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I tried to install a package and apt started uninstalling my desktop. Maybe if I didn’t panic and hit Ctrl-C I would have gotten all the packages it was removing replaced with shiny new ones? I doubt it somehow.

All the customization you can do is neat, but after that I was pretty much done with fiddling with my OS and finding FOSS versions of stuff I was already used to and wanted something that would just work. These days I have a small form factor PC with Mint that I run some server apps on, but I’m holding off on making it my daily driver again until Microsoft really puts the screws on the consumer.

For me it was gay sex that did it

On the subject of Conway’s Game of Life, one of the YouTube videos that I always have to go back to now and then is a narrated video of the game being built from the ground up in APL. It’s so wild to see the guy start with a simple expression and the algorithm taking shape as he adds to it step by step. By the end it looks like some magical incantation lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4

“This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc. A long time. You have to learn to live with it. You have a simple choice now. Live with it below the sea with Louis, or above the clouds with the Enterprise.”

One of the kids in my computer class found out about netmsg and some of us started sending messages to each other. One day I saw a kid fell asleep at his desk, so I messaged him “wake up”. It must have spooked him because when he woke up he called the teacher over and they puzzled over it together for a minute. I thought for sure since the name of the computer was in the message box and printed on a label on the computer that they would find out it was me, but nope lol

Another time in the same class I figured out how to create a local account so I could change the theme (it was Windows XP) to one I liked more. The teacher saw it when she was walking by and thought something was wrong with the monitor.

What kind of system are you doing it on?

I revisited an old hobby, emulating niche systems. I got an Acorn emulator with Risc OS 5 and some development tools, and I wrote a snake game in BBC BASIC and a calculator in pure ARM assembly, both of which are new to me. It was a blast.