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Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: April 21st, 2025

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  • Didn’t islam have to have special religious scholars for figuring out tiny things?

    At least in theory, Islam is traditionally adhered to as an all-encompassing lifestyle. As such, it’s unsurprising to find rulings on the minutia of affairs.

    FWIW, deriving new religious verdicts and/or refining the old is a continuous effort as new issues/situations arise.

    I feel like I remember them having to be called in to issue a special ruling through the Quran that a religious building could be entered temporarily by the police to end a siege between them and some other group.

    Perhaps you are referring to issuing a so-called ‘fatwa’, which is basically understood as a religious ruling derived by an Islamic jurist on a (pressing) matter.





  • I was under the impression Arch was more for “hardcore” users, is that an outdated mindset (or was it ever true)?

    It’s more nuanced than that.

    Arch Linux, the distro Garuda Linux is derived from, is definitely not a distro that holds your hand like e.g. Linux Mint does. It (somewhat) demands you to read extensively through its excellent[1] ArchWiki.

    However, Garuda and other derivatives[2] are opinionated takes on Arch that try to fulfill a specific goal that its respective maintainers have in mind. This can range from using Arch Linux as a base for delivering:

    • a scrutinizingly optimized distro that at (the very) least inches out every other distro in performance (i.e. CachyOS)
    • a distro that functions as a glorified installer[3] for Arch. But with that, remains very close in spirit to what Arch is all about (i.e. EndeavourOS)
    • a ready-to-go gaming distro (i.e. Garuda Linux)
    • (and everything in between and beyond…)

    (Note that the oversimplified descriptions found above don’t quite do justice to the enormous effort that is put into these projects. Furthermore, it has to be mentioned that each of these distros proud themselves on the amazing communities they’ve built.)

    Finally, it goes without saying that having an Arch base continues to pose a (potential) maintenance burden[4] with the constant stream of updates. While some of the above distros include some of the available protections by default, none claim to provide a silver bullet[5]. Thankfully, problems ‘should’ only act up every once in a while. And (almost surely) deflecting them with a working snapshot provides an evergreen magical experience.

    So, to conclude, Arch Linux as a distro definitely is more demanding than e.g. Linux Mint. However, the derivatives mentioned above definitely bridge the gap to a remarkable extent. So much so, perhaps, that you might not even notice much of a difference (besides the constant stream of updates).


    1. Arch Linux is not unique in its extensive documentation. This is more of a trend we find on other distros that come with (almost) no defaults; e.g. Gentoo also sports a(n arguably even more) comprehensive Wiki. This makes total sense as these systems require from their users to set it up. Which, unsurprisingly, is a nonstarter without proper guidance. ↩︎

    2. This includes but is not limited to the likes of CachyOS and EndeavourOS. A more exhaustive list is found here. ↩︎

    3. Historically speaking, the hardest part about Arch Linux was its installation. This has since been mostly alleviated with the introduction of archinstall. ↩︎

    4. I think the Upgrading the system section of its System maintenance wiki entry is one of the most striking examples of what I mean. I’m simply unaware of any other distro that requires/demands something similar. Note that -on Arch- you’re encouraged to update daily or at least weekly. ↩︎

    5. In Arch Linux’ defense, this is a hard problem to solve without introducing radical changes. Even openSUSE that pioneered the BTRFS + Snapper workflow in its Tumbleweed, is actively seeking and working on an even more powerful solution. But let’s not get down that rabbit hole for now 😜. ↩︎



  • I want my apps to be able to talk to each other. So flatpak is just in the way.

    This is (at least somewhat of) a legit concern. But is mostly directed towards Flatpak’s limitations in its current implementation.

    Also, I don’t see the point of immutable distros. I could boot off of btrfs snapshots years ago. Immutability gives me absolutely nothing of value either

    Have you ever wondered why openSUSE started working on (what would eventually become) Aeon while they had previously pioneered the BTRFS + Snapper workflow with Tumbleweed? I believe you may find the point of immutable distros in there 😉.




  • Your reply is much appreciated, fam! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to return right away. I thank you for your patience! Btw, I’m not native. So, if I misuse any terms/words/phrases or whatnot; my apologies. Usually, I put in some significant effort to alleviate this. Sadly, I didn’t quite have the chance to do so this time. Thank you for your understanding!

    Firstly, I’m glad we can have a civil discourse on this topic rather than resorting to personal attacks and namecalling. I also appreciate the fact that you seem like someone who actually wants to get to the truth rather than defending your stance no matter what.

    Thanks fam for the compliments! Your engagement is (I think) (at least) equally commendable!

    You’re right. The people in the video are in fact publicly celebrating the 9/11 attacks which took the lives of thousands of innocent people. As you can see, it’s not just grown ass men who are celebrating, but children and women too. If this is the level of hatred they have towards the United States, do I really need to explain how severe their hatred for Israel would be?

    Btw, I understood the implied context of the footage. But, it would be intellectually dishonest if I didn’t take into account the framing at hand. Cuz, if we were to be very critical of the footage itself (so without AP’s provided text as guidance), then there’s nothing explicitly there that connects those celebrations to the 9/11 killings; no burning of American flags or anything that would imply it. Granted, I assume neither of us speak Arabic. So that doesn’t help either 😅.

    Just to be clear, I’m well aware that this story is pretty much uncontested[1]. So I’m not actually disputing it. But, with the benefit of hindsight[2], it’s hard to completely deny any ulterior motives for broadcasting said celebrations.

    And to push back: is it sociologically-speaking strange for them to be glad that the biggest support of their rivals has received a retribution?

    That’s an easy question to answer. There would be one country and it would be called Palestine.

    History has indeed taught us that that[3]’s a pretty likely outcome. But, I was also curious to hear your take on the other question. Namely, “What would become of the Israeli people?”.

    But they will be celebrating.

    Likely indeed.

    And they will want the whole world to see them celebrating. That’s for sure.

    For this, I’m not so sure. But it could be.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphinarium_discotheque_bombing#Aftermath

    Ah, another celebration. I’m starting to notice a pattern :P .

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWOw7YI7vzo

    Another one.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xPNTbtUHVc

    This video I didn’t pay a lot of attention to as the media outlet didn’t seem to be as reliable as I’d like.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wyW-7iJwU

    I think I got the message by now :P .

    Again I want to be very clear that I’m not an Israeli sympathizer. I’m just trying to make a point that the Palestinians aren’t the saints that the liberals (btw I’m a liberal myself) often portray them to be.

    If sainthood is achieved through suffering alone, then I’d argue they would make a good chance. But yeah, I get where you’re hinting at.


    1. I did find this, but it seems to be a biased take. ↩︎

    2. That is, the eventual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. ↩︎

    3. Nation states only exist since relatively recently. So, there has never been a Palestinian state or something. However, Muslim rule has dictated over those lands. My reading of history informs me that while Jews definitely weren’t first-class citizens, they were fortunately not persecuted like we saw in other parts of the world. ↩︎




  • Thank you for providing that video!

    I hadn’t seen it before, and I can definitely understand why its content is disturbing.

    Granted, as I’m unable to understand the context beyond what AP themselves have provided, I’ll (for the sake of the argument) accept this as Palestinians celebrating an attack on the US.

    Then, my initial intention was to dissect the argument and explain why I can’t agree with your extrapolation[1]. However, to my surprise, your extrapolation might not be as far-fetched as I initially thought 😅. But, this ultimately depends on what you mean precisely. So, please allow me to ask further clarifications:

    • With “Israel would simply not exist on the map today.”, what do you mean exactly? Like, what would come in its place? What would become of the Israeli people?
    • With “And the Palestinians would be openly celebrating over the dead bodies of Israeli people.”, do you mean something similar like we see on the footage? Or something more grandiose? (And perhaps more sinister?)

    Let me know if you still aren’t convinced.

    Please allow me to take you up on that offer 😜.


    1. That is, “But if Palestine had the kind of military backing Israel does, Israel would simply not exist on the map today. And the Palestinians would be openly celebrating over the dead bodies of Israeli people.” ↩︎












  • thanks, that’s comprehensive

    Thanks fam for the appreciation!

    I recommend it at least :-)

    I totally get it and I actually appreciate your efforts. Which shouldn’t be surprising as I favor anything ‘atomic’ over the traditional model. Heck, were it not for Fedora Atomic, I would probably have daily-driven openSUSE Aeon instead.


    Uhmm…, my apologies for sidestepping to a topic I would rather not… But here goes nothing…

    Perhaps you might have noticed the discussion that has been going on elsewhere in this thread😅. And thus…, you might have become aware that an LLM was used (by me) for wording/phrasing/punctuation the earlier ‘info-dump’. Note that the content is still mine. I just wasn’t able to commit to put out a decent writing myself. Instead, I speech-to-texted my input. Asked the LLM to make it legible. After which we had a bit of back-and-forth until we arrived at the final result.

    Anyhow, now that you’re aware of the context, I would like to ask you the following: What would you have preferred?

    • (Either) That I didn’t do any of that and thus not comment at all.
    • (Or, rather) Our current situation in which I did whatever I did.