Quoting: soulsourceStrange, my experience was the exact opposite. Ubuntu was rather great, until they started shipping Unity.

I've always used Kubuntu. Maybe it's not Ubuntu itself that was unstable but Unity.

Admittedly, my experience with Gentoo is a decade behind me, and I understand the distro isn't as Wild West as it used to be. I just remember whenever there was a major upgrade of critical components, it always felt like rolling the dice whether or not your system would work afterwards.

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Quoting: prosoorAbout Gentoo and some less common like Mandriva or even weirder package system I should rather not. I have no time even to read about them, less to try them.

I used Gentoo many years ago when I had more free time to invest in maintaining my system. Since everything is compiled from source code, the initial install was an all day (and overnight) affair. Even something as simple as installing an office suite could take several hours to download and compile the source code. Of course this was on an older, slower single core CPU, so things may not be as painful these days, but I really didn't mind it at the time until I was in the middle of a college course, and a routine update completely broke my system (not an uncommon occurrence for Gentoo). Since I didn't have the time to recompile an entire Linux install from scratch, I used Kubuntu as a temporary solution to get back up and running quickly and was so pleased with how fast and easy it was that I've never looked back.

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Quoting: soulsourceThere is an important piece of information missing regarding Ubuntu: People should imho only use LTS versions. The non-LTS versions are horribly unstable (bordering being completely unusable), and will only lead to frustration.

This is not true based on my experience. I update my Kubuntu install every six months when a new version is released and have never had a problem.

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Been using Kubuntu for years and have never had a significant problem with it.

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: TheSHEEEPWhat is "naff" naming?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1453_uptodate3/page15.shtml [External Link]

Another source https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=naff [External Link] and so on. Pretty common where I am from, I forget that English slang can be an acquired taste. Basically, naff = a bit rubbish.

One of the strangest turn of phrases I've encountered is "it's the dog's bollocks". I still don't know if that's a good thing, or a bad thing.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Mountain Manthe Chinese coronavirus

Parroting this xenophobic name invented by American right-wing politicians really underlines your ignorance.

The term "Chinese coronavirus" is no more xenophobic than any other common term for illnesses based on their point of origin like Spanish flu, West Nile virus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Zika fever, German measles, Ebola, and dozens more.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyFinally, China. China wiped the disease out within their borders. They eliminated it, before any vaccine arrived. They're already back to economic growth and living normally. Because they didn't fuck around.

China claims they wiped the virus out, but they were also the ones claiming early on that there was no risk of person-to-person transmission despite the fact that they perfectly well knew the truth. They deliberately kept the rest of world in the dark for months about the potential dangers of the Chinese coronavirus, so why are you trusting them now?

As for mask use, there is actually no good evidence that it can stop or even slow the spread of influenza like the Chinese coronavirus. There are actually studies going back for years that prove this, but when it came to this latest "emergency", governments operated on the logic of "We must do something" even if that "something" isn't actually effective. Case in point, there has been high mask and social distancing compliance in my state since at least August of this year, and yet things are supposedly worse now than they were before all the draconian measures were instituted. As the saying goes, if masks, then why aren't they working?

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Mountain ManThe government might be able to reduce certain types of injuries and deaths through regulation, but overall human death rates do not rise or fall based on government mandates.

Deaths are reduced, but death rates do not fall. Aha...

Not what I said. Government intrusion might be able to prevent certain types of injuries and deaths -- for instance, vehicle fatalities could theoretically be reduced by 100% if the government simply made vehicles illegal -- but you would find that the human population in general would still die at the same overall rate.

The biggest problem right now is that governments are operating on the logic of "We must do something about X; Y is something; therefore, we must do Y" which is the kind of thinking that leads totalitarian minded politicians to believe that any decision they make, no matter the consequences (both intended and unintended), is morally justified.

There was a curious study that was recently published (and then hastily covered-up) by Johns Hopkins showing that deaths in 2020 attributed to the Chinese coronavirus have risen in direct inverse proportion to deaths attributed to other causes like heart disease and cancer such that overall death rates are not significantly greater this year than the year before. In fact, on average, any person who contracts the Chinese coronavirus has a better than 99% chance of surviving without complications, and in many cases without requiring any sort of treatment. And yet our governments have destroyed hundreds of millions of people's lives in response.

Should our governments have done something in response to the Chinese coronovirus? Probably. Should they have necessarily done what they've done? Probably not. Like I said from the beginning, it's not the virus that's out of control, it's our governments.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Mountain Man"...free until COVID-19 is under control"

Let's be honest, it's not the virus that's out of control, it's our governments.

Yeah, why not making fun of 1.5 million dead people?

I wasn't making fun of anything, just pointing out that the damage being done to us is not because of some virus that's out of control but because of how our governments' have responded. The fact is, someone in the world dies from something every single second of every single day, and government totalitarianism can't stop that.

Actually, I think there's quite a lot of evidence that it can. Not that government regulation can make people immortal, but it can sure as hell make them die somewhat later on average, whether it's seatbelts, or not allowing poison in our food or water or air, or safety standards at workplaces, or insisting that people stop at the nice red light.

The government might be able to reduce certain types of injuries and deaths through regulation, but overall human death rates do not rise or fall based on government mandates. And in the case of the Chinese cornoavirus, the "cure" -- reducing human socialization through fear; destroying economies; forcing people to stifle themselves with face coverings that have their own associated health risks quite apart from any influenza and don't actually prevent the transmission of illness -- may, in fact, be worse than the disease when all is said and done.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Those who would give up essential liberties for a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Mountain Man"...free until COVID-19 is under control"

Let's be honest, it's not the virus that's out of control, it's our governments.

Yeah, why not making fun of 1.5 million dead people?

I wasn't making fun of anything, just pointing out that the damage being done to us is not because of some virus that's out of control but because of how our governments' have responded. The fact is, someone in the world dies from something every single second of every single day, and government totalitarianism can't stop that.

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"...free until COVID-19 is under control"

Let's be honest, it's not the virus that's out of control, it's our governments.

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