2025-12-08 23:41:00
It's kinda wild to look back on it, but yeah, this month marks my first year using Linux!! So I thought it'd be fun to look back on everything that happened before, between and now.
First things first though, I was always scared of using Linux as I felt it was too complicated from what I saw everywhere, and even when I did attempt to give it a try back in 2020 with Ubuntu, the very next day the PC didn't want to boot up at all, which made me feel this kind of operative system was too "tech-savvy oriented", so I stuck with Windows 10 for the next few years.
As its End of Life approached closer and closer, I had to update my PC, so I wanted to try updating to Windows 11 and... It did not work, because my motherboard lacks that dreaded TPM 2.0 chip. At the time I just finished upgrading my PC from a potato in the literal sense to one that did everything I use it for (gaming, art, browsing, etc.) good enough, and I did not want to upgrade my hardware yet again because everything worked pretty well, even though Microsoft seems to think its outdated, but I decided I would wait till October 2025 to see my options.
The thing is, between that time I tried to update to Windows 11 to the next few months, my experience with Windows kept worsening more and more.
May it be the system lagging more often, using more and more resources out of nowhere, how bloated it started to feel, how things like the search bar gave me web results instead of files in my system??
But what pushed me to switch from Windows now was something very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but something that still pissed me off due to everything prior. When I finished updating my PC one time, when I checked again I had the Copilot shortcut added to my taskbar.
I do not want your AI, I did not agree to having this in along with your browser that you keep shoving in every damn web feature, I did not want to have ads for Candy Crush in my start menu, I do not want this treatment you kept giving me for using the system.
That's when I snapped with Windows, and decided to switch off it now.
That's when Linux came into the picture, and I was hesitant at first because of both what I heard of it and my personal experience with Ubuntu, but a friend insisted for me to give it a shot again, so after figuring out if I wanted to do it or not, I went with it.
One call figuring out how to install it on my system later, I ended up having Linux Mint in my PC along with Windows 10, as a dual boot to test it out. We could not figure out how to make GRUB work (the boot loader that usually comes with Linux Distros) but from what I tried Linux Mint, I just liked it!
It was faster and felt way smoother than Windows, it didn't take an absurd amount of storage just from the system files, I could actually have a functioning search function, no AI anywhere, and even more importantly for me, I could customize it however I wanted to. Back when I was on Windows I tried different third party apps to achieve that, but here it was all built in, and I could do even more things, like add a second taskbar (panel on Linux).
I liked it so much in fact, that a week or 2 after installing that partition, I decided to nuke the windows partition and have Linux Mint as my main system. This time I installed it by myself and everything, it all felt so nice.
It felt weird for me how I didn't see any of the complains I heard online on Mint, like how you need to use the terminal at all times (everything in Mint can be done via GUI), how you can break everything at any time (Mint never broke in all my time using it), or how unhelpful and elitist/loud the community is (every time I needed help for something, everyone was very kind).
Also, Proton exists, which helped me to play most games on my Steam library from Linux just fine thanks to it being a compatibility layer for translating Windows stuff to Linux. at first I checked every game status on ProtonDB (an user contributed tracking of how well games work with Proton) but nowadays unless that game has an Anti-cheat, I just don't check it and it works fine every time, just hitting play they already work out of the box.
Over time, I wanted to try out different things from Linux, Mint was nice and all yeah, but there was things like KDE, GNOME and the at-the-time upcoming COSMIC desktop, along with Fedora and Arch that looked interesting enough, so I ended up giving them a shot each and every one.
Fedora KDE worked perfectly for me post install, though I needed to mess with the terminal every time to finish the set up as its lacking a few non-free dependencies I need. Every time a week or so passed though, something kept breaking in one way or another, and it took me weeks to find answers to those.
Fedora GNOME had the same post-install shenanigans as the one above, but it was far more stable, akin to Mint, even if I tried it for a tiny bit everything felt nice.
I tried COSMIC through Fedora, and it worked... well enough, though it was a bit laggy in some parts and buggy in others, though that's to be expected as it's in beta at the time of writing this. I'd definitely come back to it if the opportunity arises.
I also tried installing Arch and it did not work. I tried going through Archinstall but I kept getting one error after another, and the normal installation process was too complex for me, so I ended giving up on that idea.
Since then I started trying out more alternatives for apps, like Pixelorama for Pixel Art, Heroic for Epic Games Store/GOG/Amazon games, Akegrator for RSS Feeds, it all worked nicely!!
I stuck with Fedora KDE for most of that time until recently, where I decided to switch to Kubuntu.
And yeah I know, Ubuntu is bad and so are Snaps plus my last experience with Ubuntu was terrible, but I wanted to use KDE Plasma in a more stable way, Fedora KDE was nice and all, but it kept breaking the more time I used it and, as someone who works on arts and the like, I cannot really allow myself to risk losing those files, so Kubuntu seemed like the best option for me and hey, it is! I'd even dare to say it feels more stable than Mint, while still keeping things like KDE Plasma and Wayland which I use often.
If there's something I would say to the past me in 2020 is to try giving Linux a time again, because it's damn good. Thank you NullDott for helping me with this transition from one OS to the other.
Anyways, I'm off to remove the french language from my Linux Distro, bye!
2025-12-08 11:47:00
Dear me,
AI makes smart people even smarter, yet it gives them the feeling that they’re becoming dumber. That as a form of noticing.
AI makes foolish people even more foolish, yet it gives them the feeling that they’re becoming smarter.
That as a form of delusion.
Sometimes I feel like I'm in the first group.
Sometimes I’m aware that I’m in the second.
I try to keep myself in the first group more often and for longer.
I need a certain foundation within myself to be able to do that.
I need an oar, the skill to row, or even an engine to steer the boat I'm standing on.
I have to find a way to reach the shore, or at least get close to it.
If not, I will be swallowed when we reach the waterfall.
Hữu Phong.
2025-12-07 16:24:00
Article written by suliman
Hi! This is my first post on here, and I'm taking the initiative of finally following through on our book club's third rule:
… The post should go up on the first of the month, and be updated as participants submit the links to their posts.
I'm six days late, but oh, well, "better late than never" they say. We intended for this post to inform those who were not part of our Discord server of our book picks but it ended up just containing a link to posts by participants, thus fulfilling only half of its role. If you'd like to suggest books, feel free to email or send one of us a DM on Discord. For voting on books, you'd need to join our server which you can request through the aforementioned channels.
This month's pick is Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a memoir detailing the author's experience of working at Meta (then Facebook) for seven years. The book seems to have hit a nerve at Meta as they're suing the other into bankruptcy over it.
Anyway, the people participating this month will be listed below:
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I do!
2025-12-06 23:58:00
“what is this? this is not what we talked about,” the author said.
the ghost just shrugged.
“you know i have a deadline, right? i need those pages by tomorrow!”
but the ghost was on the way out the room.
“wait! please, i… i need your help,”
the ghost just stared back at the author.
“uhh, i know what that look means. ok, ok, we'll go with your original plan then.”
the ghost just stared back at the author.
“no? what do you mean no? i… i can’t do it.”
the ghost just stared back at the author.
“fine, i'll let you possess me for two more days.”
\ \
2025-12-06 19:38:00
I was out with two former colleagues yesterday. Same thing a couple of months ago, but from another workplace. And last month with three friends from my childhood.
All these people have one thing in common. They make up about ten percent of the total group of people I spent time with during each of those periods.
Is it because of common interests? Somewhat, but it’s far from the whole answer. Maybe because of distance? Nope, these people are scattered across quite a large area.
I believe it comes down to the Swedish term lagom (just the right amount). Not in terms of the actual number of people, but how much time we spend together. We talk, text, and meet in a way I feel is lagom.
As soon as I feel a kind of neediness in people, that constant pull for attention and interaction, I keep my distance. Otherwise, I get drained. It gets too much for me to handle.
So I’m subconsciously cautious, guided more by feelings than facts.
And somehow, it lands at ten percent being lagom.
2025-12-06 19:10:00
I've mentioned this in passing a few times and sparked some curiosity, so I'm going to tell the story of the time I ended up on an FBI watchlist, which was creepy AF but still a badge of honor for getting under the skin of the man.
I live near Ft. Bragg, the gigantic U.S. Army base that's home to the 82nd Airborne and Special Forces, AKA The Green Berets. I was in the Army in the '80s, and two of my kids are also military vets. The Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq was an abomination, one that I deeply opposed to the point where protesting that war became the center of my life. I was a member of various groups, but my work centered on my relationships in three of them: Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, and our local group of old Quaker ladies and the usual lefty suspects.
On the first anniversary of the invasion in March of 2004, local folks organized a demonstration against the war that surprised us with its turnout and drew attention from all over because of the proximity to the large local military community. We decided to do it again in 2005, and it quickly became obvious that we had more support than we could imagine. Everybody who was against the war wanted to come. The list included a member of Congress and Cindy Sheehan, a Gold Star mom who became infamous for protesting outside W. Bush's Texas ranch to confront him about the death of her son. The newly formed Iraq Veterans Against the War was there, along with a parade of groups like Code Pink and veteran activists from Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Nelson Johnson, a survivor of the Greensboro Massacre, spoke. Multiple documentary filmmakers contacted us.
It took months of planning. It was clear from the beginning that we were a threat to the pro-war crowd. They definitely didn't like the participation of so many disaffected members of the military community. I got doxxed on a local message board and started receiving hate mail addressed to my house. At work, I started finding pro-war propaganda left on my desk regularly. The rear window of my car was shot out in my driveway. Then the phone calls started.
The callers, always men, presented themselves as active-duty soldiers who were against the war. I'd talked to many GIs who thought the war was bullshit, and they didn't sound like the men who called me. The callers wanted to know if we were going to "do anything," meaning direct action, e.g., trying to enter the military base or "anarchist-type shit." It was obviously a clumsy attempt to gather intelligence on our already very public plans.
The demonstration was a huge success. It was the largest antiwar event outside a military base since Vietnam. We held it at the same park where Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland had once entertained antiwar GIs in the early '70s. The local police called in reinforcements from 11 other agencies, including horse-mounted cops and surveillance units with cameras and telescopes. The following week, a newspaper poll of the community found that 50% of the people in our community were against the war. That was pretty telling in a county where the vast majority of people were on active duty, veterans, or members of military families.
Since the war didn't miraculously end, I kept on organizing, locally and nationally. In early 2006, I got a call one day from a reporter from NBC. He told me he was working on a story about government violations of the Patriot Act. He'd discovered that the FBI was maintaining records of antiwar activists past the legal time limit on such lists. Of course, my name was on the list that had been leaked to him. He wanted to know if I would comment on the record about the information. I gave him a sound bite about the evils of the Bush administration and the similarities to government actions against activists during the days of J. Edgar Hoover.
I didn't hire a lawyer or call Washington with an attitude. It took a couple of days for the shock to wear off, but I took it more as a badge of honor than anything else. It made me happy that our movement was such a threat to the government that they felt they had to use resources to keep tabs on us. I knew that I wasn't doing anything illegal. No behavior modification was needed on my part. I was fatalistic about anything happening to me. Nothing would have made the war machine happier than to intimidate people like me into silence. That wasn't going to happen.
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