NormalC [he/him, comrade/them]

Free software advocate and queer bangladeshi muslim anarchy-trans.Refuge from blahaj.zone cat-trans

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  • 31 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • Since presuming the computer came with Windows activated preinstalled, then the license key is likely embedded into the BIOS of the device. Reinstalling Windows will not void that license key because you already paid for it with the “windows tax.” I’ve reinstalled windows on my pre-built “gaming” PC and the license activated automatically.

    There are some pains getting a USB bootable installer image with Windows on a full GNU/Linux system, but it is entirely possible. It’s also possible to virtualize windows with GPU pass-through or use Wine/Proton which should always be examined before attempting to reinstall Windows (which is always a last resort).










    • a minimal, fast system
    • keyboard / shortcut based - all interactions can be done from keyboard (within common sense limits)
    • all keys can be custom mapped (i have muscle memory of my custom keys for certain actions, so i’d like to keep them)
    • all can be configured from dotfiles (worse case shell scripts and ansible)
    • very low ressource consumption, snappy system with no delay

    I’d recommend Debian 12/testing/sid with the Sway compositor. Homebrew, Nix and Guix can all be installed on top of any GNU/Linux distribution to provide containerized packages. Flatpak can be used to obtain the latest version of graphical applications as well. Terminals like alacritty and kitty are Wayland natives and Foot is widely considered to be the most minimal “default” terminal for Wayland compositors. You can use Sway’s built in “swaybar” or status bars like Waybar and eww. Sway configuration is just like i3 where you can configure specific devices like keyboards and monitors from a single file.


  • Technical documentation of API, Language constructs, and usage (a la mandoc) should always have a standard-compliant (any widely accepted help manual format like mdbook or texi) text form licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL). This is to ensure that freedom 01 (“The freedom to study how the program works”) is not obstructed in any way.

    Videos are tougher due to having a much wider arrange of factors. First off, you’d want to make your videos accessible (using subtitles, on-screen graphics and not just a narration all the way through, translation to other languages). You’d also want to be able to share that video among your peers without obstruction. Just having it be hosted to a proprietary mass-media site like YouTube will not be enough. I have doubts about the “hit record and magic happens” premise, videos are a lot more daunting than text formats if you don’t have the prerequisite equipment and skills beforehand.

    If you really want to create videos, you should have a text alternative to the video or at least a technical summary of the video’s topics attached alongside the video so that you can leverage both text and video alongside each other.