Weeks start on Monday

This is the “Frequently Asked Questions” section. Consult the link above for further information.

Q. Why do you always say that Azerty keyboard layout sucks?

A. It’s mostly because, if you pay attention to different existing layouts, azerty is one of the ones, if it’s not the one, which has the highest “Nor standard neither handy/needed changes” ratio. Then, it’s pretty annoying when used to code: most of “character pairs” (like brackets, parenthesis, etc.) arent side by side, dot (“.”) is only reachable via shift, pipe (“|”) needs the “Alt-Gr” key, etc. So, qwerty is not the “Best” multi-lingual layout ever, but frankly, it’s a pretty correct balance between standard/handy and inaccessible characters (like accented ones).

Q. Why do you think that UTF-8 is far better than any other existing encoding?

A. This is fairly simple: Unicode is the only (as far as I know) encoding designed for later additions (allowing to support more languages). And Utf-8 is the only one among them which is backward compatible with ASCII.

Q. What Operating system do you use, which one would you recommend, and why?

A. I don’t really care of the operating system I use since it’s stable, reliable, handy and fast enough. So, to play games, I use windows, to work, mostly Linux (I indifferently use many distributions), and sometimes, I use Mac OS. Now, for most users, I’d recommend Mac OS, ’cause of its stability, simplicity, easiness of use. For others, and professionals, Linux would be great. About windows, I don’t really recommend it unless you game on.

Q. Which Linux distribution is the best?

A. LFS. No, just kidding. I don’t think there is a “best one”, but at least you can choose yours regarding to certain specifications. On the first hand, I, but that’s just me, usually greatly appreciate the simplicity; but not the “simplicity of use”. I want a system which is simple to understand. A one wherein I could look under the hood without fear. And something easily understandable is easy to use. That’s the main reason I don’t use graphical environments ’til it’s really needed. And according to these principles, two great distributions would be Archlinux and Gentoo (I prefer Arch, I’m kinda annoyed by emerge and its endless compilation). On the other hand, since I haven’t the time to make the perfect distribution to me, I’d rather use a standard, even if it can be considered (and I think it is) as an awful one: for the moment, I use Ubuntu, because all I want is to achieve common things simply, and I don’t have the time to care about “really free software”, “interesting and innovative software” and all these border-line things.

Q. Why do you dislike Ubuntu so much?

A. It can seems a little strange that I almost hate the distribution I yet use. I dislike it for certain reasons, and I mostly use it because I haven’t found one less worst. I mean, I mentioned above some good distro, but they are by far too time-consuming to me, and considering the few I want to do with my computer. So, this question is a bit long to answer, and I’ll split my text into paragraphs. I’ve used Ubuntu 6.06 few years ago, and I threw it away after some weeks of use for some reasons I can’t precisely remember anymore (for the most, they are, I think, almost identical to these I expose below. Plus 6.06 was WAYS MORE buggy than the actual release (9.04)). But, there also are some things I actually remember:
First, this Linux distribution doesn’t always follow the standards [source/citation needed], and the whole distribution is more a creepy bunch of software pieces than a cohesive ensemble.
Then, do never dare to modify anything: even if in some distributions, you can modify something you completely understand, Ubuntu is so opaque, so complicated and so messy that your modification will likely have unpredictable consequences.
Finally, this distribution is built empirically, upon bug corrections, and not “correctly and neatly from start”. Even if in the end, that can makes something not bad, for the moment, it’s just “not as worse as before”.

Q. Why don’t you use Google, Facebook, and others?

A. From a practical point of view, using such internet services as Google (search, images, video, documents, etc.), Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Identi.ca, and so on, is