Hello, everyone! Recently, I've been working on a guide to play Minecraft competitively (don't take it literally; it's just focused on gamemodes like Bed Wars, Bed Fight, etc). Anyway, here's the link for it: https://codeberg.org/mc-guides/mc-competitive-guide

If anyone has ideas, please tell me what they are — I might actually implement them!

I've been thinking about the best way to refer to systems that use the Linux kernel, whilst avoiding the confusions that come with using the latter for both meanings. Since there are GNU and non-GNU (e.g, Alpine Linux) systems, I assume that *Linux would cover both. However, for users without a technical background, the asterisk means much less than it does to developers — this seems self-deprecating, considering that the point of the suggested term is to avoid confusion for NON-TECHNICAL users. Am I overthinking?

Introduction & Notes

Hit selecting is one of the most powerful methods in 1.8 PvP, although it only truly became popular after 2022, mainly because of the Boxing and Ranked BedWars communities.

Do keep in mind that this is mainly taken from a GitHub issue I made for a cheat client — nonetheless, everything still applies perfectly.

Mechanics Involved

There are multiple phenomenons which make hit selecting exceedingly useful, so I'll start from that:

1: Due to how combat mechanics work, you can get free hits / combos if you hit at a different time than your opponent, given the correct distance.

2: Hit selecting makes you hit the ground earlier — this may lead to you being faster, which, combined with a sprint resetting technique, will make you deal more knockback than your opponent, potentially allowing you to initiate a combo. In many servers, there is also a Spigot fork that has custom knockback, perhaps including a ground and a sprint multiplier — making the advantage even greater.

3: Minecraft's attack range is based on a vertical beam starting from your eyes, and is not entirely consistent (by that, I mean that players lower than others will have a slightly higher range).

4: Players make lots of tiny calculation mistakes, and hit selecting takes advantage of that — since your opponent is not taking knockback right away, it'll briefly confuse that same opponent's aim, and you might be able to get a combo.

These advantages can (and should) be combined with multiple other methods, such as W-tapping, S-tapping (both variants), block-hitting, and strafing.

But, how do we use them to our advantage?

It's complicated, but there are several ways to do it, some that should be combined with others, and some that shouldn't.

1: Moving as if you're going to go for the first hit, but you pause hitting once you get in attack range, and you hit circa half a second after you get hit. Keep in mind that you cannot zigzag strafe whilst doing this, you can only either strafe and move forward in one direction, or move in a straight line.

2: Same as the first one, but you hit right after you get hit (circa 200 milliseconds), and you can zigzag strafe right before you do it. It's recommended you follow up with more of this hit delaying, to get enough, in order to achieve the same goal as in the first method.

What if someone performs this against us?

There are many methods to fight back against these methods, but I'll focus on the very first method (also called normal hit selecting), which is the most used on:

1: Hit select too — seriously, this can be extremely effective. However, this leads to a situation similar to rock paper scissors, except that both you and the opponent are trying to find the position most convenient to yourselves.

2: A well-timed, slightly longer W-Tap (takes lots of skill, not recommended for beginners). This makes you get the benefits of hit selecting, instead of your opponent.

3: Counter strafing, which is switching directions right before you can hit your opponent. This throws your opponent's aim off, allowing you to get free hits, and potentially start a combo.

I hope I managed to explain this properly. If any of you have questions, either reply to this post or contact me through my other social media accounts.

Background: I am a lifelong Windows user who is planning to move to Linux in October, once Microsoft drops support for Windows 10. I use a particularly bad laptop (Intel Celeron N3060, 4 GB DDR3 RAM, 64 GB eMMC storage).

I do have some degree of terminal experience in Windows, but I would not count on it. If there are defaults that are sensible enough, I'd appreciate it. I can also configure through mouse-based text editors, as long as there is reliable, concise documentation on that app.

So, here's what I want in a distro and desktop environment:

• Easy to install, maintain (graphical installation and, preferably, package management too + auto-updating for non-critical applications)
• Lightwight and snappy (around 800 MB idle RAM usage, 10-16 GB storage usage in a base install)
• Secure (using Wayland, granular GUI-based permission control)

I have narrowed down the distributions and desktop environments that seem promising, but want y'all's opinions on them.

Distributions:

• Linux Mint Xfce: Easy to install, not prone to randomly break (problems: high OOTB storage usage, RAM consumption seems a little too high, kind of outdated packages, not on Wayland yet)
• Fedora: Secure, the main DEs use Wayland (problems: similar to above except for the outdated packages; also hard to install and maintain, from what I have heard)
• antiX Linux (problems: outdated packages, no Wayland)

Desktop Environments:

• Xfce: Lightweight, fast, seems like it'd work how I want (problems: not on Wayland yet, that's it)
• labwc + other Wayland stuff: Lightweight, fast, secure (problems: likely harder to install, especially since I have no Linux terminal experience, cannot configure through a GUI)

In advance, I thank you all for helping me!

I appreciate any help, especially in things like:

• Neofetch screenshots, to showcase idle RAM usage on some DEs
• Experiences with some distributions

Is it a good idea to crank up the settings in Argon2id to max (20 iterations, 100 length, salted) for applications? I'm new to the cybersecurity subject, but I assume keeping the hashing as slow as possible (and a longer hash length = fewer chances of collusion) helps fight against brute-forcing. Is that correct?

Also, what is the security of having a password logging in system that: 1: Uses the max Argon2id settings, to make the authentication slow 2: Makes it take 1–2 seconds (in a circle loading style) for it to either fail, or succeed 3: Adds a 1-second cooldown, increasing by 0.5s by every failed attempt (any successful attempt in that cooldown is ignored, it just says that it's on cooldown nevertheless)

I'm open to suggestions! (I'm not implementing everything, but thought experiments are a good place to start, IMO)

As the title goes. This would involve turning the tax levels / brackets into an exponential mathematical curve. One of the benefits off of the top of my head, is that people wouldn't be scared of their salary increasing just enough, to actually lower their clean income. Another one would be that you can lower even further the tax rate for middle / low class, because you (the government) would receive more from taxes. Any opinions/ideas for this?

As the title goes - I think it's a good solution for some of the Western World's problems, like politicians not following their campaign promises. On the other hand, conflicting politics are a big possibility, which would create further problems. Any ideas?