So you may have heard of the install gentoo meme, when I looked the guidebook I thought it looked a little complex like with Arch.

Does Gentoo have something special that other distros do not? Apparently you can use the USE FLAGS to determine what stuff you want and it's meant to be even more lean on resources.

Isn't there a Gentoo installer like with Arch? With Arch I can confidently just run the installer on a VM but I got stuck with Gentoo

As a beginner I mainly focused on Cinnamon, XFCE and GNOME but want to try out a windowing DE on a VM to get a feel for things.

What window manager DE would you recommend to a first timer that doesn't use tiling DEs?

There seems to be pretty popular ones like i3 and hyprland.

I was also hoping if some wm's still have a task bar as I am comfortable using that to keep a traditional style as I come from a long line use of Windows as well (starting from the XP era)

Thank you if you have any recommendations, it is good to branch your horizons a bit!

Forgive me but this part of the open source and foss confuses me. If you code and release an open source and free piece of software like say, a robust video player such as VLC, how is that dev being paid?

Because in my eyes (I'm not too privy to FOSS ins and outs)

I'm basically getting your software for free of no charge, it IS free as in free beer cos you're not asking ME to pay it for so who is paying YOU?

Does it come via donations or wealthy corporations like Red Hat and Microsoft pay or fund open sourced projects that is given to the hard working developers of that OSS/FOSS project?

My favourite sandwich has gotta be mayo chicken in a bagel with crunchy lettuce, satisfying in both taste and the crunchy texture of chopped iceberg lettuce from the shops.

Another one would be sausage and egg with some cheeky brown sauce (British lemmy users know what I mean)

What is YOUR favourite sandwich? Fillings or sauces to go with it, maybe your favourite type of bread?

For me I had a stack dvd blanks left over, I decided to save a little bit of money and used them to back up folders of childhood photos, documents etc and place them inside their own jewel cases.

I do have a 2TB external HDD, But that I throw on LARGE steam game back ups and movies.

Sure, the "cloud" exists and I use that too but what if your intewebz goes down, good luck getting your backups until it's back up.

What do you use? Optical media, tape drives etc?

I'd like some recommendations as a beginner in the virtualization space for good GUI software for running vms for both experimentation and server use.

I've used virtualbox on Windows before but are there any better alternatives on Linux? I hear a lot of praise of QEMU but this seems to be only terminal based like what you do with containers.

VMware workstation is free but again, I'd like to know your thoughts on other good beginner options.

Thank you advance and have a good day/afternoon/night

So I shop around to get some bits and pieces for a good home made meal, and I notice some items say, a pack of vegan burgers, these are more expensive than regular burgers!

I'm not a vegan but I'm curious as to why these items are priced as such, it's a bit of a pain for people who can only eat gluten free food as those items are priced high too. The bread we get for me grandpapa is pricey for what you get.

Is it different production methods that make it pricey? You'd think with healthier, easier to get ingredients would be cheaper than producing regular non vegan items.

What sort of martial arts do you practice in and why? Judo? Karate?

Educating yourself in self defence seems very useful especially if you live in parts of a country that might be rough.

I'd like to get into it myself but I can't hear well, I can lip read however. Did some boxing when I was very young but it was only practice on training bags : )

Kung Fu students and masters alike, let me know your wisdom!

Aside from Linux running on NASA hardware, phones and consoles. Does it run on ATM machines, PDAs and point of sale monitors?

I ask this because I've seen Windows being used in airport terminals and really old versions being used for cash machines as well. The crowdstrike problem made this more prevalent by seeing "non end user computers" using the OS.

Does Linux fill this niche as well do you know? I don't recall hearing any big name embedded distro used for those sorts of machines. Maybe Alpine Linux or NetBSD?

Thank you in advance for your input!

I should clarify I wasn't a upper level sys admin managing those servers, I just used them or maintained accounts being a rank and file technician

While I get the fundamental concept of DNS as a phonebook for your IPs. I am not sure why it is joked around if something goes haywire or someone breaks something.

Is it because if you get no DNS, people can't log in through their AD accounts, browse the Internet?

Afaik DNS is a bit of a rabbit hole topic, maybe that's why people joke about it due to DNS being this "No one really knows how this magic name matching box works"?

Please correct me, I'd genuinely like to know why this is prevalent from you guys.

Consider me a weeb but I like Japan, it has some truly beautiful nature and cuisines to try across the country.

Yes, there is a bit of that anime or gaming side to it, they've birthed many favourite nostalgic franchises of mine like Crash Bandicoot or Pokemon.

I also really like their architecture with their traditional houses and castles, the whole thing just seems really peaceful and tranquil given it it is a "quiet and polite" country.

Their country might be set in their ways but that is what I think makes the country special, keeping its traditions, beliefs and culture for many, many years.

My bro likes Spain because of their food and hot sunny weather 😎

What about you? What country do you like and why?

What is your pizza chain of choice?

Pizza Hut - Probably my favorite in terms of franchises since I like their salad bar and where I live I'd say their prices are more reasonable

Domino's - ehh I've only had them twice in my entire life and I think the price is a bit much for what you get, there are some cracking deals though that top Pizza Hut

Papa John's - So I hear from lads and ladies that this one more "cheaper" than the first two but I really can't say as we don't have any Papa John's in our city except for 1 small one along a small street.

Local Takeaway - Probably a 2nd close favourite since the takeaway I use always deliver fresh pizzas with a decent amount of toppings, not every takeaway shop who do pizzas are gonna be the same A+ quality though..

So my fellow pizza enjoyers, what's YOUR choice or listing?