Instance name checks out

Also, hello there, fellow labrat! Are you a microbiologist?

You monster!

Immigration being seen as a weapon has always bewildered me. If people come to your country, commonly running away from famine and war, and you see them as nothing but a weapon, something is seriously wrong. I am aware some countries like Finland are already fairly filled with immigrants, but Europe could use some more cooperation to solve this.

To my perspective, Russian government was not the bad one, it was a rival, as in yet another place being run by shitheads. Funnily enough, 1991-2000 was actually the time when liberties coming from Perestroika were tanked again, the country was destroyed against people’s will, and wild privatization combined with corruption has left millions in deep poverty and famine; crime arose. People had their homeland taken away from them before they could react, and they were intentionally kept clueless on what was going on. But it was also the time when Russia had better relations with Europe and the US, which is why this period is seen as “Russia being good”.

Removing all governments overnight is not feasible indeed. But we should admit the harms patriotic and, as a radical extension, nationalist models cause to society at large and our global cooperation, we should own up to what it means to hostility, warfare, and breeding idiots who make it worse for all of us. Every time someone tries to instill patriotic feelings within the population, they just want to make us more controllable and divided. We shouldn’t let them. And as an extension of that, we should advocate for direct democracy and gradual dissolution of government as a main controlling entity.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t praise certain decisions made by your government. They can be objectively good!

Oh, I should make it very, very clear: Ubuntu is a mess that newbies shouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. Comparing to Ubuntu, even Arch can look appealing for lack of confusion. Nothing that I say goes to support this abomination, and I did not mention it positively.

Generally though, most distros featuring KDE/GNOME will already have everything in one place - but, ironically, not Arch, which actually features three places to look for apps: the official repos for precompiled packages, Flatpaks, or AUR. And without something like pamac - a tool made by Manjaro team available through AUR - you can’t have all three in one interface or through same commands.

If I would choose distro by how easy it is to have everything in one place, this would likely be Fedora/OpenSUSE/Debian with Discover app store from KDE suite. Everything, be it native packages or Flatpaks, is in there, and you can easily select the source for any given app.

As per compatibility, I’m a strong proponent of Flatpaks. They are not significantly harder to manage than any other apps (in most cases, they don’t require any extra configuration), but they will help you avoid dependency issues and they also won’t get full access to your entire system, which is to me a disaster waiting to happen.

I started with Manjaro, and found myself in quite a predicament once I figured out what it means to have Arch under the hood. It was…a rude awakening.

Then I moved on to Debian and Fedora, and from there I gained enough knowledge to manage Arch systems. Now, I have Endeavour on my main computer and OpenSUSE Slowroll on my laptop.

For a casual experienced user - maybe, if bloat is a super big concern and ricing is an absolute priority.

For a casual newbie - please, no. Arch will immediately force the user to go through a lot of hoops, learn a million terminal commands to make basic changes, and overall it will be a very frustrating and non-intuitive experience. Also, rolling updates will inevitably lead to bugs here and there, and without the experience managing Linux systems, there’s only so much one can do to fix it.

Guess that’s why Europe has built defences against immigrants, and many European countries straight up rejected to accept them? And that’s why right-wingers with their anti-immigration policies win over more and more votes?

My point is, this is one of the consequences that comes with national identity. For some, it’s just unfair preference of “their” people and things, for others, it’s nationalism and xenophobia.

Blocking “disinformation” is also a slippery slope towards autocracy. Y’know, Russia did the same back in the day. I understand that it feels like a necessity amidst hybrid wars, but it’s bound to be problematic down the road.

Newbie Linux users shouldn’t go with Arch to begin with, even Endeavour or Garuda, unless they’re seeing it as a learning experience and have an IT background behind their back.

It’s not worth it for the average user, and honestly - even for most veteran users for that matter.

The great power of Arch comes with great responsibility to manage your system properly.

Nope, I’m from Russia.

But then again, where does that not have its place? Are people in Europe, say, universally welcoming to immigrants? Or maybe Asia is not full of xenophobia? Africa, at least?..

There are much better factors of unity than being on a certain plot of land.

Super valid!

My point is: there’s little to brag about. But hey, I got that badge anyway.

Actually, yes. In many, many aspects Arch wiki requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge. Otherwise, you’ll be better off following online guides.

Why not? It takes a few hours at most, and I get a new interesting experience.

It is amazing if you’ve settled on your distribution of choice, though.

Very easy nowadays, even manually with all the guides, so you can cross that one off quite easily.

Arch Wiki is great, but it’s mostly oriented on people who already know something. And installation page should be very clearly written for absolute noobs.

Go ahead, install Arch on a VM (it’s not hard at all, actually!) and get your medal.

Then keep with Endeavour and enjoy your ride :D

Installing Arch manually is not hard, and there are plenty of step-by-step guides.

Figuring out what you need next and then managing this mess is more complicated.

Source: I installed Arch manually btw

We can always do our best to make it closer.

Most people claim this to be Utopian, and then just try to tone it down in others, so their own compliance is not seen to themselves as weakness but rather “wisdom”. No - it is a surrender, an act of learned helplessness.

Sure, it’s hard to force politicians to abandon the concept of nations, and it’s hard to bring a revolt to a population so compliant.

But everyone can make personal steps.

First, admit that patriotism is bullshit. There is no ground to be patriotic, and nothing realistically unites you with your “nation”. You have more in common with a person of the same position on the other side of the globe than you have with the president of your very “own” country.

Second, watch your own preferences in people and what you factor in your decision. Maybe you give too much weight to where the person comes from? Is it that you label people in some way based on that characteristic alone?

Third, if you have the opportunity, form an international collective, reach out to specialists within other nations, or if you can’t, see if you can build a collective or even just a friend group with the immigrants around you.

Fourth - advocate for people in other countries, learn what they face, what they get to endure. For example - do you know that the deadliest of recent wars was not in Ukraine or Palestine, but in Ethiopia? What do you know about the current situation in Myanmar, aside from the Facebook drama? Did you consider supporting women rights’ causes in the Middle East?

Personal action and involvement will not allow you to fall for the traps the state tries to implant in your mind, and you’ll be personally responsible for a small, but proud piece of international cooperation - one that should become commonplace to the point when it wouldn’t make sense for anyone to draw divisions.

Human life is human life. Human suffering is human suffering - here or on the other side of the globe. The concepts of unity, hope, and cooperation are all universally recognized wherever you are. Why not step in?

We should band together based on mutual respect and common responsibility, and not based on someone telling us who to band with and who not to.

The concept of nation-state doesn’t allow us to band with whoever we like, and calls to unite with people born in place X (and commonly against people born in place Y). The concept of state in general oversees and dictates our relationships more broadly.

Multitude of states all fostering loyalty to their rulers doesn’t allow many people to look at those of other nations as equals and fellows with shared global goals. Sure, messages of international peace are commonplace, but hey, we should definitely exclude those pesky Chinese/Russians/Americans/Ukrainians/Israelis/Palestinians/whatever!

When we categorize people by nations through the lens of state, we put easy labels that are far from true. If someone’s a Russian, he sure supports war in Ukraine. If someone’s American, he sure is personally responsible for all the immigrant scare. If someone’s born in Israel or China, clearly he’s all on board with genocide!

At the same time, state-level patriotism fosters coming to terms with terrible people within the nation. Sure, our billionaires might be at fault in some ways, but it’s better than other country’s evil and corrupt billionaires! Our rulers are wise leaders, their rulers are cruel autocrats! My neighbor is a terrible person, but at least he’s not one of those <input the nation with bad stereotypes>!

It forces us to make preference to people who may not deserve our support, who might be actively undermining our causes, it leads us to close our eyes on the sufferings of others outside our arbitrary group that doesn’t even share our views and goals.

Now, I know it doesn’t have to be that extreme, but patriotism is always showing preference to someone or something based on a very arbitrary characteristic, instead of honest and fair consideration. It’s an intentionally cultivated fallacy.

On a personal note, I’d rather avoid ad hominem attacks if you’d like to keep a good faith discussion running. And, FYI, I never take any drugs, not even alcohol.

The state should not exist. We are people of Earth, and we should not be divided by someone. Divided, we are powerless to make a global change, and those who divide us reap all the benefits of this bullshit system.

State-level patriotism is always bullshit to begin with.

That’s how you’re tricked into loyalty based on the most arbitrary reasons.

Be the messenger of humanity and get curious about the Universe. People are brothers, and there’s no pride in being born in one plot of land over the other.

written before reading the article; it get the topic from another, more interesting and less imaginary, angle

Do we explore it post-Google or post-anything that would take its place?

Because those are two very different scenarios. There are plenty of Big Tech corps that are willing to take Google’s place.

If we actually mean no one does search with targeted advertising and stuff, my bets are on more indie sites popping up, and Fediverse getting stronger as well.

We’ll have more link indices, and more relevant search results hosted on different corners of the Internet.

On the negative: unless open-source projects step up their game, usability and quality of web interfaces will suffer dramatically. And without truly massive Fediverse or at least decent webrings, finding basic information and connecting to others might actually get harder.