I always keep close track of these contests, it's fun to take a look at all the different concepts. Though IIRC only Juliette Taka (who designed the themes for 8, 9, and 11) even submitted a theme last time. She's great, and Emerald is great, but I hope this post gets someone even better involved with the artwork.
ipacialsection
joined 2 years ago
I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a mix between Starfleet and Vau N'Akat dress.
how do I install programs from outside the "discover store"? I can get the Plex app through the built in app store, but the Plex media server app isn't on there so I have to download it from the website, which gives me a .rpm file.
Installing from Discover (or to be more precise, your distribution's software repositories, for which Discover is a frontend) is usually best practice. Programs you find online are less likely to work on your distro (especially something as technologically unusual as Bazzite). That said, from what I could find online the command to install an RPM file on that distro is sudo rpm-ostree install <path/to/package.rpm>. I have never used boxbuddy or any kind of distro container, but I imagine it would as simple as opening the terminal for one of your distros and entering the appropriate command for that distro to install your package.
Also, outside of the built in discover store, what's the best way to install programs?
Generally, Flatpak packages are safe to install, and any Flatpak repos you enable will show up in Discover. Flathub contains the majority of Flatpak packages in existence, though it might be enabled by default on Bazzite.
What are some cool programs in general to check out? My main use case is gaming, I don't program or do any work on my PC but I'd like to explore just for the sake of exploring!
Just look around in Discover and you'll find lots of gems. As a retro gamer, I've found RetroArch indispensable, as a frontend for all my emulators and then some. Lutris is nice if you want all of your games to be centralized under one launcher. There are lots of fun time-wasting open-source games too.
Also, what's a good way to familiarize myself with using the terminal? I've used the terminal on Windows quite a bit in the past, but only for basic things like unlocking a bootloader on Android and sending a ROM to it, back when I cared enough to root my phones. How would I, for example, pull a program off of github and compile it myself if needed? There's a program on github called gHub GUI by ysph that I'd like to check out, would be nice to be able to configure my mouse since piper doesn't seem to recognize my mouse.
You can just ease into it, or read any number of Linux courses online. Following tutorials on Linux will be as easy as following tutorials on Windows. You can learn about programs with either man <command>, info <command>, or <command> --help.
Most projects include README files instructing you on how to compile and/or install them; the exact process depends on the program. But generally, if you see files named "configure" and "Makefile", the process is to install dependencies, then cd into the source code folder and run ./configure; make; sudo make install.
What are some general best practices that differ from Windows? I don't really know how to narrow this question down, apologies for it being so vague.
Discover should be the first place you go to install programs. Don't install programs from random websites unless you absolutely have to. They probably won't work.
A lot of the programs you are used to from Windows will not be available for Linux. They might be compatible with Wine or Proton, but try to find alternatives to them before you try that. There is a KDE app and a GNOME app for most of the basic uses, and https://alternativeto.net/ is a decent resource for finding Linux-friendly alternatives to just about anything.
You probably don't need an antivirus - there are viruses for Linux, but they are extremely rare, and the anti-malware programs that are available for Linux will only detect and remove Windows viruses.
Don't have any comments on your other issues, because I don't have experience with the software you're using (I rarely if ever buy "gaming" hardware).
Debian! It's stable, elegant, and doesn't impede customization. I distro-hopped a lot over the years - some that I ended up disliking included KaOS (severely limited software repository), Clear Linux (only way to get ffmpeg was to compile it from source) and Fedora (very slow); most I liked, and just decided to move on at some point. But I kept coming back to Debian, and eventually got to a point where instead of trying a different distro when Debian broke, I would just reinstall Debian.
I'd be interested to try VanillaOS or another "immutable" distro at some point in the future. See if they've matured enough for my day-to-day use.
Now I'm (tentatively) excited to see how they'll outdo a season with a novel gimmick in each and every episode, including a musical and a crossover with a parody show, in terms of gimmicky weirdness.
I was quite satisfied with Debian Stable for a few years on at least two different laptops, and felt I had found my "forever distro", until I got a Framework laptop whose AMD graphics were quite buggy on it. In order to get rid of all the issues, I had to upgrade to Testing and install a mainline Liquorix kernel (and along the way, I briefly made a Frankendebian and fiddled with kernel parameters). While my years of experience with Debian and derivatives has prevented me from breaking anything, I do wish I didn't have to use all of this beta-quality software just to prevent games from freezing and crashing constantly, just because I bought "new" (about a year old) hardware.
I still want to keep Debian, because I've found nothing else that works quite as elegantly or stably, but I'm hoping to find ways to get the performance I need without Liquorix, and if something forces me to reinstall between now and the time Debian Trixie becomes stable, I'll probably give Fedora or KDE Neon another try.
"Klingon ambient" would be a good concept for an album.
Glad we have a release date now. Although, I hope they go for weekly releases, because I don't want to feel obligated to binge watch it.
Like I said I've only seen the consensus classics there, and it's been a while. I'm planning to see the rest of it as the Greatest Generation podcast covers it. But it is also probably my least favorite Star Trek show.
TOS: The Cloud Minders. One of the show's extremely heavy-handed message episodes, this time about classism and labor rights. It's quite dramatically compelling in addition to expressing its ideas eloquently.
TAS: Beyond the Farthest Star. One of the more "normal" episodes of that series, but it really works for me.
TNG: Contagion. One of the most tense and action-packed TNG episodes, featuring computer malfunctions both amusing and terrifying, but also a great showcase for all the characters, and their ability to combine their talents to solve what seems like an impossible problem, to the point that it's one of the episodes that got me into Trek in general (alongside Remember Me).
DS9: Visionary. Pretty good episode of time travel weirdness, and one of my go to examples of what I think is best way to go about explaining time travel: don't explain it, just do whatever wacky shit you want and laugh off the paradoxes with a recurring joke. "I hate temporal mechanics!"
VOY: Latent Image. In addition to being yet another fascinating exploration of the rights and sentience of artificial life, with a hint of an ethical dilemma in there, I really relate to how the Doctor's trauma responses are described.
DIS: There Is A Tide. I love all of the scenes between Admiral Vance and Osyraa.
PIC: The Impossible Box. I remember that being one of the more tense and well-made episodes of the show, especially Soji's existential crisis and Picard's Borg flashbacks, although I find it hard to think in individual episodes with this one.
LD: Veritas. The show hadn't really clicked with me before this episode. I loved the whole theme about the lack of attention the command crew gives to the ensigns, and how this just adds to their problems.
I've only really seen the consensus classics of ENT, and while I have seen SNW and PRO, my favorites are all consensus favorites that get a decent amount of buzz already.
Remember Me was one of the episodes that got me into Star Trek. My parents loved TNG and Voyager, but it was one of the first episodes I actually sat down and watched with them, and the whole premise of everyone disappearing, and how Beverly figured out what was going on, hit my brain in just the right way.
For me, the outdated packages in stable have actually gotten better over time, as DEs get closer to a place where I don't need any major updates to enjoy using them, Flatpaks become more readily available, and on a subjective level, I get less and less invested in current Linux news. Before Debian became my "forever distro", I'd hopped to it a few times, and often found myself wishing for a newer piece of software that wasn't in backports or flathub, or simply being bored with how stable it is, but that's been happening less and less. And I feel like Debian 12 in particular left me with software that I wouldn't mind being stuck with for two years.
I've gotten warnings to upgrade my browser with Debian's Firefox ESR, but they never affected a website's usability in a way that a newer version would fix, and they do provide security updates and new ESR series when they come out; even if you must have the newest Firefox, you can use the Flatpak.
Additionally, I'm currently on testing in order to get better support for my GPU, and each time I've tried to use it, it's worked for me for a longer time than the last as I get better at resolving or avoiding broken packages. If you do experience issues like the one you described, and can replicate them, and no one else has already reported them, you should report them to Debian's bug tracker. The whole point of Testing is to find and squash all the critical bugs before the next stable releases.