Oh, and on the “fail often” thing…
Get a basic/old/free pc/laptop and install Proxmox on it.
Loads of tutorials out there, but the basic installer will get you to a “I’m learning” stage.

Create a VM, install Debian, play around.
Then: create a new VM, install Debian, create a snapshot, play around until it does what you want, restore the snapshot, do the steps that got you from vanilla to what you want. Create snapshots along the way as checkpoints. Snapshot, tinker, restore snapshot, advance.

Proxmox is amazing for learning VMs and server things

Raspberry pis are an easy intro to actually using computers (instead of using something like windows).
Raspbian is great (based on Debian) and there is a HUGE community for it.

So yeh, it’s a great started for $25, as long as you have a PSU and SD Card. And an hdmi cable + monitor + keyboard at your disposal (and a mouse if you are installing a desktop environment (IE something like windows, whereas headless is a full screen CLI).
And don’t get your hopes up for a windows replacement.

But… Why not run a Virtual Machine? If you have a windows machine, run VirtualBox, create a VM and install Debian on it?
That’s free. You can tinker and play.
And the only thing you are missing from an actual raspberry pi is that it isn’t a standalone device (IE your desktop has to be on for it to be running), and it doesn’t have GPIO (ie hardware pins. And if this is your goal, there are other ways).

If you really really want a computer that is on all the time running Linux (Debian, a derivative (like raspbian) or some other distro) - aka a server - then there are plenty of other options where the only drawback is lack of GPIO (which, in my experience, is rarely a drawback).
And that is literally any computer you can get your hands on. Because the raspberry pi trades A LOT for its form factor, the ethernet speed is limited, the bus speed is limited (impacting USB and ethernet (and ram?)), the SD card is slower and will fail faster than any HDD/SSD. The benefit is the GPIO, the very low power draw, and the form factor - rarely actually a benefit.

I’d say, play around with some virtual box VMs. See what you want, other than Fear Of Missing Out (things like PiHole? They run on Debian, or even in a docker container). Then see if you actually want a home server, and what you want to run on it.
It’s likely you won’t want a raspberry pi, but a $150 mini pc that can actually do what you want.

I’ve had “cmd” default to “CmDust.exe” which is a program installed by Codemeter (a hardware dongle licence thing).
Considering I used to type “cmd” and get CmDust.exe, I was happy when Terminal became easier to launch. And Terminal is great to use, imo

Yeh, it’s come as standard on windows for a few years now, right?
I don’t ever remember installing it on any windows computers I’ve used and it’s always been there

I’ve always opened it with “terminal”.
Terminal is a program, and it can do WSL, powershell and batch. It has tabs and other modern features.

Pretty sure CMD only does batch

The majority of Europe survives.
Although their sockets are recessed.

I doubt it.
Tripping over a cable is as likely to damage the socket as it is to rip the cable out of the plug.
Any appliance that increases risk by being unplugged should probably not be using a consumer connection…

I think the 3 pin layout caused a lot of headaches, and the integrated fuse required a user-servicable plug.
So it would have to be a split-shell design of some type, where the appliance cable would have to be cable-gripped to the same part as the plug/socket pins.
Thus, a bottom-entry (heh) cable grip and a removable back plate that can only be unscrewed when it’s unplugged.
This was all in a time of bakelite. Plastic wasn’t flexible.

But no, I think tripping over an early bakelite g-type (I think it’s officially a g-type) plug cable would likely shatter the plug and pull the pins out of the socket… If it didn’t also damage the socket.

No, the cable comes out perpendicular to the pins (ie parallel to the wall).
Which pretty much guarantees foot-pain orientation

Ah, I missed that part of the conversation

You sure it’s not WhatsApp that’s link-shortening?

How much innovation has there been in the ballpoint pen in the last decade?

I was gonna say “salt bae some any wherever there are squiggles”.
Your way seems more… Methodical

Ailerons are for imparting roll.
Flaps and slats are not for steering

Conjugate the verb ‘to go’…

That’s true.
But the idea is that there are no precompiled binaries that are implicitly trusted.
So you CAN vet all of the code and artefacts, and if something doesn’t seem right you can trace it back to the code and understand exactly why, instead of seeing a black-box binary and coming to the conclusion “it’s doing something it shouldn’t, but I don’t know what or why”.
The idea is that you are in control of the entire build process.

But yes, it would be extremely time consuming to vet GCC, build it from source and (I guess) compare checksum/hashes against published binaries. Then vet all of the source code of everything you need to compile for Gentoo, then compile that and compare checksum/hashes etc.
Which is why it’s in a 4chan meme.

But I imagine governments agency will have some deblobbed Linux installs with the technical capacity to vet all the code and artefacts

It’s referring to binary blobs. A windows exe might be a binary blob.
These are distributed compiled. Even if the project is open sources, the binary blob might have been generated by a compromised compiler.

This is one of the reasons the XZ Utils compromisation went unnoticed for so long. One of the compressed files used for testing contained malicious code that would be included in the build artefacts (IE, the final compiled binary) under very narrow and specific circumstances.

So “deblobbed” means absolutely everything in the OS was built & compiled on their computer from original source code

The planned obsolescence is most likely a deliberate trade off rather than actual planned obsolescence.

If fast charging did do significant damage to battery life and this was known at the time of implementation, the decision would have been “users want fast charging phones” Vs “users want devices that last a long time”.
In this instance, the convenience of fast charging absolutely would have won.

“Users want a clear and easy to use device” Vs “users want a robust device”. Which is why we all have glass screens, and the glass technology had to catch up to further expectations.

“Users want easy wireless connectivity” Vs “users want fast and reliable network speeds”. WiFi wins, and has to catch up to further expectations.

Skyrim?

Or “you went to college? You’re overqualified for flipping burgers”

And you finally get to jump