I’ve been ricing my Debian daily driver the last 24 hours or so and I feel as if I have gotten to a point where it can’t get any better (without implementing hyperspecific mods that might be difficult to reproduce after an update).

It’s in every way better than Windows and more user-friendly than all the Apple stuff should you know how to use search engines, seriously. It also simply looks better and the trimming I did reduces cognitive load significantly. I don’t have to make that many decisions during use.

All of this produces a feeling of anguish. I don’t know if it’s because it felt to easy or something else entirely. Maybe I cannot stand knowing that this could be the standard everywhere.

Colemak and various other efficient keyboard layouts exist. So do BT ergo splits and orthos. We don’t have the limitations of typewriters anymore, QWERTY and staggered keys are indeed optional. How this example from the world of keyboards isn’t the default is rather puzzling. Or take Python, why do universities, some would say even respected universities, teach this language when Go and C/++ exist? I have similar feelings about the lack of alcohol taxation and the low rate of rice cooker adoption in the west.

It really makes me want to get active to proselytize because we live in a world with all the tools available to us to create lives for at least 80% of all people that are entirely fulfilling and within personal control. Until I work somewhere where I can affect change in the direction of sustainability I have several VMs to take apart and put back together.

I hope you can forgive the weltschmerz. How do you feel about this?

  • timmytbt@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    2 days ago

    My Linux journey started with Debian (which is still on the home server) but I now have Arch and Fedora (Sway spin) on my two laptops.

    The laptops basically run the same apps and I’ve been working on configuring/ricing the Arch laptop to my liking.

    I’m currently setting up a local Git repo (following this tutorial) so that my Arch config can be used on Fedora.

    The cool thing about the Git approach is that it’s easy to make it publicly available if you choose … and easy to roll back if you screw something up.

    I also have automated snapper snapshots set up for the later scenario 🤪

    • Silver Needle@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      2 hours ago

      I would honestly love to share my stuff but I’m afraid that what I have to share contains too much identifying information with screenshots and all. I probably spent 24 hours in total with my current install and at least triple as much getting a previous Cinnamon install that I screwed up because I went to the experimental Wayland session to look and act a certain way. Back when I studied architecture we would consider all the failed attempts as a natural and indeed deeply necessary aspect of design, therefore I count the previous install as being the starting point of my current one. I hope that made sense. All of this is to say that I spent an inordinate amount of my recent life on this. I would love to share, but my paranoia is really keeping me from doing that. It took me 24 hours alone to create a decent repository of thematically and aesthetically matched backgrounds with all the selecting and editing of images. There is just so much that you have to do.

      • timmytbt@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        19 minutes ago

        All good, and understandable. My Git is only local. Great for version control though and sharing across different machines.