Hunter Perrin

Which Linux Distro Should You Use

So you’re ready to try Linux, but you don’t know which distro to use. Don’t worry, here’s a comprehensive list of distros that I recommend:

For Desktop / Laptop

Fedora

• When you install Fedora, choose to enable Third Party Repositories.
• If you have an Nvidia graphics card, open the software downloader (Software on GNOME, Discover on KDE), search for “nvidia driver”, install the “NVIDIA Linux Graphics Driver”, then reboot.
• Run all of your games through Proton. Don’t use the native Linux builds.

For Handheld / HTPC

Bazzite

• Run all of your games through Proton. Don’t use the native Linux builds.

Which Desktop Environment Should You UseDo you like Windows?

Use KDE. (Fedora KDE)

Do you like macOS?

Use GNOME. (Fedora Workstation)

• Want maximize and minimize buttons? Install GNOME Tweaks from the Software app and enable them.

Conclusion

I have solved your problem of not knowing which distro to try out. Now you know. If these don’t work for you, well, no worry; you can try something else for free. Trying another one is really easy, and eventually you’ll find one you like. I’m not going to tell you anything else though, because these are fine for beginners, and that’s really all you need.

#linux

Migrating Away from GitHub

After 17 years on GitHub, I have made the difficult decision to migrate from GitHub to a SciActive hosted instance of Forgejo.

It’s not exactly a secret that GitHub has been having a rough time, recently. More importantly, GitHub seems to be playing a bit fast and loose with its users’ data, with regard to AI. These things have concerned me enough that I strongly feel it’s time to move away from GitHub. I am proud of the software that I write, and it’s all written by humans, without the help of AI. Port87 has a strong stance against the use of AI in email and software development.

SciActive software will now be hosted and developed on a custom instance of Forgejo at https://forge.sciactive.com.

We have already migrated all of the Port87 code and infrastructure (these are private repositories, so they are not visible to the public). We will be migrating our remaining repositories slowly over the next several months. The open source repositories will remain on GitHub as mirrors, but issue tracking and pull requests will all be handled on the SciActive Forge. We have configured our forge to allow users to log in with both a GitHub and a GitLab account, which should allow us to remain accessible to the open source community we have served for over a decade.

This move allows us to maintain full control over even more of our infrastructure. At this point, we have very few outside services that we rely on, which allows us to remain online even when large service providers experience outages. This also helps us better maintain our users privacy. Having confidential information (like production SSH keys and environment configuration files) remain only on our on-premise servers allows us to ensure that information, along with our users’ personal information, remains private.

GitHub has been a wonderful provider, and I don’t want this announcement to be perceived as me throwing any shade toward them. I still think GitHub is a great company, I just personally disagree with the direction they have decided to pursue. Thank you to everyone at GitHub for the work you do.

#port87

Our Stance on AI in Email

Port87 does not use your email to train AI. Port87 also does not use AI to read your email. We do not use AI in the development of Port87. Port87’s code is written by real people, and much of it is open source.

We do not use AI for a number of reasons:

• Training AI on private email content can leak private information. It is possible to craft a prompt to retrieve verbatim copies of real emails used to train them.
• Using AI to read email can introduce security vulnerabilities. Agentic AI can be targeted using a technique called “prompt injection” to divulge private information to malicious third parties.
• AI is prone to hallucinations and inaccurate results.
• AI generated code is unreliable, unmaintainable, and prone to security vulnerabilities.
• AI generated code may infringe on the copyrights of the developers whose code was used to train the AI. In fact, testing has shown that AI generated code has already infringed on our copyrights.
• AI does not provide enough value to justify its astronomical cost, both monetary and environmental. In fact, we struggle to see any value AI provides, considering the real threat of security vulnerabilities and inaccuracies.

We value your privacy, and we do not and will not mess around with unproven and unreliable technologies when your privacy is on the line. As such, we currently have no plans to introduce any features that rely on large language models or any other kind of generative AI.

If you are currently using an email provider that offers such features, we strongly encourage you to switch to a provider that doesn’t.

Photo by cottonbro studio.

#port87