I don’t even disagree with that criticism. And maybe I’ll check out The Fountainhead later.

It’s a funny thing, I was never politically aligned with Rand to begin with, but I really enjoyed Atlas Shrugged as a science fiction book. The dystopia led by incompetent and ideologically empty boobs was an interesting take. From the way Rand portrayed her characters and presented the ideas of her opponents made me think she might have been autistic. Her politics made me think she was insane. It’s a fun book.

Your brother is wise.

Anecdotally, I don’t trust Klarna one bit. A few years ago I was making a payment and Klarna directed me to a third party site that wanted my bank credentials. It was at that moment I stopped using Klarna and requested they delete all information they have on me. Apparently, Klarna wanted to see my account activity. I now go out of my way to avoid them. I have a similar issue with PayPal, where connecting a Credit Card requires entering information in a way I’m uncomfortable with.

So for now I’m just using a CC directly. This may not be the best approach, but it feels the least intrusive - for now. I don’t know what the optimal solution would be. Maybe when GNU Taler becomes an option…

I would love to hear him cite the exact laws he thinks they have broken and in what way.

I’m throwing in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which I really enjoyed, and The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin, which is a really interesting travel journal. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne is also great. And since you like Dostoevsky, maybe try Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev?

People always praise Frankenstein, but I thought it was poorly written and frankly nonsensical. Shelley’s The Last Man is better, but a bit dull.

Despite the inherently probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, do you think the universe is deterministic?

Unironically, this is why RMS was radicalized.

Gone too soon. So sorry for you loss.

With Japan, they only have so much inhabitable land anyway. It’s a mountainous island where all viable land is already pretty much taken.

Librewolf, which is great, but I have been desperate for alternatives for a long time now. I also use Falkon and Gnome Web on the side and those are ok, but unfortunately not on the level of Firefox and its ilk. I’ve been considering Waterfox and GNU IceCat also, but honestly the overall situation is depressing. Currently, Librewolf ticks most of my boxes, but every browser has some issue or another that I’m not keen on. I have no idea what the next step is.

Oh heck, did not expect to see this one. Really unfortunate.

I can’t give you an in-depth comparison, but I have used both Mobian and postmarketOS on the PinePhone. In fact, I have pmOS as my primary OS and Mobian installed as back up right now. When I first got the PinePhone, I ran Mobian testing for a few years. It was a roller coaster, but that was to be expected. Eventually some issue or another drove me to try pmOS and I immediately found it more performant and stable. The difference isn’t anything massive, though, as they run the same software, more or less. One odd thing I found was that with Mobian, my phone would noticeably heat up during calls, but not with pmOS. I don’t know why. I’ve mostly stuck with pmOS since.

So, overall, I found pmOS to be the better experience. I’m not sure if their decision to add systemd to their OS will be a good one, but we’ll see. Linux on phones is still in a flux. I had to give up using the PinePhone though, since the modem would mysteriously just vanish and a lot of smaller issues started adding up. Finally, MMS not supporting my carrier’s APN settings was what forced me to look at other options.

Hope this helps.