This seems to be the most popular one, though I can’t use it in the way its written here, because it will fuck up DNS. I’ll substitute the dots with dashes and then it should work.
Most shells usually default to a truncated version of the hostname that only uses the hostname up to the first dot. Of course one can change that by setting the PS1 env var and using (in case of bash) H instead of h.
I tried with emojiea and it worked. what would break it though?
edit: nvm something broke after a reboot. neofetch reports the hostname as ‘archlinux’ instead of whatever is inside /etc/hostname. matlab drive connector reset and initializer dialog poped up which it did not do before.
“if you can’t parse tabs as whitespace, you should not be parsing the kernel Kconfig files.” ~ Linus Torvalds
This is what we got after people sent him into PC training. The OG Linus would say something like “if you’re a piece of s* that can’t get over your a** to parse tabs as whitespace you should be ashamed to walk on this planet let alone parsing the kernel Kconfig files. What a f* waste of space.”
Yours is too, its posting a silly link at the bottom which makes you look like you’re a Facebook mom in 2003.
Dear Mark Zuckerberg
With this statement, I give notice to Facebook it is strictly forbidden to disclose, copy, distribute, or take any other action against me based on this profile and/or its contents. The content of this profile is private and confidential information. The violation of privacy can be punished by law (UCC 1-308- 1 1 308-103 and the Rome Statute. NOTE: Facebook is now a public entity. All members must post a note like this. If you prefer, you can copy and paste this version. If you do not publish a statement at least once it will be tacitly allowing the use of your photos, as well as the information contained in the profile status updates. FACEBOOK DOES NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION TO SHARE PHOTOS OR MESSAGES.
Mocking people who point out it’s pointless is toxic, abusive, and deeply revealing. You think AI harvesters give a shit what you’ve told them not to harvest?
No-no-no. “Whoever can’t handle tabs as whitespaces should heat their IQ, it is below freezing right now”. Or classic “should be retroactively aborted”.
Special author: Jia Tan was a co-maintainer in 2022-2024. He and the team behind him inserted a backdoor (CVE-2024-3094) into XZ Utils 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 releases. He suddenly disappeared when this was discovered.
Actually, Ctrl+C is the interrupt hotkey for pretty much every CLI app/terminal on every platform. Try it within the Command Prompt/PowerShell/Windows Terminal, or the macOS terminal - they’ll all behave the same.
The use of Ctrl+C as an interrupt/termination signal has a very long history even predating the old UNIX days and DEC - it goes back to the days of early telecommunications, where control characters were used for controlling the follow of data through telecommunication lines. These control characters, along with regular characters, were transmitted by being encoded in binary, and this encoding scheme was defined by ASCII (American Stanard Code for Information Interchange), published in 1963.
In ASCII, the control character ETX (meaning end-of-text; represented by the hex code 0x03) was used to indicate “this segment of input is over”, or “stop the current processing”.
Now what does all this have to do with with Ctrl+C you ask?
For that, you’ll need to go back to the days of early keyboards. Keyboards back then generated ASCII codes directly, and when a modifier key (Ctrl/Shift/Meta) on a keyboard was pressed in combination with another key, it modified the signal sent by the keyboard to produce a control character.
Specifically, pressing Ctrl with a letter key made the keyboard clear (set to zero) the upper three bits of the binary code of the letter, thus effectively mapping the letter keys to control characters (0x00 - 0x1F: the first 32 characters on the ASCII table).
The ASCII code for ‘C’ is 0x43 (binary 01000011).
Pressing Ctrl+C clears the upper three bits, resulting in 00000011, which is 0x03 in hex.
And would you look at that, 0x03 is the code which represents the control character ETX.
The use of ETX to interrupt a program in digital computers was first adopted by the TOPS-10 OS, which ran on DEC’s PDP-10 computer, back in the late 60s. It’s successor, TOPS-20 also included it, followed by the RSX-11 (on the PDP-11), and VMS (on the VAX-11).
RSX-11 was a very influential OS, created by a team that included David Cutler. It influenced the design of several OSes that followed, such as VMS and Windows NT. Cutler later moved to Microsoft and became the father of Windows NT. Early NT did not include a GUI, so it was natural to adopt existing terminal operation standards, including the use of ETX. In fact, NT’s internals were so similar to VMS that a lawsuit was in the works, but instead, MS agreed to pay off DEC millions of $$$.
Also, when UNIX first came out (1969), it ran on DEC hardware, and so they followed the tradition of using the ETX signal to stop programs. This convention flowed to BSD (1978) which was based on UNIX, and NeXTSTEP (1989), which was based on BSD. NeXTSTEP was developed by NeXT Computers, which was founded by Steve Jobs… and the rest is history.
Therefore, Ctrl+C is something that’s deeply rooted in history. You don’t just simply change something like that. Sure, you may be able to remap the keybindings, but it’s actually hardcoded into many programs so you’ll run into inconsistencies - that is, if you used the standard remapping tools built into GNOME/KDE etc.
If you want to truly remap Ctrl+C, you’ll want to do so at a lower level (evdev layer) so that it’s not intercepted by other programs, eg using tools like evremap or keyd. But even then, it’s not guaranteed to work everywhere, for instance, if you’re inside a VM or using a different OS, or in a remote session. So it’s best to remap the keys at the keyboard layer itself, which is possible on many popular mechanical keyboards using customisable firmware like QMK/VIA.
Bravo, very good explanation! As fun fact, i still have at work several DEC ALPHA and OpenVMS servers (some are now VM but we still have physical servers from this era managing our data) and Ctrl+C works well!
Switching it at the terminal emulator level should work fine for every CLI/TUI though, right? Just have your terminal send 0x03 when you press C-S-c and copy selected text on C-c. I haven’t tested it but I’m sure that alacritty, wezterm, windows terminal and probably tmux can do this.
I will point out that in modern Windows terminals, Ctrl+C does copy selected text if there’s text selected; personally, I don’t see a problem with having it be context aware like that to make it behave more like how the majority of current users will be expecting based on how programs outside the CLI behave
Having a separate, open source JavaScript engine is in everyone’s interests even if they don’t know what they’d lose without the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox. I’m a web developer and Mozilla has protected the open web for all of us and if people understood what they’ve done, they’d all donate.
Google and Microsoft cannot and should not control standards. Mozilla is the conscience of the industry. Support it or you won’t know what you lost.
They actually have money in the bank, they just aren’t profitable on their own in any way, and rely on search partnerships for yearly funds. I think they are just being responsible here and cutting people who aren’t working on relevant projects going forward.
I’m not saying they are the right size. Just that if we lose Mozilla and Firefox, it’ll be almost as bad as losing Wikimedia for certain things. We need to protect the open web.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Mozilla (the foundation) is still involved with Firefox, so chance that your donation won’t go toward maintaining the engine. foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-do/
Mozilla (the company) manages Firefox and doesn’t seem to accept donation. They do accept manpower contribution: wiki.mozilla.org/Contribute
Yeah, employing this many employees, the donations would not cover it and you can hardly guarantee a stable job position. It might take just one scandal (whether it’s true or not) for everyone to stop donating.
The Mozilla Foundation uses donation money rather for political activism and they’ve also often distributed money to important open-source projects which are too small to collect donations.
@Ephera@redcalcium I don't mind them using funds on activism directly related to privacy and an open web but they have been blowing huge amounts on far left political causes unrelated. That's why I ignore donstion requests.
I was donating until I got an email telling me to donate more signed by their CEO or something who earns a couple hundred thousand a year.
Mind, I wasn't opted into communcation like that. Only updates and news this was neither. If their new CEO cleans house and refocuses as they said they will, I will consider renewing my donations again.
And how are they keeping anything together. Market share isn’t substantially better than before and rather than focusing on the product mozilla was created for they keep pivoting to weird BS like this AI grab. I actually think market shares gone up recently… cause google pushed through manifestv3. That would’ve happened even if mozilla did nothing. I think mozillq is still the better browser but that sure as hell doesn’t seem to be because of whose in charge.
The CEO of the Mozilla Corporation shouldn’t be asking for donations. It’s the non-profit Mozilla Foundation which collects donations (and owns the Mozilla Corporation). It is a bit confusing, yes…
…and, more importantly, none of the donations go towards Firefox development. Instead they go towards “causes” that Mozilla Foundation finds worthy, and usually they have nothing to do with the open web.
Note that the best way to support it is to actually use its products, Firefox in particular. That’s what gives Mozilla the ability to influence the direction of the web and web standards.
The problem is that the vast majority of end users prefer apps over websites. They have no clue whatsoever that 99% of all apps are essentially just wrapped websites.
Since Mozilla has been unable to find a viable business model (No, relying on Google handouts is not a viable business model) I fear that there is only one possible future and a free web is not part of it.
This is the only realistic answer. Corporations have effectively decided that the future of the web is closed source proprietary javascript bloatware apps that are all functional skinner boxes. Many people, especially young people, have no clue how to use an actual computer. It’s “click the bubble to make it pop and give us your mom’s credit card number to unlock super premium bubbles.” That’s the future of the internet. But probably worse.
They get 500M every year from Google and keep focusing on random bullshit instead of Firefox. Plus, the money you donate in no way is guaranteed to go to Firefox.
There’s no way I’m donating money to an org like that. I use Firefox because it’s the only alternative, but honestly, I hope Mozilla dies and is reborn as a Firefox non-profit. One singular focus: browsers. Only then will I donate.
But Google won’t let them die. They need an excuse should they ever be accused of web domination. “What do you mean domination? We give half a billion a year to at least one competitor out there. What else are we supposed to do?”.
Personally I find it far more important that it’s not run by a company that will try its hardest to track your every movement on the web, but to each their own, I suppose.
También tenemos que entender que hay algunos que solo entran para tener con quien discutir, porque con su esposa no se atreven, así que entran aquí a eso 🤣
You never tried to listen for stock Firefox’s traffic with Wireshark for sure.
People speak very good thing about Firefox but they like to hide and avoid the shady stuff. Let me give you the un-cesored version of what Firefox really is. Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances and they also do stuff like adding unique IDs to each installation.
Firefox does is a LOT of calling home. Just fire Wireshark alongside it and see how much calling home and even calling 3rd parties it does. From basic ocsp requests to calling Firefox servers and a 3rd party company that does analytics they do it all, even after disabling most stuff in Settings and config like the OP did.
I know other browsers do it as well, except for Ungoogled and because of that I’m sticking with it. I would like to avoid programs that need no snitch whenever I open them. ungoogled-chromium + ublock origin + decentraleyes + clearurls and a few others.
Now you’re free to go ahead and downvote this post as much as you would like. I’m sorry for the trouble and mental break down I may have caused by the sudden realization that Firefox isn’t as good and private after all.
Yes but no. Firefox does some creepy stuff, and I will need to verify this. But it also matters how much data websites get about you, and Ungoogled Chromium has no fingerprint protection
I think librewolf scrubs most of that stuff out. I’m basing that off of using burpsuite’s proxy server though. On vanilla firefox it captures so much crap going out. I havent tried with wireshark though.
Not OP, but every single day, for web development. I find them quite a bit more intuitive and easier to use then the ones Ungoogled-Chromium comes with.
That’s all true, but why take a modified chromium instead of a modified Firefox?
Because chromium rendering is better than Firefox’s and I personally like the dev tools better and my usual target audience in dev uses Chrome. I have LibreWolf as the secondary browser but I don’t see me ever liking the way Firefox renders the web.
I personally prefer Firefox’s rendering, or even Edge’s old and long deprecated EdgeHTML (Trident fork) renderer.
IME Chrome performs way too much antialiasing on graphics that are not to scale, and their default font hinting technique doesn’t match Windows or even common Linux distro defaults.
It feels a lot like the enhanced speed and performance come from the shortcuts taken in the renderer, akin to Safari… except that Safari also opts to just refuse implementing new APIs and draft specs.
Text heavy sites in particular are not really that nice to read in Chrome for me personally.
Chromium-based browsers have inherently weaker extensions due to Manifest v3 and many other targeted attacks on adblockers. If you want a browser that works far better and provides a much higher level of privacy, use Mullvad Browser (worked on in collaboration with the Tor Browser, just without Tor integration) or LibreWolf. Both are Firefox forks with Firefox telemetry removed and anti-fingerprinting measures. You don’t need and absolutely should not install any extensions beyond the default installed in those 2 browsers (except perhaps a password manager), as that will dramatically damage the fingerprinting protection they provide. Both will have a much higher level of protection than you could ever realistically expect from any Chromium-based Browser.
I’m not ever going to use Mullvad Browser, I would rather use stock Firefox than that. I have LibreWolf installed as second browser and I like it at that, but I don’t see myself going away from ungoogled-chromium anytime soon.
Can we ask why you wouldn’t use Mullvad Browser? I’m honestly curious about that. From my wireshark tests, that thing only hits what you tell it to hit, nothing else. Am I missing something?
So… you don’t trust Google but you trust some shady VPN company? You aren’t wrong about quick wireshark tests, it does seem cleaner but long term trust and VPN companies are not something that go into the same sentence.
I dont use Mullvad VPN, only the browser. I do use NordVPN when I need to show as being in another country, but mostly to circumvent geolocation and keep some stuff from my ISP. I know commercial VPNs are just switching who sees your data, but I’m good having a company that’s not my ISP and in my country looking at that. And yes, I distrust Google to no end. The same applies to Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, etc. There are not many names out there I trust. At the end of the day, anything not under your control, you need to choose how much you trust it, if at all.
I know commercial VPNs are just switching who sees your data,
Oh yeah.
And yes, I distrust Google to no end.
Me too, the reason why I use ungoogled-chromium is mostly because of that and because when you take Chrome and remove all the tracking and spyware it runs way faster ahah. There are many people and projects that came together in the ungoogled-chromium community and the source code is scrutinized and cleaned up like nothing else.
We’re lucky that there are so many nice developers out there just providing these tools for the community to break the ropes that tie us to big tech. Those devs are the real heroes in my book.
First off, everything Mullvad deploys is open source, from their clients to their servers. They have been audited and checked by 3rd parties to ensure their servers are running the source code they released. They are not some “shady VPN company” like Nord. They have a continual commitment to transparency that has been tested and true for many years.
Second, MullvadVPN has very little to do with the development of the Mullvad browser. It’s just a fork of Tor Browser maintained by the Tor Project as a collaborative effort towards a uniform browser with the benefits of Tor Browser, but to be used without the Tor network. It is funded by Mullvad, but maintained mostly by the Tor Project. Do you not trust the Tor Project? The non-profit that has been open source and audited constantly throughout its lifespan? Here’s the source code on the Tor Project’s repo: gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/…/mullvad-browser
The only Mullvad affiliation is the Mullvad extension that comes preinstalled (which you can uninstall, of course), the name, and the logo. That’s about it. No need to use their VPN, no need to buy anything from Mullvad, it’s basically just the Tor Browser without Tor.
I’d really rather have some harmless telemetry by Mozilla with a stronger ad blocker than Chromium bullshit. Ngl some people take privacy too seriously
If you ask a user to show you a “core dump” they’re more likely to shit on their floor and send you a photo than do what you actually mean.
Telemetry is absolutely crucial in determining what to focus on in development, to fix issues the users might not even realize exist. Especially for projects that aim at the general public. As long as it’s communicated clearly, used truly only for development purposes and an opt-out is available there’s nothing wrong about it.
Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances.
I’m not going to refute this because it seems to me that article are right in several points. Also, we have to be honest, Mozilla is kind of stupid sometimes.
But if you care about the default search engine or privacy settings, you really just need to do some hardening and tweaks to make it very private in general. Chromium doesn’t have any of these settings, it even doesn’t have RFP btw.
Looks like you can download Firefox through the Mozilla’s official HTTP/FTP repository that doesn’t trigger this ID token generation. Also this article motivates people to download Firefox installer from Softonic’s page:
Firefox users who prefer to download the browser without the unique identifier may do so in the following two ways:
Download the Firefox installer from Mozilla’s HTTPS repository (formerly the FTP repository).
Download Firefox from third-party download sites that host the installer, e.g., from Softonic.
I’m not trying to justify the Mozilla’s problems. They makes silly things sometimes, but being realistic, they do a better job taking care of their users privacy more than Google or even Brave.
we have to be honest, Mozilla is kind of stupid sometimes.
Yes.
Looks like you can download Firefox through the Mozilla’s official HTTP/FTP repository that doesn’t trigger this ID token generation. Also this article motivates people to download Firefox installer from Softonic’s page:
Yes, but still having to go around the main download page to get an untracked version is kind of annoying. Fuck Softonic, the rest of the information about the IDs still holds true.
Firefox is better than most, no double there, but at the same time they do have some shady finances
So I went ahead and read that article and goodness gracious, does anybody actually read these links??? Because that link is a complete nothingburger. It’s a blog post from someone who never read a 990 before (standard nonprofit disclosure form) who thinks every other line of is proof of a scandal. But it’s not, it’s just a big word salad that is too long to read, so nobody will bother.
The most significant charge is (1) that the CEO makes too much and (2) the author doesn’t like that they contract out work to consultants who think diversity is good. Every point made, so far as I can tell:
Have assets worth $1.1 billion as of 2021
Mozilla spent less on “expenses” from 2021 relative to 2020
Revenue went up over the same time
A lot of revenue was from royalties (e.g. agreements for default search)
They disagree with the wording on a donate form about whether Mozilla “relies” on individual donations
The CEO made $5.6MM
They pulled out one expense, which appears to have been training/education relating to social justice topics
They pull out a few more individual expenses and weren’t sure what they were.
This isn’t secret documents being handed to Deep Throat in a dark parking lot. There’s no smoking gun, no smoke, just a PDF with ordinary tables of expenses and revenue, and consultants who did diversity training. If that’s shady then, get ready to be mad about every non-profit ever.
The only issue they have with sandboxing is on Android, as they have yet to implement per-site process isolation despite it being present on desktop Firefox and Chromium Android for many years now. I’ve been tracking the development of Project Fission on Android (Firefox’s per-site process isolation) for years now and it still isn’t even ready for testing. Additionally, Firefox Android does not use Android’s isolatedProcess flag for sandboxing, which is another area in which it is behind Chrome. For that reason, I cannot recommend Firefox on Android, and instead recommend Cromite (fork of Bromite after its development was abandoned) which is based on Chromium.
Yes very poorly true. The lack of any sync makes other mobile browsers hard to use for me though. Often start stuff on mobile, and continue on a real browser on Laptop.
Firefox shipped sandboxing on Android years ago (before chrome) and then removed it. I’m not sure you gain much from it on Android. It eats up ram making performance crap on cheap phones and apps already run in their own app user context to isolate what they can access.
If you’re referencing an isolatedProccess implementation, the benefit is that each site is isolated in its own process, and any exploit would only have access to its own process (the data that the site sees anyways) without further escape (kernel exploit or meltdown, for instance). Without this isolation flag, sites are not sandboxed from each other or from the browser’s process itself, meaning an exploit could access any data from any other active site or from the browser’s process (such as accessing browser settings, bookmarks, history, or the built-in browser password manager). This has a massive implication on security. I’m unaware of the sandboxing you mentioned before Chrome, so I can’t comment on that, but you gain a lot of security from proper per-site process isolation. Yes, the app lives inside its own sandbox, but there’s plenty of data within that sandbox that you may not want a site to access, hence the importance of the isolatedProcess flag.
I dont think the community is generally against AI, there’s plenty of FOSS porjects. They just don’t like cashgrabs, enshittification and sending personal data to someone else’s computer.
I don’t see anyone calling for cash grabs or privacy destroying features to be added to gnome or other projects so I don’t see why that would be an issue. 🙂
On device Foss models to help you with various tasks.
You are, if you’re calling for Apple like features.
You might argue that “private cloud” is privacy preserving, but you can only implement that with the cash of Apple. I would also argue that anything leaving my machine, to a bunch of servers I don’t control, without my knowledge is NOT preserving my privacy.
Apple’s “private cloud” is a thing. Not all “Apple Intelligence” features are “on device”, some can and do utilize cloud-based processing power, and this will also be available to app developers.
Apparently this has additional safeguards vs “normal cloud” which is why they are branding it “private cloud”.
But it’s still “someone else’s computer” and apple is not keeping their AI implementation 100% on device.
@MentalEdge@FatCat same as the time they sent all the notification to the government or uploaded all the pictures for server side scanning. It's "private" as in they keep it for themselves 🤣
On device Foss models to help you with various tasks.
Thankfully I really really don’t need an “AI” to use my desktop. I don’t want that kind of BS bloat either. But go ahead and install whatever you want on your machine.
It is quite a bloat. Llama3 7B is 4.7GB by itself, not counting all the dependencies and drivers. This can easily take 10+ GB of the drive. My Ollama setup takes about 30GB already. Given a single application (except games like COD that takes up 300GB), this is huge, almost the size of a clean OS install.
Feature-wise probably next to nothing, and it’s usually behind one or two generations in terms of bandwidth. HDMI is often the only port available on TVs though, so GPU makers likely can’t afford to just leave it out.
They should anyway. New tech TV’s are all smart these days and the dumb ones are made for two decades ago. At this point we are better off with a PC monitor and separate speakers. Built in speakers are shit seemingly as a requirement. I use a video port switch for extra inputs without needing to use the on screen menus or just running out of built in ports.
Decades of being the standard in a/v. That’s like asking, why don’t we get rid of gas stations and just install electric chargers? Well, everybody’s got gas powered cars.
AV things sure since they stick around longer, but computers? When was the last time you saw a high end GPU with VGA or DVI? And they already usually have mostly DisplayPort with just one or two HDMI ports
Well, I wasn’t referring to that ecosystem. That ecosystem is already on display port. The reason HDMI is so prevalent is because it’s the standard in audio-visual equipment. Why would I talk about computer equipment when it’s not the standard there?
The point still stands. Everybody has equipment that has HDMI, and to phase out that standard in equipment going forward is phasing out equipment people already own.
HDMi foundation is founded by companies who own the home theatre environement (mainly movie conpanies and television) who puts DRM on HDMI to make it harder to illegally copy content like movies, ao they will always want to be anti open source because thats the request of streaming services/movie businesses. Its why for example, mobile devices have widevine levels. those levels basically determine how “unlocked” the device is and services will refuse to offer full functionality to unlocked devices because of it, be it audio or video.
Members of VESA, who control the displaypprt standard are generally computer companies are mostly not in the business of media, so they value specs over drm on changes, which for example a use case is that displayport allows for daisychaining diaplays.
I don’t know a single person who has ever used HDMI to steal copyrighted content. Seriously? Who would rip a 2 hr move by watching it vs the 10 min it takes to rip a movie digitally.
Like shit ya got CAM, WebRIP, BRRIP and SCENE. I doubt HDMI was used in any of these scenarios.
technically speaking, every gamer who capture cards to bypass when games on PlayStation has an explicit mode that disables built in recording when a cutscene is active is an example.
its the attempt that matters more to investors than the pirates. its why a shit ton of games have denuvo, evem if the version of denuvo they utilized is cracked already or not. its not there for the end user, its there for the investors to show they are at least attempting to fight off piracy.
Denuvo is actually very effective relatively speaking. Several popular games that use it have never been cracked. They haven’t made it impossible, just sufficiently difficult and tedious that no one wants to bother.
it’s working in the sense that i slows it down. However how denuvo works is that there are usually are generations of denuvo that get cracked, so once one gets cracked in a generation, theres a handful that will be cracked with it. if a company is using an older generation of denuvo, you may typically see day 1 cracks, which ultimately means the company paid denuvo for nothing, but the point is, denuvo wasn’t meant to stop piracy first, it was meant to appease investors that require denuvo to be implemented.
My guess is it has something to do with DRM protection in the HDMI spec. I have no proof but it seems like it is always DRM that screws over open source.
Tbf 500ms latency on - IIRC - a loopback network connection in a test environment is a lot. It’s not hugely surprising that a curious engineer dug into that.
I’ve seen that claim a couple of places and would like a source. It very well may be since Microsoft prefers Debian based systems for WSL and for azure, but its not something I would have assumed by default
It started with ssh using unreasonably much cpu which interfered with benchmarks. Then profiling showed that cpu time being spent in lzma, without being attributable to anything. And he remembered earlier valgrind issues. These valgrind issues only came up because he set some build flag he doesn’t even remember anymore why it is set. On top he ran all of this on debian unstable to catch (unrelated) issues early. Any of these factors missing, he wouldn’t have caught it. All of this is so nuts.
The fact that 90% of people don’t give a shit about ads, privacy or their operating system in general. They want a machine to open a browser, that’s it. If Windows comes pre-installed, they’ll use Windows.
The only realistic chance we’ve got is that MS shoots itself in the foot once more by all that Recall crap and businesses drop Windows. But that’s a long shot.
I find most people don’t know of the alternatives but they are open to change as they are unhappy with current options that they are aware of. I’ve talked with a few people that were surprisingly open to to trying Linux. They didn’t know how easy it is to use and install but jumped on the opportunity as they were unhappy with Windows.
… And then something happens and they want you to install Windows again.
As much as I like Linux, compared to Windows and Mac OS it’s high maintenance. Once in a while, things will bork themselves. And you need to have at least a rough understanding of what’s happening to fix it.
Also (and that’s not a Linux problem per se) people seem to think if Windows breaks, MS or they themselves are at fault, if Linux breaks, that weird nerd and his hacker stuff are at fault.
I have to disagree, at least in my experience.
Windows causes more problems, both for my mum and myself.
Her only purpose of a PC is basically to open a web browser, answer some mails and plug in a USB from time to time. For her, Mint never made one single problem, except when the hard drive failed.
She really liked the “boringness” and the old Windows charme.
And for me, Linux never made any big troubles in general. When I used Tumbleweed, there were a few papercuts (e.g. graphical glitches, program freezes, etc.) due to the bleeding edge, but nothing major.
And since I use Fedora Atomic, I completely forget that I use an OS in general. I never have to update anything, I can’t break my stuff, etc…
It’s the most “boring” and user friendly OS I’ve used, even more than MacOS and Windows. Only Android/ iOS are better in that regard.
But I’ve never seen my OS just borking itself. If that should ever happen, I can easily roll back in a second and it will work again.
And you need to have at least a rough understanding of what’s happening to fix it.
If you can fix Windows (which made way more problems after updates for me) then fixing Linux is way easier. And if you’re an average person, then you go to a local repair shop and say “My PC broke” and they reinstall Windows for you.
Without fail, every Linux installation I had destroyed itself after a while.
Be it a full boot partition, some weird driver compatibility, etc, etc.
My Windows installations (granted, all work laptops) never destroyed themselves. Yes, some bugs here and there, but it worked well enough for home usage. You can’t discount that.
Okay, but understand that from for example my point of view, your perception appears really skewed because my GNU/Linux installations have never “destroyed [themselves] after a while”. Respectfully, I think that you project your Linux failures unto the entire ecosystem, based on issues that were unique to you.
I've got the complete opposite to you. I'm in a household of 3 gaming desktops and 3 laptops, plus family who need help. I've been daily driving Linux for about a decade now and keep duel boot around just for Adobe products.
On all these machines, Linux hs been rock solid and never had issues that wasn't user caused. Windows on the other hand drives me crazy with how much it fucks out. I have next to no control over it. It updates when it wants. I have no control over what's updated. I hate the gods damn ads (and that's on Windows 10) despite running de-crappifying software. I hate how many errors it has and how long it takes t troubleshoot them. I hate that if the system borks itself enough, it's faster and less insanity inducing to just reinstall the whole os than try and fix it. I hate that Windows just gets progressively slower and laggier over time whereas my 6 year running Arch install was as fast as the day I installed it.
need to have an understanding of operating systems, so they can think about alternatives
need to be aware of the actual alternative
need to be willing to learn something new
need to be willing to leave some applications or games behind
need to choose a Linux distribution
need the technical ability and understanding to actually download, flash and boot from boot system, install it and setup initial, such as root password and such
These are basic and trivial stuff for us, but most normies don’t have this understanding and interest to go this far. And then it depends if they are happy and stay. Even if every PC manufacturer and distributor would offere the same PC with Windows and Linux, most would just choose Windows (probably). This is the current reality.
Such a hard agree. My wife won’t even let me install Linux, which takes out the more technical aspects of the above.
She’s just comfortable on Windows. Most people don’t want to learn something new and even fewer actually care about privacy.
Edit: Us Linux users assume that if Windows gets bad enough people will switch to Linux, when we all should face facts that normies will much sooner switch to Mac.
I have an M2 mini I use for iOS builds, cheap enough for me to buy and stick in the rack to use for remote builds. I got that a year ago for $600ish iirc.
Which is fine, I don’t store anything on there (Jenkins automations to build, local git repo on another machine, output goes to NAS), but it’s ridiculous how much the upgrades cost.
If I didn’t need a build target for iOS I wouldn’t have bothered with it, that’s for sure.
I might be biased running a NAS as well, but I’m not fussed about having a tonne of storage on-device. Yeah agreed it is bonkas how much they charge for that extra 8GB of RAM. Default should for sure be 16 by now.
Mostly yes but there’s one other option that simplifies the whole thing: Chromebooks. They’re actually pretty decent for someone who doesn’t need much beyond a browser, a mail client, and a basic office suite.
Sure, they’re tied to Google with all that entails but they can be a real option for someone like a senior who relies on relatives for tech support.
Something I’ve never checked for but…are there any linux installers that run from within windows? Shrink the windows partition, create a linux partition, populate it, install grub, and tell the user to reboot and choose linux? I think general lack of good ext4 fs support in windows might make things difficult, but you don’t actually need to do that part from within windows. There could be a second installer that’s triggered the first time they boot from grub.
I feel like a well supported installer like that would dramatically lower the barrier to entry. It could make dual booting windows a breeze for anyone who knows how to run an installer and reboot, which is what people actually want.
This sounds awesome idea. Not sure if there is a technical reason why this could not be done. On the other hand, Windows already has WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux, is it still called like that?). All antivirus programs would probably go nuts. Windows itself is a restricted system and some things need to be done before booting into Windows. I assume if it was possible, then this would have been done before. At least I never heard about this. The best way is to have a preinstalled Linux on hardware.
Until something breaks, or doesn’t have a GUI. The average user seeing a terminal means they will abandon it. And even if they are willing to handle a terminal to fix an issue, the toxic community members that flock to be the first to respond condescendingly to new users will turn them away permanently.
Linux communities have some of the most helpful users, but they also have people worse than a League of Legends game. And all it takes is one of them to turn the average person away forever.
Businesses that already use Windows with all of the heavily integrated business-related stuff from Microsoft (AD, Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, etc.) won’t change that just because a feature that most likely can be disabled via GPO.
It’s true. I only use applications. The OS is a thing in the background that needs to get setup fast so I click an application and now I’m using my computer. I spend more time in my BIOS than I do the back of my OS.
Whichever OS does that best will always be the most popular.
Yes, but there are things that absolutely drove be crazy in Windows. When you switch to Korean, it would default to Latin characters, and you have to switch to Korean characters. Which is fine if you always use the Korean layout and just toggle between Latin and Korean characters, like most Koreans.
But I am actually learning Korean and I speak more than one other language. When I switch to Chinese I expect it to type in Chinese. When I switch to Korean, I expect it to type in Korean.
The most bullshit thing about Windows is if the default behavior doesn’t suit you, there’s no way to change it. You’re stuck with how Windows works because it’s batteries included.
What would it look like? I’d guess Amazon ads in the search bar, proprietary package managers overriding the old open package manager, and popup ads for distribution Pro?
Ubuntu was my first distro because ubuntu was linux for outsiders many years ago. Any other distro was only for hardcore people. I don’t regret hopping around the linux world.
I used Ubuntu for over 10 years. I loved it. But Canonical does have a lot of baggage. Plus, I wanted to go to the source. So that’s why I use Debian. I’d still advise a new user to go for Mint if they loved the Windows UI or Ubuntu if they hated it. If you use and love Mint, I don’t think anyone would criticize you for continuing to use it. If you use and love Ubuntu, I’d say Debian is a very easy next step.
I used to be “Debian on the server, Ubuntu on the desktop” but recently I’ve spun up a few Debian boxes for desktop and I’m pleasantly surprised.
Kinda wish Valve would go for a full-out supported distro that stays in step with the Deck for Linux gamers (the old desktop SteamOS is kinda abandoned from what I can see), among with making the deck frontend a supported desktop manager. It would make sense for them to do so and rake in the game sales whilst providing a well-supported platform without the shit others are doing.
Same. I started really using Linux with Ubuntu 6.06 and was drawn in by its “Linux for human beings” goals - the Ubuntu homepage of the era really pushed the ideals of community and openness. Canonical sat in the background paying to send you free CDs in the mail. It was such an idealistic thing back then.
And then it all changed around 2010. The color scheme shifted to a shitty MacOS lookalike, the human elements were dropped, the logo was reworked, it got bundled with a paid music store, then Amazon ads in the search, and it’s been a roller coaster on a downward spiral ever since. I switched to Debian not long after the initial enshittification in the early 2010s and have not looked back, though I moved most of my systems to Arch a few years back because I like life in the fast rolling release lane and Debian wouldn’t support my new GPUs.
I got into linux right before all the snap drama really blew up (it did exist but didn’t seem to be quite as hot of a topic). I really liked my experience with Ubuntu, but seeing where Canonical has taken it, I’d never recommend it to anyone. I’d honestly advise newbies to use Debian. It’s incredibly stable, has a fantastic and well established community, and has everything an average user would want without adding layers of confusion with things like snap.
Ubuntu has had all three of those things. Amazon ads in the search bar was awhile back. Not sure but I assume they still hijack installing Firefox using apt and instead install it using snap. And Ubuntu Pro popups are a new thing.
Does anyone know if this is still the case? This video is 11 years old, but logic and common sense tell me that, if anything, it should be even worse now.
No clue, but they did their “whoopsie, didn’t know you wouldn’t like it, now it’s opt in” pretty quickly.
A while back I’ve read about some allegations that they’re illegally collecting data from Azure Ubuntu instances and sending Ubuntu pro marketing material.
It’s ridiculous how Ubuntu went from the easiest entry to Linux to one of the most hated distros in the community. Seriously, I’ll never understand how the broken brains of their leadership even work.
Yes, they worked differently than the way Edge or Chrome do now and were in many ways superior for tab management, much more like Vivaldi’s sessions but more intuitive. I was a heavy user and so am biased. They said “just use an extension!” but it would crash and lose your session (and imo the extension works even worse today). It was really ahead of its time.
Few people used it because they didn’t advertise it or make it easily discoverable. You had to know the shortcut already through osmosis or drag the button out of the customize menu.
I actually prefer Chrome’s tab groups, preferring to have groups visible and one click away. Ideally the user would be able to choose whether to show or hide inactive groups.
I mean, why not use Geckoview? Mozilla is doing something really nice and has the only full fledged browser with actual Addon support. Meanwhile GNOME and KDE have half-baked projects that use engines only really maintained by Google and Apple.
Damn Lemmy users are no different from Reddit. Don’t read anything. Take anything you did read out of context. Be sure to rage post your own ignorance so we can all read about it.
There are a bunch of free channels on the internet that some TVs can just stream without a dedicated app. These channels are supported by ads like cable/whatever channels, but not locked behind a subscription. VLC is supporting whatever formats they use to allow (or make it easier; IDK) people to watch them if they want.
The other part is that they're working on web assembly to allow sites to use VLC as their embedded video player.
I’m so conflicted about web assembly. I’m a web developer and I think it’s going to be amazing eventually but 20% of me thinks it’s going to be a security nightmare and require a decade of fuck ups to reach its potential.
I’m mostly worried about how much less open this will make the web for simple local hacking. I often add small features to webapps I use by injecting code and hooking into their systems (when it’s not an app with open source, where I send a PR instead - and if I can work around issues I do contact the owners with a working fix).
This will be much harder with WebAssembly. Sure, there’ll be decompilers in time - but in the time it takes me to change a small piece of behaviour in such cases, I can add multiple features in the current JS environment, even if the code is obfuscated.
I’m more concerned that the web will get even slower and bloated. We are already seeing the first frameworks that ship a webassembly .NET runtime, Python runtime, JVM, … . I kinda fear that in 10 years when you visit a site you need to download runtime xyz in version abc for the 1000th time. All because some people or companies just can not be bothered to learn any new technology.
Yeah sure it’s user fault and not the click bait headline, I’m sure they can describe the whole article in one headline without any confusion, oh and probably half of lemmy user are used to be redditers
I mean, yeah, muscle spasm disorder or my dumb ass absent-mindedly opening files in my download folder or Jester from HR, who doesn’t know that a job application shouldn’t have the executable icon. For all of us, it improves accessibility, because we don’t need to be as cautious anymore.
I appreciate the joke, but well, yes. The difference being that it’s only for executables and you need to do click-move-click rather than the usual double-click, so it’s even harder to accidentally trigger.
idk about you, but I only run executables from dolphin once every full moon, or so. And even if it was frequently, it doesn’t come close to the number of folders I open that only need a single click.
Right. I use a proper launcher for anything I execute constantly - like Gnome shell or KRunner on KDE. Scripts I usually run in the terminal to see their output. So it’s really rare for me to run anything by clicking on it using Dolphin.
Maybe the KDE devs were expecting you to do file management using the keyboard only. Or maybe they thought that linux users aren’t technical enough that they would ever consider organizing their files. Just dumb it all on the desktop and call it a day, amarite?
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