 Every once in a while, I get the hankering to answer some questions, and that's what I'm going to do today. So I put out a post on Twitter and on the community page asking for questions that I could give answers to, and I have some questions to answer. So let's go ahead and jump in with the first question. So the first question is, I wanted to become a Linux kernel maintainer. I know C from school, but I've been reading lately that the rewrite of Linux in Rust is actually being considered. Do you think it would be best to relearn C or should I go learn Rust directly? So I should put a proviso on this, I'm not a developer, so I have no clue what you should learn. And I'm also not a Linux maintainer for obvious reasons. I'm not a developer. But from what I've read, I don't think that the whole Linux kernel is going to be rewritten in Rust, just certain parts of it. So even if it is going to be eventually rewritten in Rust, it's going to be years and years from now where all that work is going to be completed. So what I would say is continue to learn C because that's what the vast majority of the Linux kernel is going to be for years to come. And then as you go along, learn some rust because Rust is very popular. It's kind of a mean language, but it seems to be very popular and probably for good reason. So there's no reason why you can't learn Rust along the way after you've developed your C skills. So that'd be my answer. I would also say, find yourself a developer to ask, they would have more knowledge than I would over what would be best to learn for the kernel. So that's the answer to that question. Moving on to number two. So the second one is, would you consider Windows if it suddenly became fully open source? And then they said, they know it's obviously not going to happen, but let's assume it did. So this is an interesting what if question. My answer to it would be probably not straight up Windows. Probably if Windows were to become open source, it would immediately be forked by somebody. And then whoever that was would go through and take out all the stuff that annoys people about Windows. I might use that version. But probably not for very long. I like Linux too much to even consider using an open source version of Windows. But I would try it probably, just to see what it was like, especially if that fork ended up having some of the stuff that annoys me about Windows pulled out. So for example, forced updating, inability to customize a lot of the stuff, the telemetry obviously, pull all that stuff out of there, then maybe I'll try that fork. But I probably wouldn't switch to it full time. So the next one is, did you ever complete your Xmonad config enough so you feel comfortable living in Xmonad? The answer to that question is, kind of? I actually, what I ended up doing was just pulling DT's configs down and then customizing those. My biggest problem with Xmonad is that it has a ton of libraries. And it's kind of like Python in that. But Python is more, at least from my experience, my very limited experience, Python is more forgiving when it comes to what libraries you input and which ones are using and all that stuff. It's easier to learn simply because you import a library in Python and then you use it. That's the really dumbed down way of going about it. But in Xmonad, there's like three different ways of importing libraries. A lot of the libraries conflict with each other. So if you don't import them the right way or if you're importing two that conflict with each other, things break. And there's just a ton more of them, right? I don't know about more of them, but it seems like there's more of them, especially when it comes to the ones that you have to use in order to get Xmonad to work. So the Haskell language just kind of baffles me a lot. It's the libraries. It's the weird syntax for parentheses that they have going on with question marks and the greater and less-length signs that are in there for weird reasons. I can't get my head around Haskell's, the bottom line. So I just ended up using DT's configs and then customizing the key bindings. He already has like scratch pads already built in and it's easy enough to duplicate those and create the number of scratch pads that I use. It was just easier to do it that way. Even with that being said, I haven't lived in Xmonad for a while. It's just, as much as I wanna like it, I don't feel comfortable being in a tiling window manager that I can't customize and understand what I'm doing. Because I can't get my head around Haskell, I can't really be comfortable in it because I can't say, well, if something goes wrong, I can go in and fix it. Whereas with DWM, I've learned quite a bit of C so I can go through and if something goes wrong, I can fix it pretty much. I mean, it's not always the case. Sometimes I mess something up and I have to go backwards in time or whatever, but for the most part, if something goes wrong, I can at least have an idea of what's going on and I can try to fix it. With Haskell, I have no confidence that I can do that at all. Okay, so the next one is, do you prefer writing or scripting? The answer to that question is easy, it's writing. I'm really good at writing and I'm not very good at scripting so that's an easy question. Moving on, what is your favorite distro is, that's also an easy one. My favorite distro is Arco Linux. It's basically arched but with a ton of stuff pre-installed and the reason why I like it so much is just because it works for me. It's probably the most stable version of Linux that I've ever used. I can't say that I've never had any problems with it but those are so rare. Like usually those are like problems with applications. I don't think I've ever had a significant problem with the distro itself. Now there have been some things that have come down through the arch repositories that have been conflicting or whatever but those get fixed so fast and the solution or workarounds for them if they don't get fixed are usually posted on Eric DuBois YouTube channel like the next day or within a few hours. So that's why I like Arco. Not only has it been so stable but also the community and the developers around it are just so good. I haven't found any better than that. So Arco is my answer to that question. So the next one. Linux user base is slowly increasing. Do you think EU and other government may fund Linux or an open source development in the future? And if not, how to make them do so? When it comes to government types I have a problem with them because most of them are idiots and most of them are Luddites. Like a lot of the ones here in the United States don't know how to use a computer all that much. And there's a good reason they've been in Congress for so long. Most of them have been in Congress longer than the internet's been around. I mean, so trying to get that type of official to actually understand what Linux and open source stuff is, I think it's harder than we're gonna think. Now the organizations below like the leadership level are gonna have better chances because they hire new people and fresh knowledge comes in with those new people. So it's gonna be through those organizations that this kind of stuff is going to happen. We've already seen some country level governments switch to Linux but a lot of them tend to get, I'm not gonna say bribed it, but I mean bribed that they get sponsored by Microsoft after a few years to switch back to Windows. That just, I mean, it happened in Germany a couple of times. Like they were using open source software and Linux and stuff. And then Microsoft built a headquarters there and they switched to Microsoft. It's happened a couple of times. So that's kind of something that they have to deal with. So will it happen? I think it'll happen on and off but I think for the most part, most people are trained in the use of Windows. So that's gonna be, it's gonna remain the predominant operating system for government, sadly. Or at least on workstations. Linux is going to continue to kill it in the server space. The next one. So this one is, do you think nerds are here for pecking only? I see regular user and even semi advanced user is always okay with most things in Linux but nerds keeps complaining about everything. Well, as a self-proclaimed nerd and someone who has their official nerd card, I take offense to this question. Of course we're gonna complain about everything. We as nerds tend to use our operating systems in software in a way that exposes us more to the flaws of that software, if that makes any sense. So because we are, a lot of nerds and developers and stuff tend to interact with code and tend to interact with the more deeper aspects of the operating system and software, those flaws are going to kind of float to the surface. So of course nerds are going to complain about things more. Also another word for nerd would be fanatic. A lot of the fanatics behind Linux are very passionate about Linux and open source software and therefore are more interested in improving it and the only way you improve something is by being critical of it, by pointing out the flaws, by helping to solve those problems and stuff like that. So of course I think nerds tend to complain about everything more than just a random user. If all you ever do is get on your computer and use Google Chrome, what do you have to complain about? You're not interacting with the system at all. You're using a Chromebook. So yes, I do think that nerds complain more and I think that's probably for good reason. Moving on. This one asks, do you have a home media server? Was it easy to set up which platform to use? And the answer to this question is I don't anymore. I used to use Plex and I just did that on my regular computer. Like I had Plex running in the background on my regular computer because my computer stays on most of the time because it's also a file server and I used to use Plex. Since that time, I don't really do that anymore because nobody ever used it. So I stopped using Plex and Plex got kind of subscriber-y, if that makes sense. They went through and had to have a... I mean, they've always had a subscription service but then they had more than one subscription service and then they have streaming and DVR and all this stuff. They got entirely too bloated for my tastes. I tried at one point to set up Jellyfin but I couldn't get it running. I eventually want to set up a Jellyfin server with an actual server but it hasn't happened yet. Now as of ease of use, for the most part from my experience, Plex was really easy to set up as long as you don't have your media on an external hard drive. And if you do have it on an external hard drive, then you have to deal with permissions. And if you have an odd permission structure or you're using something like NTFS which has a wide open permission structure just because it's the nature of NTFS on Linux, then you have a lot more problems simply because Plex needs to be a member of certain groups. They have to have certain permissions in order to access that external hard drive and getting it set up so that that actually works kind of can be a pain in the butt. So if you were to do this, set it up on a computer that has an internal hard drive big enough to store all of your media files. It's just way easier. So the next one comes from my buddy Josh Woolley. This is not an Emacs question by the way. I was really disappointed by that. He asked, I have over 8,000 packages installed. Am I doing it wrong? First of all, I want you to go on Discord and prove to me that you have 8,000 packages because I'm calling BS. I mean, it's possible that you do, but what exactly do you have installed on your Gen2 machine? I mean, I don't think he actually uses Gen2 anymore, but still, my question in return would be what do you have installed on there, man? So here, for everybody else, this question, package counts don't really matter for the most part. And the reason why is because they can be deceptive. If you've installed two just stock standard Linux machines, one of them has Arch on it, one of them has Debi on it and you look at the package counts, you're gonna see that Arch has probably around six to 750 packages that are installed. Maybe less than that, maybe a little bit more than that. It's around that average. If you install a Debian system or Ubuntu, whatever, you're gonna see it has around 2,000 packages installed without you doing anything. Now, some of that is because Arch doesn't have a desktop environment installed by default. That's a perfectly valid point to point out. But also, the way Debian packages stuff and counts packages is different. It's just the way it is. So when I first started using Linux stuff, I was very confused about it too, I was like, wait a minute, Debian's way more bloated than Arch's. But that's, and you can still argue that. Don't get me wrong. But the package count really doesn't indicate that at all. You could have an Arch system and a Debian system that had the exact same things installed on them. And Arch is always gonna have fewer packages, say it's gonna have fewer packages installed, simply because of the way it counts packages. Technically, why it does that, I don't know. It just does. You can, I mean, you can look if you want. But that just seems to be the case. But if you have 8,000 packages installed, I'd say it's time for some spring cleaning. You don't need that many. I think, well, let's see how many I have. I have 2047, but you also gotta remember, I'm a Linux YouTuber, which it just blows my mind to actually say out loud. But I install apps like crazy and like the top Linux apps of the month lists that I do. I always install those applications and about 70% of the time, I forget to uninstall them. So that's the reason why I have so many. And this is an Arch based system, but it's also ARCA, which has a ton of stuff too. So yeah, between 2,000 and 2,500, usually where I run before I end up doing a Nuke and Pave. So the next one. Why is there so much hate against advancements in GNU slash Linux? I've seen it with Paul's Audio System D and ultimately these efforts bring about a better computing experience for everyone. But there's a small minority that have been vehemently against them setting reasons like it's not the Unix way. So I don't think it has anything to do with the Unix way, which is for those of you who don't know, the Unix way basically says do one thing and do one thing well. Or do one thing and do one thing only, I guess is the way it really should be. I don't think it has anything to do with that. I think that the reason why there's been such pushback against Paul's Audio System D in particular is simply because they're backed by major corporations. And that just rubs people the wrong way a lot of the times. It's back, Paul's Audio System D, GNOME, all that pipe wire, Wayland, all that stuff was basically sponsored by Red Hat. And Red Hat is a gigantic corporation. And even before it was purchased by IBM, it was a gigantic corporation. And like I said, that rubs people the wrong way. It's the same reason why people don't like snaps a lot of the time now. I have other problems with snaps. I have no problem with Canonical being the owner of snaps. At least I wouldn't if they had actually open sourced them, but that's beside the point. A lot of people don't like snaps simply because Canonical is the one that created them. And Canonical is a big company. So the biggest reason why I think that there's a big pushback between those ones that you mentioned is simply because they were created by a gigantic corporation and not the community. And that's also the reason why the pushback is really minor. I mean, you hear, you see YouTube videos and you see people in forums and stuff like that talking about how horrible SystemD is, how bloated SystemD is and whatever. Those people are very rare. I mean, the concentration of them seems to be very high in the Linux community, but that's actually not true. They're just a very loud minority. The vast majority of Linux users like SystemD and they wanna use SystemD. Well, I should say the vast majority of Linux users don't know what the hell SystemD is. But the ones who do, most of them use it willingly, like me, I prefer SystemD. And the reason why is because a lot of programs are just you, they're written for SystemD and getting them to run with something like RunHead or OpenRC or whatever is a pain in the ass. So SystemD is the default. I mean, it's by far the most popular init system. It's more than init system, but we'll just call it init system. It's the most popular and therefore programs are developed for it. That's the reason why I use it. Now, do I want it to be like the only init system? Of course not. I like the fact that there are alternatives out there. I like that there can be alternatives out there. And I think there should, those alternatives should continue to exist. It's good for there to be competition and stuff between this kind of stuff because they steal ideas from each other. Everyone always asks me like, should GNOME be the only desktop environment or should KD be the only desktop environment? No, of course not. They should continue to develop things on their own. And the reason why that is good is because oftentimes they steal idealists from each other and they make each other better. That's kind of the way things work. And it's good for open source software and us as users. Okay, next one. Why do you use Discord just instead of Matrix or IRC? At least you can bridge. So I keep getting requests to bridge my Discord over to Matrix. By the way, if you wanna join the Discord server, the link is in the video description. I keep getting questions and requests to bridge Discord to Matrix. The reason why I haven't done that is simply because I haven't got around to it. But also, why don't I use Matrix or IRC instead? There's nobody that actually uses Matrix or IRC in comparison to the number of people who use Discord. Now I know there are a lot of people who won't use Discord. There are a lot of people who won't use Discord and more power to them. I think that that's a good thing. I mean, if you don't wanna use a proprietary piece of software that runs in Electron, I mean, I can see why you wouldn't wanna do that. But for me personally, the way social media works is that you have to be where the people are. Social media doesn't work if you're just shouting at yourself. That's the reason why Mastodon doesn't really work for me. Like I follow like, I don't know, 40 people on Mastodon or whatever and it's good, like I get a lot of responses on Mastodon and I have some followers over there. But when you compare to the number of people who are using Twitter, it just doesn't add up. Those numbers don't compare. And when you're trying to interact with a community, the community has to exist for you to actually interact with them. And for the most part, on these fringe social media sites like Matrix and Mastodon and all those, you know, other things, they just have a community so small that it doesn't make a ton of sense to ignore other places where more people are, if that makes sense. Now, obviously you still have privacy concerns and all that stuff. I do have those privacy concerns as well, but I think as long as you're smart about it and as long as you're aware, like I talked in my video about privacy this last week, as long as you're aware of what's going on, the transaction between you and the corporation, you're fine. So moving on to the next one. How did Linux change your life? So this is a hard question because it really has changed my life. It seems like over the last four and a half, five years or so since I started using Linux, I've learned more. Like when I was a Windows user, I just used my computer, right? And things went wrong all the time. And I put up with the nonsense that comes with being a Windows user. And it was fine, right? You know, when you use Windows, you don't think, oh, this is horrible unless something actually goes wrong. And it does go wrong often. But for the most part, you just use, when I was a Windows user, for the most part, I used my computer like I would use a Chromebook. I was just in the browser all the time. I didn't get into scripting or programming. I didn't have any kind of curiosity over how the system worked or the tweaks that I could make or any of this stuff. Because you can't tweak anything other than a few colors in Windows anyways, that stuff never interested me at all, right? So when I came to Linux, it sparked a curiosity in me to not only learn more about the operating system itself, but how I could tweak it, how I could do other things on it. Like learn how to script, learn how to code, learn how to design things, searching for other applications that maybe are better and stuff like that. It made me more curious I think, not only for my technological use, but also everywhere, I ask questions more. I try to get involved in communities more than I ever did because Windows doesn't really have a community. You don't hang out in a Windows forum and answer people's questions. You know what I mean? People go to a Windows forum and ask questions and expect to get answers from Microsoft. They don't expect to get answers from a random community user. Now obviously there are forums like that, but it's not the same in Linux when you go to a forum, all those people are community users. They're community members. And Linux for the first time allowed me to be a part of a community, an online community that I truly could feel a part of. It wasn't like Facebook or whatever. You don't feel a part of anything on Facebook when you're whatever. I mean, at least when I first joined Facebook, most of the people that you friended or whatever were people you actually knew in real life. And if you wanted to talk to one of those people, you'd call them on the telephone. I know it's a quaint idea, but that's the way it was when I first joined. And it was only after that that groups were introduced and all that stuff, but I never really got into that kind of stuff. So when I first got involved in Linux, being able to be a part of a community and being able to help new users, being able to help people solve problems, getting problems that I had solved really made me feel a part of something. And I think that's one of the great things about Linux is that if you really truly entrench yourself in the community, you can kind of feel like you're a part of it. Now, obviously I can't take any great credit for anything in the Linux community. I'm not a Linux kernel developer as I said earlier. I'm not a developer at all. But I like to think that I've helped maybe some people by creating some how-to tutorials or getting in the forums and asking some questions or answering some questions. You know, I hope at least that I've helped some people in that way. And that's the way that I can help them. I also write documentation for a couple of projects, right? At least I try to help, right? And that's the way I can contribute. And I like the fact that I can contribute. I never had that feeling on Windows. Okay, so moving on to what I think is the last question. And it's the best question of the month. Why always dumb community posts? I don't know, man. It's what other type of posts are there, I guess, is the answer to that question. So that is it for this video. If you want to get in contact with me, you can do so in the comments of this video or you can hit me up on Twitter at the Linuxcast. I'm also on Mastodon. You can find that username in the video description along with all my other social media links and stuff like that. Like I said, you can find that in the video description. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast. Before I go, I'd like to take my current patrons. Today, Devon, East Coast Web, Gentoo's Fun 2, Pedrigal, Primus, Marcus, Maiklin, Jackson, Abdul, Steve A, Slapegarry Linux, Garrick, Mitchell, ArtCenter, CarbonDade, Sean, Jeremy, Odin, Merritt, Camp, Joshua Lee, J-Dogs, Peter A, Crucible, Dark Bandit 6. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.