RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/117241250895962141

I have felt for a while that every new Linux distro hype cycle is some sort of slop / scam / problem / pipe dream / unnecessary / combination of any of the above until proven otherwise.

Any time a YouTube video says "you GOTTA be using this new HypeDistro OS!" I get highly suspicious.

Sometimes it's fine! (So don't @ me about your favorite distro because it might be fine.) But a lot of them feel sketch and turn out to be sketch.

On the one hand I think it’s a good thing for somebody like Hank Green to say “yeah actually my AI usage was a problem and I can admit this” but also I am not so attached to him or his work that I have any issues saying “you should have never done it in the first place so bye Felicia”

Every day I am more convinced that computers were a mistake and that I should just go live naked in the woods.

Programmers are like:

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
XML: eXtensible Markup Language
YAML: YAML Ain’t Markup Language
TOML: Tom’s Obvious Minimal Language (C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER)
AYSAML: Are You Serious? Another Markup Language?
FMRAML: Fuck Me Running it’s Another Markup Language
OTTILACDAML: Only Two Things In Life Are Certain: Death And Markup Language

Okay, I briefly started looking for Discord alternatives when they announced age verification but put it on the back burner when they delayed it. But it’s finally time. I’m looking for recommendations, but I have some specific needs based on my friend groups.

1. Self-hosting is okay but not required. I’d be the one hosting it and I’m decently comfortable with this. I’d prefer to not have to but digital sovereignty comes with time expenses.

2. *Has to* have a usable mobile app for both iOS and Android. A web site usable on mobile is NOT a mobile app.

3. Onboarding needs to be simple enough for the normies in my life that they can do it with minimal help.

Thanks!

Update: I’ve got all my PLA tests printed (not all pictures here).

One goal I had is I wanted to design labels with different design languages for different brands, like if you had a box full of software made by different companies. They’d all look different!

This makes the information slightly less clear, but I really like how it looks.

90% of my art is bad. But 100% of my art is made without AI, so it’s fine. Bad art made by humans is great and important.

Not my original idea but I decided to inventory / test swatch all my filaments by printing floppy disks, complete with some custom labels. Yes, I AM an elder millennial thanks for noticing.

I’ve got an AYN Thor getting delivered within the next week (which don’t get me wrong, was also quite expensive!) and so maybe that just becomes my primary console. I’ll just play retro games and whatever light Steam games will run on it. Anything more modern I’ll just skip.

Between the price of hardware and the proliferation of AI in video game development, maybe from here on out only play video games released before 2026.

This is actually somewhat disingenuous. I like Gnome quite a lot and do want to use it. But I keep flip-flopping back to KDE because I really want Gnome to be like 10-20% more customizable out of the box. I love Gnome for its simplicity while also thinking it’s just a little TOO simple.

I shouldn’t have to dig into a random css file to change the colors on my window title bars.

Switched back to Gnome from KDE just to feel something.

Linux training (from 2019): Over the next 5-10 years, you’re going to see IPv6 take over.

Me, 7 years later: …Okay.

He also said Gentoo “is a good option for low resource systems” because he had XFCE installed on it.

In an introductory Linux course.

Gentoo? Introduction course? Aside from conflating distro and DE, this is just an insane thing to say.

Taking some mandatory Linux training at work and I’m getting real snarky about it.

He called Linux an operating system (wrong: it’s a kernel)

He pronounced “GNU” as “new”

He compared rolling releases to Windows (since when is Windows a rolling release?)

He has pronounced Ubuntu like five different ways: oo-boon-too, oo-bun-too, you-bun-too, oo-bon-too

He has conflated distros with DEs, i.e., describing Gnome features as Debian features and KDE features as OpenSUSE features, because he just happens to be using those DEs on the respective distros.

Now that I’m using tmux and not beholden to terminal emulators with built-in multiplexing, I’m open to shaking up my workflow. Sell me on your terminal emulator of choice. Cross compatibility with Linux and MacOS is a huge plus.

For the record, I am currently using Kitty. Which I’m mostly happy with except that it requires installing kitty-terminfo on any remote hosts I am going to ssh into.

I complained that new cases with optical drive bays were hard to find back when I did my last major computer upgrade in 2020 and everybody said "physical media is dead, you lost this one."

In 2026 there are approximately 13 gazillion YouTube videos about "taking back control of media because streaming sucks!" and half of them are about ripping your media with the optical drive that was "dead" six years ago.

I played the long game but I won.

I spent the first day of my vacation putting my desktop into a different case. Migrated from a Jonsbo D32 Pro to a Thermaltake TR200.

Why?

The TR200 is case with an honest-to-god optical drive bay. Physical media never died, baby.

Oh also I guess the biggest con of all was how expensive this project ended up being. I’m sure I could have gotten a very capable music player at half the cost. I certainly paid for nostalgia here.

Pros:

- It looks cool. My first iPod was a blue 5th Gen nano so I have nostalgia for the color
- USB-C and wireless charging mean I will actually remember to charge it because I always lose my 30-Pin cable
- Bluetooth is nice I guess but I’ll mostly be using wired headphones
- Flash storage seems faster than the one I put in my other refurbished iPod

Cons:

- The Custom Connect backplate glues in so I hope I never have to open this guy again
- I don’t HATE that the backplate is visible from the front but I think it’s less sleek than a regular backplate
- Removing the original faceplate sucked a lot and came with some minor injury
- I wanted to avoid soldering so the USB-C is only good for charging and not data transfer. I still need my 30-pin cable to sync new music to it