Hello community!

I come to you for advice. Using an m1 macbook air since 2020, I installed popos on my old 2013 macbook pro and I was quite happy with it but… I bought a steamdeck two weeks ago and exploring its desktop mode made me reconsider some choices. Using distros based on different systems, with different commands, desktop environment, etc. gets a little confusing for someone like me, who doesn’t use linux as my main machine. Do you have any advice for me? From what I understand, steamos is debian-based while popos is ubuntu-based: is that the biggest part of how a distribution works, ie commands, etc.? Good ui/ux is important for me so i should maybe use nitrux or deepin, that are debian-based, or is it a bad idea to choose a less common distro for a amateur like me?

Thanks in advance, I’m a bit lost.

  • @[email protected]English
    1•1 year ago

    That is not entirely correct, the definition of hacking you are using is much newer. In the past, hacking was a much more broad term, like those above you were stating.

    A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term hacker has become associated in popular culture with a security hacker – someone who utilizes their technical know-how of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them – hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations.

    • Wikipedia entry for Hacker

    It is still common in the open source community for people to use the original meaning of hacker. The hackers you are referring to are security hackers or crackers.

    • Rustmilian
      2•1 year ago

      It is still common in the open source community for people to use the original meaning of hacker.

      Actually the Open Source use of the term is already incapsulated in the extending portion of the definition I provided. Along with the modifying source code example.

      Additional example : Kernel Hacking; Linux.
      You’re a 3rd party extending it beyond it’s original design by modifying the source code to add additional or new functionality under the legal protection of the GPL, regardless if you do or don’t make a PR that gets accepted.

      The hackers you are referring to are security hackers or crackers.

      Actually no. The definition provided is far broader as already shown.
      The key in the definition is beyond it's original design , say for example I take source code from Grub and I extend it by adding additional functionality that allows me to play pacman directly inside it. This modification goes beyond the authors original design and doesn’t just change a pre-existing feature from it’s default setting like running a terminal command does.

      Anyway, none of this is the point.
      The point is that there’s a hard distinction between a Hacker and your Average Terminal User running a command in a shell interface. Shell interfaces like that of ZSH, BASH, etc. only serves as a way for the user to interact with the pre-existing features of the system.