And nothing of value will be lost.

Yup, Konsole is good enough.

KDE Plasma. It makes sense to me and everything functions more or less how I prefer it to. If I need something, it’s usually easy enough to find. Plasma being flexible is a plus, but I rarely need to do any modifications.

I loathe GNOME. Any time I use it it’s like pulling teeth. On a touch surface I can maybe get it, but on desktop I honestly think it has some serious usability problems cooked in. And since GNOME extensions can break at any time, trying to “fix” GNOME is a losing battle. If I had to use GNOME, I’d install GNOME Classic which is ok. Or better yet, use XFCE or MATE. GNOME is highly opinionated and that’s fair enough, they can do their thing and people seem to like what they offer, but boy is it not for me.

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes

Edsger W. Dijkstra

I think he already sent a letter.

After quite a bit of agonizing, I eventually landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I chose a rolling release distro because on my desktop I want to be up-to-date. Having used Gentoo a long time ago, I didn’t want a distro that takes effort to install and set up. openSUSE is somewhat popular with an active community and decent documentation in case I run in to issues. I also considered the fact it’s based in Germany, because EU has at least some decent privacy laws. I was put off by the fact its backed by SUSE, but that’s a two-edged sword.

Right now I’m content with Tumbleweed, but I’m keeping an eye on OpenMandriva Lx if I feel like switching.

openSUSE Tumbleweed has served me well for some time now. Maybe give it a look-see?

Is there anything this wunderkind can’t invent‽

He didn’t leave, he just went on to invent metal.

Mandriva was a Linux distribution that went out of business years ago. OpenMandriva is one of the projects that rose from its ashes with some of the same personnel and code base. It is an independent (not a fork) and community run distribution that, I think, does quite a lot with very limited resources.

My immediate first thought also. And my favorite character in the game.

If you want Debian with more frequent updates, consider going Debian sid. Base Debian is also fine, maybe with Flatpaks for more up-to-date applications where needed.

Yes, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood!

Oh man. I’m so sorry for your loss. May your system break at some vague point in the future in a way that is nigh impossible to diagnose and that no one else seems to have experienced. Godspeed, you unwillingly content penguin!

Just go with Debian.

You can install it on any machine. It’s just a terminal IRC client. I run it on a small home server with screen so that it’s always on.

I run irssi on a Raspberry Pi. It has everything I need.

Huh. David Icke was right all along. Who knew?

Well yeah, the recent xz vulnerability was not present in the source code at all. Any amount of code reading would not have caught that one.

Always check the package list when updating. Tumbleweed for some reason occasionally wants to install Patterns even if they were not included to begin with. I’ve taken to updating with the command:

sudo zypper dup --no-recommends

to avoid installing packages/patterns I’m trying to avoid. You could probably also mask some packages so they are never installed, but I haven’t looked in to that.

Hope that helps.