Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
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if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
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Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
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Notes -
I strongly discourage Arch for your first desktop Linux install, unless you have an Arch-specific package or function you're looking for. It's a lot less painful than it was even five years ago, and it can be useful as a way to learn about fundamental parts of the modern boot process and distribution of functionality, but it's a lot of tedium to eventually end up with a machine that wants to update (literally) every time you boot it up, and often multiple times, and may be harder to find support for less common use cases.
If you want to get more familiar with RPM specifically, your main bets are gonna be limited to either Fedora or OpenSUSE as a desktop tool. They're not my first choice as a daily driver, but they are functional for most purposes. Mandriva/Oracle/Alma exist, but they're going to be harder to jump into, and to find support around. EDIT: if I had to pick, I'd go with OpenSUSE. /EDIT.
(Technically, you can just install most package managers on most linux distros. I wouldn't recommend it, though, and for RPM specifically you're likely to be stuck compiling from source.)
I would love to know what your top choices are for a daily driver... and if they would differ if you were considering choosing a daily driver for a less-techy wife.
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