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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • My first Linux install was Slackware sometime in the late 90’s. I didn’t really use it though, as I never managed to get it working with my dial-up Internet.

    The first distribution I actually used was Mandrake. Others I’ve used since then include Suse, Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Manjaro, and EndeavourOS. I’ve landed on using Manjaro on both my main desktop and laptop, though I have secondary machines running Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and EndeavourOS.





  • I use BiglyBt on Debian. I use BiglyBt because I previously used Vuze, and I used Vuze because I previously used Azureus. I don’t really remember why I went with Azureus originally, but it may have just been because it was popular at that time.

    I get the impression most people use other bittorrent clients nowadays, but BiglyBt does what I need it to do. I never really used any of the “advanced” features of Vuze myself, pretty much only using it for torrents.


  • The sad thing is back in the Windows XP days Microsoft had the focus stealing thing pretty much solved. Well okay - I remember you had to install some of the PowerToys or make some registry edits to get at some of the settings. But once setup pretty much nothing could steal focus away from the current window, which was a welcome change from where we had been. That started to break again in Windows 7, and has gotten worse with every release since then.

    Admittedly XFCE isn’t perfect either, but it’s much better behaved than modern Windows.



  • I see enough weird behavior out of the Dells at work and their USB-C docks so I can believe it. Not detecting the dock, not charging from the dock, ports not working on the dock, randomly insisting the dock isn’t compatible. Even the machines that end up as folding desktops that never get disconnected from their dock end up doing this stuff. I really had no use for a laptop anyway so I finally convinced them to give me a desktop.



  • Well, it definitely looks to have backfired on US government. The politicians figured that they could force Bytedance to divest TikTok using a ban in the US as a threat, assuming that TikTok wouldn’t want to lose access to the US market and the 180 million or so (!) users. Instead of complying, ByteDance did nothing and the politicians and the US government were put into a position of actually enforcing a very unpopular ban.

    The timing of course is interesting. This comes right at the end of Biden’s administration, allowing for Trump to swoop in and lift the ban and take all the credit for that. Of course ignoring that is was Trump who originally kicked this whole thing into motion back in 2020 with his executive order to ban TikTok.



  • I’m expecting pretty decent software support for Windows 10 for another three years or so. Sure, there will be things here and there that won’t work, but most things will continue to work and many people who are on Windows 10 can just keep on using it for the next few years should they chose to do that. That’ll more or less match what happened with Windows 7, where it wasn’t until 2023 that I started to see support start to massively drop off. With that said, if Microsoft actually breaks Office on Windows 10 that’ll really change things.

    Also, I’d offer up 2001-2014 as a period of time where it was entirely possible to stick with one OS (Windows XP) the entire time.






  • The fun one that is at least a bit forgivable is “I found the solution! I just followed <long dead link to some other site>”. It’s especially fun when you keep finding multiple postings that look hopeful at first but then end up just linking back to the same dead link.

    The lesson here is that it can be helpful to future internet searchers (or even your future self) to copy the relevant information or briefly summarize it instead of just dropping a URL. Especially when linking to something like an company’s official support forum or posting as many companies will pull that stuff down eventually.


  • Internet Explorer was originally based upon the Mosaic browser. Like a lot of Microsoft’s tech, it’s something they acquired.

    Up to IE4, it was a standalone browser. It’s IE4 where Microsoft integrated it into the OS and made do double duty as Windows Explorer, which is what you’re thinking of.