If you are coming from Windows, I would say Mint for sure. I have friends that are 20 using it and my parents in their 70’s use it. Both seem to like it and even find it easier to use in quite a few respects.

Speaking of Quod Libet, Ex Falso from them is still the best way to fix meta data on music that I have found - so very very handy.

Definitely agree - I usually use cmus because it follows my system theme as part of the terminal and kind of fits in anywhere, but for graphical players having options for skins is a must for me. Used to like all the options for this on AIMP when I used to use Windows.

I play the Java edition on Debian with mods from modrinth and don’t require emulation etc.

That’s true, the problem with the original statement is that it is too broadly scoped by “knowledge”, implying that it is any and all knowledge. If I obtain the knowledge to write a singleton in object oriented programming while at work - even if the concept is applied to a work project, and later use the programming concept of a singleton in my own software, then they can’t do shit.

A simpler example that shows that it’s too broadly scoped is that if I get trained and certified to use a forklift for a job, and later start my own company and have to use a forklift, there is no precedent for my original employer to come after me for using a forklift in my business operation just because I learned how to use a forklift while I worked for them.

If the knowledge is proprietary or copyrighted or a trade secret and what I do uses any of that, or what I produce is a 1 to 1 product of that, then they can come after me.

Oh for sure - I think that this method has more efficacy in production environments ran by small businesses anyway, since best practices are rarely followed in many of them (until something happens that changes their mind on what they budget for haha), and even at that it is still a rare attack to see.

I am unaware of this type of attack ever occurring on a persons personal network, most likely because so few end users make backups, there is no need to go through the trouble of doing this, making this method useful only in highly targeted attacks.

We are definitely in agreement on proper backups still being the best method to recover from the vast majority of problems - even this one, depending on the backup solution.

They usually embed themselves in within the system files and have some scheduled job that basically checks for the criteria - if you are only backing up and restoring user data then it’s a non-issue, but if you do a full recovery including the system files/the system scheduler etc, then it can happen, and it is often necessary to backup executable and system files for production environments (true, not so much for individual users and their systems).

When I was working in an IT shop, one of our clients was ransomwared with this method. The saving grace for us in that instance is that our backups were going to a product that allowed you to easily break open and dissect the compressed backups pre-recovery, so we were able to determine where the malicious files were and kill them before pushing the backups. Of course we only noticed that it was in the backups after we had tried to push the backups once already, so it was quite the timely process - I think I worked for something like 18 hours that day.

You can read about such malware if you search for “timebomb malware” or “malware does not execute until date” etc.

The attack is not super common anymore, but still happens.

For example, here is an article discussing time bomb methods on linkedin.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/time-bombs-malware-delayed-execution-any-run

Another on the knowbe4 blog:

https://blog.knowbe4.com/ransomware-can-destroy-backups-in-four-ways

There are viruses that are time-bombs. They specifically don’t do really do anything until some criteria is met in the future, such as the current date being beyond a specific date, at which point they proc. They do this in order to make sure they are in your backups when you restore them so that they immediately run when recovery is completed and the system is booted.

little one deleted

It’s the ending lyric of “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” By Neutral Milk Hotel. (Thanks to @[email protected] for sending me better formatting for the lyrics.)

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

^{Neutral Milk Hotel}

What a beautiful face I have found in this place
That is circling all 'round the sun
What a beautiful dream that could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be in the arms of all I’m keepin’ here with me

What a curious life we have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds, Anna’s ghost all around
Hear her voice as it’s rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees

Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
But now we keep where we don’t know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one, you loved so long ago
Now he don’t even know his name

What a beautiful face I have found in this place
That is circling all 'round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud, I’ll be laughing out loud
I’ll be laughing with everyone I see
Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all

… / --. — / .- .-… .-… / … -. / .-- … - … / – -.-- / --.- -.- .---- ----- .---- / -… …- … .-… -… .-.-.-

The Debian docs were really useful for me in setting up my 3090 on Debian proper.

Since Mint is downstream, maybe they will help you.

https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

No, I would not. Be careful with generalizations as they include all the people most negatively effected by the policies of the region. Criticizing “Alberta”? Completely fair. Criticizing all “Albertans”, people who didn’t choose to be born here, to have their families here? Very different, and a cohesion/division fallacy if you give it more than a passing glance.

Saying that every person here is evil or stupid because of the choices of a government, ignoring those who voted against the government and then rolling the moral standing of both groups in with each other is an awful thing to do.

On desktop I just turned off the compatibility settings for proton and then reinstalled. Steam cloud held all my saves and they were unaffected.

This is beautiful.

I’ve been looking for exactly this for some time, really excited to try it out.

It wasn’t for me on Debian 12/13. I just had to add the repo for the drivers and run 1 or 2 lines of bash and I’ve been good ever since with my 3090.

I was not about to put up with windows co-pilot or recall and had already put up with enough ads and bugs.

I had been running Debian on my laptop for a year without a problem and then finally Windows 11 started doing this when I was trying to update:

Click check for updates? Same result. Wait a week and try again? Same result.

I could no longer trust that the OS was secure from even 3rd parties, so I pulled the trigger and installed Debian 12 - later upgrading to Debian 13 when it released.

There just is never any going back now - Linux is just waaaaaaay too good.

Now I just need something similar to happen with phones.

Helix, Kakoune, build Codium from source would be my suggestions.

I use Helix now mainly - I use Codium if I need a graphical editor for something, or one of it’s plugins.

At work the systems use VSCode but I use the Dance plugin with Helix bindings to get some of that functionality back.

Crack. The trick is you forget you spent the money in the first place.

On two versions of debian on two computers I have tried to use wayland and both times I have had really bad graphical problems and lag/stuttering of multiple visual elements. I’m sure it is fine when it works, but my problem with Wayland is that for whatever reason, it just does not work on my systems.

Each time, this was on fresh installs of the operating system as well, so I have no idea why it doesn’t like me.