Yeah true, but if you’re choosing Debian then I can see why there is caution about “unverified” flatpaks.

Ultimately if they’re not verified then you’re taking it on trust that they’ve been repackaged by a good actor and not a bad actor. We have no reason to believe there are malicious flatpaks are on flathub and verified only really meansnit was packaged by the originating project itself. But it is still a separate chain of packaging and security from the official one in a distro.

And Flathub doesnt need to be the repo used. Fedora for example created its own repo so it could verify its own flatpaks in the same way as its other system repos. Other distros do not seem to be following that path.

Personally I take the risk on flatpaks in the same way I will take risks on the opensuse OBS (or AUR in arch) - if i need/want the software and it’s not in the main repos for my distro I will generally take it off flathub rather than add an OBS source I dont know well. (If its small software I might build from source myself).

Except the big danger with fully self driving cars is that drivers are not paying attention at all as they have nothing to do most of the time. They’ll be on their phones regardless of what theyre supposed to do and that will cause deaths. So such a glaring safety flaw will have numerous opportunities to happen in real life - humans do not make good safety features in cars; thats what the self drive stuff was for.

Teslas self drive technology is not fit for the roads regardless of this. Musk had sensors stripped out pf the cars design to save money because apparently he knows better than all the worlds self drive engineers. The guy is a just an investment bro woth a huge ego - he can’t let the people hes investing in get onwith it, because he sees himself as a “genius”. The guys a moron.

Stack Overflow, like Reddit, derives its value entirely from its users—it’s just a host. Now that users (and their knowledge) are moving elsewhere, the platform’s importance is fading.

It’s odd when people worry about Stack Overflow’s decline. Online communities have always shifted: from BBSs and newsgroups to forums, chat, Yahoo Groups, Reddit, and Stack Overflow. Each had its time.

The next gathering spot for tech-savvy users might be the fediverse, but who knows at this point. AI isn’t solely to blame for the shift—people moved to Stack Overflow because it was better than what came before. Now, as it declines in quality thanks to general enshittification of services as companies try to monetise uaers, they’re moving on again.

Maybe I’m cynical but I feel like this is suspicious timing to release this information a day after videos of his memory issues in 2023 surfaced. Feels like a cynical attempt by his PR team to change the narrative.

In all honesty, an 82 year old man having prostate cancer is not very surprising. It is a personal issue and I have sympathy but it’s frankly not important to the world. A US president with memory issues concealed from voters and his own party in 2023 when it could have seriously changed decisions about the Democratic party nominations is surprising. That is an issue for everyone and very important to the world.

It doesn’t need any organisation; there are plenty of right wing apologists and zealots who are motivated enough to vote. People can’t really vote “against” Israel so it’d be very easy to distort the vote if even a minority of people are focused enough to vote for one country. Israel’s song wasn’t terrible but it was pretty bland ballad and the televote result was patently ludicrous. But also none of the other songs were that great this year which would make it even easier for a concerted effort to win the televote.

Extreme example in the other direction is when Ukraine won in 2022. The song wasn’t particularly good but Europe coalesced around voting for Ukraine. Even the Jury voting that year was distorted in Ukraine’s favour. It didn’t need any organisation.

Many are suggesting deleting the Windows partition and resizing the Linux one, but another option is to back up your data and do a fresh Linux install.

During setup, you can delete all partitions and create new ones—ideal if you want to separate the root system and /home folder. Keeping system and user data on separate partitions makes future reinstalls easier, as your personal files can be preserved.

This misses the step where you delete the windows partition - between steps 4 and 5. You have to delete the NTFS partition and resize your linux partition to fill the empty space.

You can also create a new linux partition if you wanted as a separate space to store stuff.

I’m not sure why this is being downvoted—you’re absolutely right.

The current AI hype focuses almost entirely on LLMs, which are just one type of model and not well-suited for many of the tasks big tech is pushing them into. This rush has tarnished the broader concept of AI, driven more by financial hype than real capability. However, LLM limitations don’t apply to all AI.

Neural network models, for instance, don’t share the same flaws, and we’re still far from their full potential. LLMs have their place, but misusing them in a race for dominance is causing real harm.

Most people expect a GUI interface to get into their desktop. But you dont have to use one if you dont want. SDDM can log into any desktops you have - KDE but also Gnome or XFCE etc. It can also help select X11 vs Wayland sessions.

There are alternatives like LightDM if you dont like SDDM. Or TTY is fine too. But generally they’re not large pieces of software and while they are undoubtedly bloated from what they could be, they are still small and lightweight in the era of Tbs of storage and Gb of memory. The savings you’d get in not using them would be small on the scale of the rest of the OS. Obviously they’re useless for none GUI machines / servers.

They’re called display managers because historically the concept was added to X11 system where you’d have a stand alone X terminal running locally for the end user with an X server which would then connect to an X display manager on a central machine. This was in the Unix days and shared spaces like governments, universities or corporations and the set up was potentially less hardware intensive allowing cheaper X terminals and an expensive central server.

The concept has gone now - PCs are vastly more poweful and can easily run the entire OS locally, and thin clients are the modern set up if you do want terminals/clients and central servers. The most common scenario is now the display manager running on your local PC, alongside everything else and essentially replicates the TTY login in a GUI form. So yes its basically a session manager but the name is historical and probably won’t be going anywhere fast.

I’m not sure this true - PDF is an open standard. The issue isn’t generally with layout and reproducibility - a good PDF maker and a good reader will give you an accurate representation of how it looks on all devices once the PDF is created.

Certainly there isn’t a dedicated FOSS tool for make PDFs; Libre Office and Inkscape do a decent job but not perfect which may be what you’re referring to. And they’re not dedicated PDF makers plus the real problem is building fillable forms and signature tools.

But there is a proprietary alternative called Master PDF that is a dedicated and supports all the PDF standard features I believe; one perpetual license is $80 compared to Adobe subscription based charging. I’m not aware of other options myself but they may exist. But it’s a viable alternative to the “adobe tax”.

Also of course if you have Office 365 from Microsoft, you can use Word to export docs to PDF reliably (in my experience). Obviously as far as you can get from FOSS, but it is an option on Linux via web browser if you have it from work for example; at least you don’t have to pay Adobe but it’s scraping the bottom of the barrel for this threat I know!

Firefox can do basic annotating, adding text and adding pictures but it can’t make a new PDF from scratch.

You may be confusing Adobe Acrobat Reader with Adobe Acrobat? Full Acrobat is the proprietary tool to make a PDF file from scratch including some of the more complex functions.

PDF is an open standard and has been for a while, so there are now plenty of alternatives for most of the functions. LibreOffice Draw and Inkscape can do a lot of PDF creation functions but not all. There are also “print to PDF” options to create basic PDF documents too.

However some of the more niche functions are not widely supported or well supported; and there isn’t really any opensource dedicated PDF maker that I’m aware of. Layout tools are abundant but I think it’s things like building forms and document signing that is less easily replicated. There is Master PDF - a fully functional PDF maker which is proprietary and available for Linux; it $80 for a perpetual license. I’m not aware of any other alternatives myself.

The removal of the black gradient at the bottom is a plus.

Putting the controls in their own grey capsules so they still standout is a plus.

The moving of the volume button to the right is a negative.

I dont like change just for changes sake, but in fairness some of this is a good idea and a welcome design shift. I just hopebthey move the volume button back as having on the left with the main controls is pretty widespread and common design.

Debian has a good page on it and how their set up works:

https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot

Edit: Ubuntu is derived from Debian and then Mint from Ubuntu, but they may have their own differing approachsnto secure boot.

If your linux OS supports secure boot then it does help improve security.

The differing opinions on it are often because it can cause issues in some set ups and in a default set up its only a marginal security gain.

It will add a layer of security at boot by preventing 3rd party unauthenticated processes / software from running and creates a secure boot chain from your BIOS up to the OS. But the default set up also means other authenticated OSes like Windows can be run, so its not as secure as it could be.

To really secure it you could create your own keys and then only your OS could boot. But as a linux newbie thats likely way more than you need and there are risks if you fuck up, to the point of accidentally locking you out of your own machine

So your choice is really just the default set up being on or off. On is a bit more secure but if you experience any issues then turn it off and don’t worry about it.

Its not doing nothing. Linux uses a Microsoft provided key for initial BIOS authentication and then has its own tree of keys that it uses for security. So it does have the benefits of locking out malicious code/processes even in a default set up.

Using your own secure boot and TPM keys is certainly more secure, but it doesnt follow that secure boot with the default set up is doing nothing to help secure your system at boot.

Linux supports secure boot so if a distro supports it it’s worth using it.

Linux can use a key signed by Microsoft in a preboot loader and then itself perform its own key authentications for all other processes and software (a shim), forming a secure chain from the BIOS up during boot. You dont have to play with creating your own keys.

So if your OS supports secure boot it is worth using it for added security at boot. Its far from perfect in this set up (as there are plenty of windows OS that also have permission to boot) but it is better than a free for all without it even if the risk is low for most desktop users.

You can go further and generate your own keys and use secure boot and TPM together to lock down the system further but you dont have to to get some benefits from secure boot.

This 100%. Tesla remains massively overvalued, and it’s on the basis that in the future the company will dominate with self drive cars. It’s vaporware on a scale never before seen.

Tesla has fundamentally flawed self-drive technology because someone stripped out essential tech to save money. Lidar is essential to self driving cars but some genius decided they knew better than their own engineers and the self drive industry as a whole and instead made their vehicles and tech camera only. That genius? Elon fucking Musk.

The guy’s an idiot. The company is an overpriced joke.

And the company remains massively overvalued despite the recent falls in value. It has a long way to fall yet.

If youre new to linux, then I’d say Linux Mint is the place to start. Use it with XFCE if light weight is what you want.

Not having cutting edge packages is a red herring - you really dont want bleeding edge as thats where the errors and breakages happen. Mint is reliable and secure which is what you need when starting out. You dont want to be a beta tester. Dont confuse latest packages for most secure on linux - plenty of packages have stable older versions which get security patches.

Mint is also very popular, with a huge range of easy to find resources to help set it up the way you want it.

Wayland is also a red herring - its the future but its just not really ready yet. Yes its more secure due to how its built but the scenario you’re using linux in the particular security benefits you’re hearing about are not really going to impact you day to day. And the trade off is that Wayland is still buggy, with many apps still not working seamlessly. Most apps are designed for X11 and x-wayland is an imperfect bridge between the two. I’m not saying Wayland is bad - it’s actually good and is the future. But you dont want to be problem solving Wayland issues as a linux newbie. Dont see Wayland as essentialnfor an good stable and secure linux install.

Personally I wouldn’t recommend Fedora - it has a short update cycle and tends to favour newer bleeding edge tech and paclages. Thats not a bad thing but if what you want is a stable, reliable low footprint system and to learn the basics, in wouldn’t stray into Fedora just yet. It has a 13 month cycle of complete distro upgrades and distro upgrades are the times when there are big package changes and the biggest chances of something breaking. The previous version loses support after a month so you do need to upgrade to stay secure. Most people won’t have issues between upgrades but with any distro when you do a big upgrade things can easily break of you’ve customised things and set up things differently to the base. It can be annoying having to fix thongs and get them back how you want them, and worse can lead to reinstalls. Thats nor a uniquely Fedora problem, but the risk is higher woth faster updating and bleeding edge distros. And in fairness there are lots of fedora spins that might mitigate that - but then you risk being on more niche setups so support can be harder to find when you need it.

For comparison the latest version of Mint supported through til 2029, and major releases also get security patches and support for years even after newer versions are released. There is much less pressure to upgrade.

Yes and no. The US chose to project its power around the world after WW2. It used that military power and umbrella protection to shape free trade deals, and preferential deals for US interests.

From a US perspective whats happening is the destruction of something extremely powerful to the US interests. US power and influence will be massively diminished in an era when China is on the rise.

Europe will be able to afford to go to 3% of GDP on military spending. It’ll be painful in the short term but worth it for Europe as it will give them independence. Its not a threat to European tax and spending - that remains its aging population. Increased military spending will be a marginal problem.

Trumps destruction of US dominion is going to reduce their influence and power on the global stage. Even if the Americans elect an outward looking president next, Europe and other NATO allies can no longer rely on American promises as Trump has shown how quickly american orthodoxy can be undone.

The US spends 3.4% of its GDP on its military and for that it got an extraordinary amount of influence and power. The US will continue spending that much but will now be getting much less value for its money.