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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I think you already got a good answer but let me throw in another:

    Fedora’s dnf provides some good history and update reversion tools. You can use:

    dnf history list

    to get a list of all actions taken on the system since install. Use “dnf history info 5” to get info on the 5th transaction. (Get the transaction ID numbers from “dnf history list”.)

    Then to revert a change use either:

    dnf history rollback or dnf history undo

    Using undo reverses a single transaction, so if you have one where you did something like “dnf install tmux” and then ran undo on it then that would be equivalent to running “dnf remove tmux” in terms of what it does on your system.

    Rollback does what you might think: it basically goes through all the updates between the most recent and the one specified and it reverses each of them, theoretically restoring the system to the state it was in at that time.

    I say “theoretically” because this isn’t a perfect system. For example, if you have an update where you removed some software that had some customizations done to it and then went through a rollback it’ll put that software back but may be missing configurations you applied to it, so potentially it could cause some issues if those were important. This gets into a lot of complicated stuff and tbh it is a powerful but imperfect system. Something like Atomic gives you more of a guarantee that a rollback will work because the whole system state is defined by the installer, not just the packages.

    There’s one more note: Fedora removes old versions of packages from its repos so you’ll need to add their historical archives repo to do certain things. I forget how to do that off the top of my head.

    This may not be what you want exactly but it’s a powerful tool that’s good to be aware of.

    See this for more info.






  • Ubuntu previously was excepting Gnome point releases from major testing on the grounds that Gnome’s point releases are all big fixes and thus don’t require Ubuntu’s major testing process. Gnome shipped a new major feature in a point release and so Ubuntu said “oops, guess we gotta test their point releases after all”. Practically, it means Gnome point releases take longer to get into Ubuntu than they previously did (but are more tested for bugs).




  • Basically what it’s doing is booting to an alternate OS configuration to do the install. It’s way easier to just reboot again rather than tear down the installer environment and go into a normal one. That’s basically a reboot in all but name. It’s annoying to have to enter your encryption passphrase twice, though.

    I feel like a lot of Linux behaviors tell me most Linux people don’t encrypt their data, which tbh should not only be the default but should be difficult to opt out of. Apple actually does this one right. Encryption is just the way it works.







  • So, the psychology research disagrees. While there IS a cultural/social component, there does seem to be a difference in people’s disposition.

    The big evidence there can be change is the Milgram experiment, where people who had first hand experience with the Holocaust immediately saw what was going on and refused to take part. That was an aberration, though. People aren’t being forced to confront things on that scale in that way anymore, and even then it didn’t work on everyone.


  • Unfortunately, this is one case where the answer really is “human nature”, though that nature may be influenced by experience.

    Psychological research into authoritarian personalities shows some people really do have psychological needs (or at least desires) that are met by stupid ass authoritarian power structures. It’s not even, as you may be tempted to suggest, something like desiring power or wanting their team to win over the “enemy”.

    If no enemy exists they will create one, they need it. If no hierarchical power structure exists they will create one, and not only so they can be at the top. There are authoritarian followers, too, who will create power structures so they can be at the bottom. (Or at least not at the top, they tend to need people who are below them as much as they need people who are above them.)

    But authoritarian personalities tend to want this kind of thing to happen for its own sake and not because of any particular outcome. The authoritarianism is the goal itself. Psychological studies have shown these people will support (or at least not strongly oppose) oppression of while groups of people even when they are a part of the group in question. That is: they’d rather this stuff happen than not, even if it’s happening to them personally.

    A good write-up on this aimed at non psychologists is The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer: https://theauthoritarians.org/

    Written for the Bush era, sadly still relevant today.