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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • You just want to get a feel for it, so I suggest what I’ve used with success in the past :

    • Windows host
    • Virtualbox
    • Linux Mint with the XFCE desktop environment.

    All free, Linux mint is newbies friendly and XFCE is light enough to run well in a VM. It is Ubuntu based so it’s very well documented (basically 99% of the tutorials for Ubuntu work with Mint) but it comes with less bloatware and a more ethics.

    Of course no single Linux distribution is perfect or we would all be using it but I suggest you don’t lose time looking for a distro. Just pick one and install it. If you don’t like the look and feel, then try another. You can distro hop through several of them to taste the variations. But the general principles are pretty much the same across the board.



  • This is already how it works.

    When workers need to access a portion of railtrack (a block), they need to request a possession and isolation from the command center of the line. A possession means no train can approach less than two blocks from the block they will work on, and an isolation means the power is cut (most lines in Europe are electrified).

    The procedure to perform this has been specifically designed to avoid miscommunications, with multiple back and forth between the operators on the ground and the command center to ensure one doesn’t mindlessly make a mistake. Usually it’s done by phone but I believe some lines now have apps for it.

    This accident should not have happened. If the possession had been granted then at the very least the signaling system would have warned the train driver to stop several kilometers before he reached them. On modern lines the train would have stopped automatically, without human intervention. And signaling systems are extremely robust, they don’t “bug” in a way that makes this possible.

    To me this must be a human error. Either the workers worked without a possession (because they though it would be ok, the line was not operating at that time, it was a short operation, yadda yadda. The exact reason why possession requests are mandatory…) or it was an old line and the train driver was not paying attention to the point of ignoring several, big reg lights telling him to stop.

    Either way, no GPS location sharing would have helped if someone disregarded safety instructions. :/

    Source : I’m not an expert but I did an internship in a company who designs signaling systems in Europe and my project was specifically on the subject of replacing phone calls for possession and isolation with an app on a PDA.


  • Completely agree on Linux Mint, even though it’s still one of my favorite distributions and the one I’m using usually. I’m comfortable with the base Ubuntu system but it comes without all the Canonical garbage (like Snap trying to quietly install itself back when I install an APT package).

    Still too much bloatware though, and to my knowledge there is no modern, well documented APT based distro with a community active enough that I can fix my issues reasonnably fast.

    I guess I will have to make the jump to Arch. Currently happy with my Regolith install now though, so I’m a bit lazy to explore other options.