Dark_Arc

Yeah, who the hell is out there SSHing into their web server "to update their blog" but needs to be talked down like a toddler to convince them to try out Linux? This is a mythical beast of an user that does not exist.

People that do these sorts of remote work via GUIs exist. But yes, the switch is likely pretty obvious to them. I for one used to do it with Minecraft server stuff, I had FileZilla; Dolphin pretty much replaced that instantly for me. MUCH later, scripts replaced Dolphin.

This is a massive dealbreaker for a whole bunch of people, for understandable reasons.

Is it though? They'd face the same issues switching to MacOS. There's no point in lying that some of their favorite programs may not work. I still miss Paint.net though GIMP has grown on me a lot.

This is simultaneoulsy an over and understatement. You can very likely access your old Windows drives from Linux, but it's janky enough that this piece of advice makes sense.

Nobody is going to leave their old Windows files on their OS drive AND install Linux unless their goal is to dual boot (and that's clearly not who this is for).

The entire file system needs to be replaced in the process of installing Linux, so there's no "somebody should find a better solution to this." The only way to do it would be to relocate and resize partitions as files are copied ... and that's incredibly dangerous. Not to mention attempting to guess what files are important to the Windows user has a high probability to fail.

This advice is good. You should regularly copy stuff you care about to an external hard drive and ideally use a backup program anyways. SSDs don't fail as fast as HDDs did, but it will happen someday (or very well could).

However, every single tutorial and guide you read will tell you to update all right at the top with the compulsive zeal of a puppy who has just smelled a hidden treat.

Yeah, I've never liked this as an argument for Linux. People should update software (at least when there's a security related issue) ... for the exact same reason they should ditch Windows 10. However, as you said "Having to explain to people that their perfectly working computer is actually not working despite all available evidence is a bit of an issue."

Many people prefer to roll the dice with those issues.

Yeah, I think that's probably for the best honestly.

Ahhh so leapp will simply become less relevant because a better upgrade mechanism will take over

Huh, thanks for the history and I missed that last part so thanks for that too!

It sounds like the original edit program might have been (at least partially) hand coded assembly or something (maybe some unportable C that made a variety of bad assumptions) if they were never able to port it to anything but 32-bit x86.

Maybe the new edit will gain any missing functionality eventually.

Interesting ... yeah it looks like Leapp can do some upgrades for Alma and possibly others as well (TIL). I'm not sure how well that upgrade process would compare / be supported vs Debian though.

What's the image mode and ostree stuff? Is that required for RHEL and/or Alma going forward?

I think your issue should be with Reddit moderators not Ars.

ProPublica happily allows Ars to republish their stories by disclosing the source:

https://www.propublica.org/nerds/happy-birthday-creative-commons

Ars discloses the source compliantly:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/doge-used-flawed-ai-tool-to-munch-veterans-affairs-contracts/

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-veterans-affairs-ai-contracts-health-care

ProPublica literally thanks Ars above for spreading their stories.

The Ars headline (with its subheading) also says a lot more. So it's just ... going to get more upvotes, it's better bait.

As for the second article getting squashed... Again Reddit moderators.

This looks like a nonsensical conspiracy theory ... ProPublica was not suppressed or harmed. Ars literally spread their exact story. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if more people read the story because they see "ArsTechnica" and assume good content (because Ars has a super nice website and regularly has really good journalism on it).

No that's canonical

There are pros and cons to verbosity and to using many files vs one.

Cron needs a special tool to edit it because you can break a bunch of stuff trying to edit another, very easily, and by accident.

The commands themselves when I was first learning I found easier to remember than things like dmesg or /var/log/ ... they all follow similar conventions and aren't so chopped up short that you can't guess what they do by looking at them.

Similar to how most people don't prefer 3 letter variables in code ... I'm glad we've largely moved on from 3 letter commands. Granted, if you use them a lot you should definitely make your own three letter aliases in your preferred shell scripting language.

I think systemd has moved desktop and server Linux towards being more BSD-like ... and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

Maybe we'll end up needing an X11 -> Wayland sort of transition where there are protocols instead of "an implementation."

However, I've yet to see systemd be meaningfully detrimental. Are distros a little less different? Yeah. Has it made my life easier when I need to go between distros? Also, yeah.

I think on some level, we're just getting to a more mature Linux desktop and server ... and as a result consolidating on stuff that really doesn't have strong reasoning to be different.

TIL; though I moved my servers to Debian ... having the ability to sanely upgrade without a reinstall is a major plus.

There's research into non-oil based polymers in Akron funded by the Biden administration (don't tell Trump) and Goodyear IIRC. So ... if that goes somewhere, maybe not.

Yeah, I think I'm going to stick to my energizers ... pretty much everything I use AA batteries for these days is a low draw device (door lock, smoke detector) or something like an emergency flash light, rechargeable batteries don't make sense for either use case.

I have some old school nice rechargeable batteries as well with an external charger. Those were nice back in 2016 when my bose headphones I was using at the time used AAA batteries, but it's been a long time since I've used those with any frequency.