 AskTLC is a series of videos that I've been doing for a while now, basically where I ask you guys for questions, and then I answer those questions. It's a really easy concept to understand, and it's a totally original idea, no one has ever done it before, I'm 100% sure that that is true. But anyways, let's go ahead and jump right into the first question. The first question is, hey TLC, how do you emotionally deal with the haters and the trolls? I'm asking for a friend. The true answer is that I just ignore them as much as possible. That's really all you can do. If you respond to these people, you just give them ammunition and make them feel like they're important. So the best thing to do is just to ignore them as much as possible, because you don't want to feed the trolls, and because if you do, they just keep coming back. A lot of times if you just ignore them, they scamper off and bother somebody else. But anyways, that's my answer, just ignore them as much as possible, that's what I do. It's not always easy because sometimes people say something either that's so hurtful or so stupid that you just really want to respond back. And I have made that mistake before, but it's just so much better just to ignore them as much as possible. And if it's a really bad comment, boot them from the channel so they can never comment again without making a new account. So that is the first question. Moving on to the next one, pick your top five favorite distros and explain their biggest shortcomings that you would like to see addressed. I'm not going to choose five, I will just choose one. I'm going to choose Arco in this case, because that's my daily driver. The thing that I would improve about Arco is the website. I would eliminate the vast majority of their ISOs, just make it so that their main two or three ISOs lets you choose between like a minimal install and then have all the options that they have available to you in the installer, and that's really all they need. They don't need the separate ISOs. And then I would make their website easier to understand because while I understand the whole Arco university thing, it's just not the most user friendly, easy to comprehend thing. I would just make it easier to understand. Because frankly, when you look at other arch based distributions, their websites and their ISO situations are way easier to understand and get your head around. And you don't have this convoluted path that you're trying to walk in order to get to Arch Linux. Like I said, I understand why they do that, but it's just it's too convoluted for most people. And that's the reason why almost always I just use the bog standard Arco Linux XL or whatever it is, ISO and just build it from there. So that is the second question. Moving on to number three, what is your opinion on snaps and flat packs and do you think they should be used or be installed by default on distros? This is a question that I've answered a few times and I've talked about snaps and flat packs quite a few times. But the answer where I'm at right now in my life is that flat pack is way better. And it's not even a close competition like snaps are not good. They're slow and they're somewhat proprietary. So I don't really like snaps all that much. Now flat packs have their own flaws, but I prefer flat packs at the moment. And I think that most people do as well. So I do think that flat packs should be the default. But I still like the idea that people should get to choose. So maybe in like the installer or whatever, you could have like a choice between snaps and flat packs. I don't know if that over complicates the installation process, but it'd be kind of cool. Anyways, moving on to number four, did you get anything from e-max trial that you missed now? Do you agree that snaps should, that's way more questions than one or a boom two guy? I'm going to choose one. I'm going to choose the e-max one because that's probably the one that you really want an answer to. And the answer to your question, did I get anything from e-max that I missed now? The answer to that is no, I didn't really. The only thing that I missed from my time with e-max is the ability to do a bigger text in the markdown files. And honestly, like I said in my recap video, I don't think that that was as big of a game changer for me as I thought it was going to be. So I haven't missed it that much. I will say that I missed the exploration part of it. Like I know them very well. So there's nothing new there for me when I was using e-max. I was discovering something new every single day and that was kind of fun. But that's not really what I need to do when I get in there to try to write something. I don't want to have to always discover something new. I just want to do my work and go away as fast as possible. That's what them allows me to do just because I know it better. Moving on to number five, what do you think the Linux content creators can do to draw attention of general content creators to the benefits of Linux open source? Spotlighting people who create content on Linux that isn't about Linux, maybe. Here's Anthony and David Revoid come to mind. Who else? I'm not sure actually who any of those people are. But I think that Linux content creators can just try to keep doing what they're doing. Because honestly, if a big time tech YouTuber ever picks up Linux and makes it their thing, it's going to happen because of some reason outside of our control. We're not going to be the influencers of that at all. The only thing we can do as Linux content creators is just keep doing what we're doing. Create Linux content, try to pull as many people in as possible because we're passionate about Linux and then just move on to the next day of trying to do that over and over again. We're never going to make a huge difference by trying to reach for the stars and get as many big time YouTubers as possible to cover Linux. It's just never going to happen. They're too entrenched in their making money deals in order to mess around with Linux full time. If they ever make that transition to Linux, it's going to be because of outside influences that have nothing to do with the Linux community. At least that's the way I feel. Things like the Steam Deck probably. Things, if more corporations make things that run Linux, those big tech YouTubers will cover things that run Linux. It's going to have very little to do with Linux content creators at all. Moving on to the next one, here's one I've never heard covered for noobs. Best practices on how to distro hop to find what works for them. How do you, how to do it, what not to do and how to get set up to hop to something different forever. And it does sound more like a tutorial video. But just briefly, if you're going to hop, always make sure you're backed up. All your files need to be backed up somewhere that's not the drive you're going to install Linux on. That's the number one, really the most important thing. That way, all your data is safe. You don't have to worry about, you know, dealing with separate home partitions that might or might not get overwritten if you do something wrong. Just back up your stuff. You'll be happier if you did. As for finding a distro, the best thing you can do is just stick with the main ones to begin with, you know, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Menjaro, Arco, Geruda, Fedora, things like that. And if none of those happen, then you can start filter down into the derivatives that are based on those things. That's really the derivatives that are going to offer some unique things. But for the most part, they're just going to have to deal with protest style changes, things like not using system D or not using snaps or whatever it happens to be. Those those derivatives usually deal with those kind of things. So I'll start with the main ones, then filter down to the derivatives. Moving on to the next one, advice for trying Linux or dual booting. Is dual booting something that you recommend? Okay. So the answer to this question is, is a hard one. Now I've answered this in a question in a video before. But I think for the most part, dual booting is going to be very much a personal choice. If there is something that you absolutely can't do on Linux that you need Windows for, then you should dual boot. If you aren't in that situation, you should just try Linux. My best advice for everyone really is to just try Linux because you're not going to know that there's not something you can do on it. You're not going to know if you can't do something on Linux without trying to do it on Linux, if that makes sense. If you try to dual boot right from the start, you're going to use Windows as a crutch. Like every time you come up to a small wall on Linux where you can't do something, you're going to run back to Windows immediately. And the more you do that, the more you're just going to say, well, I just keep coming back to Windows. I might just will stay in Windows. So the best thing I can say is at least at first, go to Linux full time, use it as much as possible, try to do your research on how to do the things you need to do. And if you've come up to a point where you absolutely can't use Linux to do something, then you could dual boot or run Windows in a VM, whatever you need to do. But I think that everyone should start off if they're going to switch to Linux or they want to switch to Linux, just switch to Linux. And then if you have to later on dual boot, instead of using Windows as a crutch. Okay, moving on to number eight, I don't know if you've answered this already, but how did you become a false advocate? Okay, so the answer to this question is that I wanted to create a Linux podcast in 2017. So I got on the emails with my friend Ricky and I said, Hey, do you want to do a Linux podcast? And he said, Hey, yeah, let's do that. So we started the Linux cast as a podcast. And I said, Well, you know, if I'm going to do a Linux podcast, I should switch to Linux. So I did. And that's how I became a Linux content creator slash false advocate. And I think that after that point, I became more and more interested in false. I didn't really start off as a false advocate. I just wanted to be a nerd and use Linux. And then I became more interested in, you know, wanting people to use open source and trying to propagate false software and all that stuff. So that's the short story on that moving on to the next one. What is your go to partition gigabyte allocation size for swap route home for permanent install long term district use. So this one's harder because everyone has a different size hard drive. But for the most part for swap, they recommend you to have a certain size of your memory or something like that. I usually just stick with 10 gigabytes. It's enough. The only way you'll ever need more than that is if you only have like four gigabytes of RAM, then you'll need more swap. The more RAM you have, the smaller your your swap can actually be, at least in my experience. For route. That's where all your programs are going to be installed. But the thing about programs is that they're not actually usually that all that big. So 100 gigabytes for me is usually enough home gets everything else because that's where most programs store their stuff. That's where my music is where my games are. So homes home has to be the biggest. So route about 100 gigabytes home for the rest. Moving on to number 10, would you be down to create a gaming channel? So did you know that I actually have a gaming channel? It's called super new and I don't use it. I want to use it, but I just never have time to game as much as I want to. And when I do game, I don't feel like recording. So I, you know, just I have it. And maybe someday I'll start putting stuff on there. Right now there's some city skyline stuff on there from like three years ago maybe two years ago. And that's pretty much it. I do think that there's a random like them tutor video on there. And I think that's probably the first video I ever created. So if you want to go see something really weird, I put, I'll try to remember to put the link for that in the video description is called super new. I should probably do something with that channel because it's a cool name. But anyways, moving on to number 11. Do you think it would be logistically possible to create tools to install some derived distros from the ISO of their base distros? Like installing Arch Linux or Endeavor OS from Arch and Arch ISO, excuse me. It would probably be possible, but I don't see why Arch would ever do it. You know what I mean? I don't think that like maybe somebody else would create that. Like somebody would say maybe you could create like an ISO that has like at the beginning like say, hey, you want to, you can choose from these different distros. And you select the one and then installs that thing. That'd be kind of cool. But that would require some third party to create that. I don't think that the Arch distro maintainer or Ubuntu or whatever would ever do that themselves. Number 12, why do some users criticize applications written in certain programming language even though they don't know said programming language? So the biggest one that people criticize is Python because it's slow. And the thing is, is that for, I think that a lot of people have heard programmers say Python is slow because if you use a Python application, you probably don't realize that it's slow. When they talk about Python being slow, they're talking about the compile time, at least from my understanding of it. So Python itself, like a Python program usually isn't slow. I've in my experience like Qtile, Qtile is not slow and it's written in Python. I3 is written in Python. It's not slow. So I don't think that at least I think I3 is written in Python. I actually don't know what I3 is written in, to be honest. It's either Python or C. It doesn't matter. The point is that to the end user, the critiques of most of these programming languages are just kind of filtered from developers themselves. So that we hear as normies that Python is slow, therefore we say Python is slow. And it's kind of become this stereotype of Python being slow, Electron being bad, you know, so on and so forth. And it's just kind of like a stereotype that everybody just kind of keeps repeating. And I don't think that there's anything that's ever going to be done about that. There's certain programings just kind of have a reputation for being not great in certain situations, and that kind of filters through the entire community. Moving on to 13, what should Budgie desktop environment focus? And I'm assuming you mean what should they base on? I think they're moving to the Enlightenment libraries. I think that that's what they're going to do. I think that they should pick one and stay there. That's my recommendation for Budgie. They keep at one point they were going to go to Qt, and then they decide they're going to stay on GTK4. And now they're moving to the Enlightenment libraries. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up moving back to GTK someday because they found out that the Enlightenment libraries are like really freaking old. You know, they need to shit or get off the pot is what I'm talking about. They just need to choose one and stay there. Stop changing every three or four years. It's really dumb. And it's going to kill their desktop environment eventually because eventually the developers are just going to... Like you've already seen some turmoil within the development community of Budgie because of these changes and they just need to choose one. Moving on to the next one. Can you make a rat poison window manager review and configuration video? I could, but I don't know anything about rat poison. I've heard about it. I've watched Jake at Linux's videos about rat poison. It doesn't really interest me, but maybe someday. Of DNF, apt get and de-package zipper and Pac-Man, which one is easy to learn and why apt is by far, I think the easiest to learn. I think that DNF is pretty much similar because they have similar syntax, but then so does zipper. So I think of those three, they're pretty much equal. I think apt is a little bit more powerful because it has a few more options. But for the most part, they're pretty much on equal footing because really when you're talking about learning a package manager, what matters is the syntax and those all have fairly similar syntax. Now, Pac-Man is the hard one because it does things differently. Like dash S means sync, but you're installing something. Sync and install do not necessarily mean the exact same thing. So Pac-Man has a really weird syntax. So that's the hardest one, I think, to install. Nobody uses DPKG unless they find it on a tutorial on the Internet somewhere. So that's just the truth. Moving on to the next one. What is your professional and or academic background? So I work as an editor at a historical magazine. I used to be a writer at the same historical magazine, but I got promotions. So now I spend my days going over other people's writings and correcting them when they can't do grammar. So that's what I do professionally in terms of academic background. I have a bachelor's of arts in history from Michigan State University. That is where I graduated. And I also have the majority of a master's from the same place. But I didn't finish because I ran out of money. So that's the answer to that question. Moving on to the next one, number 17. What happened to terminal for life? He is not dead. OK, I just want to put that out there. Someone asked me the other day was terminal is terminal for life dead? No, he's still alive. He just got sick of Google, so he deleted his channel. So if you are interested in talking to terminal for life, he's still around in various places. You can probably find him. Probably on GitHub is probably the best place without bugging him too much. But anyways, yeah, term for life is not dead. He's still alive. He just doesn't have a Google or YouTube channel anymore. Moving on to the next one, number 18. People seem to people seem don't care about privacy. Every time I explain about Linux and it's all about open source freedom and privacy, they seem to don't get it why they should choose open source and value more of their own privacy. I don't have strong arguments about this. What are your thoughts on this? So people don't care about the privacy. You're right about that. And there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to care about your own privacy. And if you can subtly push people towards caring more about their pot privacy, that's great. If not, just worry about yourself. That's pretty much all you can do. When it comes to privacy, because for the most part, people just don't care. Like they really want free stuff. And the only way these companies can offer free stuff is to collect as much data as possible and sell you advertisements. That's the model that the internet has basically said it, you know, settle on. And it's nothing's going to change that for the most part. People want free stuff. So they're going to continue to use stuff that violates the privacy. That's just the way the internet's going to always work, sadly. So care about yourself as much as possible and just move on. Moving on to number nineteen. Why don't you have a three foot neck beard yet? I do. You just can't see it. It's invisible. Can you make an Arch Linux installation video with Butterf SZ Ram pipe wired GNOME and Wayland? I could possibly do that, but GNOME would make me not want to do it. Moving on to the last one. Why do you distro? Because I like new things and I always think that by using a new distro, I'm going to be happier than I was on the last distro. Even if I was like really happy on the distro that I'm on. If I see something that makes me think that I might be happier, I will distro hop even if that's not necessarily true. Because usually when I get to another distro, I use the thing that I was I just dropped for and realized that it's not really all that great. So I ended up going back to what I was on. And because I wiped away a perfectly good distro that was working fantastically, I usually end up with problems because karma is a bitch. So that is it for this video. If you have other questions that you would like me to answer, you can leave those in the comment section below. I'll put those in the next video if I remember. I will try to remember. Anyways, you can follow me on Twitter at the next cast. If you're interested in following me on Mastodon or other social media networks, those links will be in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash the Linux cast. I'd like to thank my current patrons, Robert Sid, Devon, Patrick, Fred Kramer, Tridevil, Megalyn, Jess, Nightman Tool, Steve Bates, Epic Linux, Garex, Samuel, KB, TGB, Keith, Andy, Unkboned, Gary, Antoine, Mitchell, J-Doug, carbonated Jamie, Sean, Odin, Marnie, Ross, Eduardo, Artstern, Elliott, Mislop, Merrick, Kamp, Joshua Lee, Peter Ray, Crucial, Dark Benedict, Primus, PM, Arloch1, and Philip. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.