The first time I used Linux was Slackware, after I heard about in college in 1998. This was also the same time I got my first PC, having only puttered on a Commodore 64 at home and the PCs at school. I didn't have a problem with Microsoft, Windows, or DOS, I liked them well enough and had been using them since the late 80s, but something about the freedom to be found with Linux was inspiring to me in a unique way. Sadly, I had neither the skills nor the focus to forge a path through the FOSS landscape, so until more things "just worked" (due to the amazing efforts of folks far smarter than me), Linux was mostly just a thing a I installed, configured, and never actually used for much; Windows was always easier to actually use.

For a lot of tasks, Windows still is a lot easier to use. No surprise there really, software designed for Windows works well Windows. Wow, what magic is this! No harm in that. I actually liked Windows 98/2000/XP/7 and I still think that Vista Home Basic was the pinnacle of Windows UI cohesiveness and visual appeal. It makes me sad that every version since has forced me compromise, forced me to either accept Microsoft's terms and Microsoft's way of doing things, else I just don't get to use my computer the way I like to use it.

Linux never made me feel this way, until Unity in Ubuntu. As difficult as it could be and as limited as the functionality may have been, at least it was possible to run the GNU/Linux software I wanted on my computer in the way I wanted to run it. But since the time that Unity was thrust upon us, the options available to me to use Linux the way I would like (basically Ubuntu 2006, where it Debian that "just worked") has diminished considerably.

It really does feel like we can have all the Linux software freedom we want, so long as it is the Linux software freedom that RedHat et al. like and support.

"Well you're free to make your own distro if you don't like what others are doing", some truly ignorant trolls would say and while they're technically correct, actually doing this is not within the realm of possibility even for people like me who are modestly well versed in "Linux" and have been using it ~25 years. Making one's own distro for daily use isn't feasible. Heck, even trying to wrangle a sensible base system like Devuan into the setup that I want to use takes a few days of configuration and tinkering. Telling people to "roll their own" is disingenuous, perhaps even malicious - failure puts the user right back in the situation of having to use their computer in a way they don't want, simply because other people like using their own computers in that way.

Anyway, in an ideal world I'd be able to use all the software and hardware that I want in the ways I would like; I care about my freedom to privately do as I please and not really about what operating system I am using.

I sincerely appreciate the Devuan team for allowing me to continue to "Debian" like it's 2010, because it's the most comfortable and productive way I have found to use Linux since the enshitification of Ubuntu/Mint.

Maybe you don't, but how else could one describe being able to go a giant building filled to the brim with food and being able to leave with a tiny portion of what one used to be able to afford? I mean, if that's not magical, what is?

I have always hated the concept of computer security. It's a real non-topic. Anything made by a person can be broken by a person. Whoopdeedoo. As an end-user, all computer security amounts to is a bunch of super nerds making my computer run slower, because they just couldn't leave well enough alone. I don't want to know about computer security; I don't care.

I do care about surveillance and profiling by corporations for profits, especially all of those corps who are totally keen on exploiting people while also doing their very best to avoid paying the taxes which fund the development and maintenance of human civilization. Those abhorrent leaches can fuck right off.

I also care about the ineptitude we witness at all levels of the Canadian government, but there's literally nothing I can do about it, so... oh well, I guess. Ultimately, the world isn't mine to change anyway. I am certain that we average everyday people truly believe that those we elect to represent us will get their shit together, make rational decisions, and carry on with improving our lives like our post WWII representatives did. After all, that's what we sensible, common folks would do. Sadly, the monetary system is the system with the greatest influence on human civilization, at all levels, and it's also a system that most easily rewards the worst people; lie, cheat, steal, exploit, one's way to riches and influence over the fabric of society itself. That's not such a great system, is it? But that's how it works, even in a relatively safe and peaceful democratic country like Canada.

What were we talking about?

Life has been very busy... I drafted replies a couple times, but only just now found the time to finish...

At one point between now and the last updates, I RTFM and found where there was a difference between Ubuntu 22.04 and Devuan 4:

/usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes/evdev

However, when I updated my laptop to Daedalus the files are identical, save for Daedalus having a line about emojis.

That was my only lead, so I still don't know what's going on. I can say for sure that "Fn" key doesn't register at all in Devuan or Debian, using any of the software for finding keycodes. It stands to reason that's why none of its key combinations work. However, in this BIOS mode the F1-F12 keys should default to their special functions, but they're just being treated like normal function keys.

I went through every keyboard related config file in /etc and /usr and the initramfs of Ubuntu and Devuan and I RTFM, but I still wasn't able to find the difference. They "just work" in Ubuntu... must be magic, I guess.

I've never been a Mac person, so when both the Blackberry and Windows phones took a dump, I went with Android. Prior to then, whenever that was, I had actually de-Googled. After re-Googling a little for the play store access, it just all piled on with the wife and kids using Chromebooks for school (and ChromeOS is kinda cool for what it is). My usage is still limit though. I really do only use gmail, drive, and Chrome/ChromeOS, though I use Chrome in an incognito window for everything other than gmail, drive, outlook, and spotify. I know incognito is not private, but it does prevent building a history in one's Google account.

Still, none of that speaks to why I heald faith for so long. Pragmatic optimism and the convenience of drive, I guess. That was, of course, before I learned that they have that really stupid culture that chases novelty and ignores the value of maintaining the quality of services; In my books, 800 days of 100% uptime for gmail is way more deserving of a raise than banging out yet another messaging app, etc. Google is broken, from the inside out, and it sucks almost as much as their search results.

Using the installer included in the apt repos, Steam updated itself the latest version. It's been a good experience with the games I have tried: No Man's Sky, Bejeweled 3, DiRT Rally (Original), Ghostbuster's Remastered, and Black Mesa. Bejeweled needed Proton 8.0-2, but the rest worked with Experimental. Man I wish I had more Windows games on Steam!

The first distro I used was Slackware, back '98, but I switched to Debian (Libranet) in 2001, because apt is awesome! I've played with Slackware since and I love it in principle, but I really don't miss using it at all! For Windows games in Devuan, I wish it were as simple as "apt-get install stardew-valley", with a prompt to log into your purchasing platform for verification. Hmm...

I like "doing one thing" and for computing, traditional Debian excelled at being a single, coherent OS. Maybe that's caused by my C64 and DOS heritage, but it's what I like. In fairness, I did think Damn Small Linux, Salix, and Knoppix were cool, but not really as daily driver systems.

Anyway... We're here on this forum, using this OS, because Devuan is the continuation of that original Debian experience. Personally, I really don't want a bunch of frameworks, subsystems, managers, launchers, stores, installers, and containers mucking up the experience of my "personal computer". As I said in my first post, that type of Rube Goldberg machine is a big part of why I no longer want to use Windows. I'm not going to muck up the nice, clean, reliable, enjoyable Debian experience that Devuan delivers.

Having mostly ignored using Windows games on Linux over the years (apart from WoW and SWG), I don't know much about the subject. I do remember trying Lutris around 2013, but as I said, with a dual boot, it wasn't worth the trouble. However, in 2023 Lutris does seem to be the path of least resistance to play the games I have purchased on GOG and Epic, so I will give that a whirl next. If Lutris worked with Steam games without having to launch Steam, I guess that would be an ideal "one thing" for Windows games on Linux, but I am absolutely not into chain loading launchers to use programs. Type command or click icon, that's my speed, man!

TL:DR:
- Apt is awesome. Log live Apt and Devuan!
- Steam is awesome! Almost like Apt for Windows games.
- Still exploring options for non-Steam Windows games.

It really does seem that the only way to preserve a bit of your history online is to become just famous enough to qualify for a modest Wikipedia entry. "Golinux was an upstanding member of the GNU/Linux community in the early 21st Century. Here is a picture of him at Uber Nerdcon Extreme Linux Edition '29 talking to a group of doting fans". Beyond that our data is so much dust...

Google... See, I want to like them and be all happy about using their products, as I type this on my Lenovo Thinkpad C14 Gen 1 Chromebook, with my Pixel 6a snoozing on the bedside table, but they sure go out of their way to be unlikable and in so many ways! Seriously, I upgrade to the 6a from my old-as-dirt Samsung Galaxy 6 and i swear to Richard Stallman, the Google folks took every mundane task one can do in Android 9 and added at least 2 levels of futzing to them in Android 13. Swipe down and turn off WiFi with a tap? Nope, now you have open Connections and then tap the Wifi toggle, because that's so much better! Honestly, there are at least 7 of this exact problem with features one uses all the time... The usability of my phone has cratered from that high point of Galaxy 6 (itself I had to go back to twice, after giving my giving my children my Galaxy 8/10e/A53 at various times, because they broke theirs).

Anyway, I like using Gmail, Goggle Drive, ChromeOS, and (older versions of) Android, but I've lost all faith in Google's ability to not suck, let alone actually be good at anything.

As for our memories outlasting our lives, nothing beats good old books! There are plenty of nifty tools and services for turning our photos (and even spoken thoughts) into awesome hard or soft cover books. I did a garden memory book for the kids back in 2013 using HP's service and it has held up well (sitting on a shelf most of the time). If your book tells a story, who knows how it may captivate someone in the future.

Huh. It's been two years since that bug report. I suppose it's not a priority for the maintainers.

Wow that brings me back to when Slackware with KDE 3.5 was all new and shiny. I used that for quite a while. That was the same era as the Opera 12 browser. Such a good browser. It was also the only version of KDE I liked. For the longest time I preferred Xfce, but the screen tearing with Nvidia/compositing issue has become too much of a PIA to bother with given that Mate looks and works almost the same and has no such issues. KDE Plasma was OK I suppose, but I'd rather use Mate. The rest I have used, from JWM to Cinnamon, but really... all I actually want from a desktop environment is perfectly delivered with Mate. Newer does not mean better...

What bothers me is thus...

- I own a boxed copy of Windows 7.
- All of my desktop hardware has drivers for Windows 7.
- There's no problem running an old OS on a system that isn't on a network.
- I can install Windows 7 on my system without a problem.
- I can't install the GPU drivers, because they require updates that Microsoft no longer offers for download.

So, here I have a piece of software that I paid for which I can no longer use in its entirety, because the company who sold it to me removed access to some of its updates/patches/etc and no one else is authorized to provide those missing components.

Microsoft doesn't care what we want to do with our computers. They don't care that we paid for them and that they belong to us. They don't care if we have valid reasons to use older machines. In short,

Microsoft doesn't care.

For what it's worth, my lowly AMD FX-8320 based desktop is still a speedy super computer for me, from compiling with GCC in Linux to playing games in Windows 10. I can't justify spending the money to upgrade it just so it can do all the same stuff, but faster... and with Secure Boot / TPM.

It is a bummer that it will become harder to find hardware that doesn't come with all this new crud. Hard to say how much that will matter, but "very little" is my feeling, should this plateau of computing continue on through the 2030s (I mean really, other than "faster and with higher detail" and the smartphone form factor, fuck all has changed in computing since 2001).