I feel that it's important as I start this site to begin with an explanation of something that may seem extremely obvious to some, and will be simultaneously completely lost on others. That being the similarities between my site and that of Luke Smith.
First I think I should give my opinion on the positives of Luke Smith's work. What Luke has done for the Linux tech community is create some of the best resources available on a number of different topics, from something as simple as popularizing the RSS reader newsboat and window manager dwm to hosting an entire website dedicated to buying and setting up all of the services and software required to create a webserver (at LandChad.net). I have personally learned a great deal of what I know about Linux either directly from Luke's tutorials, or from further research that I've conducted after being introduced to subjects by Luke, such as Artix Linux. For that, I want to thank him.
However, I don't feel comfortable flatly promoting or otherwise supporting Luke Smith because he's decided that his priority is not in helping the libre software/Linux communities but instead with his political message. That's totally fine, he has the freedom to make that choice, however his website is entirely filled with dogwhistle right-wing /pol/ "memes" (i.e. propaganda) and diatribes about how corporations brainwash you, but somehow the Catholic Church and the Pope could never do that because they're Christian and other such nonsense - everything he writes has some small hint of this type of thinking. The whole thing about these right-wing memes that are circulating around the internet nowadays is that I used to be on 8chan /pol/ back in 2016 when this whole alt-right (they hate being called that) movement started, and these memes were not really created to be funny and harmless - they were created with the express purpose of being propaganda; and even when they weren't, they were coming from a hivemind mindset which only allowed very certain ideas to flourish, and anything even slightly left leaning was from a "libtard" or was "soy" or so on. After reading enough of these memes, your logical ability to discern good ideas and bad ideas breaks down into this new foundation of things being either "chad" or "beta", right or left, good or pure evil (we're not going to even get into the associated beliefs about i.e. Jews and stolen elections and such). People who believe in this stuff also tend to think that they have an expanded capacity for critical thinking because they're not brainwashed by the news media or by the popular opinion, but in reality if you sit and think about what they're saying their reasoning isn't really any more sound than the reasoning of the people they oppose. I mean most of the people who believe in this stuff transferred over to being just standard Republicans pretty much - way to fight the system by voting red! That's really going to save the world. "Trust the plan" my ass. The only reason the Republican party agrees with this political movement at all is because they've been infiltrated and replaced by people who do; your standard Republican from 15 years ago would want nothing to do with any of this.
As someone who myself used to use 8chan around 2016 and has done a complete 180 in my life, part of me feels bad for him, especially because he's created this online presence which would lead to a level of ridicule (as well as a financial hit) if he were ever to change his political leanings. So, do I necessarily blame him? Not really. But that doesn't mean I condone him either, or that I will link people to his site without first laying out this disclaimer about him. I do actually read all of his political blog posts and other such writing so that I can have a perspective on how the other side of the political spectrum thinks, and because occasionally he has a good idea (such as LindyPress.net), but I think as someone who used to use /pol/ regularly and now detests it that I'm in a special mental state where I'm no longer vulnerable, or at least as vulnerable, to the propaganda anymore. For just the regular person on the internet, I do not suggest watching anything political by him since it uses a lot of subtle brainwashing through memes that make it hard to rationally think about what he's saying. And when he does write something actually intellectual without falling back on memes to make his arguments, I usually don't agree with him anyways.
All that out of the way, there are many similarities between my site and his. Let's go over some of these.
dwm and st.My intention is not to steal Luke's ideas or thunder. (Well, perhaps I have a little bit of an intention to create a new place to find the same tech information without being accosted with racism.) Really, I think if Luke truly wanted to spread his ideas to people and popularize self-hosting, Linux, RSS, LaTeX, ThinkPads, and the like, then if anything I'm exactly what Luke wanted to create. I'm not going to cover all the same topics, but there will probably be some overlap since I find interesting the same things that he does when it comes to Linux and computers.
So, thanks, Luke. Kind of.
May 17, 2022