Is it really? I’ve always understood the cult around it as a joke.

But seriously, RTFM.

Is ignoring robots.txt considered “honest”?

Package metadata isn’t stored in text files because there’s an amazing technology called the database.

All you have to do is learn how to use your package manager. Spend time reading the man pages and learn the options, and you can query everything you need.

Well, updating can cause problems whenever you do it.

Technically, you should check the news feed for breaking changes whenever you update your system. Usually, the worst that happens is pacman just barfs. Then you can figure out why and apply any fixes.

Upgrading an Arch install months or even years out of date is not that big of a deal. That’s one of the benefits of a rolling release platform.

Once after a move, an old desktop sat in a box for at least two years and I had it updated in a hour or so. Yes, you have to review the archlinux.org news feed for breaking changes, but if you follow any steps that pertain to your packages it’ll work fine.

Neverball.

So gaming on Linux is obviously amazing now, but back in 2006 or so when I started using it, it was less than great. I probably tried every single game in the Ubuntu repos and Neverball entertained the hell out of me.

I spent hours rolling this shiny ball around. I loved Marble Madness on NES as a kid, so it was a natural fit.

A close second was Freeciv, as I had also grown up with a copy of Civilization.

Honorable mentions to Nesticle and Snes9x.

• PyPi
• npm
• Maven Central
• Docker Hub
• Artifact Hub
• PPA
• AUR

The problem isn’t specific to anything. It’s also not specific to malware. Vulnerabilities are just as dangerous, if not more so.

Currently my situation with VI

Any FF if you set it down for a month or two.

I’m not a game dev, or really a dev at all, but I started writing a text adventure game called Weird Woods.

Lol thanks for clarifying your sarcasm. 😂 I can be an airhead at times.

I was actually interested in trying NixOS on a laptop that is gathering dust. I did see a few months ago that there was some drama surrounding the project owner, though. I never investigated enough to understand what that was all about, but I’m less excited about digging into something if it may suddenly end.

Thanks for the suggestion. I am interested in nix, but haven’t explored it yet.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I think I have a clearer picture of the problems it’s trying to solve and the solutions it’s delivering.

It also now seems connected to immutable distros I’ve heard about recently. So I guess the idea there is that the OS is just a tiny core set of libraries that never have to change, then the applications have their dependencies bundled, instead of requiring them as system dependencies.

I’m not convinced it’s something I want as a user, but more importantly not something I need.

From a development perspective, it seems downright seductive, allowing almost total freedom of opinion.

The AUR is a different kettle of fish entirely, though. I do see your point, but the AUR is solving a problem common to all distros; hosting a repository for applications that there isn’t willingness or capacity to host in the official binary repos.

Installation, removal, dependency management, etc are all still handled by pacman. As others have pointed out there are great tools available to aid in AUR usability. My favorite is aurutils.

Some kinda wise guy over here 🤣

The sway man pages are really helpful. I prefer waybar and bemenu to round out my core environment tools.

Manjaro actually made me lol.

That would be torturous, indeed

I dunno, but it is certainly in the universe of movies I don’t care about.

Biopics suck in general, but calling this a cinematic universe is cranking it up to levels of lame I wasn’t prepared for.

This could have been something I blissfully ignored; four movies about each of the band members. Instead, some movie studio asshole right now is dreaming about Jimi Hendrix getting his own feature for the BCU.