Hello people,

We (my SO and I) bought a Raspberry Pi 5 in the hopes of setting up like a HTPC on our living room TV, with the possibility of streaming torrents through it in 4K possibly. The problem is that I am an ~~incapable failure~~ absolute noob when it comes to everything internet streaming related, and so this got way too complicated way too fast and now I'm burned out and wanting to throw the fucking brick off the balcony, but that would be more than 150€ of our money lying on the cold, wet grass downstairs with nothing gained but a renewed sense of absolute failure on my part.

So can you help?

I installed LibreELEC and Kodi on it (and Mullvad VPN somehow, though the current setup uses OpenVPN which is getting removed in January 2026 so I'll have to migrate it to Wireguard eventually...) and then got Jacktook up and running. Eventually I realized I had to install and configure some other things too, so I decided to go with TorrServer. I also bought a 30-day subscription to Real-Debrid because apparently that is needed? I have no idea anymore, Kodi itself throws errors related to searches and shit, but I don't know how to access them on the machine, plus the UI/UX is way too clunky for my taste. I'd probably need to setup SSH to be able to access it easily from my desktop Arch Linux (btw), but last time I tried configuring even that was way too cumbersome and went way over my head. And the problem might even be the VPN that I set up, but I really don't know anymore and hate everything about not knowing.

So the USA is turning into a fascist military dictatorship because of capitalism and misinformation campaigns swaying voters etc. etc. How do you (as a USian or not) view what is going to happen in the immediate-to-near future regarding civil liberties & disobedience, especially the current secret police and/or ICE (just getting a big, beautiful budget increase to unbeforeseen heights); and also thinking civil war and outside intervention?

For me, the current situation seems hopeless for the state. The bipartisan system is in its core a laughable excuse for an actual functioning democracy (then again are there any real democracies in the capitalist world?), as both parties are controlled by the same organizations and lobbyists, with governmental administration occasionally changing hands from one to the other only to unmake what little "progress" the currently "progressives" had made last time they were in the administration, forming but a pittance of what the people actually want. But the current administration seems to be too much akin to the Italian fascists or the German NSDAP of yore, and its attempts to control all media too see-through for some, who mostly seem to be in the bluer (richer and thus more better off) states. I think this stark divide between the population will be the force that rips the nation apart, as most people in the bluer more progressive states probably aren't as big on the secret police appearing unmarked and unannounced and armed, ready to take people away to concentration camps in undisclosed places in foreign nations in unmarked vans as the people of the redder and more conservative states seem to be.

So the question becomes how will the people react? Civil disobedience probably sounds nice right up until they start gunning those disobeying down, and deploying the National Guard and Marines against them (which I think might be unconstitutional there? not sure though because it happened already). The US Armed Forces apparently have 1.3 million active members (without a draft mind you) and even though there are people in this group who aren't as morally bankrupt as the administration is atm, I think they'd still have enough members positioned around the world in enough places that there isn't a single force in the world to oppose it willingly and easily. I bring this up because if (or when) push comes to shove and the civil disobedience in the blue states becomes too much for DJ Dump and his christofascist capitalism buddies, and they start driving their military might against their own people with increasing force, who will be there to come in to save the (non-militant minded) people? I think the US administration would consider this a declaration of war, and respond to it as such. So as I see it the US is on a surefire highway ~~to the danger zone~~ to Civil War part II: Electric Boogaloo, and in the end will either rip itself apart or pull the entirety of the western (NATO) countries to war with it. So thank god my country just got in! Wouldn't wanna miss this one, boys!

Anyway post your prophecies on the manifesting destiny of the US below, we'll eventually see who got it right.

Hello all,

So I have this old Samsung RV520 laptop. You can see the specs there. I've installed and reinstalled a few different linux distros on it for the past 12 years or so, the last one being Arch (btw) which is what I use as my daily driver on my main desktop as well (by the btw). But I really don't need this laptop anymore, so I was thinking I'd give it as a birthday present to my friend's son, who turns 2 this month. It would be used as a "media station" to basically just play kids' videos from Youtube.

The problem is that I basically need to install an extremely windows-like (or otherwise simple) distro on it, because while my linux-fu is somewhat high level, my friend uses windows daily so system maintenance must be simple. Ubuntu is for me the obvious choice, but I'm not sure if the laptop can even run it anymore :D of course the HDD in it is also 16 years old and I'm pretty sure I'll upgrade it to an SSD before set up. So, taking all this preamble into account, what would you recommend? Some Ubuntu-derivative, pure Debian, maybe even Arch with linux-lts? Give me your thoughts!