@Philip My 2¢ worth of info: I've used KDE (heavy desktop), tried lxde, mint, cinnamon and kept using xfce (very light desktop) for quite sometime. The differences are more cosmetic than fundamental.

@Philip Well, yes, there are some distros that introduce some quite odd changes (like the way that mint managed the use of fstab). I feel that any distro should be a good choice. Note that I am using Debian directly, so as to be able to install (and switch) among them without any problem. If you go for a distro that must use some specific desktop you are trapped inside it and will make any change more difficult. But Debian is not a newbie friendly distro (only for installation though).

Been a while, how's everyone doing? Work has been keeping me busy...

Hi @derobert. Long time no see. I hope you are keeping well.

@AndrasDeak Yes, I was thinking of more formal changelog entries, like in Debian changelogs.

@AndrasDeak This just came up by itself? Did you do a new installation?

@Isaac Debian is ok even for beginners, provided one is willing to do a little work getting used to it.

I'm hearing that a lot of people in the US are refusing to wear masks. Because it interferes with their personal freedoms or something.

@FaheemMitha I sure hope that everyone agree with you ?

@Isaac I'm sure everyone does not.

@FaheemMitha Health issues driven by politics !! What a bad Idea!!!!!!!!

@Isaac The word 'insane' comes to mind.

I find listening to Bach calming, personally. Or the composer of your choice.

For some reason, Requiems are sad, but soothing.

@FaheemMitha And yet, here we are. US is having 3,184,573 cases and 134,092 deaths (809 new deaths yesterday).

This page may help: worldofmeters.com

@Isaac Yes, I know. And new cases arriving all the time.

@Isaac Yes, I'm familiar with that site. I've been checking it for the last couple of months, at least.

India, that you worry all the time and has several time the population of USA has 1/3 of the deaths of USA. Jus plain crazy, yes.

The Indian graph is particularly terrifying. A beautiful exponential curve. You could put it in a math textbook.

I'll start Mozart for a while .... :-)

@Isaac At this rate, not for long. Have you seen the increase rate?

There was a recent study that said that India would have 500k cases a day by the fall of 2021!!!!

Almost all (beside south korea) are exponential indeed, and almost all have similar slopes.

I really hope whoever it is, is wrong. I don't think any of us can carry on like this for another year and half.

The Indian economy is already in a state of collapse.

@Isaac A good choice.

My estimate goes to 5.000.000 deaths (at least). Not a pretty sight.

@Isaac The end result, you mean?

Yes, for the next year, when we should have a better hope of having a vaccine.

@Isaac Western Europe seems to have things more or less under control, with the exception of the UK. New Zealand is also doing pretty well. Australia also seems ok in comparison with a lot of places.

It looks like things are going to be bad in Africa. But that's no surprise.

But yesterday I learnt that it is suspected (and probably alredy confirmed from the antibody study in Spain that people could get RE-infected !!!

@Isaac That's not too surprising.

My numbers didn't include such change !

It may be even worse.

@Isaac Have you been doing your own calculations?

Yes, sure, why not?

@Isaac No reason.

A simplified table:

@Isaac I don't think SE Chat has table support. Are these your calculations?

Yep.

@FaheemMitha Have you taken a look at how bad things are in Brazil and also getting close: Mexico?

@Isaac Yes, I know things are also bad in Brazil. And probably for similar reasons to India. I.e. poverty and a dysfunctional government. Currently Brazil is no 2, and India is no 3.

I expect India will soon pass Brazil, though.

@FaheemMitha Yes, a population of 1,380,344,908 in India vs 212,599,398 in Brazil. That's a 6.5 : 1 factor.

Yes, India has a lot more space to grow.

Which, turning around, says how bad things really are in Brazil. What 15 times worse than in India?

@Isaac Though unless things really get screwed up, it's mostly an urban problem in India, at least for now.

It's less likely to spread in the villages, because they have more effective natural breakers in place.

But there are still a lot of people in Indian cities. Around 25 million people in the Mumbai area alone. Give or take 5 million.

It's possible similar considerations apply to Brazil. But I'm not familiar enough with it to say.

@FaheemMitha That has been so all over the world, In Spain, 1% of the rural areas got infected, In Madrid, 15% of the people. So, no surprise there.

@FaheemMitha There are 20 Million in Mexico city, I believe. Let me check, it may be more.

@Isaac Nobody really knows.

I don't think there is a ton of intervillage traffic in India. People either stay put, or go to a city.

@Isaac Yes, I see. What is your location? If you've already told me, I apologise.

@FaheemMitha I am a citizen of the world @FaheemMitha

@Isaac So are we all. Can you be more specific?

Personally, I'd be happy to try another planet if one was available.

@FaheemMitha It depends very much in who lives there !!!

@Isaac Also minor considerations like a breathable atmosphere.

@FaheemMitha I had been, but you forget: Spain.

@Isaac Yes, I do forget. Sorry.

I should probably make a table and save it somewhere.

@FaheemMitha Yep, the urban population of Mexico city is set to 21 million in Wikipedia. FWIW.

@Isaac You realise those numbers are basically a ballpark figure, right?

And most of them will get covid-19 before next year ends.

@Isaac Let's hope not.

@FaheemMitha Sure, who has actually counted them? All of them? Also under the bridges? Yes, a ballpark figure, but better than anything I could come up with.

@FaheemMitha It is not a matter of hope, it is a matter of Pandemics.

And the Mexico goverment is doing a very bad job at that.

@Isaac So are the govts of India, Brazil, UK and USA.

@FaheemMitha :-)

@Isaac I see that cases have levelled off in Spain at around 300k.

@FaheemMitha Yes, but there have been some new outbreaks in Galicia and Barcelona. Both areas have gone back to full quarantine. So, it is not as clear as it might seem. Government is still reticent to do more testing, as they should.

If you want detail, read this: elmundo.es/ciencia-y-salud/salud/2020/06/29/…

@Isaac Ok. Well, the virus is likely to come back if safeguards are lowered. At least for now.

@Isaac Blocked because I'm using an ad blocker.

@FaheemMitha Yes, no surprise.

@FaheemMitha Well, I also use an ad-blocker and could read most of it. However, that is the site for a local newspaper and it is pretty sure that it has no "virus", so you may un-block it for a little while. But do as you see fit, it is not a matter of live and death.

@Isaac I don't do selective ad unblocking as a rule. Too lazy, I guess.

@FaheemMitha It is your computer, please, by all means, do as you like. Do as you see fit.

@StephenKitt Is it still possible to boot Debian by copying ISO contents to a pen-drive partition and using isolinux. If so, where is the guide to get the correct vmlinuz files. If not, is there a guide to perform a grub boot to several ISOs (similar to: howtogeek.com/196933/…) but for Debian.

Or, failing all that, Is there a way to manually partition a big pen-drive (32giga) that is able to boot some Debian ISO and still able to use the rest of the pen-drive (on other partitions)? Thanks. If you need me to post a question, just ask.

@FaheemMitha yeah, on its own. I haven't even updated anything for weeks

@AndrasDeak Odd. Well, maybe they need money.

@Isaac you don't want to use that as a main OS, right?

@Isaac Do you want to do a proper install, or just boot Debian off an image?

@FaheemMitha boot off an image (several images on one partition) (store files on the other partition).

@AndrasDeak I am using Debian as main OS. Do I want the pen-drive booted OS as main OS: No, of course not.

@Isaac Ok.

@Isaac What is your use case?

@FaheemMitha I just want to build a carry on pen-drive that could be both used to boot Linux and might store some (not much) files, some private keys come to mind. One ISO that might get updated from time to time and some files that could also be changed. Maybe the first partition for 15 gig of files, the second one for some boot ISO (Ubuntu, Debian, memtest, Mint, UBCD, etc).

@FaheemMitha Is it possible?

@Isaac If you mean you want to be able to boot Linux on a random computer, that might work, but probably won't.

Modern Linux kernels are quite flexible, but they still need to be set up to work with the computer's hard drive.