 Welcome to another edition of HeyDT. HeyDT is a series of videos I do where I respond to viewer questions and comments. These questions and comments typically come from comments on my videos on YouTube and on Odyssey. Sometimes these questions and comments come through email or from responses I get on Mastadon or sometimes from Reddit. And the very first question I want to address is, HeyDT, why do you promote GNU slash Linux distributions that do not follow GNU's free system distribution guidelines like Ubuntu, Manjaro, and others? So what he is saying is that most of your mainstream GNU slash Linux distributions, pretty much all the ones you guys know about Ubuntu, Manjaro, Arch, Debian, Fedora, all of that stuff, all of those technically are non-free GNU slash Linux distributions because in the Linux kernel there are binary blobs, there's proprietary bits to the kernel, there's proprietary firmware, and the reason those proprietary bits are in those Linux distributions is because without those, those Linux distributions won't run on most hardware. That's just the fact. I would love to do nothing but promote 100% free as in freedom GNU slash Linux distributions, things like GNU, Geeks, Parabola, Triscoll, but the problem is I give those distributions coverage on the channel, but I can't strictly talk about those distributions. For one, I can't even run those distributions on some of my equipment because I need proprietary drivers, for instance, to run on some of my machines. So if I can't even get those things to work, why would I spend all of my time promoting those distributions to you guys? I want to promote the GNU slash Linux distributions that will work on pretty much any hardware known to man. That's why I talk about things like Ubuntu and Manjaro, which he mentioned, and many other GNU slash Linux distributions. You also have to keep in mind that I'm trying to get people away from the 100% proprietary operating system. I'm talking about Windows, macOS, Chrome OS. I'm trying to get those people away from those 100% non-free operating systems over to things like Ubuntu, Manjaro, Fedora, Archdebian, which are 99.99% free. There's just a small little bit of proprietaryness built into those operating systems just because it has to be in some cases because certain hardware only has proprietary drivers. There's no free driver option for some things. That's why they have to include some proprietary bits. I wish those proprietary bits didn't have to be there, but still, is it better to run something like Ubuntu or Manjaro rather than Windows or macOS? You bet your ass it is. And the second question is, hey, DT, I made a comment and that comment is gone. Did it go to spam or did you actually delete it? I did not write anything that would warrant deletion. Okay, so I get thousands of these kinds of questions and it's weird. I would assume by now most people know how YouTube works as far as there are algorithms out there searching for spam comments, essentially. I can tell you right now, if you post a comment and it actually includes a link like 99 times out of 100, your message is going to be automatically filtered. It's going to trigger that spam filter and it's going to be gone. That's not me doing anything. I get literally hundreds, maybe thousands of comments a day on my videos. I don't read them. I read a few. When I post something, I may hang out for a few minutes right after I post a new video and read some of the first few comments. I don't read everything. I don't have time to moderate my comments. If I actually had to moderate my comments, I would never actually make video content. So no, I'm not sitting there moderating the comments. I don't care what you guys write. But again, I don't have to moderate the comments because honestly, YouTube does a pretty good job of filtering out the garbage. So anything that includes links is going to go away immediately. I don't have to worry about it. Also, you guys, if you use certain kinds of language, you guys know the kinds of language you probably shouldn't be posting in comments. YouTube is immediately going to catch that stuff. Also, if you're mean or hateful to other people in the comments, typically they report your comments. So, you know, you're mean to somebody else in the comment section. They report your comment to YouTube. YouTube immediately takes that comment down. Nobody actually reviews it, but, you know, YouTube is just going to get rid of it because they don't want to deal with potentially any tricky issues. So no, I don't actually delete comments. It's very rare. I actually have to moderate anything. Occasionally, I will see something that I have to get rid of. Like if it's something somebody is making some kind of threat, like a threat of violence against somebody. You know, I see that. I've got to take that down immediately because what that person is doing is way out of bounds. But rarely do I go out of my way to delete comments. You guys see the comments on my videos. I mean, I get people, you know, talking trash about me. I don't care. I'm not worried about what people say in the comments. But you guys need to know that some of what you're doing is triggering the YouTube algorithm. Also, never ever copy and paste the same message. You know, like some people will post the same thing two or three different times in a comment thread and YouTube will immediately just filter all of those out as spam. The next question is Haiti. Do you prefer upstream configs or cooked configs? He's talking about like config files for tiling window managers. Do I prefer the raw basic config file as from upstream or do I want something that's already been customized by the Linux distribution? So he's talking about like with Arco Linux, you know, if I install Arco Xmonad or Arco Awesome, you know, they're going to have their own customized versions of those particular window managers. Do I prefer that? Or do I prefer just the vanilla awesome window manager config to hack on? Well, this question is going to be different depending on the person for somebody that's already used these window managers. Then it really doesn't matter because you're always going to have your own config. It doesn't matter what you start with. You're going to wipe that out and use your own configs. So that's my case. I have my own config files for all the window managers that I actually use, so I don't need anybody else's. So it doesn't matter if they ship with a vanilla version of awesome window manager, for example, or if they ship a highly customized awesome window manager, that doesn't matter either because I'm not using either one of those. I'm going to go grab my awesome window manager config from my GitLab. And you know, so that's people that have already used these tiling window managers. If you've never used a tiling window manager, which one would you prefer? You would prefer somebody to actually configure it a little bit for you so you can actually see what the window manager could become because if you start with a very vanilla basic config, it can be overwhelming to the new tiling window manager user. And the next question I want to read, man, this is a perfect example of I obviously don't delete negative comments. Hey, DT, you seem to make a lot of mistakes in your videos. How much do you really know about Linux? Well, I would say maybe not much, but there's that old saying, fake it till you make it. The next question is, hey, DT, you say FreeBSD is a Unix-like operating system. That is wrong. FreeBSD is Unix. And I've addressed this before, but I'm going to address it one more time here is that Unix is a trademarked name for something to be called Unix. Officially, it actually has to be Unix. It can't be FreeBSD. It can't be one of the various Linux distributions. Even many of the Unix operating systems out there, they can't really call themselves Unix because, again, it's a trademark name, but it really doesn't matter. The people that get upset about this, you guys quit worrying about lineage because it doesn't matter if BSD is a Unix-like operating system rather than actual Unix. It doesn't matter if Linux is a Unix-like operating system and not actually Unix. It doesn't matter because you know what? They're better than Unix. The BSD operating systems and the Linux operating systems are better than Unix ever was. Unix is an operating system. Everybody's trying to grab a hold of some kind of history because Unix was this great operating system back in the 70s and 80s. No, it wasn't. Our operating systems now, whether you're running FreeBSD, whether you're running Linux, your operating system now is 10 times better than those Unix operating systems ever were. And you know what really makes those operating systems much better than those old Unix operating systems is that FreeBSD and all of your Linux operating systems are free. They're licensed under free licenses where Unix actually was proprietary. Why are you guys trying to attach yourselves to a proprietary operating system? And the next question is, hey, DT, I see you've started using anime and meme thumbnails. It's a little more interesting and should attract more views, but I'm curious. Do you like them? Man, I get these questions all the time that I know this person has no idea who I am. He's commenting to me, but he thinks I'm somebody else. I have made almost 1,000 videos, almost 1,000 thumbnails, and of those 1,000 thumbnails, I've made exactly one thumbnail that off the top of my head. I know I added some anime to, because it actually was a topic about another YouTuber that does anime related content. But one thumbnail out of 1,000 had anime in it, and that thumbnail, that video, I made that over a year ago. It was not even recent. So I don't think this guy is actually talking to me. I don't want to be one of these people that get upset, but I really don't like being stereotyped. I don't like being confused. I know all of us Linux YouTubers look alike. I know that. I mean, I watch some of the other Linux content on YouTube, and I know almost all of us are middle-aged, bald, white, got some facial hair. You know, we're kind of nerds. I get it. It's easy to confuse us. But it's still, I do get a little angry when I get comments from people that are obviously watching somebody else's content and then commenting to me about it. Moving on. Hey, DT, what are your thoughts on compiling software from source? Do you recommend it? I don't recommend it. I don't discourage people from doing it. Sometimes you just have to compile software from source. If you want a piece of software that is not available in your Linux distribution's core repositories and there's no snaps or flatpacks or app images of it, then your only option is to build it from source. So at the end of the day, you do what you have to do. Is it better to compile your software from source than just grabbing a pre-built binary from your Linux distribution's core repositories? No. So, no, for me, it's all about getting the software that you need on your system. It doesn't matter how you get it. I don't recommend compiling software from source, but I mean, sometimes you have to do that. Me personally, I don't go out of my way to compile software. If I can get a pre-built binary, I'm always going to grab that. It's one of the reasons why I run Arch Linux, Arch-based Linux distributions for the most part rather than source-based distributions. That's why I don't run Gen2. That's why I don't run GNU Geeks, you know, things like that is because I don't like building all of my software from source because it takes a lot of time. The next question is, hey, DT, I have a question. How do you get menus for shutdown, restart, and log out on window managers? I was using Rofi before, but i3 doesn't seem to play well with Rofi. Any suggestions? I don't know why he's saying i3 and Rofi don't play well. Rofi or Dmenu is another good option. They aren't dependent on the window manager. They work regardless of whatever window manager or desktop environment you use. I don't know what he's talking about there, but if you want a good menu for shutdown, restart, log out, all the session stuff, there are a couple of packages out there that are easy to get on most Linux distributions. One I used to use a long time ago was oblogout, and it was meant to be used with Openbox since the name oblogout. It was just a simple program that when it ran, big icons popped up on the screen for shutdown, log out, restart, and things like that. I think there's another one for i3 called i3 log out. There's a couple of these things out there. You could also do what I've done. I just wrote a simple script for Dmenu, so I have a script where when I launch it, Dmenu appears and it asks me, do I want to shutdown, restart, log out, and if I click yes, boom, I'm done. And the final question is actually a comment, and I believe this comment was on one of my videos responding to about the toxic Linux community and certain organizations and projects and foundations within the free and open source software communities that are toxic in nature and kind of divisive. And he writes, hey, DT, that's funny to me because people like you discourage convenience in favor of obscure software minimalism by endlessly memeing the bloated software and distribution supremacy. EG, don't use baboon2, install gen2, and then wonder why the Linux community is so divisive. Okay, so there's a lot to digest here. Again, much like one of the earlier comments, I don't know if this guy actually watches my content. Like, literally, I have never, ever told anyone, don't use a boon2. I don't know where he gets that. I use a boon2. I have most of my web servers, you know, web hosting, typically if they offer a boon2 LTS servers, that's what I use. I've actually like a boon2. I'm a big fan of a boon2. I have never anywhere in like the nearly 1000 videos I've made have ever said, don't use a boon2. I don't know where he got that from. And then earlier we talked about compiling software and I said I don't really personally like it. That's why I don't run source based distributions. So I've obviously never told you guys to go in and install gen2. So who's this guy responding to? Now, have I talked about minimalism, you know, trying to be more minimal and trying to avoid bloat? Yes, but how is that divisive? I'm not saying you have to do that. I'm saying that's what I do, but I don't know. It's weird. It's weird the things that people take personally and really it's comments like this. This comment really has nothing to do with me. This comment really is a reflection on the person that actually wrote that comment. And you can tell that this person has some issues in their life that at some point they're going to have to work out. Now, before I go, I need to think a few special people. I need to think the producers of this episode. I'm talking about Absi, Dallas, Gabe, Lou, Mitchell, Alan, Akami, Archbishop, David, the other David, Dylan, Gregory, Lewis, Paul, Polytech, Scott, Steven, Sven, Weston, Willie. They are the producers of this episode of Haiti without these guys. This episode, it wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because the DistroTube channel is sponsored by you guys, the community. I don't have any corporate sponsors. It's just me and you guys. If you'd like to help me out, look for DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys. Peace.