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Cake day: April 4th, 2025

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  • By the way, in the medium term, generalizing this development from the kernel to general distro packages, this could be a good argument to prefer using a rolling-release distro like Arch, SuSE Tumbleweed, or Guix over “stable” Distros like Debian or Ubuntu.

    Debian has real advantages (it has one of the fastest response times to security vulnerabilities), but rolling release distros do have the advantage not only that they in theory can update fast, but that the dependent packages only need to be compatible with the latest version to ensure stability.





  • Yes, the blog and its sources explain in depth that this is not caused by individual faulty engineering decisions but by the security culture of the organization and the culture and incentives driving it.

    For example, the decision to not test the heat shield in full tests under real conditions, and to not make full physics models of the processes in it are mayor decisions. And the decision to make a crewed flight without these tells a lot about values and priorities.










  • That also happens to be good advice if you want to reduce addictions that are caused by “addictive by design” platforms and parasocial media.

    In a nutshell, it is like controlling smoking: Not doing it at all is often easier and costs much less energy, than controlling the extend of usage.

    One reason for this is that such a decision shifts your sub-conscious fous from "Should I do this on Linux or Windows??“ to: “How do I do this in Linux - or what might I enjoy doing instead?”



  • My feeling is that might be a lack of choice here. So, just my 0.00002 cents, to supply you with a few more options:

    • Just use Debian. It is boring but it will work.
    • Or, Tumleweed has been named. But it is not maximally stable. Better, use Tumbleweed in a VM on top of OpenSuSE leap. That way, you have both superb stability and a very current system.
    • You could also sell your nvidia card (let’s be honest, it probavly will only bring you grief), and get a AMD radeon which is fully supported by a libre kernel. Then, you can install Guix on it. Then you have a truly reproducible, very lean and organized system.
    • If dropping the nvidia card sounds too extreme for you, you can also install Debian, and install Guix as a package manager on top of it. That will work because the Debian kernel supports the hardware. But don’t forget that NVidia is a nuisance, often. Well, you might have luck.
    • Let’s say you are short on money and you don’t want a system that consumes too much RAM, since that has gotten expensive, man. So, you could get Debian with XFce as Desktop environment. Or, even leaner, you could get ICeWM.
    • Or in case you want a very fast Lisp-based window manager with very fast, manual tiling, try StumpWM, say, on Debian.
    • Or, if you want an automatic tiling WM, give i3wm or sway a try. Or GNOME with paperWM extension.
    • GNOME would also run on Ubuntu, or on Mint. Actually, it is all Debian under the hood, mostly. Just easier to install.
    • Or you want a privacy-focused Distro. Try Trisquel.
    • Or, you just want to keep it simple, perhaps. In that case, I’d recommend Debian. Or, perhaps for the start, Debian-derived distro that is easy to install. There are plenty.
    • But when you want to have it even simpler, get rid of the nvidia card. This really simplifies things.