I installed Arch for the very first time this past weekend. I am a software engineer with almost 30 years experience and some time less with Linux. I did my research beforehand: I watched a manual installation on YouTube and I went over the wiki.

And the manual installation was hard. I would not recommend it to a beginner.

he is still completely new to this so I want things to work out perfectly for his first experience.

This isn’t Arch, sorry. My own Arch didn’t boot the first time (but yes I was able to fix it quickly).

Debian.

I don’t think the private portions of passkeys are stored on servers

I certainly care about it

Android–Linux user here. I’ve always been a big fan of GNOME; I’m amazed at how polished it is. I got the sense it approached macOS levels (I’m not a macOS user). This is the first time I’ve seen an actual user say this.

Mine doesn’t. I reboot when I get a new kernel.

I suggest having your students install IntelliJ IDEA and using Java. A full blown IDE might be much but I can’t think of an easier way to install a JDK and an editor suited for it.

I’ve been pretty happy with SoFi. I like that they support multi factor authentication with TOTPs. I haven’t had to deal with their customer service yet.

Their Android app is god awful though if that matters to you. Also they send me a ton of spam but Gmail takes care of it so for me that’s a minor issue.

I use YNAB

I would call Visual Studio Code a success story for them

I dropped that one and never picked it up again

It’s a ton of fun with people you’re familiar with over Discord or whatever. I miss those days.

My brother tried so hard to get me into it. I was all, “Where are the dungeons?”

HOLY CRAP

Let’s say I run a command that spews output. Are you saying that with Zsh I can use only the keyboard to navigate the spew, copy a bit of it, and paste it in a new command?

If so I should try it out!

Oh man

I’m pretty sure I’m sticking with it for the foreseeable future. But it was touch and go for a minute. I knew Debian, it was comfortable, and I had to fight the urge to run screaming back.

There are a lot of moving parts and I wish they were less abstract. Going in I had no idea I had to learn a foreign programming language. The other day I was surprised to realize that the bash NixOS module is different than the Home Manager one. In my inexperienced opinion I feel they should be one and the same. Some important packages are behind Debian. Debian. I’m on the unstable NixOS channel.

It’s not all doom and gloom. I feel I’m learning a lot more about the bits that comprise a Linux distro. It feels a lot more mine. I can keep the config in my head. I’m a software engineer so the build error messages don’t scare me. I’m on the latest kernel. I wrote a package for a little software tool that I wrote and I like how it fits right into NixOS. If I change the code one command will build it, run tests, and install it in my system. That’s rad.

Yeah, in retrospect it was unwise to try to figure out both NixOS and Home Manager at the same time. Oh well.

Edit: I love how easy it is to jump straight to the actual source from NixOS search. And I appreciate that the infrastructure is modern. Debian’s is absolutely ancient in comparison.

Thank you. What did you dislike in Cinnamon what you felt GNOME was doing way better?

The polish thing again. This was years ago when GNOME 3 was a thing. I adapted fine to it. Cinnamon was mandated as an attempt to continue with the traditional GNOME 2 paradigms. I tried and I was immediately repelled by the lack of polish. I’ve been doing UIs for ages by that point and I had gotten pretty sensitive to UI issues. I immediately put GNOME back even though I had to support it myself. I was happy to and it was easy.

The cohesiveness and polish of it (I’m a UI engineer). I understand some lament the lack of options and the heavy handedness of the GNOME folks but those issues don’t bother me personally.

Granted I don’t have much experience with KDE. I have used Cinnamon enough to make me go out of my way to get back to GNOME.

I don’t have the desire to explore because I’m pretty happy with GNOME

I think GNOME as a whole is ridiculously awesome. I can’t believe I get it for free.

I switched a couple of weeks ago (from Debian unstable)!

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