I tried to install a package and apt started uninstalling my desktop. Maybe if I didn’t panic and hit Ctrl-C I would have gotten all the packages it was removing replaced with shiny new ones? I doubt it somehow.
All the customization you can do is neat, but after that I was pretty much done with fiddling with my OS and finding FOSS versions of stuff I was already used to and wanted something that would just work. These days I have a small form factor PC with Mint that I run some server apps on, but I’m holding off on making it my daily driver again until Microsoft really puts the screws on the consumer.
On the subject of Conway’s Game of Life, one of the YouTube videos that I always have to go back to now and then is a narrated video of the game being built from the ground up in APL. It’s so wild to see the guy start with a simple expression and the algorithm taking shape as he adds to it step by step. By the end it looks like some magical incantation lol
“This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc. A long time. You have to learn to live with it. You have a simple choice now. Live with it below the sea with Louis, or above the clouds with the Enterprise.”
I love the utilitarian design, it really looks like something we would send out in to deep space for the first time. Quarters that look more like dorm rooms, uniforms that don’t look like pajamas, those buttresses in the corridors, LCD panels. But they also include design elements that look like embryonic versions of elements from TOS. It’s great.