N.E.P.T.R

Manjaro is notorious for being a shit distro with breakage and out dated packages from their repos. Instead check out CachyOS or EndeavourOS for easy arch-based distros.

To add to your list: openSUSE Tumbleweed, VanillaOS

If all you want to do is run VMs, Qubes is not what you are looking for. Even virtual machine manager (and other abstractions over libvirt and KVM) need to be hardened to avoid compromising the host.

Example: By default virt-manager uses a NAT bridge to allow for the guest VM to access the host and the LAN. A couple of weeks ago vulnerability was found in CUPS print server, allowing a hacker to do RCE. If a guest VM was compromised (previously or because of the vulnerability), since the host also likely has CUPS the hacker could use the guest system to compromise the host. This is avoided on Qubes because the host has minimal software.

Virt-manager offers no where near the same Security as Qubes. Qubes has a security hardened host and strong Desktop security model. Everything runs in VMs (aka qubes) including different parts of the system to further improve isolation. Sure, you could replace Qubes OS with an off the shelf Linux distro and run VMs, but that is nothing like Qubes, offers none of the convenience, and isn’t hardened or debloated (reducing host attack surface).

No Linux distro comes close. Qubes is designed for a specific job. I am not saying Qubes is the “best OS ever” when I say Linux distros dont come close, I specifically mean that no Linux distro is designed with as strong of a focus on Desktop security model and isolation-based workflow.

You dont have to install over the drive. Retrieve any important files from the drive by booting a USB live OS.

People on Snapchat dont give a fuck about cleanliness.

Even if documentation can be time-consuming, it is such a lifesaver and makes the whole process of coding much smoother. It means not as much time wasted backtracking. If you think there is any part of your code you won’t understand when you coming back to it, document, document, document.

Sometimes I write some multiline psuedocode comments or/and an explaination of specific choices, especially those invisible choices you make while debugging that aren’t apparent when your just reading through your code.

Good thing to do is make code that is generally readable too lol.

Or are you? Try it, just a lil 😼

Legit. Even if documentation can be time-consuming, it is such a lifesaver and makes the whole process of coding much smoother. It means not as much time wasted backtracking. If you think there is any part of your code you won’t understand when you coming back to it, document, document, document.

Sometimes I write some multiline psuedocode comments or/and an explaination of specific choices, especially those invisible choices you make while debugging that aren’t apparent when your just reading through your code.

Good thing to do is make code that is generally readable too lol.

I don’t know any YouTubers other than “Let’s Game It Out”.

My fav game to speedrun is Neon Boost (free on Steam) because of several bugs I have found in the game. Otherwise a small boring indie platformer about rocket jumping is made fun (to me) through exploitation of its physics.

1. Diagonal movement is faster (hold two adjacent directional keys). Sliding makes you even faster.
2. Precise rocket jumps can receive more velocity than the developers intended, allowing you to skip many parts.
3. You can touch the end of stage goal post from underneath the platform.
4. You can wall jump off of the top of walls, allowing for many skips and time saves.
5. You can get massive upwards velocity by sliding into a small couple-pixel ridge and jumping precisely once you touch it. This is possible on the starting platforms of all World 1 levels. It basically only improves individual level speedrun records, except on one level where you can skip the whole level and complete it in 1 second (an 9x faster than intended.

My crowning achievement was completing the final level of World 1 (1-12) in 18 seconds. The Devs expected a fastest time around 40 sec.

Dying to a stupid bug is a great way to suddenly get frustrated though. Hard agree with you though, buggy games are my favorite. Especially small indie projects because I you can find the great bugs.

Gender is obviously a signed byte.

Run FreeTube on Linux. It is an alternative YouTube client that is open source and ad free. YT sometimes changes which could break it temporarily. It has been working for me for a year now.

Docker is good when combined with gVisor runtime for better isolation.

Sydbox OCI runtime is also cool and faster than gVisor (both are quick)

Linux Mint is built on top of Ubuntu, which itself was a fork of Debian. Ubuntu is not something I would call a “clean base”. It is clunky, slow to adopt new technologies, and very (Canonical) opinionated. Linux Mint actively works against its Ubuntu base by removing Snap and other Canonical weirdness.

Tumbleweed and Leap offer the option to add or remove ANY package from your system before you even install it through their GUI installer, actually 2 GUI package choosers for either simple or advanced users. I don’t think it is accurate to suggest that Linux Mint is minimalist with its packages, especially when comparing to openSUSE distros.

I will not argue against Linux Mint being user friendly, it is pretty good. But “not bloated”, especially when comparing against openSUSE, is inaccurate.

How is Linux Mint less bloated? Linux Mint also suffers from poor Wayland support and isnt a (semi-)rolling release distro like Fedora or Tumbleweed. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone other than people who are tech iliterate. Even then, I would still suggest VanillaOS or Fedora Workstation. I used Mint as my daily driver for a year and it was fine, nothing amazing.

Bazzite is a good distro, I convinced a friend to move to Linux from Windows 10 and Bazzite was the only one that worked well with their nvidia hardware.

In that case it is a ToS violation, not piracy. You aren’t paying anything, nor does google lose any money since they have been already paid. We would have to stretch the definition of piracy to include other ToS violations since it is not a financial lose.

Let’s extend the scenario. If YouTube ToS required you to click every ad to use their service, would it be piracy if someone doesnt follow those instructions? I think it would be a ToS violation, but what damages could Google even seek?

I hear people sometimes mention that “Google needs to pay somehow to keep YouTube running.” I have no sympathy for Google since they conspired to intentionally push out other video hosting platforms to create monopoly on the market. It is their own fault that videos aren’t more spread out among providers.

How would you even pirate YouTube anyways?

I recommend Mull. It is security/privacy hardened Firefox and built by using Fennec as a base. Always use Fennec over Firefox because it removes telemetry, proprietary code, and strongly protects against browser fingerprinting. Comes with support for most (if not all) desktop Firefox extensions. I highly recommend using uBlock Origin, ask anyone and they’ll tell you it is the best content blocker available.

Another good browser is Cromite. It is security hardened Chromium with built-in ad/content blocking, decent fingerprinting protection, and strong site isolation. It doesn’t have support for extensions because upstream Chromium on Android doesn’t either and it is hugely complex to port.

Did you enter into a contract saying you must watch ads to use the service? Is ad blocking against ToS? I don’t think either are true, and a “click to consent” isn’t legally binding. Either way, I will never not block ads as it is important from a privacy and cyber security perspective.

Fixed

Since SteamOS isnt available on desktop, check out these distros instead:

Bazzite (the best option)

Nobara (another good option)

Waydroid run a rootful LXC container and removes disables much of Android’s security (for example SELinux). With a container escape, an attack could trivially gain root on the host.