It will be a pleasure, like every other year of the Linux Desktop™ for more than 20 years now! :-)

My pleasure. :-)

My impression about VS Code being popular is also from workplaces at several companies, VS Code was literally on every machine and VS Code project config files are nowadays checked in with project into version control. (In the past I would not have been happy about config files in version control, but I just accepted it by now.)

One more question: How to setup VIM/NEOVIM or EMACS as a descent C# IDE? AFAIK the language servers support navigation and auto completion, what about refactoring, code generation, support for build systems, hot reloading for code while debugging etc.?

No, never touched neovim.

The things you get ‘for free’ with VS Code:

• Integrated debugger
• Integrated unit test runner
• black
• isort
• linting

For Python, AFAIK Microsoft have their own implementation of a language server, so I don’t know how it compares to the Open Source options. My VIM config for Python runs black/isort on save and that’s good enough for me.

IMHO the distance is far greater when you use a language like Java/C#, which has really descent support from IDEs.

If neovim serves your needs, enjoy using it and don’t listen to random people in the internet. ;-)

Disclaimer: Never really used Emacs, but mediocre VI(M) user for nearly 25 years.

I am fully capable of using VIM for developing bigger programs, but I gave up on the wish of setting up VIM as an IDE. Still, IMHO VIM is worth knowing for quick edits, writing and remote work.

Seriously, if you want an IDE for Python and C#, VS Code with the Microsoft plugins is and will be miles ahead of the VIM experience. The Rust plugin for VS Code is IMHO subpar, the last time I tried it. I don’t know what is the favorite IDE of Rust developers.

I wouldn’t want to stop you trying out editors and having a nice journey, but in the last years, VS Code ‘won’ and is used by nearly every developer for a reason: It has not a perfect setup and a lot of annoying issues, but out of the box the experience is good enough™ and is has the biggest user base by far, so show stoppers will be fixed quite fast.

So, my advice would be: Learn vi, because it is a handy tool for quick edits with good defaults (looking at EMACS) and chose a popular editor or IDE for your development needs. The time trying to force VIM/EMACS into a descent IDE will never come back and the theory sounds better than it will be in reality.

In my personal life, I run Linux on all my devices and I would never invest in non-opensource technology for my career. (Work forces me to run macOS, but that’s another story).

For years now, I happily and only buy games on Steam, even if I have the choice between Steam and NoDRM. Simply because Steam just works™ and is convenient. (Of course one never buys games on steam with a forced additional starter from Ubisoft etc.).

Steam is really great from a technically POV, from a giving back to the community point and from a customer friendliness point (never had a problem with a return).

I even bought a SteamDeck although I am no big fan of handhelds, and for what it is, it is great.

I’ll happily waste more money on my Steam backlog of shame. ;-)

Thanks, of course the color escapes are the first thing I ran into yesterday, when I played around with prompt functions. ;-)

Porting your prompt command to another language is a very nice and practical little project, perhaps I will give it a go with Go. (Pun intended ;-))

Have a great week!

Wow, thank you very much! :-)

This example is very enlightening. I was kind of aware that one could run shell functions and even use a GIT function in my prompt, but I never thought it through and your example brings the point home.

I’ll waste most probably a few hours to find my perfect prompt function!

(Mandatory xkcd link Nerd Sniping)

Damn it! That is such an obvious great idea, I feel like an idiot! Thank you very much! :-)

Any advice/guide how to change the color for ssh sessions?

zsh … it is totally awesome, I saw a lot of crazy autocomplete stuff by people using it. I stick to bash mostly because it is simply installed everywhere and good enough for my needs. (With some help like autojump for bash.)

Had a 100X, back then with 2GB RAM. Worked OOTB with Linux w/o trouble, all hardware supported. Good times. Later, starting your browser maxed out the RAM so not a viable option anymore.

Nowadays I can happily recommend a HP Stream 11". Works perfectly with Fedora 39, good battery life. (Obviously you don’t want to use such a machine for more than casual work/internet surfing. But as a cheap/solid travel netbook, it is perfect. Typing this message on it.)

Thanks! And I totally agree with you: We don’t have to defend or like what the corporations/companies do, most of their moves I don’t like. OTOH Linux would not be anywhere w/o their investment. (Sad look over to the *BSDs, Haiku and ReactOS.)

There is so much crazy good and innovative output from the communities around Fedora and openSUSE (I like what is happening with Aeon right now, very cool and innovative)… so IMHO it should be the default for every FOSS user to project the communities which produce great products free of charge from bullshiters. :-)

Cheers!

First, Fedora is not Red Hat but their own community. (Although heavily sponsored by Red Hat) Second, Red Hat is FOSS.

The ones hostile to FOSS are all the freeloading companies, which used the work of Red Hat to increase their own profit, w/o contributing anything back.

If it is so easy, cheap and so much fun to support a stable Distribution for 10 years with backports for security vulnerabilities and drivers, I am very surprised that we don’t have hundreads of community distributions which do this.

Finally, over the years Red Hat contributed a load of the things we take for granted now.

(Writing this as a happy Debian user. I am just tired of reading this kind of bullshit again and again and again.)

Thank you very much for elaborating. :-)

Interesting browser choices. ;-) I like what I see from Vivaldi, but I rarely need Chrome compatibility and Chromium is in the repositories of all distributions I use, so I never opt for Vivaldi. Just a personal preference or any good reason to use Vivaldi over Chromium etc.?

Thanks for your elaboration.

When I scanned the website, I read this

“The real-time version is recommended for critical runtime applications such as Linux gaming server / client for eSports, streaming, live productions and ultra-low latency enthusiasts.”

and saw that they optimize IO. (I missed the word ‘client’ above.)

Nowadays I do my gaming on a SteamDeck, I don’t own a PC powerful enough to be useful for gaming. Don’t know about Valves changes to the kernel, but I never encountered any stutters with the Deck. If I ever find the time to build a gaming PC, I’ll give this kernel a try!

… and sorry again, I wrote not very clear (non native English speaker): I wanted to express, that I always hear/read that nowadays one should simply stick to the default kernel in the distributions. Was not aware that there are big differences for gaming.

Thank you very much for your explanation.

I still feel skeptical about using a chips controller for encryption. AFAIK there have been multiple problems in the past:

• Errors in the implementation which weaken the encryption considerably
• I think I even read about ways to extract the key from the hardware (TPM based encryption)

Do you provide a password and there are ‘hooks’ which the boot process uses for you to enter the password on boot?

I think it is nice to have full disk encryption, but usually we are speaking about evil-maid attacks (?), and IMHO it is mostly game over when an attacker has physical access to your device.

Nice, I second VSCode, although I have always a VIM version for the quick edits installed.

I just checked the website for xanmod and it looks interesting, several questions:

• Do you really use it on a desktop? (The website seems to suggest it is optimized for server loads)
• How exactly do you experience the difference in performance?
• What is your most low tech computer you run xanmod on? (I simply heard too many times, that nowadays there is no good reason to compile your own kernel unless you have very specific needs.)

Thanks for the list.

The way I setup my minimal systems is to uncheck everything during tasksel, then switch to another virtual console, chroot to /target and install what I need. Saves one reboot and hassles, when installing via thump drive. (Did this for Xfce in the past.)

I feel envious - I would love to run Silverblue like you do! :-)

Impressive list! What is the benefit of using Opal compared to LUKS?