Welcome to my blog! Here you can see the various things I've been thinking. Most of my posts will probably be related to technology, but will sometimes post other topics that peak my interest here too.
Fedora Silverblue is better than ChromeOS and Windows S.
Written on 10/3/2025 • Sharing LinkWhen it comes to operating systems like ChromeOS and Windows S, the primary audience are those who are new to PCs. Perhaps people who have used a smartphone before, but aren’t quite used to what a complete PC operating system can offer.
For that kind of user, ChromeOS and Windows S aren’t very good options. Fedora Silverblue effectively has all the advantages (minus one important one that I’ll touch on later) while not compromising on being a fully featured operating system for those who need it.
First, let’s start with ChromeOS. For a long time, what you could do with ChromeOS has been quite limited. Somewhat recently, ChromeOS has added support for Android apps and running a GNU/Linux container (Debian being the default) to get better app support. Still, the container is not enabled by default and requires an additional step to enable.
To enable the GNU/Linux container, you’ll have to go through what might be one of the worst designed GUIs I’ve ever seen on a desktop operating system. Beyond skin deep, ChromeOS is not designed very intuitively. This is quite bad when you consider the fact that this is an operating system meant for people who are new to computers.
I think the elephant in the room though for ChromeOS is the 5 year artificial cap that you have on operating system updates for your device. This just either creates e-waste after a perfectly fine computer no longer receives security updates or means that people are running outdated and potentially insecure software on their device. People are keeping their devices for longer and longer and computers are becoming obsolete at a slower pace than ever, so such a cap is just a move to force planned obsolescence on people.
Moving on to Windows S, I think a problem with it is the fact that while the operating system itself isn’t as fully featured as Windows (or even Fedora Silverblue) it does contain the full Windows interface. Windows GUI design is better in many aspects than the horrendous slop of ChromeOS, but is still nowhere near as intuitive and easy to use as GNOME. New users will likely be overwhelmed with the amount of icons and buttons present at first startup. Windows also has the problem of containing many legacy apps that haven’t seen an update
Another problem with Windows S is the Microsoft Store, which is simply put in an absolutely horrendous state. Few apps that you’d actually want to use are located there, and most of the store seems to be taken up by some of the lowest quality applications imaginable.
While Windows hasn’t done the same artificial time limit on updates as ChromeOS has, Microsoft has been willing to discontinue official hardware support for certain hardware after some time has passed. Microsoft has also been pretty clear that even if you can find a bypass for installing Windows on unsupported hardware, that they might compile Windows in such a way that might prevent you from using it on your hardware in the future. Somewhat recently, Microsoft has shown this by requiring the CPU to support the SSE4.2 instruction set preventing older but still fairly capable computers from running the newest versions of Microsoft’s operating system.
I think the biggest problem that Windows S has though is the fact that if you want to install an application outside of the Microsoft store, you have to switch out of S mode and forfeit all the advantages it provides, and you can’t switch back.
Meanwhile, Fedora Silverblue has much of the same advantages as ChromeOS and Windows S with much fewer drawbacks. Fedora Silverblue, like those operating systems is atomic. Using a read-only file system for the system makes it effectively idiot proof and more secure than a traditional operating system. It is the entire reason why ChromeOS is much harder to break than a traditional GNU/Linux or Windows based operating system, and is also why you can trust just about anyone to use Fedora Silverblue without breaking it. Furthermore, Fedora Silverblue makes snapshots after updates so in the rare case that something does break, you can easily roll back.
Fedora Silverblue also comes with the GNOME desktop environment which is simply the easiest and most intuitive graphical user interface on the desktop, especially for those who have never used a PC before. From my experience teaching people how to use a computer they tend to struggle much more with Windows or macOS than they do with Fedora/GNOME. GNOME is very simple to use by default which is perfect for a new computer user, but can be powerful when needed with extensions.
What Fedora Silverblue doesn’t have is any real artifical restrictions on what hardware you can run it on. You could run it on an old system with an Athlon 64 X2 CPU, or a modern system with a Ryzen CPU. You can expect upgrades to the operating system to support your PC beyond it’s obsolescence.
Fedora Silverblue also has the flathub repository built in and GNOME Software (a software store and update manager) preinstalled. Fedora Silverblue has automatic updates configured out of the gate, so you won’t even have to manually do anything until a new version of Fedora is released. Flathub contains applications you’d probably want to actually use. It even contains Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, if you prefer using those (slop) browsers. You’ve even got container support enabled right out of the box if you want to install an app not on flathub but available in the system repositories. Even if you want to install a system app and not use containers, you can do so using rpm-ostree than rebooting and you’ll keep all the advantages that come with an atomic operating system without having to switch to a more traditional operating system.
So, you’ve got all the advantages of an atomic system with Fedora Silverblue but you might be wondering about it’s disadvantages. First a more minor disadvantage is when you install system updates and system apps, you will have to reboot as the operating system being read-only and image based means any changes you make to the system will only become active after a reboot. This however, is inherent to all atomic operating systems and is the same way with ChromeOS too.
Earlier I said there was a major disadvantage to Fedora Silverblue when compared to ChromeOS and Windows S, and here it is: Fedora Silverblue doesn’t come preinstalled on very many devices. It’s an utter shame it doesn’t, because so many people that would benefit from a fully featured yet easier operating system won’t even know of it’s existence let alone have the ability to use it. I think this is where (to some degree) you can be the change you want to see. I am someone that people (in real life) typically come to for tech advice, so I am in the position that I can install Fedora Silverblue on their computer for them. I’ve also sold some of my used/refurbished devices with Fedora preinstalled on them.
So in short, Fedora Silverblue does pretty much everything that ChromeOS and Windows S does better and it can do more than those operating systems but it sadly doesn’t come preinstalled on very many computers. Fedora Silverblue, for the target audience of people who are new to computers, whether they be 8 or 80 years old could benefit greatly from using it over ChromeOS or Windows S.
The upcoming pseudoscience of lie detecting
Written on 8/3/2025 • Sharing LinkJust a little disclaimer, this is completely 100% an opinion. Take everything I say here with a grain of salt and if you are a student please don’t cite me as a source. With that’s being said, let’s get on with the post.
In the last 200 years, we have seen an explosion in the area of science, but with that we have seen entire fields of science come and go. Over 100 years ago, fields such as Phrenology and Eugenics were still seen a legitimate fields of scientific study, and now they largely aren’t. Sometimes I wonder what fields of study we consider legitimate today in 2025 that will be seen as complete pseudoscience in 2125.
Psychology is home to it’s own subfields, and in that we find the still popular notion that it is possible to accurately detect a lie without having hard evidence. I think that in the next 100 years, we will see the scientific credibility of this idea crumble into oblivion.
We are already starting to see the cracks in this idea form. Polygraph machines (also known as lie detecting machines) have been found to be quite inaccurate at detecting lies to the point where in many countries they are no longer permissible as evidence to a crime. Still, popular media still for some reason gives them much more credibility than they actually deserve.
If you take a look at the rest of the methods used to detect lies in the absence of hard evidence, they have at best a moderate correlation with someone lying and at worse point to something else entirely. One of the better methods is seeing if someone tells two different stories at two different times, but even that is shaky as anxiety or general forgetfulness while being put on the spot can lead to people prioritising different details leading to a somewhat different story if you ask them again, even if they are being truthful.
The worst methods involve the use of body language, the specific way they answer a question, or the tone of their voice to indicate if someone is lying. This doesn’t measure lying, it measures anxiety. While it is true that people who are lying are typically more anxious, being put on the spot especially if being accused of something will also cause anxiety that will manifest in a similar way whether someone is telling the truth or not.
Most lie detecting methods are already sketchy enough when used against neurotypical people, but against neurodivergent people they are even less accurate. People with conditions such as ADHD, Autism, some personality disorders (such as Antisocial personality disorder) and more will often respond in a much different way both verbally and non-verbally to lie detecting methods than a neurotypical person does which will result in false positives and false negatives more often than when the same methods are used against a neurotypical person. Effectively, many lie detecting methods shaky enough as they are become absolutely useless at telling if someone is lying if used with a neurodivergent person.
We’ve even found out that your own family who have known you for your entire life can’t accurately tell if you are lying or not without concrete evidence against your claim, and that your own family is hardly better than a stranger at detecting a lie without proper evidence.
The only way to be able to know with reasonable accuracy if someone is lying or not is to have hard evidence against their claim. If little Robert stole a cookie from the cookie jar and you don’t have a camera pointed at the cookie jar or you did not witness it yourself, you have no reasonable way of knowing if he lied about stealing a cookie. There are other explanations that are just as valid as “he lied” such as you misremembering the amount of cookies in the jar.
Why I recommend Fedora Workstation to new GNU/Linux users
Written on 7/3/2025 • Sharing LinkCurrently, I am working on a guide on how to switch to GNU/Linux for Windows and macOS users. This is a precursor to that guide that will answer a somewhat common question I get. What is the best distro to start with?
Usually when I am teaching people how to use GNU/Linux, my go-to distro is Fedora Workstation. Many others will suggest Linux Mint, and while I don’t think that is a bad option I think that there are some pretty good reasons for starting out with Fedora Workstation instead.
Fedora Workstation comes with the GNOME desktop environment, which is at this point (whether you’d like to admit it or not) simply the most polished and complete desktop environment there is on GNU/Linux. It has the best ecosystem of graphical applications, the best support for accessibility tools, and among the most complete Wayland sessions of any desktop environment. At the end of the day, most applications on the GNU/Linux desktop are designed with GNOME first in mind or at least as a consideration. GNOME also receives the most monetary investment compared to any other desktop environment. I’m not saying that GNOME is the best desktop environment for everyone, but GNOME is effectively the flagship desktop environment of GNU/Linux and the desktop that is overall the best suited to the general public.
Fedora itself is a very good base in general. It’s both very stable and up to date. Fedora has one of the largest distro userbases which also means that almost all software available for GNU/Linux is available for Fedora. It also provides GNOME the way the developers intended it. Some distros (such as Ubuntu) add things on top of GNOME which are often unneeded and just make the experience more cumbersome. Fedora at this point provides the best GNOME experience out of the box overall, with it being up to date and easy to use.
In short, GNOME is the most widely supported desktop environment on GNU/Linux and Fedora Workstation provides the best GNOME experience compared to other distros. That is why Fedora Workstation with the GNOME desktop environment is my go-to when converting people from Windows or macOS to GNU/Linux.