PopOS is a sure way of getting into ten times more problems than Ubuntu.

Seriously, I know them all. Started with NetBSD in 1991, used pretty much everything.

If your system isn’t super weird then Ubuntu is the most relaxed experience you will ever have as a newby.

(And yes, I am not using Ubuntu currently. But then, I hat 35 years of POSIX/Unix/Linux experience)

I am an old timer. I started with BSD before there was even a Linux. NetBSD on an Amiga 3000 before the AT&T law suite against NetBSD, then heared about Linux which was twice as clean as NetBSD and without legal issues - Later NetBSD removed all legal issues nonetheless.

First Linux was a Watch-Tower Distribution, basically a big RAM-Disk with a rudimentary Linux system which you copied to HD. No package manager, nothing. tar, make was the way to do installations. Shortly after Slackware and SuSE which basically was the same back then. Then a lot of SuSE then Debian, then Ubuntu. Don’t care much about the distribution nowadays as long as it is DEB-based.

But now something to scare all of you: Today my most used POSIX environment is… Cygwin. Well, I got a Windows-Notebook for development and a VM is really clunky in comparison to a fully integrated POSIX-layer like Cygwin. For developing Stuff it actually matters very little if you use BSD, Linux, Cygwin or even Solaris.

Enter German and Gendering: You can not say Programmer to address all Programmers in the room. You have to call them Programmerin und Programmer or Programmer:in or Programmende. And yes, most of these words aren’t even German but if you don’t use them you are a Grammar Nazi.

And btw, the fact that we address females with “die” does not mean we want them dead, thank you and have a good day.

This is exactly how it started in Germany in the 1930ths:

Old people dreaming of the Empire - which by the way did very little for them - and not really into politics. They just wanted a change.

And then voted for their own hangman.

Best argument a relative told me why he voted for Hitler: “I thought he was a funny guy with excellent dark humor. I didn’t knew he wasn’t joking.”

fvwm95 is nice though…

But for me my secret forbidden love is still AmiFVWM, an FVWM clone with the look of AmigaOS 3.1.

#You are perfectly right.

All major distributions offer all major Environments. I currently use either Debian or Ubuntu and usually install by booting the Netinstall.iso right from the official Servers which installs just the base system without any GUI at all. Then I use tasksel to select the environment. Ok, not every Environment is part of Tasksel but often it is just adding another Repository and running another apt install operation.

And yes, on my experimental computer I often install a dozen environments just because I can. Selectable at Login-Screen.

But now somethings VERY important from someone with 35 years of POSIX experience:

If you are a newby FOR GODS SAKE USE UBUNTU.

And if you are a pro… Ubuntu still is a very good option. Only if your have VERY GOOD REASONS which you COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND, only then use something else. Which is Debian for me.

I beat that. When I first installed a BSD in 1988 - I was 16 and stupid - I thought I would copy files like on Amiga or MSDOS by “copy filename c:” and did cp filename /dev/sda.

You only do that ONCE.

I have used Linux since 1993 (Slackware, Suse and Debian) and Ubuntu since 2006. I consider switching back to Debian because I hate snap and other containers for Of-the-Line Software and while I can uninstall snap and install a De-Snapped Firefox directly from Mozilla I hate doing this Extra-Work.

Dudes, even the “newer faster” Firefox-Snap is still taking three times as long to start and uses twice as much memory and on my work computer, a Core2 Q9550 with 8GByte of memory, this is VERY noticable. Yes, the system is old but for work more than enough. My i7 is only for games and I don’t mix work and fun.

Oh, and then there is that old neighbour who is using a Pentium4 3Ghz 3GByte RAM, which is 32Bit only. He is like 80 years old and doesn’t want to buy a new computer and his old rig does everything he wants. Ubuntu simply doesn’t support it anymore. Supporting old computers is something Linux does outstanding (Windows 11 dropping two year old systems is fucking sick)

2015: Share your Netflix between four people, everyone pays $4 per month, have access to 80% of all online content. The interface is shit but you keep up with it because it is cheap.

2023: You pay $20 for Netflix, pay $15 for Disney, pay $15 for Hulu, pay $10 for Amazon Prime, $15 for Discovery, $15 for Paramount, $15 for Youtube, have access to 50% of all online content. The interface is still shit and you wonder why you pay for that shit.

Joe Average: 🏴‍☠️😎🏴‍☠️😎🏴‍☠️😎🏴‍☠️😎🏴‍☠️😎🏴‍☠️ and the interface is easier than ever.

My 2013 Highest-End Smart-TV barely works with Youtube and no longer with anything else. But Burning Series still works marvellous. Another thing: “Consuming” pirated content is not “illegal” in Germany. It is a violation of private property which the rights owner can sue in a civil court. But as long as you don’t use P2P services where you also upload - which would indeed be a fellony - he can not detect what you do and can not take any action against you - so One-Click-Hosters and Warez-Streaming is totally safe. And if the rights owner could find out about you he could at most send you a cease-and-desist-order with a one-time-fee of at max $100 because it is a minor incident. As far as I know there was never a user of Warez-Streaming who paid anything.

The only bad thing: DNS is nowadays filtered at the big Telcos and Providers which means I have to change the DNS inside my Routers to Cloudflare and Google. Which are a lot faster anyway.

at least you avoided a “useless cat” by using “more” instead. Respect Bro!

Me last Thursday:

user@work5:~$ [CTRL-R] ls

user@work5:~$ ls

me: “That will do…”

I just want to point out there are some plugins and scripts to use Youtube from VLC. The “Library” then works as a search frontend. It is supercool though I can’t find the link at the moment. I remember I had to download some scripts manually and place them into my VLC-Installation. Another bone: Massively reduced CPU power. Playing a Youtube-Video in Firefox needs like four times more power. Really nice if you work on battery.

Torrents of all kinds can be easily tracked and its users be sued because they do not only consume but also distribute.

One-Click-Hosters and Streamingz-Sites on the other side are hard to track and their users don’t distribute.

At least by German Law it is mostly “we only care about distribution, not consumption”. The later has an estimated damage of $1 per case, that is not even petty crime. Distribution on the other hand often is handled at $1000/case… I think there was not a single case of a Streamingz-User being prosecuted but already millions of Torrent-Users.

Who buys his kids products from Apple or Nintendo is most likely also torturing cute cats in his basement. And enjoys it.

Nope

Those Times where Warez-Streaming-Sites had low quality are long gone. While 4k=3840 releases are rare, we have mostly 1920 nowadays with some 1280 in-between, often Bluray- or Streaming-Rips without re-encoding, at least if the source was H264/H265. Older MPEG2/4 though is still often recoded. You can easily re-encode an old MPEG2-Bluray from 20Gig to H265 4Gig without visibly loss. With more modern Codecs the Data is usually “re-containered” which means the Content itself isn’t changed, only the Encryption and Container are changed.

Overall Streamingz-Sites are pretty good nowadays, Amazon and Netflix take up to one minute to switch to high Bitrate quality for me. With Warez-Sites you have to wait 3-5 seconds but then it immediately starts at Max Quality and NEVER at lower quality. And their Search actually works great and is well organized and everything reacts so much faster because they reduce the eye candy. They also often have bookmarks - which don’t work as good as commercial providers but good enough.

I can only have access to Amazon, Netflix, Joyn and Public Television Media Centres so for other providers your mileage may vary.

I say the time of Torents is OVER. Today Streaming-Warez-Sites are the Kick.

You know, what you can not find on EBay you can find on PBay. Or whatever warez site you prefer.

Last time they ate the rich afterwards everybody starved to death because nobody was left knowing how to do thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933

And the funny thing about it: When some poor had learned how to do things again those poor became the new rich.

Capitalism might be bare of morale but at least it cares for paying customers in spite of all alternatives.

For reruns in Argentina, nothing beats Disney’s Zorro. It’s a full-on revered classic here.

Wow, I remember that one too from my child hood. The German TV played it once, the Austrian TV played it like over and over again. Don’t ask me why but the Austrian TV was always miles better than the German TV. Living close to the border allowed us to watch both, sometimes even the Swiss TV which was usually attrocious.

Well, in the 1970/1980 there actually were still a lot of black and white movies on TV. “The Streets of San Francisco” “Kojak” “Dragnet” not to mention the endless reruns of Stan and Laurel.