I’m not the biggest distrohopper but I have tried a few, both on my laptop and desktop. I still keep windows around on a dual-boot but I’m basically only using it for the odd game or two and also onenote (obsidian + excalidraw comes close but nothing really has a seamless transition between pen and typing text like OneNote)

Early 2018 and before:

Windows only

2018-19:

• Ubuntu 18.04 (desktop),
• Ubuntu 18.04/18.10/19.04 (laptop)

2019-2022:

• Manjaro w/ KDE (desktop),
• Arch Linux w/ GNOME (laptop)

2022-2023:

• NixOS (laptop, for literally a day because it didn’t have a package I needed to make my laptop work correctly)
• EndeavourOS (kde on laptop, qtile on desktop)

2024:

• No changes to the desktop setup,
• NixOS w/ KDE and also a half-functioning hyprland setup on the laptop now that the package got added.

Future?

Maybe if I can get my NixOS config to a point where I’m happy with it I’ll switch my desktop setup to that as well, in theory it should be pretty painless since i’m already using a flake setup split across multiple modules. I do really like that I can experiment with my setup without the risk of actually breaking anything since NixOS is semi-immutable.

If I don’t stick with NixOS I’ve also been thinking about trying fedora, opensuse, or an immutable distro, or otherwise just moving my laptop back to either Arch or EndeavourOS since that’s what I’m familiar with.

If you’re worried about using the terminal you could always install one of the frontends for pacman like the one Manjaro uses. Manjaro might be a pain if you’re using AUR packages (really depends on what packages you use, some niche ones like specific game modloaders or the professional JetBrains IDEs are only on the AUR) because Manjaro’s repos are delayed by around 2 weeks, but the AUR isn’t delayed at all. Depending on the packages you’re using that could break updates sometimes.

Depending on how familiar with programming you are you could also try NixOS which has an absurd number of packages in their official repo but NixOS’s config files can be kind of a pain sometimes.

Edit:

It’s also worth noting that you could start off with Manjaro and then jump over to something like EndeavourOS/Arch once you get more familiarized with using the terminal down the line. That way you wouldn’t have to relearn commands/setups when you switch, since they’re ultimately all arch-based and have the same underlying structure.

Another big thing that doesn’t get covered by big O analysis is the potential for parallelization and multi threading, because the difference created by multi threading only amounts to one of those dropped coefficients.

And yet, especially for the workloads being run on a server with 32-128 cores, being able to run algorithms in parallel will make a huge difference to performance.

A lot of android apps are built using Java/Kotlin, so you don’t actually need to care about architecture since the JVM supports both x86_64 and arm64.

There are exceptions to this though, since some apps need to run native code. Those apps would need some sort of emulation/translation layer for the arm instructions.

If anything to me gnome always seemed like some weird mix between macos, android, and chrome OS. That might be the material style theming though.

Not really sure how archinstall factors in since it wasn’t around yet when I first installed, but I love EndeavourOS. I’ve installed arch before, but I really can’t be bothered if I’m just going to end up installing all of the same packages the GUI could give me in less time anyway. Yeah, EndeavourOS is just arch with some small extra packages and a GUI installer, but that’s exactly why I like it.

Me during my exams this week

It may not have been dark out but it was still pretty cool seeing shadows get messed up and seeing the sun get covered through eclipse glasses.

Definitely hoping to travel to one of the total eclipses in the later 20s/30s tho

I don’t actually think eclipse is completely terrible (just saw the opportunity for a meme). My main problem with it is that unlike intelliJ, the UI buttons don’t scale with the font size, making it pretty unusable on my HiDPI laptop.

For now I’ll just stick with IntelliJ/idea IDEs (I have access to an education license for ultimate) and then if/when Idea ruins it I’ll probably just try to integrate my Java workflow into either VS Code or an nvim setup

You’ve fallen into my trap card, I really just wanted everyone else’s eclipse photos here

For anyone else confused: in this case NLP stands for “Network location provider,” not “natural language processing”

Java is reasonably fast though, as the JRE is pretty well optimized at this point. Languages closer to being fully interpreted like JS and Python (technically both python and JS still get compiled to a lower target and then interpreted) are still noticeably slower.

Edit: there’s also the fact that JS/TS runs on a single thread, so it’s inherently limited for applications intended to be scaled up.

As a dev who works on both Java and C# code, modern Java (17+) and C# feel almost exactly the same (not sure if Java has extension methods though).

Bonus points for using Kotlin instead tho. I dislike both Java and C# just because they both allow any object to be null and that’s usually a headache whenever a null exception shows up.

The only thing I like better about C# is the Fixture library for testing. I haven’t found any mature libraries like it for Java yet.

True, I’m more worried about Citra since interest has kind of died down for that project. I’m kind of hoping some forks show up soon that get popular enough to be put onto a package manager since there aren’t many alternatives with the same compatibility/performance (from what I can tell Panda3ds isn’t very stable yet)

Obviously every generation has its struggles, but I was never disagreeing with that. If you treat this as “just another generational problem,” you are fundamentally missing the point. It’s as you say, a whole different set of problems.

Micro targeted ads are hard to ignore because most of the time they’re influencing our subconscious state. This isn’t just another generational issue we’re facing, it’s fundamentally shaping the way people look at the world without them even being aware of it. It’s not limited to just the current generation, because everyone interacts with technology. However, targeting inner psychology will obviously impact people with less developed brains more than it will impact adults, and we’re beginning to see the effects of that already with Gen Z.

This uhhh… Didn’t age well :(

I agree with your point but imo the drama doesn’t even just come from high school kids. I’m a year away from graduating undergrad and still wondering when (or if) people are going to grow up about it. Even then, full grown adults do it about as often as people my age in my experience. Honestly some of the worst offenders when it comes to green bubble shaming have been my family members on the older side who think everyone should just get an iPhone and refuse to use anything other than iMessage.

No, you didn’t, or at least not at this level.

Sure, TV ads and even some old games had ads which were targeted to specific demographics (their audience), but modern digital ads are targeted to vulnerabilities of specific individuals (using location, search, purchase history, etc.). They’re also shown much more often and baked into products which are specifically designed to target your subconscious psychology (using nudging, gamification, etc.) so you use them more.

The kind of data required for the level of ad targeting done now did not exist more than maybe 15-20 years ago.

Which costs an additional $100/yr for something that’s free on any other platform.

Their 7 (?) years of software support is kind of misleading to me because they stop getting chip-level security updates after something like 3-4 years due to the specific Qualcomm chip they use. Not to mention the chip is on the slower side of today’s phones, let alone phones 7 years from now.

I can see how others might be fine with that though, just my 2 cents.