I’m pretty sure the movie industry will eventually devolve back to where it all started.

It’s good…and bad. I dunno. I asked ChatGPT to update some basic CRUD functions in client side javascript a couple days ago so that it followed a UML schematic more accurately… and it just took my entire code base and wrapped it in a single class…and that was it.

So then I was like no, here’s some sample classes from the UML and here’s some properties and how these methods map to these functions I wrote before, get it?

And then, yeah, it did the thing I wanted…so…cool? I mean, sure, you can call it skill issues with prompting, but man, I’ve been coding with this thing for some time now, and sometimes I’m just like, “I miss stack overflow man”…and shit…I never thought I’d ever say that.

Sure, coding was slower, and maybe you didn’t find the thing you needed to fix your problem, but that friction taught you so much and you made friends (and enemies) as you tried to get an answer to your problem. Now we’re all missing out on that and just making the AI sort of kind of not really better.

Ive been running Linux for close to a decade now and one thing that I’ve noticed is rarely brought up in Linux circles is that Linux Kernel Development is heavily funded by major big tech corpos. Examples include Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM.

There is a vested corporate interest in keeping Linux well maintained as it is the OS that underpins the vast majority of corporate server architecture and infrastructure.

I’m not saying Linux development wouldn’t exist without them, but imho, Linux certainly wouldn’t be as ubiquitous as it is today without this corporate backing. Thusly, it is worth noting that in many ways, we Linux users have not escaped corporate influence simply from switching from Windows or MacOS to Linux.

We’ve maybe lessened it to some degree, but to think we are somehow immune to the misguided mandates from state governments, like the latest recent age verification laws, is misguided.

Along with every other technology related problem. 👏Done and done!

Usually your distro’s forums are good enough, and even searching not your distro’s forums can lead to some insights into your issues/questions.

Otherwise Arch Wiki, Gentoo Wiki, Arch Forums, Gentoo Forums, Debian User Forums, Ask Ubuntu, Linux Questions, Linux Mint Forums, even Manjaro Forums can be helpful. Always do as much search and research you can before asking your question on a forum and mention what you’ve done already. A lot of the times, your issue has already been raised and already has an answer. If not, ask away and mention what you’ve done already.

I’m a self taught web dev whose only had a single fullstack job under their belt, some charity coding at a nonprofit, and plenty of group and solo projects.

I’ve used ChatGPT mainly to code and also teach myself Calculus as I get ready to go back to school and get a CS degree to hopefully help my chances at getting some work. I’m not saying as a tool on its own, LLMs aren’t useful.

But I do use these LLMs with a severe sense of guilt considering:

• The plight of Kenyan workers who got paid almost nothing to have their mental health absolutely violated while setting up initial training parameters around abusive/sensitive training material

• The many teens who have committed suicide while being influenced by LLM advice

• The massive amount of land, water, and power that is being utilized to put it all together

• The massive amount of carbon emissions that the data centers that power these LLMs releases into the atmosphere, exacerbating an already dire climate crisis

• The massive amount of scraped data that was stolen without anyone’s consent in order to train it

• The fact that our entire world economy seems to now rely solely on AI companies and NVIDIA’s stock price going up ad infinitum even if their economic metrics make no sense at all

• The exacerbation of the already existing education crisis where both students and teachers are offloading critical thinking skills

• The destruction of the useful search engine, which honestly feels preordained by the ensuing enshittification of search due to invasive advertisement/marketing strategies

And honestly that isn’t even scratching the surface.

So yeah…I got some guilt using this crap. But hey, at least I got to live another day in the torment nexus.

EDIT: Removal of massive doomerism rant towards the end there.

It depends on where you got the game and how familiar you are with Wine, Proton, DXVK, etc. And yeah, the command line is kind of helpful for most things Linux, including running pirated games.

I got a pirated version of Cyberpunk 2077 running on Linux. I had purchased the game on Steam, but hated that when I was offline I couldn’t play and even though Steam has an offline version, I figured fuck it, I’m tech savvy, how hard can it be? It was…not easy, but not the hardest thing I’ve done on Linux. I pretty much followed this reddit guide.

I’d look for a different launcher than Lutris these days since the Dev started introducing AI code into his source, but there’s options in that regard and really, the big thing is understanding Wine, Wine prefixes, and Proton.

I haven’t done this for most games as I just like to purchase my games these days, but it was a fun challenge. I have no idea how difficult this is on Windows as its been almost a decade for me Windows free, but hey, if you’ve got the gumption, its not too hard.

For cases where you just want to install it once and then update only once a month or even a couple months, and not worry about the distro not being maintained, I’d highly recommend installing Debian. You will eventually have to reinstall years down the line when a new major release happens, but it is many many years down the line and even that can be put off for quite a long time. The only drawback is that the latest releases of the software you like aren’t always available in the official repos, as Debian’s MO is to vet every package for stability before releasing it via their repos.

If you want a slightly less stable distro that has almost all the packages in the world and is up to date and is going to be around for a long time, go with Arch Linux. It’s a rolling release model so packages are updated as soon as they are made available by the distribution maintainers. Things do break occassionally on Arch and a familiarity with the command line and where to go research/ask questions (the Arch Wiki and Arch Linux Forums) is very much needed in those situations. But Arch is very widely used and established nowadays and is a fine option if you’re okay with the rare package that breaks.

Gentoo is a great option if you simply want to customize every aspect of your system, but it’s considered an “advanced” distro and usually some familiarity with a different distro is recommended before using Gentoo, though some do end up using Gentoo as their first and only Linux distro. Gentoo, like Arch, is rolling release. Unlike Arch and Debian, packages are compiled from source, giving you granular control over which features of every piece of software you want to have and the ability to omit those features you don’t want/need. Gentoo is as stable as you make it. Like Arch and Debian, Gentoo isn’t going anywhere. That said, imho, Gentoo requires more maintenance than Arch or Debian, and potentially a little bit more knowledge of Operating Systems.

Other distributions like OpenSuse and Slackware are fine options as well as they have a very long established history in the Linux Distro ecosystem, but I am unfamiliar with them, so will leave it to others to make their comments/recommendations regarding them.

I’d just walk away entirely.

Microsoft generally doesn’t worry about losing market share to Linux over games. They don’t even worry about losing desktop share for the public sector. Only businesses matter, and they have heavy vendor lock in there as Microsoft Office, Teams, and to a lesser extent, Azure, keep them subscribed/enslaved.

Microsoft also gives a shit ton of money to the Linux Foundation,along with the rest of MMAANG and many other companies. All these companies know Linux runs the back end servers, and its free for them to use however they want, and they have a vested interest in Linux being around for servers as even they are aware it’s superior for that specific purpose.

Microsoft runs the Desktop, Apple runs the phone, Google and Amazon compete for cloud, and Meta owns marketing. Sure, they sometimes compete in other spaces like Android and Azure, but those are generally the established fiefdoms.

And Linux is all of their removed, but also all of their main support beam without which nothing works.

The true underdog is BSD.

Agreed. Sadly an endorsement from Meta and/or it’s various subsidiaries is more of a condemnation than any criticism.

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Interesting indeed! Always appreciate your posts! I offer you my multitudinous compliments.

Oof…don’t tell the Islamaphobes.

Ah yes, the Morty Smith existential nihilism branch of philosophy.

Fuck past me! That guy has fucked me over in more ways than I can count. And Fuck future me too! That guy is pissed at me for reasons I can’t possibly fathom. And fuck present me! That guy be lazy AF.

The AUR is the Arch User Repository. All it is is User uploaded software packages with a script that Arch Linux and its many derivatives recognize and know how to utilize to install a piece of software and the necessary libraries/dependencies on your system.

It is similar to Debian based systems when you install software that’s not in the officially repos by appending an unofficial mirror to :

/etc/sources.list.d

Take installing Mullvad VPN on Debian for example. It’s not in the official repos, so you have to tell apt where to go get it.

Paru and Yay are what are known as AUR Helpers. All they are doing is automating the update process of the packages you installed from the AUR, which normally you’d have to update one by one manually. They also can help you easily search the AUR from the command line.

In essence, they are wrappers around pacman and makepkg.

Flatpak is different in that it is an OS agnostic package manager that sandboxes applications away from the main OS and essentially downloads/installs all its libraries and dependencies into ~/.local/share/flatpak instead of /usr/lib, though this is a vast oversimplification.

Very basically, paru/yay says “We install stuff on Arch and Arch based distros from unofficial, user maintained sources and keep them up to date so you don’t have to update them one by one once installed. When possible, you should probably default to just installing with pacman and using the official repos though.”

Very basically Flatpak says “I don’t care if I’m run on Debian, Arch, Gentoo, whatever, I’m bringing all my system libraries with me cuz I don’t know what version of what is on here, and I just need this app to run right the fuck now. So even though it’s heavier and less efficient, here’s plumbing and the kitchen sink so you have running water right fucking now. BTW, you probably shouldn’t run anything installed with me as root.”

This is a very oversimplified explanation, but hopefully that helps clear things up for you.

Molly White does a better job at explaining what Ghost is than I could. She did so on Ed Zitron’s podcast, Better Offline a little while back. Sorry, but other than that I’d just do some more research.

Here is said episode.

I’ve been using Links for years. I rarely meet another Links user, as TUI web browser use is rare in and of itself, and most go to w3m or lynx from what I’ve seen.

TUI browsers are surprisingly capable of getting you around the web even with more limited features, as long as you mainly are focused on accessing public text documents and communications.

I know one of the main uses I saw some utilizing Links for was when it was recommended during the Gentoo installation process when you had to download a stage 3 tarball. Most just had another browser or used a different Linux iso during installation, but if you were installing via the tty, and had no other device with a web browser on it, that was (and still is) a solid choice for finding and downloading the needed tarball.

Anyways, just a bit of lore. My only complaint with Links is it doesn’t let you change the keybindings and they default to emacs. No shade to emacs, but I am and probably always will be a vim user, so there’s that. Other than that I’ll always be a big fan of Links.

Ghost might fit your needs.