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XFCE Vs MATE
  • I’ve never used MATE - almost always been an XFCE guy since I got serious about Linux.

    It was sort of an accident. After a while of using Ubuntu in a VM (including a weird IceWM stint), I tried installing Debian on an old laptop I had sitting around. The first attempt, where I tried KDE, something went wrong with the Network Manager install. At this point, I can never know what went wrong - it’s been years All I know is that I chose XFCE on the second attempt and didn’t have the problems, likely due to coincidence. Still, I stick with XFCE out of satisfaction.

  • Upgrade to Freedom! The Switch from Windows 10
  • I mean YaST is kind of snazzy, though not enough to pull me from Debian for the moment.

  • Why? - Weird Pi 5 RAM upgrade

    I guess for the thrill, same reason that I’m attempting LFS?

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    What's the most obscure distro you can think of
  • This distro’s default background isn’t a knockoff of any particular popular non-*nix proprietary operating system’s default background:

  • This happened to me while getting a refresher on Memory Alpha

    Seriously, though. I think I've seen this guy in the grocery store down here in AZ.

    1
    What's the most obscure distro you can think of
  • Everybody knows glorious leader’s operating system. 😉

  • Question about Pika backup
  • Honestly, rather than reinstalling, I’d suggest you boot into a live disk and use dd to copy your old disk over to the new one, then use Gpsrted or something to expand your partition. This worked very well when I upgraded the drives for my Debian install - I think it’s been two years since at thid point without any issues.

    If you don’t have an extra drive slot, you might need to get an external adapter.

  • Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x05 "Starbase 80?!"
  • My only theory is they were kind of as prolific as the TOS film uniforms and lasted into the 2240s and were getting rare but still seen occasionally in the 2260s.

  • B5 crossover
  • Can’t be as bad as Earth: Final Conflict - I’ve watched the first season-and-a-half and was sustained at first by plot and then by awe at how shark jumpy it got after Boone died and how alien space baby rapid aged into an adult man and replaced him as the main character.

  • Where to start?
  • After watching other Star Trek shows, you'll find the true beauty is the vast majority of Lower Decks completely fits into canon, as "the true Star Trek lore" contains some ridiculous stuff.

  • Annotations for *Star Trek: Lower Decks* 5x05: “Starbase 80?!” (SPOILERS)
  • I just realized something else - I think this episode might contain the first mention of Cetacean ops going on an away mission, which reveals a lot about how their Starfleet lives might work.

    I still wonder about several things, which I’ve been wanting to make my own post about anyway and probably will soon.

  • LF Distro
  • I like Debian. To save you the misery, though, you should probably just use the OBS Flatpak with it. I used to be a “native” pedant, but these days, I at minimum consider Flatpak a VERY necessary evil, if an evil at all.

  • Where to start?
  • You dare defile Lower Decks by calling other stuff “More cannon”! Experience bij, petaQ! 😉

    In all seriousness, though, I would say DS9. The first season is much better than TNG season 1 in my opinion - not perfect, but livable. It mostly gets better from there, though like VOY, be prepared for sudden urges for Rick Berman to “accidentally fall out an airlock”, if you know what I mean.

    This might be tinted by DS9 being my favorite Trek series, although Lower Decks is putting up fierce competition for DS9’s top spot in my heart.

  • what do you think of people who use linux but use non-linux related stuff as their wallpaper??
  • Every time I work with a Mac, Hackintosh, etcetera, the 5K upscale of XP Bliss is my default as a joke (except I think near the end of one school year, where I set the background to something from OS 9).

    It was even my iPhone background for a while, though right now, it’s a random James Webb image.

  • what do you think of people who use linux but use non-linux related stuff as their wallpaper??
  • Autism has little to do with it - I’m on the spectrum and I have “proprietary” Star Trek wallpapers on all my Linux machines - Ent D and DS9 on desktop, DS9 crew on laptop, Cerritos on that one old Chromebook I installed Bcachefs Debian Testing on for fun once, Borg cube on my Surface…

    Now my wallpaper choices and overall Star Trek fandom… you could probably make a reasonable guess on where that comes from. 😉

  • Asking what I thought that cj user was saying: What non-Linux devices do you use and why?
  • iPhone, mostly because of family.

    I eventually want to jump to Lineage on Pixel, but that’s not an option for me currently.

    My Thinkpad has the factory Windows install on its factory-installed drive, but I only booted it once and otherwise never use it. As the laptop has 2 M.2 slots, I just installed a 2 TB SSD in its secondary slot and installed Debian 12 on it right after I opened the box. I nearly always use that install.

    I recently had an exam where the spyware test monitoring Chrome extension was mad about me using Linux (I only use Chromium when I have an exam - otherwise I just use Firefox), so I had to use one of the Windows machines in the lab. This was weird, because I’ve taken other tests (including after this incident) that didn’t have a problem.

    Back in high school, I had to use a Chromebook and the occasional iMac, though the Chromebook is technically a Linux device.

  • B5 crossover
  • I need to the h*** give Babylon 5 a try eventually.

  • Annotations for *Star Trek: Lower Decks* 5x05: “Starbase 80?!” (SPOILERS)
  • I have a few questions on uniforms.

    For one, I just find it a bit strange some of them are wearing ENT-era uniforms, especially considering the base was updated in the 2260s. Although the uniforms look slick, chronologically, it almost feels like a run down American naval wessel in the 1970s wearing revolutionary war uniforms. I wonder if this points to the ENT uniforms being used for a really long time (no, my time is not finally here) much like the TOS film uniforms, if at least as a starbase uniform. Thus, it was still perfectly normal to see an ENT uniform in the 2230s and 40s, and not all that uncommon in the early 2260s.

    Now what really confuses me, though, is how the base says they don't have combadges, which conflicts with the previous depictions of base officers in LD:"Trusted Sources":

    I at first thought that maybe they were just embroidered like TOS uniforms. However, someone on Memory Alpha also caught this frame of one of these same personnel in 5x05:

    The badge is gone, which suggests they are removable. This implies two possibilities: they were aesthetic, non-functioning badges, or they were real combadges.

    I wonder why they disappeared. One theory might be the station used to be able to support a few, but the system broke and the few combadges in circulation were retired.

  • SHUT UP EDDINGTON! NOBODY LIKES YOU!

    Okay, I admit Vendome came after, but still, it's not like ops/security/engineering people have never become captain. Plus, come on. Vendome's face was just begging to be memed.

    The main example I can think of from canonically before this moment is Uhura, though everyone was wearing red uniforms at the time.

    4
    Episode Analysis | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x04 "A Farewell to Farms"
  • Ma’ah’s brother says all the “I can see the original Kahless” stuff at the end of the episode. That means that Kahless II being a clone is common knowledge. I wonder when that happened, though Kor seemed aware of it in DS9:”The Sword of Kahless”.

  • Featured
    Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Lower Decks | 5x04 "A Farewell To Farms"
  • This beings up an intriguing question of when Kahless being a clone became common knowledge.

  • Preview ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Episode 505 With New Images From “Starbase 80?!”
  • There’s plenty of other crappy Starbases in the Federation… certain of that.

  • More Secure Handling of Transporter Clones

    After rewatching DS9: “Defiant”, I had a thought; to prevent transporter clones from impersonating each other, could Starfleet require, as a part of duty, that transporter clones receive slight genomic resequencing that changes no major traits but allows DNA scanners to distinguish them?

    I can think of a few issues. One, would it break genetic experimentation laws even though there would be negligible changes to each transporter clone? Two, is this too sever a violation of personal liberties for the Federation to be allowed? Three, is the technology there to do this effectively in a starship’s sickbay?

    3
    What is your top TMBG Halloween song?

    I have several that I've leaned towards over the years, but I recently added "Cyclops Rock" to my repertoire.

    7
    Where Do You Guys Throw Your Local Git Repos?

    Personally, to keep my documents like Inkscape files or LibreOffice documents separate from my code, I add a directory under my home directory called Development. There, I can do git clones to my heart's content

    What do you all do?

    83
    This Ramones Song Kind of Reminds Me of "No One Knows My Plan"

    I wonder if it's just coincidence, if this inspired the Johns (I know they're Ramones fans, or if the two songs share a common ancestor.

    1
    Confusion on Trek Eras

    TLDR; Is PRO TNG or PIC era? Do Trek eras as we know them even matter anymore?

    Edit: Fixed TOK to be TWOK era. My 2 brain cells had failed me there.

    Before I give my problem, here's what I find the conventional Star Trek eras to be (including some common sub-eras that some might consider distinct):

    • ENT era: 2150s-2160s
    • TOS era: 2250s-early 2290s
      • TWOK era: 2270s-early 2290s
    • Lost era: 2290s-roughly 2330s
    • TNG era: 2340s-early 2380s (I count Enterprise C as roughly the start of the TNG era. At the very least, the shuttle for the Hansen's ill-fated trip in the 2350s has the trappings of the TNG era).
      • DS9/VOY/TNG film era: 2370s, maybe early 2380s
    • PIC era: mid 2380s-early 25th century (I think the Utopia Planetia in 2385 is my cutoff)
    • DIS era: 32nd century

    I think most newer series have obvious placements, e.g:

    • DIS starts in the TOS era, then starts its own era.
    • SNW is in the TOS era (I'd argue it's straight up canon, based on LD).
    • LD is TNG era, based on LCARS designs and the story conventions it parodies/pastiches.

    However, the main thing that is ruffling my feathers is that PRO's placement in my framework is very confusing. It exists on an awkward border between TNG and PIC.

    On one hand, some of its storytelling conventions fit better with PIC, not to mention the fact that the Utopia Planetia attack occurs at the end of PRO.

    On the other hand, PRO continues some TNG era characters that aren't yet elderly versions of themselves.

    This goes back to the initial question: Do we place the vast majority of PRO in the TNG era (and have like the last five minutes of season 2 [hopefully not the show] in PIC era), or do we extend the Picard era backwards to 2383 to include PRO in its entirety?

    The 2383 solution might work, as that leaves 2382 in the TNG era for the 5th season of Lower Decks.

    10
    *SPOILERS* A Dos Cerritos Fan Theory

    I have a random guess about the problem with the alternate, bearded Boimler: he’s actually William Boimler, who killed (or imprisoned) Bradward and took his place on that Cerritos for mysterious Section 31 reasons.

    That Boimler even says, “nobody deserves to be replaced by their own double.”

    1
    Anyone know anything about this particular Okudagram?

    EDIT: I forgot to add a screenshot. Here it is.

    While re-watching DS9 S1:E19 "Duet", I noticed this okudagram around 6:21 and got a bit curious.

    Some of these images just look like aliens they would have already had pictures of. However, two stand out as potential easter eggs - the picture on the middle left looks unmistakably like Spock, and the human on the bottom left looks like they could be a production worker or a favorite musical artist.

    However, Memory Alpha and a simple Google Search don't seem to turn up anything. I'm intrigued to know what history, if any, is behind this graphic.

    4
    Why is Boimler so pale even though he grew up on a vineyard?

    Is Federation sun screen just that good? Does the standard Federation checkup include un-tanning? I am at a loss for any explanation.

    11
    Anyone here play the Super Star Trek terminal game?

    I pick it up again every once in a while. I just had a slate of particularly miserable emeritus short losses, including one where 9 of the 13 Klingons left were in one sector. I was docked in a Starbase adjacent to that sector, and I could have sent an armed probe. Instead, to not get any more planet loss points, I decided, "I'm just gonna take em with phasers." I got killed immediately.

    9
    There are only two types of Bad Star Trek Episodes

    Note that Bashir is not yawning, but doing that weird wall shuffling-screaming thing that no one understands, probably not even Siddig or the director at the time of filming.

    Now MOOOOVE ALOOOOOONG HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEM! (Whacks those weird wood sticks together.)

    22
    Favorite Songs off Factory Showroom

    What are your favorite songs off Factory Showroom? I personally enjoy:

    • Spiraling Shape
    • The Bells are Ringing
    • 'Til My Head Falls Off
    • Sing Like a Girl
    0
    For the two *Over the Garden Wall* fans here

    Edit: Okay, a few more fans than I expected, a pleasant suprise.

    If you haven't watched Over the Garden Wall, you should give it a try and watch every episode, especially if you're looking to get into the Halloween spirit. The whole miniseries isn't that long - about the length of a feature film in total.

    Also, my gosh, it was so miserable to put Bashir's skinny pointy little face onto Greg's big round chonker! But bird Garrak was worth it in the end.

    9
    data1701d data1701d (He/Him) @startrek.website

    "Life forms. You precious little lifeforms. You tiny little lifeforms. Where are you?"

    \- Lt. Cmdr Data, Star Trek: Generations

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