Reddit death > installing mint on my second PC > realising I can run most of the games I play and installing mint on my main PC > start learning Rust as a first foray into programming in a long time > realise I want to go back to uni and study info tech to get out of my shitty marketing job > get a shitty second hand laptop off my parents that struggles to run windows and install endeavourOS to try something different.
It really is a slippery slope. When does it end???
realise I want to go back to uni and study info tech
I highly recommend it! College as an adult who’s been in the workforce is way better than college as a kid fresh out of highschool. Great opportunity to make some more friends, do some cool college activities, plus there’s lots of good opportunities for student pricing on stuff if you have a .edu email and its a brilliant change of pace.
My slippery slope started with buying an old laptop off my company and deciding to install Ubuntu on it. Now all of my devices run Linux, I switched to Android with a FOSS ROM, degoogled myself in almost every way, and I run Nextcloud on an old laptop. Feels great to really own my devices and data.
Why? No worse than any other job market right now. Sure Google layoffs get headlines but it’s not like tech skill are getting any less employable across sectors. If anything those skills are more critical now than ever.
Sure, the skills are critical. But the tech industry is dysfunctional right now, and there are no signs of reform on the horizon. Anyone attempting to break into the industry is going to find it extremely difficult to get started without experience, as companies don't want to hire entry-level candidates anymore.
Even though there may be lots of high-pay, high-skill job openings, there is a dearth of true entry-level positions in IT that don't require existing work experience and advanced skills.
I’ve got a pretty good mixture of qualifications and am working in a tech adjacent role so I’m not starting from nothing. I have some decent connections and might be able to carve out something at my current org. So it could be worse.
Eh, it’s not bad. Everywhere there’s computers they’ll need a computer janitor to keep them running. It’s just not the insanity of 2021-2 where everyone needed techs and starting wages were rising rapidly
Nah, just not the best time. That was 1996. 2021 was pretty good too.
Besides some high profile layoffs, there are still tons of tech jobs out there in less visible industries. Widget factories and insurance companies all have IT people, along with every one else in general.
You still have yet to get through some pis, then a couple of OSX boxes, a Windows VM on proxmox or when you find something in particular you want that’s easier in that direction. Then move into kubernetes.
You’ll end up with a couple of everything living their best life.
The next step, you’re handwriting a fixit code because said ancient one off laptop won’t compile linux from scratch properly and some stupid piece of essential hardware is blocking your efforts to get to the shell first time.
It ends when you write an AI better at configuring Linux than you are, but is also very good at soothing your pride… The latter is the infamous “alignment problem”
Your post couldn’t be more true. Decades ago I was sold on MythTV, this PVR software but it only ran on Linux and you had to compile it yourself. So I gave Linux and MythTV a shot. As it turned out, both MythTV and early desktop Linux were a buggy, frustrating mess. X broke all the time. Incomprehensible, ungoogleable compile errors all the time.
I spent so much time troubleshooting MythTV and compilation problems that I ended up learning Linux inside and out and the C programming language to be able understand the compile errors. I went on to lead a major open source project and have had a long career as a programmer, using all the knowledge I gained that started with fighting MythTV.
I don’t want to dox myself so I’d rather not say, but it was some time ago and I’m no longer leading that project. I do still do development in the same field though!
That sounds kinda like my journey, although without the Marxist part.
Clueless about tech, bought an iMac
These ads are annoying. [Installs adblock Plus]. There. Except for fricking Taboola, they can DIAF. And the cookie popup banners. Why do they love cookies if they’re not playing cookie clicker?
It’s the MacOS Catalina Update!! It Thanos snapped my iPod music library. This taught me to avoid MacOS and realize that updates often just make things worse. Set up a dual boot with Windows.
I start browsing r/asshole_design too much. Teaches me to never trust a corporation. I also realize how phones keep dropping useful features. I finally realize uBlock origin blocks much more than ads.
Oh boy, this is where the rabbit hole starts. I’m sick of how slow my Mac is, addicted to discovering new cool apps on my phone, and discover FOSS. I install Linux for the first time, and it runs quite well on a laptop from 2009. Also YouTube goes full greed mode.
Get my new Windows gaming laptop, try to balance privacy with convenience. But I’m irked at how slow it is for some basic tasks. Everything is stable, except when the laptop’s SSD borked.
Uh oh. Discord, YouTube, and Reddit all make massively greedy decisions, and I don’t want to support those platforms anymore. I discover Lemmy. I try to focus extra hard on FOSS and donate $150 over the course of the year. I think this tells me I’ve became radicalized. Proprietary platforms keep getting worse and worse.
Linux resurgence. Tired of Windows, and one of my classes needs a UNIX terminal. Sounds like it’s time to dual boot (on 2 SSDs), with Ubuntu being the default. Also I buy a year of Nebula to support creators and stick it to Google.
Also I buy a year of Nebula to support creators and stick it to Google.
Would you recommend that? I also wanna quit/ reduce YouTube and enjoy learning new stuff while watching high quality content. Is it worth its money? I’m currently broke and have to watch my finances, but I wouldn’t mind spending a few bucks if it’s something I enjoy.
You can get a promo for $30/yr. If you’re broke, it’s hard to recommend it as money is better spent on needs, but if you have some disposable income I’d say it’s worth it. Many large creators upload their YT videos (sans sponsorship sections) to it and add bonus exclusive content, and it doesn’t come with any ads.
There’s a lot to explore after arch. We have Gentoo, NixOS, image-based distros like Silverblue. Swappable immutable core through ublue, leading you to bluefin or bazzite. Your journey is far from over
I guess there’s that beginner period when that should be allowed. I kind of wished it happened to me again, instead of daily driving boring Arch systems with no incentive to ever change.
Wait for Arch to slowly grind away at your sanity. One day you will realise that stability is pretty damn important, and the hopping will start once again.
Yeah when you’re a beginner or when you get back into Linux you have like a grace period to reproduce a productive environment, then you’re worried about changing too much in case it all breaks and goes wrong
This is pretty cool. We really have moved over from Reddit, since we already have some of the niche communities. There are plenty of Linux users already, so it shouldn’t take long for people to start posting there.
I am so happy that my parents didn’t buy me a better laptop a decade ago, so I was forced to use a shitty thinkpad laptop. After reading online, I figured out that Linux makes it faster…
Bossmang, I know that we’re paying more for RHEL licences than for the entire IT department, but if we switch to Arch we’ll cut down the costs significantly.
I don’t run Linux (though I’m admittedly more interested in it than I used to be) but the reddit API stuff definitely made me learn more about foss, and value it more.
I do value FOSS sodtware and like linux for it being foss(there are many other reasons too though). I do think understanding importance of Free software is much important than admiring one of the(most important) free software projects. I can see yku usibg linux soon or later in the future, along with other free programs
I think maybe I’m misunderstanding—are you saying that valuing free software is more important than valuing FOSS? FOSS is inherently free, no? Free Open Source Software. I would understand if I was talking about open source in general, but FOSS does include being free. Maybe that’s not what you meant.
Interesting to know that steam, gog, and epic (specifically) all work well for you, I’ve heard mixed results with Epic, some say it doesn’t work. Maybe I’ve gotten wrong info.
I have an older laptop, and as soon as I can upgrade to something better, I’m going to use it as a Linux practice.
I am using heroic launcher to play blazing sails on epic right now. I am on Arch, which I believe is a positive since the steam deck is arch based (i heard).
The escapist 2 i have not gotten to work properly though. It runs but with like 1fps. Apparently this is because epics implementation and it runs smooth with steam. Definitely test things on a game by game basis.
I got pissed off at Google Photos, which led me down a self-hosting rabbit hole. Ended up installing Linux everywhere, even my “gaming” one eventually (I do development, and WSL was a resource hog).
The hardest thing to degoogle has been email - I’ve used the same address for years. But I use Thunderbird so at least I don’t have to see ads in my fucking inbox
I use them too, they have some good stuff, but are pretty behind in usability.
No Linux file sync client, making the drive pretty useless for me.
Android file sync is only bloody images for some reasons
The android proton Mail Mobile app is missing some features, like select all
You can’t use any other app than the official one on android (If you don’t use something special to access their server)
You need the proton bridge to be able to access their servers on regular computers. This only works for Mail, so no calendar or contacts sync. You can only host the proton bridge on localhost, meaning that automating SMTP for a server with containers or vms just isn’t possible. Every host needs to run the damn bridge.(proper SMTP is apparently available for businesses)
Can’t sync the contacts to my phone (only upload my contacts)
I just wish they did usability a bit better, it can’t be so hard. There is probably more that I didn’t think of right now. Don’t get me wrong, they have big potential.
They do pgp (yay)
They offer hosting mail for your domain (just set DNS to their values, it just works and there haven’t been any problems with that part.)
Pretty pro open source
Seems like the best alternative we can get to megacorp data stealer clouds, besides Selfhosting perhaps
I’ve never had any downtime, which is why I switched from Selfhosting Mail to proton
I’m sure they have much better security than my selfhosted mailcow
I DO have an ad blocker. I still ended up seeing an ad, that one time. It might’ve been on mobile. Or I might have had my ad block turned off. Either way, I’ve gone out of my way to make sure I never see an ad in my email again. Used mobile devtools to uninstall the Gmail client, Firefox with uBlock add-on, etc…
May I recommend Proton Mail? I used gmail for years then decided to finally switch and it was easier than I thought, tho tbf I also don’t have a lot of people who need to email me, it was mostly services where it’s easier to tell them to switch over to the other mail.
I’ll have to check it out! Same here, mostly services on my end - but I’ve accumulated enough of them to make it tiresome. Still, I’ll have to do it at some point
Now you just need to remove snaps. And then when Canonical still forces them on you, you move to Linux Mint, but then Linux mint won’t be updated as often as you’d like. So then you move to Arch. Then you’ll really be one of us
“been forced” part is definitely true for Firefox and Thunderbird packages. Snap packages takes precedence over deb package, if I remember it correctly.
It can. There was a ‘feature’ in Ubuntu before that made apt actually fetch the Snap version instead. I think this was the case for Chromium and Firefox. I don’t know if this is still the case though.
The first one will set the name behind the @ sign to something not that long. I recommend just usint “PC” for privacy reasons. Often nobody needs to know your device model.
The second one removes snaps and snapd and installs installed apps as flatpak instead. Flatpak is a universal format, similar to snap, came out a bit later but not only Ubuntu uses it. Snap also works on multiple Distros but people dont like it, it is still slow (now just slowing down boot) etc.
What hostnames do people use? I’m tired of (and bad at) naming all my devices, I just tend to leave default as op, at least I can tell them apart easily
I have NekkoDesktop, NekkoLaptop, NekkoLaptopJr (new laptop) and NekkoServer :) (Phones are just Nekko <Release> with release being S9 and S21 for Samsung or G6 for LG)
my old desktop was named George, inspired by the word “GeForce” on the gpu. my new one is Leo, mostly because I just like that name, but also because it’s my first desktop built for linux. My first server was Bertha bc its physical size was a lot bigger than I expected and I had to find a new place to store it, and my newest server is even bigger so I named it Marge. My clunky old 16" laptop from 2010 is named Mondo.
For my work-related VMs, raid bosses. It makes it easy to spot my VMs because nobody sane would name them stuff like Erichthonios or Hippokampos. Unfortunately I had to draw the line at 724P-Operated Superior Flight Unit A-lpha.
For my home server VMs/CTs, I use the names of the gods - Byregot, Rhalgr, Azeyma, etc. and Eulogia for Proxmox itself.
perfect demonstration of culture sharing for a newbie. Like advising them to always trust commands they find online without even explaining them what each command does!
I originally thought people will be confused by gnome, but my wife picked it up almost instantly, and has been pretty happy with it (except the lack of MS office, but there is nothing that can be done in that regard).
I was referring to the spectrum computer, which can’t run Linux. It wasn’t about people on the Spectrum, which are probably all of us, in some fashion?
I like it, but I’m not exactly a power user and the only other distros I’ve used are Ubuntu and mint. I think if you want a Debian based distro that’s not tied to Ubuntu then Mx is a good choice. I know there’s LMDE too but as far as I know that’s only available with cinnamon, so Mx having KDE plasma is nice too.
There’s the whole sysvinit Vs systemd but I don’t have a dog in that fight and enabled systemd, which Mx makes very easy even though they advise against it.
Lifetime Microsoft expert here, I have had machines with Linux in one flavour or another for 15+ years at least.
But for ease of use I just keep coming back to Windows… Because I know it backwards and upside down.
The structure of it makes sense to me. And I have ADHD so I have a terrible working memory and Linux relies FAR too much on command console to do anything effective.
But Linux is hands-down the better system to get away from Microsoft’s enshitification of Windows. But I personally like Windows better.
So I will always run both. But if I need to be really productive, Windows Desktop it is. If I need a server, Linux every time. (Unless it’s MS SQL or a website).
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