Easy or not depends vary wildly. But the usual task is

• partition the drive
• format the drive
• mount the drive
• install the base system

That is the bare minimum, but we need to do more configuration to be able to boot. Hence the next task is configuring the following

• fstab
• timezone, hostname, and networking
• boot loader (I just use the EFI directly nowadays)

That is it. Everything else is usually work specific. Like, if you wanted arch to be a server, you usually didn’t install a GUI. For workstation and gaming, you need more steps but it will vary depending on hardware. The archwiki covers a good deal of hardware from laptop to desktop and their quirks.

To be fair, he could also just be fed up after a long time being ignored for what he thinks is quite an important design decision.

Punch cards are gonna be back baby

Another alternative is distrobox and bedrock linux.

You’re welcome. I also recommends Arch Wiki on SELinux. It helps clarify a lot of things and how different it is with traditional linux privilege escalation.

Right, working on every device requires a hardware solution. I haven’t encountered any such hardware yet but I do know that it is possible. Next, your second requirement makes what you’re trying to accomplish impossible. Privilege escalation by definition will escalate the privilege. The problem lies in the fact that the root user is basically a god in linux. You can even wipe your system if you so desire. However, you can read more into SELinux or other similar systems. It works by basically running check on the kernel level not user level. But the only solutions I can think of will make other day-to-day tasks more of a hassle. Also, note that whoever knows how to modify the SELinux can also bypass the system. I found an answer on serverfault that points to a blog. However, I haven’t read the blog yet. You may find an answer there.

By definition, you can’t. Any software level solution will fail since you can just move the drive somewhere else. It must be baked into the hardware and firmware.

Edit to add further clarification. Do you need it to be failing on every device or just on a device that you control? Since as stated before, moving a mass storage will completely overthrow any software solution

Well, yeah for multiplayer only games. Hence why I don’t get the appeal of paid multiplayer only games without dedicated server software available.

Meanwhile someone somewhere is having issues with steam taking too much profit. Do note that even if a game is DELISTED from steam, you still can download the game on steam. Of course it is a different story with license revocation and that is a whole different can of worms. I don’t even know if steam allows the publisher to revoke a license for a game that the player already paid for just because the game is not supported anymore (a different case with breaking ToS/EULA).

Holy shit that is one heck of a thing to do.

TIL about bus factor

Damn, I thought for some unknown ungodly reason Valve implemented something like game pass for Proton.

The difference with the distro package is that you are already using the distro anyway. If you cannot trust the distro package then the whole distro itself is untrusted. Or depending on the repo provided, maybe the whole repo not the whole distro.

I am remembering the horse armor DLC lol

Wasn’t it skyrim?

This also highlights the problem of extrapolating from a single data point.

Alright, try it with cat

Yeah good point. Navigation can be unintuitive too. Like, how do you quit? Is it q? Ctrl+C? What even is the weird symbol before C? Those are some of the hurdles that must be overcome when coming to CLI and not necessarily easy to remember. Sure you can do it in 1 hour, but say tomorrow would you remember it again? What if the system is running smoothly for 1 month and you never opened the terminal again after those 1 hour?

And how does the user suppose to know to type man? He may remember the instructions to check man, but he may not. For us, those 3 letter words are very familiar, but others need time to remember them. On GUI, this is no problem because as I stated they will bound to find it by exploring. Basically point and click adventure games I guess rather than the guessing game. And users will choose the path they most familiar first.

Yeah, you do make a good point about misattributing the system being incapable to their lack of research. But people don’t like it when they are wrong/corrected most of the time. It also applies everywhere, computers just so happen to be the most prominent. The point is that people will complain about anything anywhere.

You bring up an example of installing Debian and needing non-free firmware for their wireless card. Take a step back and think how many people are even aware about the term non-free? It is quite a ubiquitous english word with different meanings in the open source community. People reading it will assume they know what it means.

The scenario when someone that is fed up with windows and decides to install debian will see the word “non-free” and attribute it to “you must pay” at glance. If the resource they used to install it mentions and clarify what non-free means, good. Otherwise, it can be a boogeyman for them and make them re-think their decision to switch.