The interface is a bit bare bones and 90’s but I like it that way. It’s a good and reliable client.

Can’t help you there, I buy CDs and lossless copies from Bandcamp and Qobuz. Those work for me.

“Install Gentoo” is a meme, not life advice. With Gentoo, the installation process gives you good insight in to the internals of Linux systems and compiling (almost) everything from source is interesting, but won’t produce noticeable benefits for average users. Especially since updates take some time, what with compiling the programs again. Gentoo is a great distro with a fantastic package manager, but unless you’re an enthusiast or a serious hobbyist, Don’t Install Gentoo.

Today, tomorrow, every day.

[Richard Stallman] usually does not browse the web directly from his personal computer. Instead, he uses GNU Womb’s grab-url-from-mail utility, an email-based proxy which downloads the webpage content and then emails it to the user.

If you’re not doing this you’re not properly paranoid.

Aw yeah, I also love browsing the internet on meth!

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas.

The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumour campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-f****r,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofab****h deny it.”

Hunter S. Thompson, 1972. Politics never changes.

Mandriva was a Linux distribution that went out of business years ago. OpenMandriva is one of the projects that rose from its ashes with some of the same personnel and code base. It is an independent (not a fork) and community run distribution that, I think, does quite a lot with very limited resources.

I haven’t been able to solve CAPTHCAs in years.

Corporate backing is a two-edged sword, unfortunately.

I had Windows 8.1 but as the end of its maintenance was approaching I saw the writing on the wall with Windows 10 and especially 11 and I wanted no part of that. When 8.1 was put to pasture I returned to Linux and I have been content ever since. Seeing where Microsoft is taking Windows I’m more and more convinced that Stallman Was Right. I control my software, not the other way around.

!stallmanwasright@lemmy.ml

After Thunderbird’s UI overhaul I jumped around a bit and landed on Claws Mail. It’s fairly old fashioned, but I personally prefer that and find it clear and logical. It’s a good client.

It’s ok, I prefer my colon without Open Sores.

If you want Debian with more frequent updates, consider going Debian sid. Base Debian is also fine, maybe with Flatpaks for more up-to-date applications where needed.

Oh man. I’m so sorry for your loss. May your system break at some vague point in the future in a way that is nigh impossible to diagnose and that no one else seems to have experienced. Godspeed, you unwillingly content penguin!

Just go with Debian.

You can install it on any machine. It’s just a terminal IRC client. I run it on a small home server with screen so that it’s always on.

I run irssi on a Raspberry Pi. It has everything I need.

Well yeah, the recent xz vulnerability was not present in the source code at all. Any amount of code reading would not have caught that one.

Always check the package list when updating. Tumbleweed for some reason occasionally wants to install Patterns even if they were not included to begin with. I’ve taken to updating with the command:

sudo zypper dup --no-recommends

to avoid installing packages/patterns I’m trying to avoid. You could probably also mask some packages so they are never installed, but I haven’t looked in to that.

Hope that helps.