I’dv deleted the default, it’s never come back.

Used it for the last few years. X just doesn’t work right with multiple monitors of different resolution.

You wouldn’t end up at a login screen, you’d end up in the last logged in user’s session.

People use computers to accplish tasks. That requires running software on an OS, but nobody runs software or an OS just to sit & watch it exist. They run it to accomplish tasks.

Different distros mostly vary in how easy it is to accomplish various tasks. No one distro is the easiest for everything, so people make different choices depending on their needs.

I use NixOS & Home Manager. My config is in git, and I use an ephemeral setup with ZFS & tmpfs:

Mount layout:

/		 tmpfs  
├─/boot /dev/sda1  FAT32 EFI system partition
├─/nix	 rpool/local/nix ZFS partition
├─/home/persist rpool/safe/home ZFS partition
└─/persist	 rpool/safe/persist ZFS partition

ZFS partitions under rpool/safe/ get backed up, the rest don’t need to be. Everything else can be rebuilt (and most of it gets re-created at boot anyway, since / and /home are tmpfs).

#define max(x,y) ( { __auto_type __x = (x); __auto_type __y = (y); __x > __y ? __x : __y; })

GNU C. Also works with Clang. Avoids evaluating the arguments multiple times. The optimizer will convert the branch into a conditional move, if it doesn’t I’d replace the ternary with the “bit hacker 2” version.

Yep, it’s basically a way to define new groups per directory. But these groups are hidden from the normal group commands!

Hah! Lots of (shitty) sites don’t allow some “special” characters, like '. That’s usually a sign that they’re storing passwords insecurely, and it’s always a sign that they’re not following current security best practices (composition rules reduce security).

And color management. Useless for photo editing, stuck with 8-bit sRGB.

Defederation means you don’t see their posts. It does NOT mean they can’t see your posts.

I still don’t think federating with them is a good idea, but defederating won’t preserve privacy. It’ll just cut down on the “influencer” BS Meta promotes.

They also separate concerns better than classical distros. Executable binaries & libraries are separate from configuration which is separate from data. It makes backups much simpler, makes configuring new machines easier than something like Ansible, etc.

i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk =-1

It’s especially funny because systemd isn’t one program any more than GNU is. It’s a project. systemd-initd handles init. systemd-journald handles journal logs. systemd-resolved handles DNS resolution. Etc. Each systemd daemon has one area of responsibility!

Yes, or if you override something you’ll compile that thing and anything depending on it. If you override glibc, you’ll recompile pretty much the entire system!

Same, except ZFS instead of BTRFS for me.

And / is tmpfs, /home is tmpfs, /nix, /etc/nixos, /var/log, /home/$username/downloads, /home/$username/documents, and some other directories are ZFS subvolumes bind-mounted at boot. That’s only an option for NixOS or Guix though, so don’t worry about opt-in state on other distros.

This is only the case if you buy a phone from your carrier (that they’ve customized to disable hotspot without you paying extra) instead of from a phone manufacturer directly. Carriers doing that isn’t as common outside the US, but it’s not an inherently location-based thing. I’m in the US and (due to buying phones from the manufacturer) I can use mobile hotspot without paying any extra even though my carrier would normally require that.

Old-school forums have single points of contact. They’re no more private than ActivityPub, but a takedown to the admin is a takedown of all instances. Obviously public data can be cached or archived, so as always you have to send takedowns to every archival service, search engine, and any CDNs too.

The GDPR “applies” whenever an EU resident’s data is stored. The enforcement requires some presence in the EU by the entity storing the data. For multinational companies that means if they have any banking services there (e.g. taking payments from EU customers) they have a presence. For individual fediverse admins, that’s not necessarily a concern. At worst their instance’s domain would get blacklisted to EU users.

That binary cache means you don’t have to compile anything the distro provides. Same as any binary distro.

1: Anything that’s federated is public (to instance admins) and can’t be reliably deleted.

For ActivityPub, that’s pretty much everything except user account.

For email (SMTP) that’s sender, recipient, subject, and usually body.

Etc. Instance admins can log whatever they want. Laws like the GDPR or CCPA don’t apply to all instances.

2: User signup is much harder because choice paralysis over which instance to join often sets in. That in turn leads to default recommendations, resulting in centralization in a few instances. E.g. lemmy.world, beehaw.org, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.ml for lemmy, Gmail, Apple mail, MS Live email, AWS email options for email.

The “a capitalist economy” bit is the very important distinction. Communist states share most or all of the other traits with fascism. But so do Feudal countries with merchantilist economies, modern dictatorships without government-driven economy, and all other strongly authoritarian systems eventually.