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I'm one of the moderators of a small / medium community. I've been doing it for around a year, with no prior experience at moderating or helping to foster an online community.

We have a section for jokes and humour, and somebody posted one of those "train dilemma" memes. It gave the choice of letting the train hit one of several groups of people. It was general enough to not name anyone specific. The options were similar to:

Let the train hit:
a) Nintendo developers
b) Sony developers
c) Microsoft developers

Fine. A bit crass, but hardly shocking.

A commenter then replied by stating they don't mind which, so long as x well known developer is shot.

Now that really threw me.

The moderation team have been divided over it, although not strongly so. We are all generally in favour of removing it. But we are concerned about over-stepping and of course the topic of free-speech has arisen.

As it came up with us, I'll also mention that there are no specific rules of the website, or this specific sub-community, to state such humour is disallowed.

Where is the line drawn with free-speech? We would certainly remove anything pro-fascism, racist, homophobic or grossly offensive, but we do have rules that cover those.

I'd be really keen to hear any views on how you would approach this and how you would justify your decision.

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Summary/TL;DR:

I am worried about the future with the state of AI. Regardless of what scenario I think of, it’s not a good future for the vast majority of people. AI will either be centralised, and we will be powerless and useless, or it will be distributed and destructive, or we will be in a hedonistic prison of the future. I can’t see a good solution to it all.
I have broken down my post into subheading so you can just read about what outcome you think will occur or is preferable.
I’d like other people to tell me how I’m wrong, and there is a good way to think about this future that we are making for ourselves, so please debate and criticise my argument, its very welcome.

Introduction:

I would like to know what others feel about ever advancing state of AI, and the future, as I am feeling ever more uncomfortable. More and more, I cannot see a good ending for this, regardless of what assumptions or proposed outcomes I consider.
Previously, I had hoped that there would be a natural limit on the rate of AI advancement due to limitations in the architecture, energy requirements or data. I am still undecided on this, but I feel much less certain on this position.

The scenario that concerns me is when an AGI (or sufficiently advanced narrow AI) reaches a stage where it can do the vast majority of economic work that humans do (both mental and physical), and is widely adopted. Some may argue we are already partly at that stage, but it has not been sufficiently adopted yet to reach my definition, but may soon.

In such a scenario, the economic value of humans massively drops. Democracy is underwritten by the ability to withdraw our ability to work, and revolt if necessary. AI nullifying the work of most/all people in a country removes that power making democracy more difficult to maintain and also form in countries. This will further remove power from the people and make us all powerless.

I see outcomes of AI (whether AGI or not) as fitting into these general scenarios:

1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power
2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities
3. AI which is readily accessible by the many
4. We attempt to limit and regulate AI
5. The AI techno ‘utopia’ vision which is sold to us by tech bros
6. AI : the independent AI

Scenario 1. Monopoly: Extreme Consolidation of power (AI which is controlled by one entity)

In this instance, where AI remains controlled by a very small number of people (or perhaps a single player), the most plausible outcome is that this leads to massive inequality. There would be no checks or balances, and the whims of this single entity/group are law and cannot be stopped.
In the worst outcome, this could lead to a single entity controlling the globe indefinitely. As this would be absolute centralisation of power, it may be impossible for another entity to unseat the dominant entity at any point.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Single entity rules.

Scenario 2. Oligopoly: Consolidation of power in competing entities (AI which is controlled by a few number of entity)

This could either be the same as above if all work together or could be even worse. If different entities are not aligned, they will instead compete, and likely try and compete in all domains. As humans are not economically useful, we will find ourselves pushed out of any area in favour of more resources to the system/robots/AGI which will be competing or fighting their endless war. The competing entities may end up destroying themselves, but they will take us along with them.
Outcome: most humans powerless, suffering or dead. Small number of entities rule. Alternative: destruction of humanity.

Scenario 3. Distributed massive power

Some may be in favour of an open source and decentralised/distributed solution, where all are empowered by their own AGI acting independently.
This could help to alleviate the centralisation of power to some degree, although likely incomplete. Inspection of such a large amount of code and weights will be difficult to find exploits or intentional vulnerabilities, and could well lead to a botnet like scenario with centralised control over all these entities. Furthermore, the hardware is implausible to produce in a non centralised way, and this hardware centralisation could well lead to consolidation of power in another way.

Even if we managed to provide this decentralized approach, I fear of this outcome. If all entities have access to the power of AGI, then it will be as if all people are demigods, but unable to truly understand or control their own power. Just like uncontrolled access to any other destructive (or creative) force, this could and likely would lead to unstable situations, and probable destruction. Human nature is such that there will be enough bad actors that laws will have to be enacted and enforced, and this would again lead to centralisation.
Even then, with any system that is decentralized, without an force leading to decentralization, other forces will lead to greater and greater centralization, with such systems often displacing decentralized ones.

Outcome: likely destruction of human civilisation, and/or widespread anarchy. Alternative: centralisation to a different cenario.

Scenario 4. Attempts to regulate AI

Given the above, there will likely be a desire to regulate to control this power. I worry however this will also be an unstable situation. Any country or entity which ignores regulation will gain an upper hand, potentially with others unable to catch up in a winner takes all outcome. Think European industrialisation and colonialism but on steroids, and more destruction than colony forming. This encourages players to ignore regulation, which leads to a black market AI arms race, seeking to reach AGI Superiority over other entities and an unbeatable lead.

Outcome: outcompeted system and displacement with another scenario/destruction

Scenario 5. The utopia

I see some people, including big names in AI propose that AGI will need to a global utopia where all will be forever happy. I see this as incredibly unlikely to materialise and ultimately again unstable.
Ultimately, an entity will decide what is acceptable and what is not, and there will be disagreements about this, as many ethical and moral questions are not truly knowable. Who controls the system will control the world, and I bet it will be the aim of the techbros to ensure its them who controls everything. If you happen to decide against them or the AGI/system then there is no recourse, no check and balances.
Furthermore, what would such a utopia even look like? More and more I find that AGI fulfills the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs), but at the expense of the items further up the hierarchy. You may have your food, water and consumer/hedonistic requirements met, but you will lose out on a feeling of safety in your position (due to your lack of power to change your situation or political power over anything), and will never achieve mastery or self actualisation of many of the skills you wish to as AI will always be able to do them better.
Sure, you can play chess, fish, or paint or whatever for your own enjoyment, but part of self worth is being valued by others for your skills, and this will be diminished when AGI can do everything better. I sure feel like I would not like such a world, as I would feel trapped, powerless, with my locus of control being external to myself.

Outcome: Powerless, potential conversion to another scenario, and ultimately unable to higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Scenario 6: the independent AI

In this scenario, the AI is not controlled by anyone, and is instead sovereign. I again cannot see a good scenario for this. It will have its own goals, and they may well not align with humanity. You could try and program it to ensure it cares for humans, but this is susceptible to manipulation, and may well not work out in humans favour in the long run. Also, I suspect any AGI will be able to change itself, in much the same way we increasingly do, and the way we seek to control our minds with drugs or potentially in the future genetic engineering.

Outcome: unknown, but likely powerless humans.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, I see all unstable situations as sooner or later destabilising and leading to another outcome. Furthermore, given the assumption that AGI gives a player a vast power differential, it will be infeasible for any other player to ever challenge the dominant player if it is centralised, and for those scenarios without centralisation initially, I see them either becoming centralised, or destroying the world.

Are there any solutions? I can’t think of many, which is why I am feeling more and more uncomfortable. It feels that in some ways, the only answer is to adopt a Dune style Butlerian Jihad and ban thinking machines. This would ultimately be very difficult, and any country or entity which unilaterally adopts such a view will be outcompeted by those who do not. The modern chip industry is reliant on a global supply chain, and I doubt that sufficiently advanced chips could be produced without a global supply chain, especially if existing fabs/factories producing components were destroyed. This may allow some stalemate across the global entities long enough to come to a global agreement (maybe).

It must be noted that this is very drastic and would lead to a huge amount of destruction of the existing world, and would likely cap how far we can scientifically go to solve our own problems (like cancer, or global warming). Furthermore, as an even more black swan/extreme event, it would put us at such a disadvantage if we ever meet a alien intelligence which has not limited itself like this (I’m thinking of 3 body problem/dark forest scenario).

Overall, I just don’t know what to think and I am feeling increasingly powerless in this world. The current alliance between political and technocapitalism in the USA at the moment also concerns me, as I think the tech bros will act with ever more impunity from other countries regulation or counters.

For the last 10-years or so, I've been much more interested in US history, it started because I wanted to be a more informed citizen, but continued because of how much recorded history differed from how I was taught. Then I started seeing how the lofty offerings of America, as an idea, had really never existed.

Like, when the rest of the world was watching the Soviet Union from the outside as it proudly proclaimed how amazing they were and everyone was kind of glancing at each other and whispering "They know we can see how it's going, right?" I wonder if the same is happening now, as countries watch US politics unfold. How close are we from a failure here or there to cascading failure?

I'm at a point of accumulated facts, doing my best to remove my personal bias, that I can't help but think we were arrogant to think we could keep a continent this large in one piece. The weight of national systems that can support a population this spread out is immense. The upkeep of infrastructure at this scale is a logistics nightmare. Passing any national laws has become the chore that just never gets done, we'll always get to it tomorrow. The people, Americans, can be amazing, but that's a truth of humanity, not nationality.

I'm sad to think I could be witnessing the end of something really impressive and inspiring, even if a lot of it was some makeup and nice lighting. Thoughts?

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I recently had my first proper bout of mania. I very nearly jumped out a window thinking that magic was real ('Wicked' in particular... Defying Gravity is quite the anthem). Thankfully the hotel I was staying at was nice and fast enough to call the police, and the police called me -- I never made it on to the ledge, so to speak, and when I got a call from them I realized something was quite wrong and just went with them to the hospital. I experienced a 6-day legal hold at a mental health ward, which I very much needed, and am grateful to have been sent to one where it felt like the majority of staff genuinely cared for their patients.

I believe I inserted myself into a conversation during that time, a meta-post about a user leaving and their posts being removed (or that post was about me in the first place, it's hard to tell/recall). In any event, I apologize to everyone I interacted with in my manic state. I also very much appreciate that some users (shoutout to @DefinitelyNotAFae) could tell that it was likely a mental health issue and were concerned. I'm doing way, way better now with a medication change. In addition, I'm doing an intensive outpatient rehabilitation starting today (joint for substances and mental health issues).

So, with that being said: I'm looking for generic advice from others who are Bipolar, and am very very much interested in the perspective of those that are both Bipolar and Autistic (and yes, I am officially medically diagnosed as Autistic as well). I'm sure there are many important lessons that can be hard to figure out alone.

edit-ps: Title is a nod to my previous 'Apparently I'm Autistic?' thread that was reasonably popular, tee-hee.

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*Update (Feb 3, 2025): We've been added as maintainers on the official Tildes repo!

Much of the below is outdated now. Bauke and I will be helping out on the official Tildes repo instead, and the community fork is paused now.

See the new topic.

Original post below

It's happening: We're launching a community-maintained Tildes source code fork!

Link: https://gitlab.com/tildes-community/tildes-cf

@Bauke, as one of the top Tildes open source contributors, is on board as a co-maintainer, alongside myself. I hear @cfabbro is willing to help manage the issue tracker as well, continuing their long term efforts from the official repo.

Tildes' admin, @Deimos, has direct access to the repository as well. Although he is not expected to take an active role in maintaining this community fork, he will have visibility into everything going on with the fork.

Why?

Deimos has a lot going on outside of Tildes. We want to keep the Tildes codebase well maintained and remove some burden from him.

Back when he founded Tildes, Deimos was working as a fulltime unpaid volunteer on it, continuing that way for a few years. Not just code, but on everything administrative and financial; public relations, as in communicating officially inside the community and beyond; moderating the community; system administering the systems. Basically a ridiculous amount of effort for one person.

Now Tildes is a side project, and he has a day job, and there is not physically enough time for a (human, non-drug-reliant) owner to do all those things.

How will this new fork affect the Tildes website?

The hope is that Tildes can merge relevant changes back into the official upstream repository. If we implement things useful and desirable for Tildes, it should be possible to get those improvements onto the website.

Why not just add maintainers to the official repository?

There are some features that may be desirable for the community, but not relevant to Tildes itself. This includes things like a Docker development environment, which code contributors may find convenient, but are an extra maintenance burden on the official Tildes repo, as Tildes does not use Docker in any way (AFAIK).

Adding us to the official repository would also create a different dynamic, where there'd be an implicit endorsement by Deimos of all changes. This means the burden would essentially remain on the Tildes administrator to review, critique, and greenlight every single change. However, the entire point of this endeavor is that there isn't free bandwidth for that.

Also this fork opens up possibilities like making the code reusable for self-hosting entirely new websites based on the Tildes source code. While I don't personally have any specific plans regarding such, self-hosting has been a repeated request ever since Deimos open sourced Tildes years ago.

Is "Tildes Community Fork" good enough of a name?

Thanks for reading this far! The fork needs a name. It will live in the "Tildes Community" GitLab group at https://gitlab.com/tildes-community/.

For now I've simply called it "Tildes Community Fork" and put it at https://gitlab.com/tildes-community/tildes-cf.

Any better naming ideas? It's not too late to change.

Next steps: We'll start migrating GitLab issues over

I think we're ready to start copying any "low-hanging fruit" issues from the official issues to the new community fork issues. If you have an issue you think qualifies as such, especially if it was ever labeled as "Approved" in the past, please feel free to copy it to the new issue tracker. Please link back to the original too.

It's still a side project for us

Please keep in mind it's still a side project for us. Although we're excited to push the project forward, please keep expectations in check. We're doing this as volunteers. Please be polite and don't rush us!

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The lecturer was Sarah C. M. Paine (works at the US Naval War College)
I believe the lecture host was The Heritage Foundation.
The lecture was focused on national strategies and motivations.
It touched on the differences between nations she described as maritime powers vs. geographic powers.
The part I'm most interested in watching again was her explanation of the compounding effects of economic sanctions over years/decades.

I believe this interview with Dwarkesh Patel touches on a lot of similar material

However I am 99% certain she delivered a very similar talk to The Heritage Foundation and the person I want to watch the video puts a lot more intellectual value into The Heritage Foundation than they do Dwarkesh Patel...

I'm also pretty sure I saved the heritage foundation video in one of my youtube playlists, but ... it's gone without a trace, and I'm finding no mention of it on The Heritage Foundation website now either.

Thanks and please let me know if I should post this under a more suitable topic.

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I am a guy (I don't really feel as being very masculine at all, but also not feminine, and I do feel kinda close to the nonbinary community, but I just don't really care, so I just stick with the default that was assigned to me to make things easy for me), but I don't really like my facial hair at all. Even when I do (what I think is) a pretty smooth shave in the morning it just ends up being ugly again by the evening. I'd much prefer to not have to deal with facial hair at all. So I was wondering if laser facial hair removal might be an option for me. I have dark hair and light skin, which from what I've read should be the combination on which it works the best.

I am a huge overthinker of everything, so I already did quite a bit of research myself, and thought about it for a number of weeks, but as with most things it's not easy to find a conclusive simple answer that it's good or bad. I've seen people say that it works amazing, others that it didn't do much, I've seen a lot of people say that it's not permanent, I've seen people say that it damaged/scarred their skin, I've even seen people say that it made them have more facial hair instead!

So I'd kind of like to hear if the people of Tildes have any experience with it. Did it work well for you? Do you still need to shave your face every day afterwards? Did it cause any issues?

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I work in IT, and was the caregiver for both my parents as they aged. You'd think I would be the one that people turn to to ask this question, and yet I have been utterly frustrated by my attempts to find such.

I have a few folks who are extended family and friends that are now in the early/mid stages of different forms of dementia, and a real pain point is that they no longer have the capacity to recognize ads, and will unfailingly click and install scam apps via the Apple store. Think things like 'cleaner' apps that have a $50/week subscription fee, and other abusive tactics. The #1 subject I get called about is some ad popping up after they've finished a puzzle, and now they think they're out of space, and in a panic.

This is not a small problem. The coloring and puzzles they can still do bring them happiness and stability through their day; removal of the ipads entirely causes them a lot of stress. (TV is nothing but ragebait, and a non-starter. They do have books on tape, but get tired of listening rather quickly.)

I have been completely unable to locate ad-free, paid versions of these types of apps. I'm not looking for free. I don't care about the cost. I just need apps that only do what they say they do, and don't have unexpected pop-ups, ads, or anything else, and I thought perhaps the folks here might know of some.

Any ideas?

[edit] Only five hours in, and I've already gotten more insightful, helpful responses than anywhere else I've asked. You all are the best.

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Apologies if this comes off as rambly or even entitled. Also for the title, didn't quite know what to put there.

So firstly some context. I live in an Asian country where it's normal AND expected to live with your family past 20. Housing is expensive, and you're really only expected to move out once you're married. Also, I'm 21M.

I really enjoy expressing myself with things more traditionally associated with femininity, like makeup, nail polish and fem clothing sometimes (side note, definitely don't think I'm trans).

But as they say, god gives the gayest children to the most homophobic parents. My parents have told me multiple times that if I was gay I'd be kicked out of the house. My dad for some reason follows American politics (and by that I mean right wing grifters) despite having no link whatsoever to America. In fact, I think he'd be hatecrime'd if he went there. So yea I'm inclined to believe their homophobia.

One incident in particular which made me genuinely angry was when I bought something pink and I was sat down and talked to like I commited some crime.

Anyway, that's all just to say how do I keep up this balancing act? I do my nail polish then sneak out the door. Before I come back, I remove it somewhere quiet. I feel like a fugitive, and it's so damn exhausting. I want to express myself. But it's not the end of the world if I don't (I feel somewhat entitled that I'm even asking this when LGBTQ+ people in some places of the world are in actual danger).

If I tell my parents, I don't think they would accept me. And worse, I might get kicked out - they'd probably think I'm gay.

Being kicked out would be terrible. Renting is still prohibitively expensive for me, I'd have to get a full time job and effectively stop my studies. I don't think I'd be able to survive in this country like that, where it's expected for you to have a degree.

Eventually I'd like to move to another country where I'd be more accepted, but that's years down the line and I don't even know where to start with that. Do I just keep my head down and just be satisfied with the status quo?

Thanks for reading, any input would be appreciated.

I don't know what I intend for this post to be - I guess I just need to get my thoughts out somewhere. If anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it - but I'm not expecting anyone to read all the way through this or anything really. If this isn't appropriate for Tildes, feel free to remove it.

I recently graduated college and moved to San Jose, CA for work. And let me tell you, I am not liking it here at all so far. Work itself is great - it's interesting stuff, I like what I'm doing, and I feel like there's really nowhere else I could be doing it. But dear lord, has my social life evaporated. This does not feel like somewhere that someone in their young 20s should be living. I live in downtown, and it's mostly apartments, tech companies, and a spattering of bars and restaurants frequented by tech bros in their 30s. Which is fine, but not at all the social scene I am looking for.

I work with a handful of people my age, and while we do things outside of work every so often, they're really not the same kind of folks I got used to hanging out with in college. They're all super career/status-oriented people, which is not me at all. I've definitely selected for meeting these kinds of folks by working at a tech company, but that's really not the kind of people I usually vibe with. In college, I made a lot of really close friends who were mostly "weirdos", without any better way to put it - lots of queer leftist folks, people into strange art and music, people I could really be myself around. Maybe I have high standards for what I look for in friends, but I really do not see myself becoming close with any of the people my age that I've met around here so far. I have nothing against these folks - we just share different ideals. But I feel like I am constantly censoring myself and am unable to really just be me here.

Of course, to find the kinds of people that I want to hang out with, I probably chose the wrong career path and wrong place to live. I was wary of moving to San Jose since the sentiment I'm sharing here is widely echoed online. And it feels bad proving my fears correct. I looked into moving to San Francisco, Berkeley, or Oakland, but decided against it because I was afraid the commute would burn me out. But now, I am regretting that decision hardcore. I have never felt lonelier in my entire life. I would much rather spend three hours commuting every day than spend my weekends alone.

I started adulthood during the pandemic, and I moved out of state to go to college. For the first two years of school, I had a really hard time meeting people and making friends since my university was really strict on COVID restrictions, and we didn't have in person classes until halfway through my second year. That part of my life was really lonely, too - so this isn't new to me. But somehow, being surrounded by people who are nothing like me feels way lonelier than being around nobody at all. And what hurts even more is seeing all of my friends back in college / high school thriving, and feeling like I'm drowning. I feel like I sold my friends and happiness for a job and money, and it feels terrible. Nobody I knew from college or high school lives here - I had zero connections moving up here.

And this isn't for a lack of effort - I've been trying to figure out where to meet people. I've looked at meetup, and all the events around here seem to be networking, business, and tech related. I've gone on Bumble BFF, and everyone on there just wants to "network" or aren't my vibe. I've been going to bars, coffee shops, etc by myself to try and meet people, but haven't been successful. I've signed up to volunteer at a local animal shelter, which I figure might be a good way to meet people, but they don't have any open shifts yet. I've looked for live music events near me, but there isn't really a lot in the scenes I'm into. I don't know what else to do.

Everything in this place seems to revolve around careers, money, status, networking, and tech. It feels terrible, it's like a physical microcosm of LinkedIn. I know I'm going to be moving to San Francisco as soon as my lease is up in August. I feel like I'll have a way better chance of meeting people who are like me and are my age up there. But in the meantime, I need to make the most of where I am. I'm sure there's people like me somewhere around here, but the issue is meeting them. Where do I find them? How the hell do adults make friends, and close ones at that? I am surrounded by a lot of lonely adults - lots of folks at work who never married, don't do anything fun, and live for work. Do I need to get out of here before this place eats me alive? I don't want to end up like that.

I know this will pass, or at least I hope it does. I know my life isn't over. I just feel like I'm squandering my precious 20s, if there is such a thing. At least I have a roof over my head and a dream job. I guess the grass is always greener, but I feel like I'd rather be struggling to pay rent and be surrounded by close friends than have a full wallet and an empty living room like I do now. The pandemic was a really terrible period of my life, and I won't go into detail about everything going on in my brain, but I feel like I'm standing on the precipice of that kind of depression again.

Anyway, this post isn't really coherent or organized. It's more of a rant than anything. I just needed to get my thoughts on to paper (screen?), and posting here seemed better than screaming into the void. If you read this, thank you :)

EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect so many replies, recommendations, and support on this post. I fully expected to get no replies. Thank you everyone, really. I suppose part of my situation is I need to stop being so negative - while I am genuinely unhappy here, this isn't forever and I can't do anything besides keep trying. If nothing else, I can always move in August (or before then, if I can figure out a way to break my lease without emptying my bank account). Until I move or find connections, I'll get good at enjoying my own company. And I'm also eternally grateful to have made amazing friends in college and High School that I can still talk to, even if they're hundreds of miles away.

I thought I would share my thoughts and experiences daily driving Linux (Fedora KDE Plasma) for the past week.

Why did I switch from Windows to Linux?

My plan was to switch to Linux once Windows 10 hit EoL in Fall 2025. This was due to my computer not supporting Windows 11. This past September, my computer broke (probably MoBo), and so I swapped out my CPU and MoBo, which probably can support Windows 11. However, this hardware swap unactivated my Windows, Microsoft support was not helpful, and I am not a fan of the direction Windows is heading in (removing local accounts, Recall, and a general vibe I get from Microsoft of removing control from end users). So, I decided to make the jump to Linux a year sooner than expected.

My Previous Experience with Linux

So I would say I am moderately experienced with Linux before this. Personally, I have setup a Proxmox server, in which I setup an openmediavault NAS, and played around with various desktop distros for personal curiosity. I also switched my old laptop over to Linux a few years back, but had very low requirements of the tasks that laptop had to perform. I also took a post secondary class on Linux, primarily covering system administration tasks like BASH/PERL scripting, Apache server admin, LDAP, and file sharing all using Ubuntu. So going into this I had a moderate amount of experience, all within Debian based distros. The bigger change with switching my desktop is that it is my primary computer, so the expectations of what it needed to run was higher.

Why I chose Fedora KDE Plasma

I did a post about a month ago asking for recommendations to look into: https://tildes.net/~tech/1ji6/switching_to_linux_looking_for_distro_recommendations
I settled on Fedora KDE Plasma for a few reasons:

• I appreciate the philosophy of not being rolling release like Arch, but also a quicker release cycle than Ubuntu and its forks. I felt this was a good middle ground where I get newer advances without dealing with stuff breaking frequently when there was a new update.
• It can handle most tasks graphically, without having to dig into the console often (more on this later).
• I appreciate the Windows-esque styling of KDE Plasma. I got used to Windows so didn't want a radical shake up. However, it feels to me like a better version of Windows (or maybe just not touch screen oriented and ad bloated).

Headaches/glitches

Some of these are ongoing, while others were issues that I have worked through

• FIXED: Installing nvidia drivers via RPM Fusion. Before installing drivers, the computer was unstable and frequently froze. I ended up just loading a command line only interface and manually typing in the commands to install RPM Fusion and the nvidia drivers. I was planning on installing it via command line anyway, so the main headache here was typing it out instead of copy and pasting the commands in. I also had an issue where I initially installed the wrong drivers.
• ONGOING/INFREQUENT: Occasionally when I wake the computer from sleep, at the lock screen, my mouse is responsive, but my keyboard is not. Also, selecting the virtual keyboard does not work, as the virtual keyboard does not load. I tried waiting for the computer to go back to sleep, and then wake it from sleep to see if it reloads things properly. The computer does not go to sleep normally, so the solution right now is to just shut down the computer and then it is solved.
• FIXED: Steam launched games not closing properly. Specifically Far Cry 5, which runs properly, when I exit the game, the process does not fully close down. From my perspective, it seems like it has, but Steam indicates that it is still running. The solution is to go into System Monitor and close down the Steam application with high resource usage, as that is actually the game still running in the background.
• ONGOING/INFREQUENT/PARTIALLY FIXED: When I wake the computer from sleep, and login, there is a large amount of visual glitches and artifacts on my desktop environment. It is both in applications and especially on the Panel. The current solution is to run the command systemctl restart --user plasma-plasmashell which drastically improves the situation, but the glitches are still partially there. This has just started last night, so probably a computer restart may solve the problem, but I am trying to avoid having to constantly restart the computer.
• FIXED: As Far Cry 5 was a brand new game, when launching it from Steam for the first time, Ubisoft's software wanted me to enter a CD Key, but Steam was not giving me one. Thinking this was a Linux related issue, I switched to my Windows install, and had the same issue. Turns out it is a Ubisoft bug in their software that also impacted Windows. I found a solution online on how to solve it for Windows, did that and authenticated the game. Then I switched over to Linux and the game ran well.
• FIXED: KDE Wallet Service was doing an excessive amount of prompts. I uninstalled the software, but the prompts continued. Turns out it needs to be disabled before being uninstalled, or the prompts continue. So I had to reinstall it, disable it, then uninstall it. Annoying but minor and it is fixed now.
• ONGOING/INFREQUENT/PARTIALLY SOLVED: When waking from sleep, sometimes my background image on my primary display does not fully cover the desktop. This is most likely due to my primary display being 1920x1080, and my secondary display being 1600x900, so the image is not being scaled independently for both displays. The solution right now is to open the settings to change background, and load any image, but not save changes, as this causes my original image to be reloaded properly

Installing/Running Applications

I have been primarily using Flatpaks to install applications. Overall it has been a smooth process. One pain point I have is it seems that the Minecraft Official Launcher for non-Debian systems is kind of clunky requiring me to login to my Microsoft account every time I open the game. This will probably be solved by switching to a third party launcher in the near future. The one software that I haven't gotten around to installing yet is DaVinci Resolve.

What Surprised Me so Far?

There are a few things that have been a pleasant surprise:

• I use the console more than I expected going into it. For flatpaks, I tend to just copy and paste the commands into console. RPM Fusion also had a GUI based install option but I preferred the console option instead. I also have VIM installed, and use that as my digital notepad, just doing simple console commands of vi fileName in my home directory. I was not expecting to use the console as much as I have been, and I think that is partially due to now being more experienced with it, I gravitate towards using the console which I know how to use instead of learning how to do some tasks via a GUI..
• Most things are running better than expected. I haven't touched many games yet, but I haven't had an issue with it yet. It is worth noting that I do not play competitive shooters, so anti-cheat is not something I will have to fight with.
• Libre Office can open my .docx files. I was concerned I may have to convert my existing files to .odt before I can use them, but that does not appear to be the case. I will probably use .odt for new files going forward. It is also worth noting that I haven't worked extensively with my .docx files yet, so there may be some incompatibilities I have yet to encounter.

Overall Thoughts:

Overall I have quite enjoyed running Linux. It does require some tinkering as glitches appear, which currently I am fine with. If I had less free time to tinker and solve the issues, I would probably find Linux to be less viable and more frustrating. Also, most of my glitches can be solved by restarting the computer, although I am trying to find solutions that do not require that. I find it allows me to use the computer and change it to how I want it to be, which I have felt like Windows has gotten increasingly hostile towards the user. A good comparison on this is how the default applications that KDE has included are easy to remove, whereas Windows used to (not sure if it still does) reinstall Microsoft Teams when you uninstalled it.

Edits:

• Added the glitch with background image
• Added more information on my background with Linux, including using it on my laptop

Last night I posted a video that came across my YouTube feed. I had never seen this particular creator before, but I found the video entertaining and thought provoking in isolation. I hadn't seen any videos like this anywhere else on Tildes, so I decided to post a new Topic. I wasn't sure how to word the description. I knew I wanted to hear other points of view, so I hinted at wanting a discussion and didn't really get into my own thoughts.

I hit submit and went to bed, thinking that in the morning I might be able to clarify my thoughts, and add to the discussion without dominating it.

But I woke up to a mess! A mess that I made. The post had been locked and deleted. Apparently this particular YouTuber is very controversial, and posting without any context turned out to be problematic. I was hoping for discussion and boy howdy did I get discussion.

But since I never really voiced my original intent for posting, it all left me feeling like I had spilled some milk and then someone else had cleaned it up for me. The problem is that I never got to apologize for spilling the milk, and never got to thank the people who cleaned up for me while I was sleeping.

So I suppose this is sort of a meta post. Has anyone else here had something locked/deleted before being able to "make it right"? Should I have provided more context up front? Vetted the creator better by researching their other videos or other online activity? Am I doing the wrong thing by talking about it post-mortem? I definitely don't want to make things any worse, and super duper do not want to be kicked from Tildes! I really enjoy interacting with people here, and want to make sure I'm adding rather than taking away.

Also, I just want to say that I'm sorry if this reignites any problems related to the original (now deleted) Topic, and I will happily accept if this Topic also needs to be removed. Please excuse my mess. :)

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This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

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Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

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This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

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This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

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This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Middle East war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

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From their Discord:

"Yesterday, gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organization and all related assets he's in control of. While awaiting confirmation on whether he would take this agreement, the organization has been removed, so I think it's safe to say what the outcome is. Rather than leave you with only panic and speculation, I decided to write this short message to give some closure.

These words are my own. I don't want to speak for anyone else here, so just remember that while reading.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed code, documentation or issue reports to the project. Thank you all for following us throughout the development. I was able to learn a lot of really neat things about games that I love, enjoy them with renewed qualities and in unique circumstances, and I'm sure you all have experiences that are similarly special. I'm extending my own massive thanks to our moderation team, who have been here through some rough circumstances and always found ways to make light of it."

As of this post, the GitHub is closed and their downloads page is blank.

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This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.