         _.-~--~.
       .'.:::::::`.   Petros Katiforis (Πέτρος Κατηφόρης)
      /.::::::    /   
     /.:::  .---=*
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     ;    |   C ..\   Feel free to contact me! <pkatif@mail.com>
     |    ;   \  _.)
      \   |   /  \    This post was published on the 12th of May, 2024
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            '--*-*

Installing Void Linux

I recently decided to abandon my Arch Linux installation and try out something new. My original motivation was to get rid of systemd, so that's what prompted me to check out Void which operates with the help of the runit init system. The transition has hitherto been seamless and I'm glad that I made that decision! However, it did notice that the package repository is somewhat limited compared to pacman. I prefer building from source anyways, so I can get over that.

That choice has since led me to learn stuff the hard way. I've been documenting my new knowledge in org files and I'm making some serious progress! The less comfortable and minimal a distribution is, the more profitable it is for the curious user.

Wayland

I decided to avoid installing X.Org altogether, and my failed attempts trying to setup Wayland from scratch got me studying the Wayland protocol and writing my very own Wayland compositor! I'm currently using dwl, but after taking a quick look at their source code, I was surprised by how ugly it looked! After learning more about what goes into building a Wayland compositor from the ground up, wlroots seemed the way to go. It's pretty simple actually! The creator of Hyprland, although edgy and a C++ programmer, is himself a first year university student just like me, so I should be able to pull this off!

Sapiens by Noah Harari

I usually avoid reading popular books and "best-sellers" but that book had long ago sparked my interest. Some important people criticize Harari as being a pseudo-scientist and his work as having no traces of original research. Despite that, the book did contain some interesting thoughts that are worth sharing here:

Here in Greece, we usually mock polytheists and argue that the belief in a God hierarchy without a central entity is childish. This is wrong for two reasons. For starters, some versions of the Ancient Greek religion did actually believe in Chaos, the first entity and thing to ever exist before the creation of the universe. Respectively, the Orthodox Christian pantheon consists of various Saints each considered the protector of a comically-specific group of people. Saint Nicolas is considered the protector of sailors, while Saint Christoforos is known as the guardian of car drivers! Isn't that equally as "childish" (in their own, abstract definition) as what the Ancients worshiped?

We sometimes refer to socially undesirable behavior as unnatural. But what is unnatural anyways? The author argues that anything that can be observed is de facto natural, since it is derived from the rules of nature. An object moving greater than the speed of light could be safely classified as unnatural. Homosexuality, under the above definition, can be classified as natural. Lions exhibit homosexual behavior as well, even though they aren't subjected to social propaganda trying to confuse their minds. Some bigots claim that what is natural is synonymous to the propagation of a species, but that's not what comes to mind on most people when they hear the term. It seems like a pathetically cheap way to broadcast fascist ideology via a simple play on words.

While technology has been drastically advancing, have our lives actually improved for the better? Our ancient ancestors had less obligations and they were way, way less stressful than us. Even when a disease hit, they used to recognize it as a natural inevitability and they just moved on with their lives. Did we domesticate wheat, or did wheat domesticate us? There are 35 billion chickens around the world, an immense success from evolution's point of view. But isn't it also true that individual chickens suffer the most horrific of tortures and the most dull of lives? Adult humans of the "civilized" world slave eight hours a day, a reality that quickly becomes an eternal habit until their death. I recently met a guy on the bus on my way to university and he narrated me how he used to cry out loud at home during his first days of work. He nevertheless got accustomed to it in just a few weeks time... That's troubling!

(random fun fact: the first depiction of Christ's crucifixion is a Roman graffiti making fun of a follower of his named Alexamenos, depicting Christ as donkey-headed under the misspelled inscription "Αλεξάμενος Σέβεται Θεόν, Alexamenos worships God")