I actually just Googled (well, Kagi’d) it, and found the article that the AI presumably hallucinated this command from.

Sounds like a good way to remove the French language pack from your system. :P

The command it created looks correct, but is subtly wrong. $3 isn’t the “length” of each segment, it’s the template for the output file. $2 is in fact the (approximate) length of each segment in seconds, not the “N” value as the function name suggests. Also, you probably want to set reset_timestamps so the timing information is correct.

Why not?

You say you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I think gamedev is a good way to learn a variety of skills. And doing it as a hobby takes a lot of pressure off and allows you to take things at your own pace.

I used to work as a software dev before mass layoffs got me. Our work was technical enough that most of us used Linux to the point that finding a Windows user to test things was a real problem.

For the swap space, yes that’s for when you run out of RAM. 48GiB is plenty of RAM, so you should be fine without it. I have 32GiB of RAM on my system and have been running without swap for ages without issue.

Hardening guides like that are mostly designed for things like web servers which are connected to the public internet and need higher scrutiny. The default configuration for distros like Mint should be secure enough for the average user.

However, don’t feel invincible and run random code from random sites. Both Windows and Linux can’t protect you against malicious code you run yourself.

Having organised partitions is the kind of thing that people obsessed with organisation do. For most people, the default partitioning scheme is fine. However, as always, remember to keep backups of important data.

For installing software, Mint has a Software Centre (which is distinct from the Snap Store). I’d recommend installing software using that for the average user.

In Mint, there are three main types of packages:

• Debian/APT packages, which are provided by Mint (well, technically by the Debian distro and they trickle down to Mint, but technicalities). Not all software is available from Mint’s repos and they may be out of date.
• Flatpak packages, which are provided either by developers themselves or dedicated fans. They are usually more up to date and have a degree of sandboxing.
• Snap packages, which are controlled by a company named Canonical. As of late, Canonical has been a bit “ehhhh”, so there’s pushback against Snap. Mint has it disabled and has their reasoning explained here: https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.html

Mint’s software centre is able to install both Debian and Flatpak packages. I’d recommend using it where possible since it allows automatic upgrades and easier installation/uninstallation.

It’s easy to get fame as a programmer: Just make a popular open source project and you’ll be surrounded by people angry at you for not doing enough upaid work on it.

It’s open source. If 32 bit support is important enough, people can fork and maintain it.

Don’t know if this is true for all environments, but you might be able to just create a file in ~/Templates for it to show up in that list.

Dual booting is fine. Bitlocker just makes it so that the installer isn’t able to resize the Windows partition (since it’s encrypted), but you can resize it in Windows to create enough space to put Mint on. You can also disable bitlocker entirely, but your files will no longer be encrypted.

There’s worry about the bootloader being nuked, but I think that’s a bit of an overreaction. Now everything is EFI, Windows shouldn’t touch other OSes. If it does, then that doesn’t require a full reinstall; it’s possible to boot from the live USB (the installer) and reinstall just the bootloader.

I don’t know if they still do it, but Mint used to do staggered updates (through their update manager) for some packages. They would start out making the update only available for, say, 10% of people and then slowly built up to 100% if no issues were discovered.

One thing that many guides tend to skip is how to install software. People coming from Windows might try to install software the “Windows way” by going to the website and downloading them. That is just likely to cause pain and suffering for a number of reasons.

Instead, every beginner friendly distro has its own flavour of software centre that users should be encouraged to use instead. Maybe even include a link to flathub in the guide or something.

When you plug your mechanical keyboard in, your steam deck shuts off, right? If you unplug it again, does it instantly come back to life or do you need to press the power button? Does it resume from suspend or actually boot from scratch?

Are you using the dock with a mains power connection (e.g. for charging)? The keyboard might require more voltage than the Steam deck can provide.

Does your keyboard have any of its own USB ports on the side? Having another “hub” connected to your main hub might be confusing it in some way.

Looking at how much of a reach some of the disruptive + proprietary stuff is… Yeah, there isn’t a lot of recent innovative proprietary stuff, is there?

Although I would put Chrome under “disruptive”. It absolutely was when it released decades ago, and even now it’s still changing the browser landscape.

Ubuntu 25.10 entered beta on September 18th. It releases on October 9th. It’s still in beta.

… Yeah? Beta software having bugs isn’t the hottest of takes.

I’m willing to bet that if the GNU coreutils getting bumped a minor version caused widespread issues for a day, nobody would even bother reporting in it…

I like that they’re passionate and supporting Linux and all, but unpaid work like that should be discouraged, imo.

Rust and C are the same “tier” of performance, but GNU coreutils has the benefit of several decades of development and optimization that the Rust one needs to catch up with.

This would never happen if it were licensed under GPL. /s