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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: January 29th, 2024

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  • A few off the top of my head:

    • Every time I try it I have installation issues, across a wide variety of hardware. (Newbies have also reported to me that “Linux can’t even install” after trying Mint - when I sit them down with a Kubuntu install on the same machine it tends to go flawlessly)
    • Cinnamon seems to have stability issues (this is one of the more common things I’ve had now ie friends complain about and ask for help with)
    • the blocking of snapd in the repos and the way it’s done can be pretty confusing to newbies when they click a “get it on the snap store” button and things just fall apart. (I also think their blocking of snapd itself is fairly user hostile, but the fact that the UX around it is so bad is also a problem)
    • On the subject of blocking packages in the repos - their own packages seem to have file conflicts with the Ubuntu repos they use but don’t put the relevant “Conflicts” lines in their deb metadata, which I’ve seen cause conflicts for newbies that break apt. (KDE Neon does a much better job of taking care of this IMO, but I certainly don’t view it as a beginner friendly distro either)
    • The lack of a Plasma version is a major downside to me. (Random aside: I once had a newbie ask me how she could get the pretty version of Linux I had because hers was so ugly - she was running stock Mint and I was on Fedora’s KDE spin)


  • Many US states got their capital chosen because when the territory became a state it happened to be the closest to the centre of population of the state. Jefferson City, MO is a good example of this. The three major population centres at the time were St. Louis, Kansas City and (to a much lesser extent) Joplin. So Jefferson City was right by the centre of population.

    Meanwhile, most European capitals (including at the provincial level - think German states or French regions) came to their state by being the capitals and cultural centres of feudal states, which gives them more depth.

    I don’t mean any offense to Iowa (this time), but there’s not a huge amount going on there. It exists almost exclusively as an administrative division.









  • Advocating against voting for Democrats, no matter what the particular language, is advocating for actions that will increase the chances of Trump getting elected, of Republicans having majorities and of Israel’s further escalation in Palestine, in addition to all the other bad things Republicans will do.

    The time to move Democrats on the issues is not now. Those times were during the primaries (in which I voted uncommitted on the presidential level and for pro-palestinian candidates on other levels) and after the election through things like lobbying.

    If there are particular third-party candidates who have any reasonable chance of winning rather than being a spoiler (I don’t know of any), it’s reasonable to advocate to their electorate that one vote for them instead of the Democratic candidate. However, if one supports Palestinians and opposes genocide, the best vote in the presidential election and in most national or state elections on November 5 is for the Democratic candidate. That’s not a “vote blue no matter who” opinion or an “all you need to do is vote for the Dems” opinion. It’s harm reduction in the short term so that we can ensure that there actually are medium and long terms for as many people as possible.