There’s probably a better way, but the way that works for me is apt show <package> and then copying everything from the Recommended section into an apt install command

Edit: people in forums are suggesting the simpler apt install --reinstall --install-recommends <pkg>.

I find this preferable because it means the recommended packages get marked as auto, which means an uninstall will automatically remove them.

On the other hand, it forces a redownload and install of <package> which might be unwanted. If you want the best of both worlds, you’re going to have to manually install the recommended packages, then also manually apt-mark auto <list of packages>—although that might make them immediately susceptible to an autoremove, so this might require some tweaking; I’ll work it out when I have time.

If you want to always install recommended packages, add APT::Install-Recommends "1"; to your apt.conf (which just includes the --install-recommends option by default, behind the scenes)

As a rule I don’t tell people to RTFM, because it has some rude dismissive connotations, although I will share when it helps me solve a problem I’ve been butting up against that would’ve been solved if I had just read the docs.

That being said, I do encourage people to read the docs, as others’ walkthroughs can be misinformational, and are usually tied to specific setups or software and hardware versions. It requires learning how to wade through a lot of information to find the info you need, but the info is usually guaranteed to be the most current and reliable.

That all being said, I’m more than happy to help when people want it.

Podcasts?

If you really want to save some space, you can save a lot by opting to use command-line programs instead of the GUIs that basically just act as front-ends for the command-line programs. E.g. most FOSS audio converters just use ffmpeg behind the scenes, so really they’re a lot of extra libraries and such just to give you a graphical means of building up the CLI command. Same goes for videos. Same for images, though a lot of those might use imagemagick instead (even though ffmpeg also does images).

That being said, I use VLC for converting videos and audio files. I honestly can’t tell the difference between uncompressed (e.g. .wav), lossless (e.g. .flac or .ape), and high-bitrate lossy like mp3 v0 or mp3 320. Heck, I can’t even tell the difference between the aforementioned and mid-bitrate lossy audio like mp3 192 or Vorbis (the .ogg format) 192.

Quality is of course dependent on how sensitive the listener’s ears are, and how quality the equipment you’re listening with is. You’ll want to run some test conversions youraelf before committing to any specific format.

If your files are already in lossy formats, then you really don’t have much choice for compression, outside of bundling them all together in a tarball and compressing them with something like gz or zstd. This is only good for storing them, if you try to listen to them, your system will have to extract them, and that either takes time before it plays, or causes stuttering while it plays.

It usually is this simple for any distro anymore. My advice is mostly tailored to worst-case scenarios so that people don’t get overly pissy when things don’t Just Work™

There’s nothing I can say to convince you Ubuntu is sucky if you don’t personally experience problems with it/have the occasional “I wish I could do this, but I guess it’s not possible” thoughts—spoiler: it’s usually possible, just not with that distro; this is true for all distros though, there will always be things they cannot do that others can.

That being said, my biggest gripe with Ubuntu, besides canonical’s geologic-paced attempts to make it profit-driven (which was what I was thinking of when I mentioned user-friendliness), is Snaps. I understand the motivation behind them, but the implementation was just sucky for many nitpicky reasons that I don’t really care to enumerate rn.

I also just don’t see much value in downstream for my needs. I can basically turn Debian into a Ubuntu clone if I want to, and my packages will still largely be supported by upstream maintainers. For bespoke distros it makes sense, but those are usually ill-maintained or hobby projects that update at glacial speeds.

I’m not saying that Debian >>>>> Ubuntu. It’s better just enough that I’d recommend Debian before I would recommend Ubuntu.

I had very few issues with a GTX 970 and i7-4790k. The only issues I hear about with either any more is the linux kernel not supporting some of the features of newer GPUs (e.g. I know ray-tracing was a pain-point at one point).

I don’t like recommending distros based on such a general use case, mainly because every distro can be tweaked and configured to exactly what you want. Instead, you should research the different mainline distros that have been around for decades—Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Guix, NixOS, OpenSuse, Slackware—and see what they’re about, what sets them apart from others, what the maintainers’ philosophies are, and what kind of package management system they work with. Once one sounds better than the others, look into it and try it out.

#Dos and Don’ts:

Don’t try a niche distro. They are harder to troubleshoot and less likely to be actively maintained.

Don’t use Ubuntu. It’s just a suckier version of Debian. It used to be user-friendly Debian, but now Debian is more user-friendly than it.

Don’t dual-boot with windows. This just solidifies your reliance on windows, especially if you’re the type to give up on problem-solving issues that you didn’t have in Windows. It also can cause issues with making Linux unbootable.

Do try a live usb with persistence before you commit entirely. It’s not exactly the same as a complete install, but it’s close enough to let you know how the OS feels and what hardware will or won’t work with it. Some people say try a VM first, but that won’t have direct hardware access.

Do problem solve the little things. Anything that irks you or bothers you or just slows down your workflow. It doesn’t have to be an actual bug or glitch, just anything that could be better. This not only solidifies the feeling of ownership over your OS—you no longer have to settle for anyone else’s lousy design choices—it teaches you the resources for troubleshooting larger issues.

Do plan around things not being plug and play at first. Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working. This won’t always be the case, but it will irk you a lot less when it is if you expect it. The more you make time for solving these issues now, the less time they’ll take up in the future (either they’ll be gone, or you’ll immediately know how to fix them, or your troubleshooting will be more streamlined).

Do set aside time to learn about Linux “under the hood.” You don’t have to become a computer scientist, but it will save you a lot of headaches, show you cool things you can do, and make your computer a smoother experience. It especially helps if you take the time to learn as they come up: e.g. installer asks you what “bootloader” you want, but you’re not sure what that is, what it does, or why it’s necessary? Now’s the best time to take a little learning detour.

Do ask questions on forums.

Don’t listen to the people who shame you for asking.

Do listen to the people who try to show you a better way of doing things, even if it’s not your way.

Yeah, that was warranted. I was being hostile, which is why i deleted the comment immediately after posting it

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Tried flatpak steam as well as valve’s installer script; nada.

I don’t generally do flatpaks, I just tried it to see if it would remove the issue

I’ll give it a shot next time I have some time, thank you!

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Tried with root and user perms for the drive, tried with 777 on the folder and whatever permissions steam uses when it creates the folder. The drive is ext4 and mounts fine.

It doesn’t matter where or how I mount the drive, the problem isn’t the drive; idk how I could have made that clearer.

What does any of this have to do with KDE, Gnome, or nautilus?

The problem only happens under KDE and Gnome on Wayland; the nautilus thing was just a curiosity. Did you read my comment?

On KDE I couldn’t get Steam to put my game library on my second harddrive. It would open up the file finder, then simply ignore whatever folder I picked (regardless of drive and folder permissions). I was able to recreate the issue on Gnome under wayland, but X11 works fine. I even tried making a symlink to the other drive in my home directory, no dice. Tried flatpak steam as well as valve’s installer script; nada.

Interestingly, it seems that the “pick a folder” button in Steam opens up a contextual file search window in X, but just a regular nautilus instance in Wayland. I’d say that this is the problem (the regular nautilus/dolphin instance not reporting back to Steam what folder I selected), but it works for moving to different directories, just not drives (in both DEs). Same thing happened on Fedora, so it’s not just “Debian is too outdated.”

But let’s be serious, if I wanted to spend a lot of time tweaking and tuning my graphical environment to be exactly what I want, I’m not settling for Gnome nor KDE. I’m not gonna go with Cinnamon, XFCE, LXQt, LMDE, MATE, nor any ecosystem. I’m going with a window manager and mixing and matching every single program/element myself.

I use i3 on my laptops. I would use Sway (because I don’t have to care about Steam), but for some reason it’s like 5x as resource hungry on these machines (constant freezes and stuttering).

>inkjet

LED printers have been around for fucking ever, and the average person doesn’t need the graphic fidelity that only an overpriced pigment soup, which goes bad in a month, can supply.

Oh, and literally every part of a toner-based printer is easier to replace/repair… so why would a printer designed around repairability and upgradability use ink???

Edit’ And I almost forgot: toner is cheaper per page than ink! Whyyy???

I agree with your main point, but I do want to criticize

I think he was a bit off the rails and a leftist hater.

This is an understatement. He was an ecofascist in all except name. In Industrial Society and Its Future, his critiques of the right basically boil down to “they’re bad at optics” and his critiques of the left basically boil down to “they care about animals, [slurs], and women.” He was the archetype of “claim to be centrist because I know how unpopular my actual opinions are.”

That being said, I also want to shed light on a little glimmer of hope hidden inside the surveillance state:

if there were to be a socialist revolution in a 1st world country any time soon, just how much of an advantage the state has over the people due to it’s surveillance network.

A few counterpoints to this:

1. A point I learned from a movie of all places, no less poignant that it was a movie about resisting the surveillance state (Enemy of the State): one of the primary principles of Guerilla Warfare is to use your opponents biggest strength and turn it into their weakness. This leads me into my next point:

2. There is way too much data. A major part of the push for AI is because it can emulate human decision making while parsing orders of magnitude more data. Trying to find a person in Petabytes worth of video and imagery and metadata is like finding a needle in a hay-planet. Sure, they may have all that surveillance, but most of the signal gets lost in the billions of times more noise.

3. The government is not a monolith. The 50-agencies-in-a-trench-coat may try to pass themselves off as a unified entity, but when push comes to shove, they’re a bunch of organizations that all have their own agenda, and each organization is just a bunch of people that all have their own agenda. Push hard enough, and you’ll start to see the cracks form. Talk to any government employee and you’ll soon realize their org is just as susceptible to all the internal bullshit squabbles that any private company is.

4. Piggybacking off of 2 and 3: they need manpower that they don’t have. When we talk about “the state” or “the government,” we can lose sight of the fact that these organizations aren’t composed of countless, faceless people. Instead of 10% of all civilians, it’s less than 1%. This number may still be huge compared to the size of local leftist org chapters and lemmy communities, but it’s only like 1.3% of the working class.

5. Combining 3 and 4: the large majority of those government employees are also part of the proletariat. Their loyalty to the government only extends as far as their paycheck, and if any kind of class revolution were to kick into full swing, there would be a mass exodus of labor. There would also be hundreds of thousands of workers who are sympathetic to the cause on the inside, throwing wrenches in all kinds of cogs.

So yes, things are pretty bleak with the state of privacy in this day and age. No, there is no magical solution where an authoritarian government just willfully cedes its power to control its populace. No, there won’t be any way to altogether avoid revolutionaries being incarcerated or worse. No, it won’t fix itself, nor will somebody else take the reigns while we can comfortably be bystanders.

But it’s not already a lost cause.

But if I’m not able to update constantly, how else will I get the dopamine hits from watching the numbers go up?