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  • Vittelius@feddit.orgtoLinux@lemmy.mlDistro and/or config for elderly person
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    2 months ago

    I would probably go with bluefin. KDE is great, I myself use aurora on one of my devices, but it can also be kinda fiddley with all of it’s options.

    The user has never even used a PC and therefore won’t profit from the familiarity that KDE’s default desktop layout provides. Gnome on the other hand offers a more simplified experience with few options and big icons. All of that might be an asset here. You can use menulibre to hide menu entries from the menu and use the official documentation to remove command line access: https://help.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/lockdown-single-app-mode.html.en

    Plus it’s still atomic which I actually think is helpful here. For once all the important system stuff is read only. Secondly if one manages to screw something up you can just rebase.




  • There is another downside. The local and global feeds are potent discovery tools. But they only work if you group people with similar interests onto the same instance. Your proposal assumes a certain amount of homogeneity. If everyone is interested in the same content anyway then yes you can distribute it randomly. But all the people interested in Linux memes are already here. If we are to expand our reach we need to have instances catering to other interests.

    And it also doesn’t work with international communities. German speakers for example go to feddit.org, precisely because that’s where German content is going to be amplified via the local feed and therefore easier to discover (for people an that particular instance)


  • I considered that. Unfortunately silverblue doesn’t do live systems and aurora therefore doesn’t either. So a VM is the only way of trying it out. OP stated that they have someone to help with the actual installation so I left the whole create install medium for bare metal install out intentionally since I assume this person will be capable of helping with that.

    Also small Markdown help: If you use dashes lemmy will automatically format bulletpoints correctly. You can’t use •s for it. Doesn’t take anything away from your comment, etcher is still the best tool to create a bootable usb drive, but for the future consider using dashes.


  • Vittelius@feddit.orgtoLinux@lemmy.mlIs Linux (dumb)user friendly yet?
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    2 months ago

    You can try Linux out without installing it to get a feel for it before you make the jump. Set a weekend aside (or at least a couple of hours) to test drive a Linux distro and check if it is your cup of tea.

    This is one way of doing this:

    • Install Virtual Box on your (Widows) PC
    • head over to https://getaurora.dev/ and download the latest iso
    • In virtualbox create a new VM
      • set the OS Type to fedora (64 bit)
      • after that you can keep all the standard settings, just be aware that performance is not going to be representative of an actual install
    • Then select the newly created VM and open the settings panel
      • here you go to “Storage” and click on the slot under “Controler: IDE” labeled “empty”
      • click on the CD symbol on the right side of the window, in line with “optical drive” and select “choose a disk file”
      • pick the iso file you downloaded in step 2
    • close the settings window and start the VM
    • go through the installation wizard to install Aurora OS in your Virtual Machine
    • Profit

    I know that these instructions can seem daunting but it is easier than it reads, I promise.

    Why Aurora OS

    Aurora OS is based on Fedora Silverblue meaning that it is what is known as a immutable distro. That in turn means that it’s harder to mess stuff up and break your install. It also means that some things are harder to achieve. But I also think that you are probably not interested in the hard stuff anyway.

    Aurora uses the KDE Plasma Desktop, the same desktop used by Valve on the Steamdeck. It has a familiar Windows like layout by default but also allows you to customise it like crazy to fit your particular need (whatever that may be).

    Aurora flatpak as it’s app format. To see what kind of software is available for this distro you can check flathub.org . It’s not going to be as much software as Linux Mint for example (Mint uses flatpak and deb), but everything the average user needs should be there.




  • It’s bazzite with a custom UI instead of Steam Big Picture and no desktop mode. Their big claim seems to be that they say that they have solved anti cheat on Linux: the system generates a checksum of the kernel space, the anti cheat then compares this checksum with the one on file. No custom kernel module needed on the part of the anti cheat dev. At least in theory.





  • It’s projected from the actual (then still unfinished) count but I think it uses some data from the exit polls to fill in the gap. So both?

    We now have a preliminary official result. You can see it here: Saxony, Thuringia

    @barsoap@lemm.ee has explained the basics of our electoral system pretty well: The first vote (Erststimme) is towards a candidate in a FPTP system to represent an electoral district and the second vote (Zweitstimme) for a party in a closed list proportional representative system. A party nominates a bunch of candidates and ranks them on a list. If they get enough votes to get a certain number of seats then those get filled first with candidates elected by Erststimme and then with candidates from the list starting at the top.

    A party needs to win at least 5% of the Zweitstimme or win at least 3 seats using the Erststimme to be awarded any seats. This was done as a lesson from Weimar Germany where too many small parties made coalition building impossible which helped Hitlers rise to power.

    But what if a party gets more seats via Erststimme than they should have? In that case we just start adding seats until the proportionality is maintained (those seats are referred to as Überhangs- und Ausgleichsmandate). That has lead to ballooning parliaments with our national parliament the Bundestag (small pronunciation guide: Bundes-tag not Bunde-stag - compound words can be tricky) being one of the biggest, right behind China. Recent reforms should curb that. We’ll see next year how well they work.





  • Maybe? But I am not that cynical. I think the answer is actually both easier and more complicated. The US’ public position has always (or at least for a long time) been support for a two state solution. And I don’t think the Democrats are capable enough of convincingly lying for this to be untrue. Someone would have leaked something etc. Plus it plays into their compromise fetish. And to satisfy that it helps to actually have some land for the second state left. That’s the easy part.

    The complicated part is in understanding why they keep sending weapons. I think Dems have genuinely convinced themself that if they didn’t arm Israel, Hamas would wipe them out. And for a two state solution it helps to keep the first state around. So they keep sending weapons but they also want everybody to know that they are really disappointed whenever Israel uses them to kill civilians. Plus Biden thinks he can push Netanjahu more effectively if he stays on his good side. That’s the “hug Bibi” strategy. I think we have more than enough evidence that the strategy doesn’t work.

    Also there is a difference between “enough weapons to level Gaza” and “enough weapons to secure the border”. And maybe someone should tell the people in charge of weapon shipments.



  • White House staffers even have a nickname for it. It’s called the “hug Bibi strategy” which reportedly has been in place since the Obama administration.

    So I think the reports are accurate. Biden seems to think publicly supporting Israel is the best way to arrive at a ceasefire. Of course doing something ineffective and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.

    What complicates matters is that there are actually good reasons to supply Israel with some military equipment. Many Israelis are living there in 3rd or sometimes 4th generation. Putting the let’s call it complicated circumstances of Israels founding aside, they are a people and deserve self-determination (just like the Palestinians do). The often repeated line “Israel has the right to defend itself” is not only a line it’s also true. You can’t just cut them of from all military assistance. So any policy is going to look kind of contradictory.

    All of this isn’t me defending the Biden administration. It’s just me pointing out, that a substantially different policy would look very similar. You would hear a lot of “friends tell friends the truth” and Israel would only get the weapons they actually need to DEFEND itself (iron dome missiles etc.)

    And that’s something they should definitely do