 Welcome to another edition of Haiti. Haiti is a series of videos I do where I respond to viewer questions and comments. These questions and comments typically come from the comments posted on the videos on YouTube and Odyssey. Sometimes these questions and comments come through social media such as Mastodon, Reddit, sometimes through email. And the very first question I want to respond to is, Haiti, it's time for an update since Firefox is dead and Audacity is gone. I'm curious, what other software suggestions do you have for the common user? Well, that is kind of a deep question, especially if you're talking about all software like everything you should use on a computer for a common Linux desktop user. That's an entire video. That's an entire series of videos. I'm not going to get into that. But he specifically mentioned that Firefox is dead and Audacity is gone. Well, Firefox is not dead, but a lot of people have problems with the direction Firefox is going. And that's part of the reason why Firefox here in recent years has lost a lot of its market share. Firefox is definitely on the decline. I think it's definitely a dying project. And nobody can deny that. Even people that are fanboys of Firefox, you know, a lot of people want Firefox to succeed. I want Firefox to succeed because it means a lot to free and open source software. But the problem is the people running Firefox, they are not taking it in a direction that it needs to go. And unfortunately, it's losing market share. Google Chrome keeps gaining influence. You know, it dominates the browser market share. Audacity, of course, is now essentially spyware. But we have forks, right? And that's the thing people don't understand with free and open source software. Both Firefox and Audacity are licensed under free and open source licenses, which means they can be forked and they have been forked many, many, many times. There are a ton of Firefox forks out there you could use if you love Firefox. One of my favorites is LibreWolf, which is essentially straight Firefox, except it doesn't have a lot of the problems that Firefox has. You won't have pocket installed by default. You won't have DRM actually installed by default either. It's mainly for privacy and security. So you're going to have to enable DRM in LibreWolf, which is just a checkbox, something you take in the settings. For example, if you want to watch Netflix. But the great thing about LibreWolf is AdLock is built into it, which is a feature I know a lot of people find useful. So I would say check out LibreWolf. And for Audacity, I made a video a few weeks ago about two popular Audacity forks, Audacium and Tenacity. And I've got both installed on my computer. I use them all the time to edit audio for my videos. As a matter of fact, this video I'm making right now, I'm probably going to have to edit some of the audio, clean up some of the audio on my shotgun mic here. And I'm going to do that probably in Audacium. Moving on to the next comment is a comment that I got from literally dozens of people on my video the other day about the top five Arch Linux based distributions. And on that list, I had Artix and I said one of my complaints with Artix, why it wasn't higher on my rankings list, is the fact that Artix, their ISOs are so old. They haven't had an official release in a long time. The last official ISO was something like a year ago. And I said, I don't like installing rolling release distributions from such old ISOs. So that, you know, prevents me from really recommending Artix to people. People are like, hey, DT, you're wrong about Artix as the rolling release comment and the ISOs being old. There's weekly ISOs. Artix is always up to date. Well, here's the thing. If you're going to make a comment like that, that a weekly build or a daily build or a nightly build of a Linux distribution means that that Linux distribution is always up to date, you know, that those nightly builds, those daily builds, those weekly builds actually count as official ISOs, then literally you could say every Linux distribution is always up to date, right? That's essentially what you guys are trying to tell me is, you know, these automatic builds, right? Because it's an automatic server that spits out these daily ISOs or these weekly ISOs for many distributions. Many of the distributions that actually see active development do push out daily builds or weekly builds, but those are not official ISOs, right? There's a reason they don't call that an official release. They don't put it out there for public consumption. Because nobody really tests that thing. That's just something that, you know, they're servers, they have a build server that spits that thing out, you know, once a day or once a week, but those are not official releases and there could be problems with that and that's why I don't install daily builds or weekly builds on this channel. Like I don't do a distro review or a first look at a distro and then go grab a daily build or a weekly build because that thing could have bugs. And if I do run into problems with that and then people are going to complain, well, that's not even the official ISO. That's a daily build. That's a weekly build. Of course it has bugs. Nobody tested that. Why are you using that DT? But then I've got other people telling me go grab a weekly build because it's just like an official ISO, right? It's like an official point release. No, it's not, right? And you're lying to yourself if you're trying to convince yourself that a daily build or a weekly build of an ISO is the same as an actual thoroughly tested release, an official release of a distribution because it's just not. And the next question is, hey, DT, first of all, I love your channel. New supporter here. I appreciate your support. And then he goes on to say, just wondering if there is an uninstalled script for DTOS. I was also wondering if there are dot files to pull the individual configs from. I love DTOS and I would love to piece it together. All right. Well, let's start with, is there an uninstalled script for DTOS? No, there isn't. And I really can't make one because the way DTOS is set up, it installs all of the packages I use, all the programs I use on my desktop, plus some custom packages that I build and maintain my own repository of software for Arch Linux. And it installs all of my packages and programs, fake files and everything from the ground up, assuming that you install it from a base Arch Linux install, but even you can install it on Arch base distributions like Manjaro, Arco, Endeavor, things like that. But I have it set up, assuming that many people will install it from a base Arch install, meaning nothing is installed, right? The base Arch install is essentially when you run the packstrap command for installing Arch and installs the Linux kernel and the init system and a few base packages, but it doesn't install anything else. There's no graphical environment, no graphical programs installed of any kind, but my DTOS script does install the X11 server, right? Xorg it installs all of the desktop environment, the login manager, all the graphical programs you're going to use on your system. And I can't have a script that just uninstalls everything that DTOS installs because if I just reverse the script and just say uninstall everything that DTOS would normally install, well it's going to uninstall Xorg, it's going to uninstall video drivers, it's going to uninstall a lot of important stuff, so I really can't have an uninstall script for it, but if you want to uninstall the packages, some of the packages that got installed, which you could do, there is a file in the DTOS repository on GitLab it's called PackageList and it's a line by line listing of every package that gets installed when DTOS is run. So what you could do is go in there and just look for some of the programs that you know over want and just uninstall them yourself. Now you also asked, are there dot files for individual configs? So you don't want the entire DTOS, right? You just want specific configs, like you just want my Xmognad config, nothing else, or you just want my Doomy Max config, nothing else. Yeah, you can go get all of that from my dot files repository on my GitLab. So don't go to the DTOS repository, go to my dot files repository, and in the dot files repository those are my personal configs for everything on my computer. Every window manager I've ever used, every text editor, anything that has a config file practically, is in my dot files repository. Moving on to the next question. Hey DT, do you encrypt your ARCO installation? I'm wanting to try ARCO but want to have encryption and I get a video tutorial, smiley face. I don't know if there's a need to do a tutorial, I'm assuming you're just talking about your basic hard disk encryption and I'm assuming ARCO probably has a box that you just tick on during the installation. Many Linux distributions do these days where during the installers, the Calamari's installer, whatever installer they happen to be using, what most distributions now will have a box where you check, yes, you want to encrypt your drive then you give a password and then that's it, right? You've got encryption meaning that when you reboot your computer or start up your computer you actually have to enter a password before your computer or boot up and anybody can actually access anything on the drives on your computer. It's not hard, you really don't need a video installation on it. Now you asked me personally, do I encrypt my drives? No, I don't because I'm in a unique situation where nobody really has access to my machines, especially my towers, you know, my workstations. Nobody is going to steal them, they're not in a position where that's an option, they're not in a position where people are using these computers other than me. Now if I had laptops that I carried around all the time, then I would strongly urge you to actually encrypt those devices because anybody can steal a laptop, right? Or you could just lose a laptop, right? You could, I don't know, get on a bus with your laptop bag and forget to grab it on your way out. Well now anybody can just pick up your laptop and they could eventually access the data on those drives if you didn't have it encrypted. So for laptops, I would always encrypt the drives for workstations. You make that decision yourself but for me, I don't bother on my workstations. And the next comment I want to read is one I get on almost every video I've ever made since the beginning of time by thousands of people. ADT, I see you are using the clear command a lot, try control plus L instead, you will not go back. So what he's talking about here is in a terminal, when I want to clear the screen, I type the word clear and it clears the screen, right? He's saying that you could just hit a key binding for the clear command control L and he is right. Control L does work sometimes. It depends on the shell you are in and it also depends on what mode you are in within that shell. For example, on the bash shell by default the bash shell uses Emacs key bindings, Emacs like key bindings. And in Emacs, those of you that have used it, a lot of key bindings involving the control key such as control L and that is why that key binding is there. I actually don't use Emacs key bindings in my shell. I actually set the bash shell not to use Emacs mode but to use VI mode or VIM mode, right? So it uses VIM like key bindings. So control L in my terminal actually doesn't do anything in the bash shell or in the ZSH shell either because I think I have that set to also not use that command. So for me, I do have to type the clear command but even if I didn't, even if I did use Emacs bindings, I still would type the clear command on my videos. I do that is because I want it to be obvious to people, hey, I just cleared the terminal by typing the clear command or if I just do a key binding and I don't actually mention the key binding or what it does, people are going to wonder, well, how did he get a new screen, a fresh screen on his terminal? How did he do that? Well, by typing the clear command, it's obvious to a new user who doesn't know much about the terminal exactly what I did. But the biggest reason that I type clear instead of using control L is because I know it annoys the hell out of people and I and when I say I've literally got thousands of comments about not using control L, I'm serious, thousands of comments. This helps me in the YouTube algorithms. I will never use control L because I want to always type clear on every single video I do is because I know I'm going to get a few people that actually leave me comments about it and you guys really help me in the YouTube rankings. And another comment I want to address is, hey, DT, your Gemini server is down. I've gotten this hundreds of times. Yes, I did videos a couple of years ago about Gemini and I set up a Gemini server. I had a Gemini website essentially of what is called a Gemini capsule and I do like Gemini. I still like Gemini. I no longer have that server there because I just couldn't keep up with it. I like making videos. I don't like maintaining websites, gopher holes, Gemini capsules. I don't like any of this stuff. I don't like maintaining my mastodon instance or any of that stuff. I do that stuff mainly for proof of concept because you guys want some of this stuff up but I don't like it and it's time consuming. I spend as much time on all of this stuff that you guys don't even see on camera as what I do on camera. And again, most of it is stuff I don't want to be doing anyway. But the Gemini capsule, you know, I have to maintain a website because everybody's on the web. So I'm maintaining my own website and I'm maintaining my own Gemini capsule. That's double the work, right? And what I was eventually thinking of doing, I never got around to it, was I was thinking I was eventually going to set up a website that was written in org mode where org mode through org export would export to HTML for a website and it would also export to gem text which is the syntax for Gemini. That way I could write everything in org, just have all of my org documents export to a website and a Gemini capsule. I never got around to that. That's a big project and again, it's something that really doesn't interest me. I don't like the web. I don't like going websites and the Gemini capsules, even though they're not the web, you know, it's similar. It's just not something, it's not something I want to be taking up my free time essentially because that's what it would be doing. It takes up my free time. I spend all day every day working on these videos, right? Thinking about these videos doing show notes and getting ready to do all of this which I really love and then in my free time I'm going to be building websites that are associated with the channel. No, I don't want to do that or hanging out on social media, you know, promoting the channel. No, I don't want to do that when I'm not doing this. I want to be doing stuff with family and real friends and real life and I don't want nothing to do with all that stuff. That's why I let the Gemini capsule go, I may eventually, my website go, I may eventually let everything go. All my social media instances and everything is because really that stuff annoys the hell out of me. I just hate it. I really do. I know a lot of you guys are probably, that's weird because I love hanging out on the internet all day. I'm to the point where I just really just want to check out from the whole internet at this point. And the next comment is one I got from a couple of dozen people. Hey DT, great video, thanks for it. If I was hanging out with you in a friendly video chat during this recording I'd say that your next alias needed to be SBRC equals source dot bash RC. That should be your second alias. So this came from a video I did where I showed you some of what I thought were the most useful bash aliases for anybody using Ubuntu. And I said the very first thing you want to alias is upgrading your system. So sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade. Make an alias for that command because you're going to be doing that command in the terminal all the time. And then the second alias is saying well you should probably make the second alias sourcing the bash RC because that's useful if you're constantly adding aliases, right? So you could resource the bash RC and I knew people were going to leave that comment. This is another one. You know I hate to admit this but sometimes I purposely play you guys, right? I take advantage of you guys and this is something that is a good tip for content creators if you're thinking about starting a video channel, a YouTube channel, or Odyssey channel is you know if you want to drive comments, right? And drive a discussion. You know sometimes you have to play the game a little bit and I knew I typed source dot bash RC. I typed that command on that video at least 20 times probably and I knew it while I was doing it. Man people are going to tell me to alias this but I'm not going to alias it because I want them to tell me to alias it in the comments because again the more comments you get the better you rank in the YouTube algorithms. So again I just probably I don't want to you know make it sound like that I'm purposely taking advantage of you guys the viewers because I do love you guys. You guys are really wanting the channel successful and wanting the community around the channel is successful but sometimes I do have to play the game and I hope you guys understand that. And the final question is hey DT what would you do if Windows became open source? And people have asked this question to me several times over the years this this one keeps coming up. Hey is the only reason you're running Linux is because it's free and open source and Windows proprietary because you guys know I hate proprietary software. So what if Windows was open source? Would you use Windows? Well it's Linux you're gonna be proprietary or it's Linux you're gonna be free and open source. I said if Linux is still free and open source it's still a better operating system than Windows. Like it's not just the freedom aspect of it it's just Linux is better. Linux is more flexible it's more customizable. Linux is more secure. Linux more private. It's Linux I have fun using Linux. Windows is frustrating. When I was a Windows user I never realized it how much pain and suffering in my life was caused by using that horrible operating system. It doesn't matter what Windows is licensed under. Well I won't say it doesn't matter. I would love for Windows to be licensed under a free and open source license but I mean Linux is not the only free and open source operating system out there right? There's a million of them. I mean if you count each Linux distribution as its own operating system and then you've got all the various VSD operating systems and there's a whole bunch of them and then you've got free operating systems like Haiku, ReactOS and some other you know really niche operating systems. You got the various UNIX operating systems, Solaris, OpenIndiana, things like that out there. They're all free and open source right? I don't use all of that. I don't use any of that other than Linux. Why? Because I like Linux right? It's not just the licensing. Now if Windows was open source would I actually do stuff with it? Would I have it installed? Would I keep a virtual machine of it around? Would I demonstrate Windows stuff on camera? Would I actually start giving Windows coverage on my channel? Yes I would because at the end of the day I do like to promote free and open source software and if Windows was free and open source software even if I personally didn't use it I would still give it coverage just because I want to promote anybody that is also promoting free and open source software and Microsoft was really invested in free and open source software and made Windows FOSS. Yeah I would definitely give it time on the channel just like I give VSD you know time on the channel on occasion or some of the various flavors of UNIX you know even though I don't use those operating systems they're free and open source software they deserve a little love to and I would cover Windows on this channel if it was ever truly open source. Now before I go I need to thank the producers of this episode of HeyDT. I'm talking about Devin, Gabe, James, Matt, Michael, Mitchell, Paul, Scott, Wes, Akami, Chuck, Commander, Angry, Diokai, Dylan, George, Lee, Linux, Ninja, Maxim, Mike, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Arch, and Fedor, Polly, Tect, Red Prophet, Stephen, and Willy. These guys they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This episode you just watched would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. It's just me and you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to help support me please subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. Alright guys, peace.