In this case, I would check out the Floorp browser. It is a Firefox fork that plans to be more like Vivaldi and have lots of features, including vertical tabs.
Yes, because I want my friends (who aren’t tech orientated) and interest groups (which aren’t tech orientated) to be on the Fediverse.
They’re always complaining about this, that, and the other about the big platforms but they have so many hang ups regarding Fedi software, so they don’t use them.
A lot of it is perception, but you have to try and make it so people don’t have those perceptions or break them.
I have worked in service/retail, and this argument doesn’t make a lot of sense. Most service/retail is actually 7-day weeks, but the workers average out to 5-day weeks with rotating shifts etc.
All that would have to happen is the workers now average out to 4-day weeks, with a similar level of pay (which is what the 4-day week advocates are asking for).
The 4-day week isn’t about office workers, it’s about everyone.
Debian doesn’t push the responsibility to the user to finish setting things up though, it is designed to be complete out of the box, especially since Debian 12.
For what it’s worth on my computer with a GTX 1650 and Debian 12, I am unable to use Wayland at all as the drivers simply do not work (yes, this is the nvidia-driver package, not nouveau). On Plasma, everything seems to move at a snail’s pace, and on GNOME the desktop is constantly flickering and showing old portions of the screen. X11 is perfectly fine though.
On my cheap laptop with integrated AMD graphics though? Debian 12 with Wayland works like a charm and has no issues.
Not everything actually requires a GUI, obviously. But anything that requires configuration, especially for controlling a hardware device, should have a fully functional GUI. I know Linux is all about being in control, and users should not be afraid to use the command line, but if you have to learn another bespoke command syntax...
Your issue seems less the command line and that things aren’t “working”, or the tools you want aren’t pre-packaged.
Using Arch Linux was not the best idea if you want something that “just works”, as it works on a philosophy where you install the minimum amount required and then add things, such as drivers or packages, as you need them. In other words, it’s a distribution where you know what you need for your system. It is also a command-line centric distribution, so it’s strange that “GUI” is your bug bear when you picked one that deliberately forces command line.
Regarding overclocking and GPU configuration, you just get CoreCtrl, which even has a GUI.
Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely agree that everything should have a user interface as much as possible, but the whole “Linux means you have to use command line all the time!!” is simply just not true anymore, and I feel this issue comes from people recalling memories from 10 years ago or using distributions where command line is necessary, rather than something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint where it mostly isn’t.
Have people installed Debian since Debian 12? The installer is very straight forward, and Debian 12 also comes with all the firmware modules to make things “just work” for people.
I would like to know exactly what Debian does wrong other than a blanket statement of “it’s hard”.
I definitely agree their website needs work, it is very confusing to browse if you need anything other than the net installer! I find everything else by using search engines instead.
Hmm? I’m sorry, I’m not following because all distributions follow the same format here, which is that you flash an ISO to a USB stick (or other removable media).
If concerned about privacy you wouldn’t switch to Apple - you’d actually install a custom OS on your Android phone, since you’re allowed to do that on most phones.
Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for the article title to specify it’s specifically about the US, then? The US is the only country that doesn’t do this and it’s really annoying when just browsing (especially since lemmy.world is hosted by a Dutch individual using software made by Europeans).
Petitions have weight providing they’re coming from the right places. There’s a difference between the random internet petitions that random users make, and petitions coming from bodies such as unions or regulatory bodies.
This is a petition being put forward from a well known organisation, so I would gather it actually has some weight.
Yes - but the vast majority of people are not going to be downloading forks or modified versions of software, they will always get it directly from the source.
My wife and I started talking about this after she had to help an old lady at the DMV figure out how to use her iPhone to scan a QR code. We're in our early 40s.
A lot of posts here are talking about how the current young generations (Generation Z and Generation Alpha) are bad with technology as they don’t understand anything, and this is true, but to most people being “good with technology” means you’re good at using it for desired results, not necessarily understanding how things work or how to troubleshoot.
In my opinion: No. Due to the type of technology that the millennials grew up with, they are generally good at adapting to new and changing technologies, so I suspect they’ll be quite good at keeping up. Whether this will hold true for Z and Alpha is to be seen.
They definitely exist - quite a lot of them in fact - it’s just after the big migrations in 2022, the kind of people who tend to get popular on Mastodon are the more “serious” posters, as they’ve eclipsed the memers in popularity. (Eternal September kind of thing)
If you check out the explore and local feeds of instances such as Wet Dry World or Beige Party, you’ll find the meme posters, who you can then follow.
What doesn’t help either is that meme posters never use hashtags, even though they’re the primary way to be discovered on Mastodon. On the other hand, people who are posting “serious” takes tend to use hashtags a lot - this also helps skew the meme posters away from people. Unfortunately, hashtags have gone completely out of vogue and just aren’t used by most people.
Mastodon is implementing full text search soon though, most likely with 4.2.0 (the next version), which should hopefully make things easier.
The link is to a GitHub discussion, where gargron shuts down a discussion because he’s made a unilateral decision and then locks the thread to avoid debate....
Problem is, like 80% of people are on Mastodon, and many features (quote posts being the most obvious one) require the people you’re posting to to have the same interaction with the post.
Using the quote post one for an example: If Mastodon never implements quote posts, what’s the point? Most people will only see you posting links and it ruins the whole interaction you’re looking for, so using another piece of software isn’t going to help.
In regards to people disagreeing with decisions that Mastodon makes (such as full text search like this), it’s a bit more complicated. Depending on the feature as well, it’s possible for the things you don’t like about a feature to still affect you, even if your instance doesn’t have it implemented. A LOT of people complained about universeodon.com having full text search, and there was nothing they could do about it (other than just blocking universeodon.com).
I’m personally of the opinion that Mastodon should use its success and mindshare to be a little more like what people expect to get people on decentralised services (within reason - we still want good privacy controls and anti-abuse tools), and then other platforms (or instances!) can then take it further when it comes to things like no search, no quotes, etc. for insular and private communities that people want.
Problem: Who is Mastodon for, and what is the goal of Mastodon?
From my perspective, the issue is that Eugen made something, a certain community and culture ended up forming (not Eugen’s goal, but it is what it is), and now that a different community and culture is starting to take notice, the old community and culture wants to preserve what it always was.
However, I think Eugen wants Mastodon to be for everyone, and Mastodon doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so sometimes you do have to override the opinions of those who are already there. You’re hearing the voices of those already there directly, but you’re not hearing the voices of the people who aren’t there. (and in my opinion, they should be on Mastodon / Fediverse, we’re all aware of why centralised social media is bad)
There’s a lot of opinions and views on Mastodon, and while “the users” are important, if Eugen wants Mastodon to have reach, sometimes he has to do different things. An example write-up of why Eugen could be making the decisions he is currently can be seen in this blog post: erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-w…
And lastly, my final point: Whatever Mastodon itself becomes, users and administrators are still in control, so does this really matter? With the code being open source, with the ability to federate and defederate freely, ability to turn off features easily with toggles and options, Mastodon is not being compromised. The question comes down to what the default experience should be, and the Fediverse gives people control to still keep the community and culture they want, just somewhere else.
Not sure how I feel about this being a standalone app, it already feels like there’s so many vying for attention, with IRC, XMPP and Matrix being federated already. While Signal exists, I’m not sure how I feel about it being a walled garden despite being open source.
I do love the idea of it hopefully being added to Fediverse platforms though - even though it makes sense to use an actual messaging app for messaging, it’s user expectation that you can just message people on any platform you’re on easily, it’s something Mastodon desperately needs.
Edit: Really though, what I want to see is an interoperable protocol being picked (Signal is actually one of them, FWIW, the Foundation just doesn’t federate with its flagship app due to “user experience and innovation” per Moxie), and then people make their platforms on that, just like how ActivityPub has become the standard for interoperable social media.
It will be open source, end to end encrypted using Signal’s double ratchet encryption protocol, and he plans to make it easy for fediverse platforms to integrate it. The beta will release later this month....
I think this disconnect here on Lemmy comes from why people use the platforms they did before (Reddit vs Twitter).
Reddit was always purely content focused, and I feel people trying out Mastodon from Lemmy are expecting the same thing - where Mastodon is about content, and not people you want to follow.
I also love Mastodon as well and I don’t think the issues people are posting about in here are issues at all either, as Mastodon being about directly connecting with people and a purely chronological feed is why I like it - if I want to search content relating to a topic, I browse Lemmy instances instead.
This is my take too - Google Search and YouTube especially which are owned by Google.
Even if Chrome had like 5% market share, surely they could just push this anyway? While the Chromium monopoly is partially to blame for this, I’d argue the centralisation of the web is as well.
Sure, “Google Search is useless now, you can’t find what you want!”, but the vast, vast majority of people still and continue to use it, and nothing will change that most likely.
For what it’s worth I’m not saying that - it’s just a common argument I’ve seen online lately in these spaces. I don’t actually know if it’s true because I don’t use Google Search.
Technically the idea is that if Chrome has barely any market share (will never happen, but let’s pretend), they cannot implement this as it will anger and lock too many users out of day to day life.
However…
With Google Search and YouTube being by far the most 2 popular websites in the world, I think they still could. The vast majority of people would never give those up and if they’re told to use another program to access them, they absolutely will, meaning in an ideal world with a browser competition, they can easily destroy it immediately.
So as I understand it, Google’s using it’s monopoly market position to force web “standards” unilaterally (without an independent/conglomerate web specification standards where Google is only one of many voices) that will disadvantage its competitors and force people to leave its competitors....
You have to realise that to most people, Google is not seen as a bad company - quite the opposite in fact. They have all these “free” products that do everything you need them to, so they’ve built-up a huge amount of trust with the general population.
Google is obviously trying to take over the web, but the regular person doesn’t see this as they don’t follow any of this news, nor do they actually care. Google has good, fast, free products, that’s all people care about.
The one thing Musk and Spez have successfully done is make themselves scapegoats that leave people believing that everything will be resolved once they leave, so people have hope since there’s a “clear solution.”
These issues run much deeper than the individual owners and CEOs though, it’s the rot of the companies and platforms themselves, and getting rid of those people will solve absolutely nothing.
What needs to happen is for people to just switch off and help grow alternative platforms away from corporate meddling. Will it ever become mainstream? Maybe not, but it will never happen if people never try and just give up.
Great blog post on where mastodon is up to now, but mainly the general topic of what it means to open a social media space and make decisions about how it works or doesn’t work....
Telling people to “just use Firefish” is a common thing that comes up when people talk about this, but it’s not really a solution at all with where we’re currently at. (this isn’t aimed at you, by the way, just addressing this specific point)
Whether we like it or not, Mastodon is by far the biggest player in the microblogging space (8M accounts on Mastodon vs 499K on Misskey at #2. with Mastodon being 77.9% of the entire Fediverse!), and it is going to be what the vast majority of people are using, simply due to word of mouth or mindshare. On these sorts of platforms, many features depend on the people you’re posting to also experiencing the same features you are. Quote posts are a very popular topic that’s requested for various reasons on Mastodon, but while the 3rd party apps and other microblog platforms have these implemented, it doesn’t matter if 80%+ of your followers are using Mastodon, because they won’t see the post as you intend for them to see it.
Furthermore, as we know, the “culture” of Mastodon is of the Fediverse at large, using a different platform isn’t going to fix this issue - your community is what you make of it depending on your instance really, but fact of the matter is, most people are going to be drawn to the simpler general instances “where everyone is at”, which is going to be the big Mastodon instances. Trying to divert those people to other platforms isn’t going to work, because they don’t understand how all this works, so good first impressions need to be made on Mastodon, and unfortunately due to the culture of Mastodon attracting a certain type of crowd and no mass migrations to “Eternal September” the culture, especially since Threads now exists, this is going to be a very hard barrier to overcome.
Whenever I’ve talked to people about Mastodon outside of the tech-savvy spaces, most people just see Mastodon as an app and there are “people on Mastodon”, attempting to try and introduce people to all these different platforms and how you can still talk to everyone in places unfortunately just makes their head explode, as they’re not used to the open web due to how it evolved after the rise of Facebook.
Mastodon is stuck between a rock and a hard place, where it wants to make decentralisation the norm by attracting as many people as possible, while still keeping its general culture in place and not wanting to turn into “another Twitter” which usually ends up being filled with hot takes and people dunking on people for entertainment - but unfortunately, this is how people consume social media now, it’s all about content.
Nomadic identity is a bit of a weird one, because there’s no silver bullet. It’s either:
People store their credentials and data on their own systems in a peer-to-peer like system, but people are going to be constantly losing their access to their identity if they do this, so while this is technically ideal, it isn’t going to work for those that aren’t too familiar with technology. People have gotten very used to not having to look after their data in recent years.
The identity is handled by some sort of identity server for authorisation, but what this will most likely do is give rise to some centralised identity services that you’re going to have to trust, which arguably may be against decentralisation.
I do agree it would be way better for a single account/identity to just work everywhere on the Fediverse, but I’m not entirely sure how the details should be handled. Nostr is one implementation (it’s the first one), whereas things like SSO with Google / Microsoft is the second (kbin, for example, has this).
I have noticed that Mastodon development has slowed down considerably though, but admittedly it must be hard having requests from literally every angle about every use case and concern. It’s easy for us to say “just add quote posts”, “just add search”, but the people who have already been on Mastodon have used it knowing those don’t exist, so the Mastodon developers have to implement these things while still thinking of every use case and also still sticking to their own beliefs as to what Mastodon should be.
Hot take incoming. Just some thoughts I’ve been having recently as I experience Linux at work for several years now. To clarify, I mean Linux on the desktop as a consumer. As in, what our lord and savior Richard M. Stallman would call “GNU/Linux”; pick your favorite distro here. I’m leaving out Linux on the server,...
So I didn’t read it either (sue me), however people are paid to work on Linux. The examples you give about RedHat and SUSE are completely incorrect - they’re not there to tell people how to use Linux, they literally develop for it and are paid to make it a better product.
The “issue”, of course, is that they focus their paid efforts on Enterprise and server usage, and not as a user-facing product for the most part, although it could be argued that widespread adoption by companies is how you get it into peoples’ hands, since they get used to it at work or education.
Also, you’re using Ubuntu LTS 20.04 which is technically out of date, as 22.04 LTS also exists, and LTS is primarily meant to be for server/company use, rather than trying to keep up with the latest software and features.
I took a look at your bullet point list too, and literally every single one of your bullet points (other than accessibility, unfortunately) is covered by my laptop running Debian 12 with KDE Plasma - seriously, try out a KDE Plasma distro, it most likely fixes all your problems.
For what it’s worth if you want to stay inside the Ubuntu ecosystem (so to speak), I would personally recommend installing KDE Neon, which is based on Ubuntu and maintained by the KDE developers. Otherwise, Debian - most Ubuntu specific things work in Debian, although not everything (PPAs and stuff).
I only self-host a MediaWiki website at the moment, along with a PPSSPP adhoc server for said game that the wiki is related to. I want to self-host a lot more stuff, but storage space is expensive, and I don’t really want to leave things running at home all the time either as it will eat into my electricity bill.
Nextcloud and OnlyOffice are what I’m interested in next, and perhaps a Fediverse platform.
There’s been a few comments on here talking about Firefox on Android being laggy compared to Chrome on Android.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this, but the main reason this is and/or appears to be the case is because Firefox is capped at 60Hz, whereas Chrome will display at 90Hz, making it feel much smoother.
No, I have no idea why.
Edit: The above is misinformation after I did some research - it appears that resisting fingerprinting causes the browser to set itself to 60Hz, but this can be disabled to get your screen’s refresh rate, but of course this means throwing away a privacy protection…
A collection of really amazing open source projects, where people are getting Mastodon clients to work on 70’s mainframes, the Apple II, and all kinds of crazy things.
Isn’t pre-installed on well known machines by well known brands.
Popular applications (whether productivity, creativity, or games) do not work out of the box that people want. It doesn’t matter that alternatives exist, or that you can use things like Wine. If it’s more than just click the icon, it’s too much.
If things cannot be done purely through touch / the mouse, it is too hard for most people.
While this is true, if someone goes to a shop and buys a “PC”, it will have Windows 100% of the time.
You have to look to get Linux preinstalled on stuff, or pick the choice yourself. People buying PCs aren’t picking Windows, it’s just what comes with them.
It’s actually just all your Mastodon follows, not people on Pixelfed. Due to the federation, pixelfed and Mastodon accounts can interact how you’d expect.
Since Red Hat made their recent decision, there has been a lot more talk about people wanting to focus on communiy-based distros instead of corporate-backed distros....
It tries to make things similar to Windows (which most people are accustomed to due to school), and also has its own set of apps that try to make things as simple as possible by having simple names so people know what to expect.
Hello, some people have told me that it is possible to see lemmy posts from mastodon. To me it makes a lot of sense to have a single app for whole fediverse. However, mastodon is not doing a good job at this....
The reason this doesn’t work so well is that Lemmy communities are ActivityPub groups, which is not a feature the Mastodon has really implemented - right now you just follow the group as a user and it boosts all the posts to you.
However, Mastodon plans to do groups in their next major update, and this will most likely make the integration much nicer.
What existing organizations should start hosting fediverse instances? Which ones are already doing so?
TLDR: This is a long post, so a shorter question you can respond to is:...
Firefox will have a built-in ‘fake reviews detector’ — Amazon is in trouble (mashable.com)
An EXTREMELY Simple Guide to Mastodon (for when someone says it's too complicated to catch on) (www.staygrounded.online)
PS- The "real" (non-joke) full guide for the Masto-curious is here.
81% of full-time workers want a 4-day work week – and they're willing to make sacrifices to get it (www.cnbc.com)
The Phoronix forms, where AMD and NVIDIA engineers can effectively communicate (lemmy.zip)
Michael should be getting royalties...
Hey Linux devs - Build a GUI or gtfo
Not everything actually requires a GUI, obviously. But anything that requires configuration, especially for controlling a hardware device, should have a fully functional GUI. I know Linux is all about being in control, and users should not be afraid to use the command line, but if you have to learn another bespoke command syntax...
Elon Musk admits X 'may fail, as so many have predicted' (www.businessinsider.com)
Debian turns 30 – and important to Linux world as ever (www.theregister.com)
‘You’re Telling Me in 2023, You Still Have a ’Droid?’ Why Teens Hate Android Phones (www.wsj.com)
(unpaywalled version on archive.today: archive.ph/03cwZ)...
France wants your browser to censor the web, and Mozilla is petitioning against it (foundation.mozilla.org)
More context: blog.mozilla.org/…/france-browser-website-blockin…
Do you think millennials who grew up with the early Internet and home computers will be as bad with future technology as boomers are with current technology? (dmv.pub)
My wife and I started talking about this after she had to help an old lady at the DMV figure out how to use her iPhone to scan a QR code. We're in our early 40s.
As Twitter destroys its brand by renaming itself X, Mastodon user numbers are again soaring | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
It’s not just lemmy that’s benefiting from Elon Musk.
If you’ve heard that people have problems with the head of mastodon (gargron) this recent little incident might be an example. (github.com)
The link is to a GitHub discussion, where gargron shuts down a discussion because he’s made a unilateral decision and then locks the thread to avoid debate....
The creator of Pixelfed announced an upcoming encrypted messenger for the fediverse that will work across the fediverse (mastodon.social)
URL seems to be wrong … here’s the correct URL...
The creator of Pixelfed announced an upcoming encrypted messenger for the fediverse that will work across the fediverse (mastodon.social)
It will be open source, end to end encrypted using Signal’s double ratchet encryption protocol, and he plans to make it easy for fediverse platforms to integrate it. The beta will release later this month....
I don't need it... 👀 (lemmy.world)
Microsoft accidentally leaks internal tool that can enable hidden Windows 11 features (www.windowscentral.com)
Seeing how good Lemmy is makes me frustrated with Mastodon
My Problems with Mastodon...
Brave will not add Web Integration support (twitter.com)
I think we need all support we can get to fight Google on this, so I welcome Brave here actually....
The state of the internet 2023 (media.kbin.social)
In light of articles all over Lemmy about Google pushing ManifestV3 onto Chrome and the majority of web users, isn't that an antitrust violation? (www.ftc.gov)
So as I understand it, Google’s using it’s monopoly market position to force web “standards” unilaterally (without an independent/conglomerate web specification standards where Google is only one of many voices) that will disadvantage its competitors and force people to leave its competitors....
STOP saying “fuck u/spez” START saying “FIRE STEVE HUFFMAN”
“fuck u/spez” means absolutely nothing to anyone who isn’t familiar with Reddit, it’s just noise....
The Affordance Loop (erinkissane.com)
Great blog post on where mastodon is up to now, but mainly the general topic of what it means to open a social media space and make decisions about how it works or doesn’t work....
Linux will continue to be a frustrating geeks-only club unless and until somebody starts getting paid to work on it
Hot take incoming. Just some thoughts I’ve been having recently as I experience Linux at work for several years now. To clarify, I mean Linux on the desktop as a consumer. As in, what our lord and savior Richard M. Stallman would call “GNU/Linux”; pick your favorite distro here. I’m leaving out Linux on the server,...
Hey selfhosters, what are you selfhosting?
https://chatsubo.hiteklolife.net/pictrs/image/c786875e-7455-4f5b-8e56-d1af5f1e0cfa.png...
Firefox has surpassed Chrome on Speedometer (treeherder.mozilla.org)
Here's How Reddit F**ks Advertisers
There’s been a few people who commented this in the past, but as an advertiser on Reddit, I want to share the numbers I see....
Check out These Beautiful Retro Mastodon Clients! (wedistribute.org)
A collection of really amazing open source projects, where people are getting Mastodon clients to work on 70’s mainframes, the Apple II, and all kinds of crazy things.
What are the main challenges in Linux adoption for New users, and how can it be addressed? (lemmy.ml)
Introducing Sign-in with Mastodon: Streamlining Sign-up and Login on Pixelfed (pixelfed.blog)
Base Community Distros
Since Red Hat made their recent decision, there has been a lot more talk about people wanting to focus on communiy-based distros instead of corporate-backed distros....
What is the most opinionated linux distro?
cross-posted from: infosec.pub/post/550905...
mastodon with lemmy (lemmy.world)
Hello, some people have told me that it is possible to see lemmy posts from mastodon. To me it makes a lot of sense to have a single app for whole fediverse. However, mastodon is not doing a good job at this....
Dutch government starts own Mastodon instance as reaction to the instability of Twitter (lemmy.world)
@beheerder