• 6 Posts
  • 36 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • You have a point here indeed. But it is much easier to create a CLI tool that combines the updates of all systems rather than destroying the incredible things that flatpak and pip offer. A five-line bach script would do. Although, a reliable distro would probably want to rely on something much more elegant and harder to break. For Fedora specifically, the python-based dnf tool should be straightforward to be extended to do that. Perhaps the Debian apt tool has a lot of functionality to carry on and may be harder to do. In the essence of unix philosophy and modular approach, it should be a separate tool. I’m looking forward to that too.


  • I know that a lot of people share the same thoughts with you but I respectfully disagree. If you want your system to be updated only with your apt/yum/dnf program, then just don’t install anything useing snap/flatpak/etc. Sure, you will not have all the apps available in the repos, which was also the case in the past before these systems. Back then, your only option was to compile from source, which was more work-intensive than flatpaks/appimages/snaps. And updating was also much more complicated. Therefore, unless you wanted something really special, you’d stick to your repos. Flatpaks allow developers to distribute their software (and users to install it) in a less labour-intensive manner for the developer. Compiling and testing your app for Debian, Fedora, Arch, SuSE, MX-Linux, Linux Mint, Linux Mint DE, Gentoo, and all the other popular distros is an impossible task for small developers. Flatpaks was a godsend for them and for the users who don’t want to compile from source. Now, you can argue that we shouldn’t have all these systems (flatpak, snap, appimage, docker, etc…) but one would be OK. And again I will disagree. One of the most important aspects of FOSS is diversity. Embrace it even with its drawbacks. It would require a much longer post to explain this and others have done it already better than I would.




  • Either Linux or GNU/Linux is OK to me. It’s the practice that makes the difference. While I mostly use Debian, which defines itself as GNU/Linux and I appreciate every aspect of it, I recognise that Arch Linux (which drops the GNU) has a much healthier approach to free software than Red Hat (recently at least), which defines itself as GNU/Linux but adds clauses to RHEL which are against the spirit of free software. I prefer using GNU/Linux because, as a statement, respects things that are important to me. Of course, I am totally cool with other people using any term they feel more comfortable with.





  • The truth is that it mostly worked other than some issues with full screen but firefox has better ways around it. I really wanted to make the statement since I saw the notification that encouraged me to switch to another browser. Firefox is fully compliant and so should be their service. And should be DRM-free but that will be another discussion in the future.



  • I agree but admit that I share some responsibility as DRM is optional and I choose to enable it for some sites. Quite often, when a site is less essential to me (or its DRM features) I decline them. The more we decline them, the more probable that there will be free alternatives of some services.





  • That was really nice but I think the lady was lucky that she met you. Can you imagine if she had met Linux Torvalds himself? He would have told her off for not knowing that the 2.6 kernel was many years old, the whole Linux world had moved on with strides beyond this old piece of software and reached 6.5 and there was no reason wasting everyone’s time with this kind of question. Plus: “we never, ever break the user experience and hence the mouse should work without questions!”




  • This appears to be true on the surface but is not accurate. I am a structural engineer and when people need to do something with their buildings, the engineers (structural, mechanical, fire, etc.) and the architects need the plans or at least a survey. If a side has the plans and the authority on the plans, that side has huge leverage over the building. Fortunately, this is never the case with buildings. Plans are considered public information. It would be so much better if the same applied to software.