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I may have misconveyed my meaning. I wasn't necessarily arguing that systemd has no viable alternatives. I meant to say that where systemd doesn't work (embedded systems being a good example), chances are the lack of support won't be a burden for a reasonably skilled user.

Honestly, it's 2024, and as a result, this post gives me a bit of a chuckle. For most purposes, systemd has won, and honestly, I hardly even notice. (Granted, I have only used Linux during the systemd era.) If systemd actually interferes with one's needs on a technological (not just a vague philosophical) level, little stops them from seeking out a way to use another init system.

Has it gotten more difficult to use other init systems these days? Yes. However, by the time a person has a problem where systemd can't do the job and have to use a different init system, they're probably more than competent enough to create custom services. I also feel like in terms of software support, only the most idiotic, worthless projects have no possible way to port hem to another init system.

I'm pretty sure some basic stuff is running on the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (no thanks to Qualcomm), which is very similar. See https://www.phoronix.com/news/Windows-Dev-Kit-2023-Linux

I wonder if the endgame for getting Linux running on these freakasauruses is not to create a custom UEFI firmware for each laptop that could abstract away the differences between each laptop with an ACPI API, rather that modifying the kernel itself.

It sounds daunting, but people have done it for the Raspberry Pi before. I don't think it runs as actual firmware on the device - I think it's just an ARM binary that could then execute and provide abstraction for a bootloader.

There are difficulties with that, obviously. For one, the Raspberry Pi is one hardware platform, and a Broadcom-based one at that. Still, I can't imagine that you'd have to redo everything from scratch on every platform; it'd basically just be something like a device tree to define the ACPI info built into every firmware build variant. If this idea worked, people could just have an environment to install an operating system on that is almost like a normal UEFI PC but with ARM.

Truth be told though, I kind of wish Ampere would get more into the consumer space; I feel like they have the least insane configuration of almost any ARM device, being users of UEFI. I don't know if they could viably scale down from their 192 core beasts, though. Now that BNL song is going through my head. "If I had a million dollars, I'd buy an Ampere workstation; a power-hungry ARM beast."

Honestly, no. I just use direct apt commands on my Debian installs for native stuff, assuming I even use the shell for that; sometimes, if it's not a complex update that's going to hold back 1.0*10^6^ packages, I just use Synaptic or Package Updater, frankly, as one of those is what I have my XFCE Package Update Indicator set to use on any machine I use frequently and it's convenient sometimes.

As for Flatpaks, I just run the flatpak update command whenever I feel bored. I wish Warehouse GUI supported updating, just because I find it really weird that's excluded from an otherwise pretty slick application that gets rid of me having to muck through the Flathub.

I don't write Rust code at the moment, and as for Python, I'm either using the Debian version of Python packages or scattered venvs that follow a de facto standard for Python developers: "What's an update?"

True; as said, this is Debian Testing. By "major issue", I mean Grub occasionally gets borked and I have to chroot in and fix it, or the time_t_64 transition.

I found the compromise between stability and newer packages acceptable for my desktop machine, which I am usually only on when I would actually have the time to debug these things. However, these days, I'm busy, thus may switch to stable in the next few months.

Having used the same Testing install since early 2022, I'd say it's not too bad. Stability-wise, I only have a major problem once a year.

Eventually, you get tired of having to switch to Flatpaks while packages transition. I'll either stay on Trixie when it goes to stable or reinstall. It's still an ext4 system and I want something different, as stable as ext4 is. I've been using btrfs on my new laptop for about a month and have been happy.

Honestly, in the age of Flatpaks, stable Debian is fine for most people in my opinion.

I guess also, for Badgey facial expressions, I got some practice when I attempted to design a Lego Badgey figure (in addition to all of the Cerritos crew, most of which are fine except for Rutherford is really hard and so is T'Ana. Also, I need to fix up Billups's face. I did like how Shax's face turned out, though, even though he still needs a bit of work.)

Thanks. I actually overlayed a transparent image of Badgey over to get the relative sizing right. The eyebrows I did by myself, though, partly based on image reference; on the last one, though I tried to capture angry 10th doctor going stone cold through the ISS Cerritos hallways slaughtering fascists left and right.

I might add proportions were very hard and his eyes are actually proportionally much bigger than prime Badgey because when I tried to make the proportions the same, he looked TOO derpy.

Still a bit bizarre. I feel like with 2TB NVMe as cheap as it is, HDDs in anything remotely portable are insane.

Now they make sense in RAID/NAS stuff, but I feel like ones the 3.5” ones.

I like CoreCtrl. I don’t know how well it works with Intel and Nvidia, but it’s great on my AMD Thinkpad and desktop.

Nice thing is it’s in most distros’ repos these days.

I haven't researched this (I don't have kids), but out of curiosity, what type of mobile device is your daughter using? Also, I think PiHole is a solid recommendation like others recommend.

Otherwise, from a quick Google, I don't know of anything that can integrate both Linux PC and mobile phone screen time. Honestly, this sounds like a fun project I could implement someday if I ever had the will. However, for right now, in terms of screen time all I can think of is reading system logs (perhaps via SSH) to manually analyze your daughter's screen time.

Delightfully 2000s. Maybe replace that icon theme, though. Also not big on any official Ubuntu derivatives, but that’s your choice in the end.