Yeah, those are going to last at -40F/-40C nights we often experience where I live. Nor do I see them being able to add any cool relief from their shade on a hot day.

That said, it is hard to grow healthy trees in the poisoned soils of a big city. They tend to struggle and be sickly when choked by concrete and asphalt.

Linux is kind of sort is already in elementary and high school use. Schools in my state are often issuing Chromebooks to students for use. They are cheap, easy to manage and get support for, and can do the things students need to do. And the only ones really using all those old Macs that infest schools are the teachers. Though in my local school, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades are using iPads but switch to Chromebooks in 5th grade.

One can complain about google being evil all you want, but they do offer all the free tools schools and teachers and students need for their lessons.And if COVID taught schools anything it was that we could teach classes online if necessary-- no more snow days.

If you are looking for FOSS CAD, then FreeCAD 1.0 is about the only game in town. SolveSpace is fine for fairly simple uses but lacks all the advanced toys one might like. Nor has it been updated in 3 years now. Siemans SolidEdge has a free community edition, but it’s Widows only. OnShape is is a popular alternative to Fusion, and is fully cloud based, but it is restricted like Fusion.

As an acolyte that wears the sackcloth and ashes of FreeCAD, there is a growing community of tutorials, (I highly recommend MangoJelly on youtube) for beginners to learn with. But the learning curve can be steep as you get past the basics. There is a FreeCAD community here, but it’s small and not very active. Sadly the best place for answers remains on reddit.

One has to wonder if Recall just isn’t as profitable as they had hoped.

Like most prepper things for sale, this is a better product to skin money from the ignorant and the unreasonably fearful than it is truly useful. It assumes you have electricity and the functioning equipment to access it.

In a real prepper situation, you either already ready have the knowledge in your head, (the best method), or you have real books and pamphlets to read, (slow to access).

Remember Kiddies, if a real SHTF gets here, there not only won’t be no google or youtube, but there won’t be much time to use it anyway. Survival is a real time sink. And most living in the big cities will simply die in place anyway.

It’s supposed to be in the US also.

It’s still the same function at the base level-- to deliver and install/remove, in an easy manor, whatever software package the user wants to use/remove. Whether it’s a good system or not, is a separate issue.

Every Ubuntu based distro I’ve tested allows snaps. The highly touted beginner’s distro Linux Mint sure does. Even Fedora can use snaps and Ubuntu can use flatpaks if you want to be that silly. I have tested that both ways and it worked. But it was merely OKish. It’s just Ubuntu pushes snaps and Fedora pushes flatpaks. So snaps aren’t as insular as you seem to think.

For the user, there isn’t much difference between a snap, flatpak, deb, or rpm in use. The basic install or remove experience is meant to be the same, it’s supposed to be a carefully curated point and click. Even Gentoo’s portage is supposed to be simple for the user. The one other not quite as common, but a bit more universal installation method for users is the appImage package. I use several appImages because that’s the only way they are available. And personally, over the nearly 3 decades of fooling with Linux, I’ve had issues with all of the package management methods. I still have PTSD from being repeatedly caught in rpm hell back in the day or needing to compile from source. (Damn, I’m old)

The longer I use Linux, the more I think that whatever distro you choose, it’s more a matter of how you personally vibe with that distro than anything intrinsically better than the rest of them. Just about everything else is window dressing.

So basically, Ubuntu just with a different name and paint job. (I’ve used them both)

We are all at the most basic level, running pretty much the same kernel, one of the same small handful of desktop environments, and we choose from the same pool of software, (unless you need to get out into the weeds for a program on git hub). Everything else is either window dressing, (package mangers are window dressing-- they all do the same basic thing), or a choice on just how close to the bleeding edge we want to be, (rolling releases or immutable).

Celery is excellent that way. A peanut butter lover’s dream

No! CheezWiz with raisins or nothing! Just like my mother used to make.

My Acer Nitro with Aurora Says Hi!

(I’m thinking maybe going to Kinonite)

I’ve switched away from DDG after many years of use. I have gone to Ghostery Private search. It seems to be better for my search results with a lot less garbage mixed in.

That’s true. But it’s the numbers that will really tell the story if lemm.ee grows and how it grows. That’s why it’s far more telling in the months ahead and not some random single day.

That’s really good to see. But it will be far more interesting to see what the numbers are a month and longer are from now. If they don’t stick, it’s pretty meaningless.

The mini’s are the latest new hotness for desktop computing. I’ve been running a dirt cheap $90US, mini for 2 years now. It fits extremely well on my desk, just tucked in under the monitor leaving plenty of room for all the other tasks I do daily.

Will it play the latest hot new video game? Nope. But it will run OnlyOffice, FreeCAD and FreeDoom just fine.

Not so sure about the jokes. I use Arch BTW…

Disclaimer: I actually don’t. I’m too lazy these days.

Have you spoken to your healthcare provider about Viagra^tm? It may be able to help with your issue. (Please seek immediate medical help with an erection lasting more than 4 hours).

Still got to have the money. And police departments need to have budget to replace equipment.

I have been elected to a city council several times and have gone over police budgets and it was no easier for the police to get money replace a squad car or get any of the “goodies” you think are so easy to them to get. There is only so much money to be had in any city budget.

Let me introduce you to ‘We ain’t got no money to buy anything’ trick.

Replaced by who? And where is the profit in selling something to someone who has no money to buy?