There’s 2 kinds of people in Trek fandom:

1. The sane people who know Berman sucks and her outfit is a known unfortunate symptom - we just pretend Seven had real clothes.
2. “I liiiike Seven of Nine” - creepy gen X white guys who just watch Trek for boobs and lasers.

I find Pegasus a decent episode. I think that while utopian aspiration is a fundamental tenet of Star Trek, I think it’s a bit reducto e to call it completely a show about perfect humans.

Heck, from the get go we had Garry Mitchell doing pyscho god stuff and Charlie X groping people, and a captain who sacrificed his crew to the weird space Romans so he would survive.

I think in truth, Star Trek is both about the best humanity can be and how the best in humanity can overcome the worst in humanity - you can’t exactly do that without episodes where the protagonists or the Federation makes mistakes, sometimes small and sometimes on the magnitude of Pegasus.

In many ways, DS9, darker as it is, feels the most Trek - a team of very different people with different beliefs overcoming/respecting their differences and forming a beautiful community despite the folly and evil around and within them.

On an unrelated note:

Why do you have Teddy Ruxpin as your desktop background, and more importantly, why do I feel such reverence for it as a very non-stereotypical background for a Linux user?

Honestly, I kind of want Kirk to stay dead regardless of how they do it.

Admittedly, that irks me slightly just because of the shared name with the devices folder in root, but do what works for you.

One of the best Trek scenes of all time: Fear: "I'm afraid." Hologram Clone of Janeway: "I know." Fear: "Drat."

Fade to black.

Moral of the story: The only thing you have to fear will be born in Indiana and her name is Kathryn Janeway.

Honestly, it's 2024, and as a result, this post gives me a bit of a chuckle. For most purposes, systemd has won, and honestly, I hardly even notice. (Granted, I have only used Linux during the systemd era.) If systemd actually interferes with one's needs on a technological (not just a vague philosophical) level, little stops them from seeking out a way to use another init system.

Has it gotten more difficult to use other init systems these days? Yes. However, by the time a person has a problem where systemd can't do the job and have to use a different init system, they're probably more than competent enough to create custom services. I also feel like in terms of software support, only the most idiotic, worthless projects have no possible way to port hem to another init system.

I totally agree with you on the Linux side. However, I first got into Linux by using it in Virtualbox on Windows. In the Windows world, as far as I know, it’s the easiest-to-use free-as-in-beer^1^ hypervisor, so long as UEFI support has improved since I last used it.

1: I say this because of the non-libre extension pack.

I installed Pop in a VM (I use Debian usually) and was surprised how usable it was sans-graphical acceleration. Ubuntu is pretty much unusable these days in a VM - it can literally sometimes take 30 seconds for a button press to register where it works instantly in VM Pop or Fedora.

I feel like that's the Trek films in a nutshell - from a critic's standpoint, they're not necessarily all great, but they almost feel like long Star Trek episodes that you enjoy anyway.

Here's my thoughts on each film:

• Generations: Honestly, I think pretty good with a solid overall plot. I loved Data's arc - I feel like they did a great job not taking the comic relief too far. The fight scene was delightfully campy, and the "Time is a predator" stuff is so memorable to me.
• First Contact: I think it was a fun film. It's almost the Wrath of Khan of the TNG films - a lot more action, with some Trek - which is probably why it's considered the best. Personally, I prefer Generations, but this is still a good watch.
• Insurrection: There were a lot of fun moments, but the overall plot wasn't that great - Picard's new love interest that we never hear about again, the weird theme about "being in the moment" that I feel didn't integrate into the plot all that well, etc.
• Nemesis: I think Nemesis had a lot of great things that didn't quite land at the end. I think Shinzon did a great acting job, but could have been written better. They made him more irrational than I think he should have been, and the whole plot with "blowing up the earth" and "conquering the galaxy" felt way out of line for someone who is the product of and survived imperialism. As for B4, I feel they didn't address the ethical concerns of throwing Data's mind in him. At the end, blowing up Data didn't help, but if the rest of the movie had been written better, I might have been fine with this choice, Chances are, whether through B4 or a Search for Spock-esque plot, we would have gotten another film where we got Data back.

Qemu/KVM and Virt Manager. I have three VMs that I pass my GPU to: a Hackintosh, a Windows 10, and and Windows 7.

Meanwhile on the USS Voyager:

Tuvok and Chakatoy encounter each other in the hallway near Holodeck 1.

Tuvok: Commander, I am concerned about the Captain’s continuous holodeck usage. She has not exited the room for the past three hours, and I believe it may be inhibiting the effective operation of the ship.

Chakatoy: It’s been a rough week. I’m sure she’s just blowing off some steam.

Suddenly, they heard muffled noises through the holodeck door.

Tuvix: I have a right to live!

(Excessive machine gun noises)

Chakotay taps his combadge.

Chakotay: Doctor, can you come to holodeck 1? I think something’s wrong with the captain.

(No offense to Janeway. Just a fun caricature.)