One of my best friends in elementary school was a son of Turkish immigrants.
His parents didn’t speak any German, so naturally he had serious issues with the language, too.
This held him back in school, which lead to him getting sent to the lowest tier of secondary school.
(We have 3 tiers in Germany. The highest one (Gymnasium) qualifies you for university, the middle one (Realschule) used to qualify you for highly-skilled work that doesn’t require university, and the lowest one (Hauptschule) for the trades. Nowadays, even trades jobs scoff at the middle tier, and the lowest tier is basically a direct route to a life of shit jobs or unemployment.)
But just by hanging out with him as a friend, I taught him German, how to use and fix computers, showed him the world of books, and connected him to German society better. I’m not trying to brag, he was a very bright kid and it wasn’t like I was doing this as welfare, he was just a good friend and we shared what we liked with each other.

25 years later we met again by accident. He actually recognized me when he saw me on the street in a different city.
By then he had switched from Hauptschule to Realschule, went on to get his qualification for university, studied economics, created his own company in the IT sector, and had 6 employees. And he told me that my friendship was what kept him out of the wrong circles. On the old computer I had given him (which my parents had replaced) he had taught himself how to use office programs, so he was the only one in the family who could do the taxes, which taught him about finances.
At the time I met him again I was actually unemployed and working odd manual labor jobs under the table, after failing my university education twice due to depression.
He connected me to some contacts he had, which landed me an IT support job, and now I have a pretty good career as a sysadmin.

Some of the people I communicated with were Majors.

German take: Parking on the side of the road and on sidewalks should just be banned.
Its legality is based on a single court case from the 1950’s where a judge decided that it should be a legal use of public space, because it’s necessary and useful for motorizing the country. The justfication is obsolete. It’s not enshrined in any laws. The traffic law specifically forbids it, with exceptions.
Yet it’s practiced everywhere and even where parked cars block sidewalks, police simply don’t enforce the law.

“But where should I park?”
You should have thought of that before buying a car.

“But what about rural areas where you need a car to live?”
No problem here, just park it on your turnip field.

There isn’t an ISO for Linux Mint with Xfce.
What I would try:

• Boot the normal ISO
• open a terminal instead of starting the installation
• enter sudo live-installer-expert-mode

It should boot the Debian expert installer, which lets you choose what DE you want to install. I haven’t tested this on LMDE, though.

Otherwise, install LMDE normally. Then do sudo apt install xfce4 and sudo apt purge cinnamon* muffin* nemo*.

Don’t use FreeBSD on a notebook.
Unless you can live without energy management, suspend, bluetooth, function keys and usable wifi speeds out of the box.

Is there any reason not to use Debian when you’re already happy with it on your main rig?

the version change is right there in the screenshot.

I actually do. I participated in a 1-day 250km group ride in the Netherlands recently. But I did it on easy mode with a road bike, there were people riding a traditional baker’s bike (including the box) while wearing wooden clogs.

Mann und Frau sind vor dem Gesetz nicht gleich. Das betrifft auch den Mutterschutz, und die Regelungen zur Anerkennung der Elternschaft. Kurz: die Bereiche in denen die biologischen Unterschiede der Geschlechter rechtlich relevant sind.

Ich hab Plattfüße, eine Beinfehlstellung und mein Ellbogen macht bei Liegestützen und Klimmzügen ein Geräusch wie wenn man in trockene Cornflakes beißt.
Trotzdem T2 (für T1 war ich einfach nur zu klein)

Yes but only from Gnome directly with an app called extensions manager. You can’t install them from the Fedora repo.

I can basically ride a bicycle forever as long as I eat and drink enough, until the lack of sleep overwhelmes me.

People keep commenting on how extremely fit I must be.
But honestly, if you find the right pace it’s like a brisk walk, and if your bike and your clothes fit, it’s more comfortable than that.

In easy terms, it’s a bit like running a phone OS. The further you deviate from the default, the more issues you’ll have.
It’s the opposite end of the spectrum to Arch.

Great insight, thanks!

I feel like even that would have only like a 60% achievement rate.

or your next ticket is gonna be low priority no matter what.

That’s childish and won’t ever cause a change in their behavior.
Bonus points if they show management the ticket that’s stalling a project from progressing and has been sitting on your desk for 2 weeks.

I work in tech support. An error I haven’t seen doesn’t exist. So yes, I’m going to re-trace the trouble-shooting steps with you.
90% of the people who call in haven’t done it, but claim they did. Because they think I have a magic tech wand that can find and fix all problems, and that I just make them go through the motions because I’m lazy.

In the age of computer-controlled ABS and brake assistance systems, that just sounds like poor programming.
There’s no reason why the computer shouldn’t be able to take current weight into account and deliver more braking power to the tractor when the trailer is empty.

Cybersecurity

If you have anything worthwhile on your PC, you should really buy your own router instead of using the one provided by your ISP.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

I’m a huge Tarantino fan and enjoyed every single one of his movies, except that one.
Maybe you had to have been in the Hollywood scene at the time to understand the humor, but I was bored out of my mind the whole time and wondered whether he’s making fun of the audience and seeing if he can get away with a movie without a real storyline if he just includes his signature foot shots, long conversations about nothing and a massacre at the end.