> And I'd like a pony to sprinkle fairy dust on me that I snort up and change gender.

This is probably the strangest place to announce your wish to change genders, but we of slashdot will defend to the death your right to make that decision. Good luck to you, future brother or sister.

Running Gentoo. Full KDE5 desktop.

Never installed PulseAudio or Network Manager. doing great with WPA_GUI and Jack2/Cadence. Bluetooth doesn't depend on either, and my wiimotes/speakers work great with the bluetooth stack.

Jack allows me to take a WebRTC audio stream, pipe it into FL Studio (Under WINE!) for effects, and then pipe that output into Skype/Audacious/Audacity/VLC/ffmpeg/Carla at the same time, to as many different sound outputs as I want (even on different PC's!), in _realtime_. PulseAudio is a toy.

His father (EU Member of Parliament Nils Torvalds) put his son's actions (saying no, while nodding yes) on the record in EU parliament shortly afterwards. His father believes he's been approached.

If you're really concerned about security, you are likely running OpenBSD or a heavily-modified linux kernel by now.

Linus Torvalds was asked during a LinuxWorld keynote two years back if he was told by government agents to put hardware backdoors in linux. he said no, while nodding yes. His father, Nils Torvalds, a member of EU parliament, put it on the record that his son was approached by government agents requesting backdoors.

There is a known issue with the random number generator being _forced_ to do hardware-based (known to be broken on Intel/AMD chipsets) random number generation. under Open/Net/FreeBSD, there's an intermediary (software) random number generator that ensures actual randomness. Linus uncharacteristically led this charge to keep the RDRAND weakened, even resorting to calling others stupid for thinking otherwise. a prominent developer resigned due to it.

There is at least one recent Intel Management Engine talk at last year's Chaos Communication Congress. There was a similar talk the year before about AMD chipsets and their secret undocumented internal firmware. If you enjoy strong encryption, you would be wise to apply the proposed RDRAND patches that Linus rejected.

Now that all the major distributions have adopted systemd, there's now a full RPC backdoor to not only the GPL's linking requirements, but a backdoor to run "Approved" (by whom? we'll get to that) code automatically. Many people have pubatlicly posited that systemd will be the cause of "The Big One" vulnerability that eventually comes out of Linux and ruins its reputation.

Now, for the Ubuntu side: Canonical is incorporated in City of London, which means they are under the jurisdiction of GCHQ. Anyone who has watched/read a talk by Moxie Marlinspike will know that SSL/TLS is easily-spoofable by nation states. They will probably also know how exploitable SSL/TLS is today. All the draconian crap the GCHQ has jurisdiction over can easily be extended to a corporation registered under their governance. If Canonical refuses, they will be forced to, the way Google is forced to comply in the United States under similar framework. End result is that you cannot trust anything beyond your initial install CD, if you can even trust that.

You will likely never look through the custom patches compiled into your binaries, let alone think about Ken Thompson's "Trusting Trust" essay. You will just download your updates, and assume everything is A-OK. You are an end-user, and that's okay. Just don't think Shuttleworth's words are anything but a big fat placebo to keep his stock value afloat.

for the list. I went to kickass.to and paid what I wanted for the books. Even got the $15-tier books.

to date, I haven't found anyone into canadian law that has ever seen a reverse class proceeding. It's certainly the first time I've seen one.

the format is rather useful; one could easily see how such a format could be used for other proceedings (assaulted by police that refuse to identify themselves? no problem!), and if approved by the courts, it could be a very powerful tool to stop semi-anonymous government corruption.

Nice seven-digit UserID.

You weren't around for Kuro5hin. You don't understand the culture. To even attempt to compare it to /. shows how little you know, considering you weren't around for /.'s culture, either.
Maybe next you can tell us about your opinions on everything2.com? I bet you'll have all sorts of similar insights.

Bottom line, we appreciate your attempt at posting, even if you have nothing to contribute.

All my systems are now switched to Devuan.
The essay made people like me (linux-only since 1998) switch.

I logged in after a few years of lurking because of how truly offended I was by this submission.

This is not the /. I remembered. /. would not have tolerated such astroturfing in comments, nevermind allow it to make it to the front page. slashdot would have modded all these astroturfing comments -1 Troll, and the metamoderation would have said those -1's were fair. this submission proves that the libertarian-geeks that used to reign supreme on /. no longer post or live here. this submission proves /. was a failed revolution.

If there's an admin around looking at this, could you delete my account? I want nothing to do with this site anymore.

This is not the Slashdot we knew. It's been handed down to at least two companies by now. it's prettier now, but the soul disappeared.

All the good vibes of /. now exist on hackernews, but that's starting to go downhill as well. It seems that there's a cycle to the nerd news site: unknown and small -> good community -> community you actually mention to others as newsworthy -> purchased by a large corporation -> Trolls and newbs take notice -> eternal september commences -> site abandoned by quality participants.