No, they aren't. Just the other day I saw idiots on Facebook calling for DOGE to come investigate our (Democrat led) county. They think he's doing great work saving them money.
I was in high school at the time, taking Current Events as a class. Our textbook was Newsweek, then a fairly respectable news source.
It was a good year to take it - the 1992 elections, the Branch Davidians, and probably a few other things. We all wrote down our predictions for how the Branch Davidian situation would end, and we were all wrong. (I do not recall my prediction.)
Stockdale was also Ross Perot's vice president running mate in 1992.
He lost points in the vice presidential debate that year when he flat out stated he wasn't ready to comment on a specific question (I don't remember the topic). Kind of a nice summary of the issues with our elections in one sentence, isn't it?
I started using Slackware in the late 90s - say 1998. I used it for most of my desktop applications pretty much right away.
I don't game much so that wasn't an issue for me.
It was definitely harder to configure. I recompiled so many kernels and told myself the speed boost from getting exactly what I needed and nothing else was impressive. It wasn't.
I dunno. It wasn't as polished as it is now, and was harder to configure, but it was still very good, and once you got it configured, it kept working, unlike the more popular os of the day.
Witnessed a car crash a few years ago right in front of me because of this. I was the second car in line heading south at a traffic light. When our light turned green, a car heading west in the late afternoon ran the red light and smashed into the car in front of me.
I saw them coming and said, "Watch out!" but of course that did no good. The driver of the westbound car said she lost the traffic light in the sun and didn't realize it was red. I have no idea why you'd continue on at 40 mph if you weren't sure you had a green light, but here we are.
I had chosen that route home intentionally to avoid driving into the sun. Had I been the first car in that line, I might have been involved in the crash despite my caution.
Running the country?