Vinegar

Vinegar, 6 months ago

I avoid Ubuntu because Canonical has a history of going their own way alone rather than collaborating on universal standards. For instance, when the X devs decided the successor to X11 needed to be a complete redesign from scratch companies like RedHat, Collabora, Intel, Google, Samsung, and more collaborated to build Wayland. However, Canonical announced Mir, and they went their own way alone.

When Gnome3 came out it was very controversial and this spawned alternatives such as Cinnamin, MATE, and Ubuntu's Unity desktop. Unity was the only Linux desktop, before or since, to include sponsored bloatware apps installed by default, and it also sold user search history to advertisers.

Then, there's snap. While Flatpak matured and becoame the defacto standard distro-agnostic package system, Canonical once again went their own way alone by creating snap.

I'm not an expert on Ubuntu or the Linux community, I've just been around long enough to see Canonical stir up controversy over and over by going left when everyone else goes right, failing after a few years, and wasting thousands of worker hours in the process.

Vinegar, 6 months ago

I worked at a sandwich shop and had given my two weeks notice a few days earlier. My manager came to me and asked me to clean up the bathroom...alright. I could smell it before I even opened the door.

I told my manager I'd clean it if he'd still give me the employee discount after I was gone. "Done". That's when I knew it was really bad.

When I opened the door I discovered someone had ass-blasted the bathroom. I'm not talking about blowing up the toilet, they did that too, but they had dropped their drawers and point-blank diarhea shotgunned the pipes under the sink.

My manager didn't honor the employee discount after I was gone, either.

Vinegar, 6 months ago

Ever since Signal removed SMS capability I've really hoped to see SMS added to the FOSS fork Molly.

Vinegar, 8 months ago

You've listed a lot of good reasons why open-source for business isn't used more frequently, and they're all consistent with my experience as well. Are you familiar with any consulting companies / vendors who DO advocate open-source solutions?

I've been considering starting a FOSS MSP / FOSS B2B consulting firm, but I've consistently come to the same conclusion that the tech industry and business culture here are almost innoculated against open-source. If you know any firms that DO recommend open-source solutions I'd love to check them out.

Vinegar, 9 months ago

Karl Marx was a philosopher and economist. He wanted to understand class relations and social conflict, so he developed theories to explain why things are the way they are. A Marxist uses Marx's theories to understand why the world is the way it is.

Marx had a lot of theories, such as historical materialism - that all history was primarily motivated by socio-economic forces, not supernatural forces or grand conspiracy. Marx wrote that the dominate socio-economic system running the world in his time was capitalism/imperialism which fueled capital accumulation through exploitation and alienation, and used technology to further this process with imperialist wars for resources etc... He also focused on class struggle between those with the most resources, and those with the fewest resources - the bourgeoisie (capitalists) vs. the proletariat (workers/peasants).

Marx went further than trying to explain why the world is the way it is, he also theorized on how humanity could replace the dominate socio-economic system, and what a non-exploitative non-alienating socio-economic system might look like. "Marxist" refers to anyone who believes Marx's theories are valid and uses them to understand the way things are.

Vinegar, 9 months ago

Gnome provides a more consistent user experience because Gnome apps usually have fewer features and don't offer many customization options by default. KDE apps usually have a lot of settings and customization options, but the user interface might be a little less intuitive or you may have to search in a settings menu to find what you're looking for.

In my experience Gnome is pretty, intuitive, and well integrated, but I tend to settle on KDE Plasma because KDE apps often have more advanced functionality and more options for configuration. If you're the type who likes to explore device/app settings to configure things exactly how you want, then consider KDE Plasma. If you'd rather have a minimal but consistent experience out-of-the-box without any tinkering then Gnome is probably the better choice for you.

Vinegar, 9 months ago

It is supposedly a personal moral failing every time someone drives too old, too tired, or too impaired, but if trains, busses, & walking were the default ways to get around then this chronic societal problem would diminish dramatically. For the vast majority of US citizens busses, trains, walking, biking, etc are not viable options because US infrastructure & city planning overwhelmingly neglects everything but the automobile.

Incompetent driving is rooted in systemic failures, not personal moral ones.

Vinegar, 9 months ago

Check out the Fairphone 4/5 running /e/OS. To get a "stock" phone that comes degoogled and ready to use, no tinkering required, you can buy a phone directly from the makers of /e/OS/: Murena

Vinegar, 9 months ago

Take a look at OpenSCAD for modeling, if you have any programming/webdev experience you'll be making simple parts in <5min. It's the best for making & sharing designs that are easy to modify. Just yesterday I was going to print a phone stand that was a little too narrow, and by changing a single number variable it fit perfectly.

Vinegar, 10 months ago

I have not quite finished the book yet, but Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future is hard-science fiction set in the near future when climate change tipping points start to be reached, and it is so far my favorite book in a long time. It is dystopian, but not bleak or hopeless.

Vinegar, 10 months ago

✊ I wish it weren't a fight, but it is. You deserve to be as you are and anyone who denies and opposes another's right to simply exist is simply wrong.

Vinegar, 10 months ago

The immutable Fedora releases, like Kinoite, have been the best development distros for me. Immutable Fedora releases come with Toolbox for making per-project containers, so you can have separate de-cluttered dev environments for each project. Toolbox containers are not isolated environments like virtual machines, so performance is on-par with bare-metal as well.

I don't know if Sliverblue or Kinoite is the right choice for your exact workflow, but if you're looking for a Linux host that "just works" out of the box, has a trivial learning curve, and provides serious quality of life improvements then definitely look into Fedora Kinoite.

Vinegar, 10 months ago

I haven't played in over a year, but I really spent some hours in Veloren the last time I picked it up!

Vinegar, 10 months ago

I know your struggle. It's not uncommon to experience issues with the Windows installer if the install medium is not created using Microsoft's official Windows installation media creation tool (Use the middle option to download mediacreationtool.exe).

Coming from Linux, I tried writing the Windows .iso directly to a USB drive using dd, this absolutely would not work on any machine for me. Sometimes the install medium would boot, sometimes it wouldn't, but even if it did the installer wouldn't recognize any storage mediums or would fail part way through installing. Using the official media creation tool resolved all the issues I was having.

I do not know why the Windows .iso images do not work on any of my machines, but it sounds like you are experiencing the same issues that I was. Give the official media creation tool a try, hopefully that resolves the issue.

Vinegar, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

+1 for the Framework laptop from https://frame.work/ . It's my favorite laptop I've ever owned and the Linux support is excellent. There's a healthy Linux community surrounding this laptop and the Arch wiki even has an entire aricle dedicated to it.

Vinegar, 10 months ago

The 9to5 article is poorly written. In the first paragraph 9to5 says a new window system is "scheduled to replace" the current one, but this is not true. The cited blog post explicitly says "There’s no timeline or roadmap at this stage". The Gnome developers are merely experimenting with a new window management system and at this early stage it's impossible to know what the finished product may look like if these experiments go anywhere at all.

Here's a link to the original blog post where Gnome developer Tobias Bernard explains their dissatisfaction with existing window management systems and discusses the techinical challeneges developers face.

Vinegar, 10 months ago

Police spend most of their time on routine traffic stops, and routine traffic stops could be eliminated by transit and walkable infrastructure. It's almost like it's a racket...

Vinegar, 10 months ago

Until humanity is mature enough to stop exploiting, poisoing, and destroying everything in our path it seems best that we quarantine on Earth imo. There is so much possibility down here as soon as we stop trying to run away from home and we bloom where we're planted instead.

Vinegar, 11 months ago

All too often I think the discussion misses the fact that there is no alternative to driving for the vast majority of US citizens. Busses, trains, walking, biking, etc are not viable options because US infrastructure & city planning overwhelmingly neglects everything but the automobile.

It is supposedly a personal moral failing every time someone drives too old, too tired, or too impaired, but if trains, busses, & walking were the default ways to get around then this chronic societal problem would diminish dramatically. Incompetent driving is rooted in systemic failures, not personal moral ones.

Vinegar, 11 months ago

Just chiming in to reaffirm what everyone else has said: KDE Neon is specifically built be the best KDE distro. The development branch is what KDE devs use to build & test all their software, so no distro is designed to work better with KDE software than KDE Neon.

Vinegar, 11 months ago

This is an old argument that's long dead. The bottom line is it's a big deal to uproot your entire life / entire company just to exploit tax loopholes, and the use of tax havens is already so common place that it is unlikely to be exacerbated by additional scrutiny.

The book Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe talks a lot on this topic. The authors Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage defend progressive taxation, and state that the only historically-successful argument for raising taxes on the ultra wealthy has been "conscription of wealth" - The working class were conscripted to fight and die in war while the propertied class were not, so the property of the ultra wealthy was taxed very highly (conscripted) for war efforts.

Today, the world faces numerous crisis, and it is the lower class that will work the hardest and be forced to suffer the most while resolving them. It seems reasonable to me that the wealth of the upper class should likewise be put to use solving these crisis rather than exacerbating them. That's a conscription of wealth I can get behind.

Vinegar, 11 months ago

If you earn 45000€ or more per year (post-tax) you are in the 1%. (According to this)

€45,000/yr is in top 1% globally, but not the top 1% for the EU. Either way, the article is discussing a tax on wealth, not income. Even if €45,000/yr was in the top 1% income for the EU, someone making that salary is extremely unlikely to have accumulated enough assets to place them in the top 1% for wealth.

Vinegar, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

"good" "selfish idiots"

Such disregard for life is unjustifiable and inexcusable - I don't know what values you aspire to live by, but celebrating death or wishing punitive suffering on anyone is certain to perpetuate harm.

It's tragic that people died regardless of the lives they lead. I have no love for the ultra wealthy, and this event overshadowing the capsized migrant boat highlights our collective hypocrisy, but celebrating death & suffering is a self-destructive and socially regressive action that I hope fewer people do. Instead of directing your ire towards the individuals who died I hope that you and other readers direct that frustration towards the systemic failures those individuals embodied, and I hope you find a way use that anger for constructive action towards a better world.

Vinegar, 1 year ago

I expect to see further erosion of Net Neutrality if big tech firms are required to pay for internet infrastructure. I have no love for big tech, but if they are required to pay for infrastructure, then how long until smaller companies and hosts are required to pay? The Biden administration seems to agree: "[it] is difficult to understand how a system of mandatory payments imposed on only a subset of content providers could be enforced without undermining net neutrality." I have no love for ISPs either - ISPs should be run as public utilities, not as for-profit private corporate conglomerates.

As others have already pointed out the US government (and Comcast, Verizon, & Century Link customers) have been defrauded by the major telecom companies for nearly 30 years worth at least $400 billion dollars (data from 2014, the current total is likely over $700 billion). They've been pocketing obscene amounts of money instead of investing in infrastructure for decades, at this point additional infrastructure should be publicly funded, owned & operated and the telecommunications companies should be forced to sell the internet infrastructure to local public utilities.

The Irregulators are a group of experts who have been fighting this fraud since 1999, and they have a couple books about this:

• The Book of Broken Promises- $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net
• DISS-CONNECT - How America's Big Telecoms Stole Billions from the Public and Created the Digital Divide