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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • When it comes to installing stuff, I’m very trigger-happy. So, from experience…

    Installing stuff on Windows (safely)

    • Hope it’s on Chocolatey (choco install)
    • If not, search for the website online
    • Scroll past the AI slop and suspicious Softonic downloads
    • Click the website
    • Find the correct download button
    • Download
    • Scan with MalwareBytes (don’t want an STI)
    • Run setup.exe
    • Verify PATH and wanted feature set
    • I do not want to bundle Candy Crush or McAfee
    • skim the Privacy Policy to see if they’ll grind my bones to dust
    • Install Microsoft C++ Redistributable 2014-2018 (wtf? I already have 4 of these)
    • Wait
    • Sort the installation shortcuts into my folders

    Installing stuff on Linux (safely)

    • paru some_software
    • If on AUR, skim PKGBUILD
    • If not packaged at all (rare), git clone it and either skim the install.sh or Makefile
    • Done

  • Sometimes friends, in their curiosity, come up to me and ask me, Jordan Belfort-style, “Sell me this pen Linux.” Why do I like it so much, they wonder?

    And I always tell them:

    "Linux is like… the vegan OS. (bear with me) Mac and Windows people don’t really care about OSes. People who switch to Linux either find they couldn’t be assed to deal with it, or they love it, and those who love it love it. Then they always tell people lol.

    A good thing though: because everyone’s such an opinionated nerd, the lateral set of problems you run into won’t be ‘solved’ by random Microsoft Forums /sfc scannows or arcane regedits, but by a nut who debugged the entire thing 30 minutes after the bug came to exist to find a workaround. True story.

    Buuuut Linux is more of a lateral movement in terms of problems, it’s just a tool after all. You solve Microsoft Recall and start menu ads but run into new but tiny annoyances. I find Linux problems easier to fix than Windows ones because of the nerd army thing but if your Windows setup works for you, it works and that’s really all that’s important. If you do start Linuxing though you’ll learn a lot just by osmosis."

    And they usually laugh and decide to keep their routines in place. Don’t hate me vegans.


  • I use Firefox everywhere else, but for my Android I’m on Brave.

    Sure, adblock and tab grouping is a plus but my main reason I use it (i.e. over Firefox) is because of memory. When I have six FF tabs open, my Samsung model shoots at least three down the moment I enter another activity or open a new tab. They survive on Brave.

    I’d still use Brave on iOS devices too – as another commenter said, it’s a webkit reskin but at least it’s got good Adblock.