Cool!

One thing I always find amusing about these kinds of write-ups is how much the writer is desperately trying to replicate the Windows experience. It’s most exemplified in the section “Mission Center is the task manager you really need”. Half the issues mentioned in this section are effectively aesthetical, from what I can tell. Mission Center looks a hell of a lot like Task Manager. I almost skimmed past the screenshot without realizing it was not a screenshot of Task Manager.

This theme comes back again with the section on KDE: “So far, I like this KDE desktop better because it feels more like Windows 11 or Windows 10. There’s a Start menu and a taskbar at the bottom of the screen. The Start menu pops up as a small box, rather than taking over the whole screen like the Gnome menu did.”

I don’t own a Streamdeck, and I hear they’re really useful, but reading this section about Boatswain I really wonder what’s going on in the brains of the average computer “enthusiast” because if you’re only using the Streamdeck as a push button interface to launch Gmail of all things… I really want to question what, exactly, makes you a “computer enthusiast”. It also really exposes how little the writer seems to understand about “advanced” computer usage.

There’s no option to launch websites,

Yes, that makes sense. Since you can perform almost any task via the terminal, there seems little reason to have a “launch websites” function because…

but the workaround is to just but the command to launch your browser (in my case, google-chrome) in front of whatever URL you wish to launch.

You can just call your browser of choice using its command parameters. This isn’t a “work around”, this is base functionality of the software. I wonder if they understand that they could do this on Windows as well.

I wish this process were a little more seamless and you could get a menu of preinstalled apps to choose from or a dialog box that let you put in the website you want. But this is a process that works and, for that, I am thankful. Kudos to the makers of StreamController and shame on Elgato for not having a native Linux version of the Stream Deck app.

If you want to use Linux, then you should learn how to use Linux. Heck, it’ll even make you better at using other operating systems like Windows and macOS because what StreamController is forcing you to do here is learn how to execute applications via the command line.

I’m trying to find a good, free PDF editor where I can enter text on a medical form I have to fill out. I’ve tried five different editors and all seem to have issues that make it difficult or impossible to put text on top of the form. Very lame. Any suggestions?

Pretty sure both Chrome and Firefox can do this in the browser window. Maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway. The closing sections are interesting.

For example, StreamController allowed me to configure my Stream Deck Neo, but it’s not nearly as easy-to-use or powerful as Elgato’s own Stream Deck software.

What is the measure of “Powerful” here, exactly? StreamController features a plugin system where you can build your own actions using python and their code library, which the Stream Deck software also has. If you can launch an application like chrome and feed it parameters to open a specific website, then you can probably tell StreamController to launch a bash script that does a whole list of tasks for you and more. I guess you’d have to learn bash, though.

Community versions of software are a mixed blessing: There are community versions – apps made by independent developers – that fill the gap where first-party software lacks Linux versions. However, these are often made by volunteers who have other things to do and don’t have the kind of insight that would come from being part of the original hardware or software team. For example, AutoHotKey, a major macro app for Windows, is not available for Linux at all. There’s a community version called AHK_X11 but it still hasn’t been updated to work with the latest versions of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux flavor, because it’s incompatible with the Wayland window manager that Ubuntu uses.

I have to highlight this whole section because it is mind-boggling. “There are community versions – apps made by independent developers […] these are often made by volunteers […] and don’t have the kind of insight that would come from being part of the original hardware or software team. For example, AutoHotKey” AutoHotKey is FOSS! It’s maintained for free by a non-profit foundation. You can volunteer your time and submit a pull request on their GitHub page. This isn’t exactly the “first-party software” you’re talking about, and it also shows you’ve fully missed the point of what the Linux ecosystem is doing, and its foundational ethos.

This also makes me laugh a little because I wonder what exactly they were using AutoHotKey for? The most we get is: “I write AHK macros that select menu items you can’t get to with a hotkey in Google Docs or in Photoshop Elements or elsewhere”. If you desire a fully keyboard-driven experience, if that’s what sits at the heart of this AHK thing, let me introduce you to a little program called GNU Emacs.

Too many ways to install software

Again, fully missing the point here. If you desire a monopolized, centralized, authoritative experience where you are locked into the precise workflow as prescribed to you by private interests, then go back to Windows or MacOS. It is a fair critique once you’re well acquainted with the ecosystem, but it’s something that is only resolved through centralization and mass adoption of a single distribution method, and that is never going to happen.

Changing Desktop managers is too much work

I would say that’s a step up from having zero ability to change desktop managers but, who am I to say exactly?

Code editing: There are a lot of code editors. I still haven’t found one I like as much as Notepad++ which I use in Windows. Notepad++ will run using Wine emulation but on my home desktop, which uses scaling, the font is too small to read.

This shocks me a little. Even in the world of VSCode, people are still loyal to Notepad++? I mean, the options are infinite really, Notepad++ really hasn’t evolved in a long time. What exactly could Notepad++ be doing that can’t be replicated even with VSCode? I know that Notepad++ is at least less of a resource hog then something like VSCode but is that really a concern given the systems they’re using? VSCode isn’t even a great option, it’s just the most popular option with the most broad appeal and support. Again, you could be investigating things like Vi or Emacs.

Logi+

I have an MX Master mouse as well. I fucking hate the Logi+ bullshit, and it’s insane that you are allowed to create a mouse like the MX Master and lock all its functionality behind software that wants to run all the time in the background, and phone home to Logitech with “telemetry data” for “enhancing user experience”. I shouldn’t have to have privacy concerns regarding the mouse I use on my computer. I’m glad Logi+ doesn’t exist on Linux. When you set up the device on Windows it tries to automatically install the Logi+ software, it should be considered a virus at this point. I had to wipe my work computer recently, and uninstalled Logi+ after Windows was up and running again, and actually just used AutoHotKey to remap the side button on the mouse. Out of the box, all the button does is emulate a WIN+TAB keyboard command, which I intercept and change to Win+CTRL+S which launches screen capture.

Phone Link:

God only knows what Windows is doing with all the information it is nabbing off your device while connected to their operating system. “These work, but their UI looks very primitive in comparison to what you get from Microsoft.” Again, aesthetics.

I really like Linux and, if it had just a little bit better support for the hardware and software I rely on, I could see myself switching to it for 90 or 100% of my daily usage. As of now, though, I’ll still be using Windows, at least some of the time.

It’s funny that they walk away with a positive experience, yet the real takeaway is that “it’s not enough like windows”. Learn Linux. Learn it for real, and you’ll never need whatever you’re missing from Windows. Decolonize your brain from decades of Windows lock in. You’ll be better for it.

Ok I’ve spent a few hours now tinkering and figuring things out, and I totally see the power here. I wanted to install the 1password Linux application and discovered I could do it easily using distrobox, and I wouldn’t even know that’s how it was running considering the GUI experience is the same as if I had installed it directly on the system.

Very cool. It’s a little to bad the gaming experience isn’t great, but this is a 8 year old laptop with intel UHD graphics, so not shocked really. Windows gets better performance naturally.

huh, very interesting. I think I’ll give Bazzite a shot and see how it goes. I have an T490 kicking around, but it only has the Intel UHD graphics (no NVIDA Mobile chip, sadly), but on Windows it could handle some gaming. So, I’ll be curious to see how it works out. The Bazzite site says it doesn’t support the “Steam Gaming Mode”, which just means the steam big picture mode.

Your user configs and home files are never changed when you ‘image hop’.

So I have an older Lenovo Laptop that I’m looking to put Linux on to replace an even older Lenovo Laptop I currently have Linux on, and this bit really has me curious about Fedora Atomic. I’m only learning about it now through this post.

I have intermediate experience with Linux, as it’s not my daily driver, how far into the deep end would I be plunging if I gave Fedora Atomic a try?

This is how we get around all these pesky compelled speech laws. You have the right to remain silent, but you do not have the right to hide your face, and you gave up your fingerprints when they booked you. Now they have all your passwords for all your accounts.

I love discovering little things like this. That’s a interesting find!

We have to do it; otherwise we might fall prey to… Socialism!!

Known for espousing antisemitic tropes,[11][12] Sima’s Weibo channel spread the notion that Jews colluded with the Empire of Japan to establish a Jewish homeland in mainland China during the Second Sino-Japanese War in what has been termed the Fugu Plan.[13]

In August 2022, he admitted to buying a house in California. This made him a target of widespread ridicule, with commentators saying “being anti-American is work, living in America is life” (反美是工作、留美是生活).[14] For unknown reasons, he was blocked in Chinese social media in August 2022.[15] His accounts were later reinstated on 27 August.[15]

On 4 July 2023, he attended the American Independence Day dinner hosted by the US Embassy in China where also met with US Ambassador to China R. Nicholas Burns. Sima’s attendance of the dinner was mocked by Chinese social media users who accused him of being hypocritical, as the day before the event he had criticized the US proposal to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs during the Russian invasion as “an act against humanity.”[16]

I mean, he sounds like a provocateur, probably looking to heighten tensions between the two powers. Antisemitic at that. Also, support for Donald Trump under the guise that he’ll be better for China? The best outcome for China is (somehow) becoming a partner with the US economically and having friendly relations. Problem there is neither party wants that. Under Trump, tensions will continue to be heightened between the two but also internal tensions in the US will also accelerate. Maybe this is what he means when he says Trump is good for China, but that’s a very nationalistic sentiment.

If you want to stop the spread of far right nationalism in your country this is one way you handle it. In America, we put far right nationalism on the same level as every other political thinking, except for left thinking, especially left economic thinking, which we demonize.

Most corporations are not going to do that because they often standardize around products with known solutions for management that come with service guarantees. No one wants to support a small fleet of aging hardware running an os outside the dominant platform.

Man, our enemies sure love keeping stuff underground.

The issue is, however, the largest superpower is backing and supporting the actions of Israel in this regard. “The World” would have to label the United States as an active participant and begin the process of sanctioning and isolating the US. Either way, it wasn’t morals or ethics that ultimately led to turning on Nazi Germany. Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States was very comfortable in keeping itself out of the conflict. At the time, Anti-Semitism was the soup du jour of domestic policy in Europe and America.

The Franks (of Anne Frank fame) attempted to immigrate into the US leading up to World War II, and despite Otto Frank’s connections within the American government, and his connections as a businessman, him and his family were deemed a “security risk” and denied entry. They were one family out of thousands who were turned away by FDR’s State Department. It was clear early on that the Third Reich was facilitating mass oppression against their Jewish population. The problem, ultimately, is that the prevailing opinions about the Jewish people were shared within the western powers. From an American perspective, what the Third Reich was doing with its Nuremberg laws wasn’t too far off from what America was doing with its Jim Crow laws, in fact, the Nuremberg Laws were heavily influenced by the Jim Crow laws of America. Meanwhile, European countries facilitated the emigration of Jews from their borders through the Third Reich’s first solution, which was relocating the Jewish people to “Israel”, of which they covered the majority of the costs to do so.

The United States didn’t enter into the war until after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was a form of blowback resulting from the British and American embargo on oil heading to the Japanese Empire. Up to that point, the states had been operating Lend-Lease programs for weapons and supplying the Allied powers with material support in an attempt to allow them to deal with the Axis threat. There were great material interests in pushing the Third Reich back, as they had expansionist ambitions, ones that would see them control land and resources that the Allied forces had ready access to. Ambitions of conquest in Africa and Asia, as well as a colonization scheme into Russia. It wasn’t until April 1945 that the Dachau Concentration Camp was discovered and ultimately liberated. The idea that the Allied powers were fighting against the Third Reich on Moral and Ethical grounds rooted in the treatment of the Jews is very much a misunderstanding of the timeline of that war. The European front was effectively finished by May that same year.

So this idea that the world “can find it in themselves to have a single moral or ethic, and then act on it”, as if that was what happened in World War II, is idealism, and a revisionist view of the events of that war. I do not see this conflict playing out as the way you imagine it.

I hate to break it to you, but the people who were told “don’t invade Poland” were eventually exfiltrated into the “international community” at large.

I’m sure America has nothing to do with that. I’m sure America would just sit back and let weapons be delivered into Gaza or Lebanon without reprisal.

Powershell, yeah I said it!

Clearly this is an act of a truly crooked and evil supreme court subverting the will of the people. This kind of thing would never happen in the good old USA. /s

It would be the death of this side of the federated internet. The amount of content it would generate once federated would crush existing servers. You would have to defederate or face near instant storage shortages. The federated que would take years to sync.

Anyway, it wouldn’t happen because they would need to transmit real vote counts instead of fuzzy vote counts. You would be able to see how every single person on reddit voted. Which would simply expose the vote manipulation going on there.

Do you have a link to the Reuters story they’re referencing?

Oh no my shiitakes!

Lol like trying to find a needle in a haystack.