This has always been the whole point behind the Trojan Horse that is systemd. Now that Poettering/Red Hat control the entire userspace across virtually all distros, he/they can use it as a vehicle to force all of them to adopt whatever bullshit he thinks of next.

This is what the Linux ecosystem gave away when they tossed their simple init system to adopt the admittedly convenient solution that is systemd. But in reality, the best solution was always to drop init, and instead replace it with an alternative that was still simple to replace if the need should arise. But now that everyone is stuck on systemd, they’re all at the mercy of Poettering’s Next Stupid Idea.

Convenience comes at a price. systemd is the Google Chrome of Linux userspace. Get out while you can.

Not just the hardware. I far prefer icons from that time as well. I hate the modern trend of flat icons with no details. They look like someone mashed them out after 5 minutes in Krita and then drugged their management into believing that it was a recreation of the Mona Lisa.

Search engines are websites that people used to go to in order to get helpful information. These days, they just spam out a bunch of SEO garbage, AI-generated bullshit, and ads.

Google, probably

Yes, a lot of developers have done this. Many examples have been posted on this thread (OsmAnd, Conversations, Davx5) - Mindustry is another example. free on f-droid (and Google store too I think), but $10 on Steam.

Not necessarily! I always run ln -s '/usr/bin/$EDITOR' $(which $EDITOR) after a fresh install, so I have a valid executable on the path called $EDITOR.

Of course, then I have to make sure to add export EDITOR=\$EDITOR to my .bashrc. (Obviously.)

It was always obvious to me that as long as I was using closed source software that any day could come when the vendor would screw me over. In fact, it could have been running it with bundles and bundles of spyware already and I had no way of knowing it. So I pledged to start using open source software only, to make sure that wouldn’t happen. First, I migrated all my desktop applications to open source alternatives. Then I finally made the switch.

I don’t have any suggestions, but this is incredibly impressive. I haven’t heard of jmp.chat before, but it sounds like you can create multiple identities using different phone numbers - is that correct?

If so, that sounds amazing. I really hate how the modern world is trying to force people into a singular identity online, and the way that they’re using phone numbers to do it. This sounds like it could be a pretty decent method to avoid that.

+1, I would recommend neovim with lazyvim. The documentation is excellent, and it’s very easy to set up.

https://www.lazyvim.org/installation

What exactly is it that people obsess over? The desktop environment and terminal customisation? Setting up NetworkManager with nmcli? Using Vim to edit a .conf file?

Welcome to the crowd! Eventually, you realize that an operating system is just an operating system: something you use to get work done, and the less you notice it, the better it’s doing its job. The pride of setting it all up mostly ends very shortly after you’re done. At that point, you realize that pretty much all distros are the same, give or take.

That said, there are always moments that make you realize that your OS is amazing. When you’re faced with a new and difficult task that you don’t know how to achieve, then you look at your distro’s documentation and solve it in a few elegant steps. And I’m not an Arch user, but that’s when the Arch wiki will really be your friend, as well as all the other resources that Arch has for its users. I can’t think of examples of these kinds of moments because they’re so rare, but those are the moments that feel great and really make you appreciate your OS.

One for every current ~0.5% market share!

Do you know how vim has distributions like lunarvim, lazvim, nvchad, etc.? Simply installing something like lazyvim can quickly and easily convert vim from a text editor to a full blown IDE.

I think Gnome needs something like this. A curated set of plugins that are easy to install and maintain compatibility with different versions of Gnome - something that would deal with the API churn in Gnome while maintaining a stable, usable desktop environment.

I don’t know if this is feasible, because I haven’t used Gnome since 2.x, but I think it would really help make it an actual full blown DE.

If I want to make a piece of software to improve people’s lives and I don’t care to do it for free, I’ll choose MIT. If it gets “stolen” by a for-profit corporation it only makes it better, because now my software has reached more people, thus (theoretically) improving their lives.

I’m not completely sure about this.

Suppose you write a library that a company like Facebook finds useful. Suppose that they incorporate it into their website. I’m sure I can skip the portion of this post where I extol the harms that Facebook has wrought on society. Do you think your software has improved people’s lives by enabling Facebook to do those sorts of things? They would not have been able to do them if you had used AGPL instead.

And I don’t want to make it seem like we should never do anything because someone might use the product of our work in a sinister way (because that would quickly devolve into nihilism). If 99 people use it for good and 1 for evil, that’s still a heavy net positive. But at the same time, I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that the 1 person using it for evil still would make me feel bad.

I was surprised that comment this got so many upvotes, so I’ll respond by saying that, with all due respect, I think your argument is much more fallacious than the one you are trying to debunk.

The comic author takes one specific case of an MIT licensed product being used in a commercial product, and pits it against another GPL product.

Yes, this is called an example. In this case, the author is using a particularly egregious case to make a broader conclusion: namely that if you release software under a “do whatever you want” license, it may come back to bite you in the future when it’s used in a product that you don’t like.

This comic is a warning to developers that choosing MIT/BSD without understanding this fact is a bad choice.

This ignores situations where MIT is the right answer, where GPL is the wrong one

It does not ignore those situations. All situations are multifaceted and need to take multiple considerations into account. The author is trying to argue that people should take care not to overlook the particular one to which he is trying to draw attention.

situations where legal action on GPL violations has failed

Just because legal efforts have failed does not mean that they are not worthwhile. There may be many cases where people avoided misappropriating GPL software because they did not want to deal with the license - there may be cases where people were less hesitant about doing so with MIT/BSD because they knew this risk was not there.

From that I conclude that this falls under The Cherry Picking Fallacy. While humorous, it’s a really bad argument.

Just because the author used a single example does not preclude the existence of others. That is a much more fallacious assumption that invalidates much of your argument.

and all cases where the author’s intent is considered (Tanenbaum doesn’t mind).

Just because Tanenbaum didn’t mind does not mean that other developers who mistakenly use MIT/BSD will not either. Also, it honestly shouldn’t matter what Tanenbaum thinks because we don’t know what his rationale is. Maybe he thinks malware is a good thing or that IME is not a serious issue - if that’s the case, do we still consider his sentiments relevant?

commonly referred to as “cuck licenses”

This sentiment makes the enclosing sentence an Ad-hominem fallacy

It does not, in fact. Just because the author used a slang/slanderous term to describe the licenses he doesn’t like does not mean that his logical arguments are invalid. Ad-hominem fallacies are when you say “the person who argued that is $X, therefore his logic is invalid”, not when he uses a term that may be considered in poor taste.

by attacking the would-be MIT license party as having poor morals and/or low social standing.

Misrepresentation. The author is not arguing that they have poor morals, he is arguing that they are short-sighted and possibly naive with regards to the implications of choosing MIT/BSD.

My conclusion: I appreciate the author for making this post. People should be more aware of the fact that your software could be used for nefarious purposes.

So unless you really don’t care about enabling evil people, you should be defaulting to using GPL. If people really want to use your copyleft software in a proprietary way, then it is easily within their means (and resources) to get an exemption from you. The fact that there is so much non-GPL software out there makes the GPL itself weaker and makes it easier for nefarious interests to operate freely.

(Not that I would ever release software under GPL myself. I think software licenses are stupid. But no license basically has the same non-derivative limitation as GPL so it doesn’t matter as far as I’m aware.)

Xournal - a great way to draw on pdfs

Agreed. Objects are nice and a great way to program. Composition is great. Traits/interfaces are great. Namespaces are great. Objects are a really nice way to reap the benefits of principles like these.

But then there are aspects of OOP that absolutely suck, like inheritance. I hate inheritance. The rules get very confusing very quickly. For example, try understanding overriding of methods. Do I need to call the superclass method or not? If not, does it get called automatically? If so, in what order? How do these rules change for the constructor? Now repeat this exercise for every OOP language you use and try not to mix them up… Java, C++, Python, etc.

Fortunately, it feels like we rely on inheritance less and less these days. As an example, I really like how Java allows you to implement Runnable these days. Before, if you wanted to run a thread, you needed a separate object that inherited Thread. And what if that object needs to inherit from another one too? Things would get out of hand quickly. (This is a very old example, but with lambdas and other new features, things are getting even better now.)

Anyway, long story short, I think OOP is a complicated way to achieve good principles, and there are simpler ways to achieve those principles than a full OOP implementation.

Those documentaries are great findings (and really really interesting). I would highly suggest posting them to the channel (or I would be happy to if you don’t mind)

And ofc, Microsoft is well aware and is not interested in letting that happen.

This is true, but there are only so many times that they can pull off what they did in Munich. If enough cities keep trying at this, there’s no way they’re going to be able to hold the floodgates back forever.

I’m usually a pessimist, but stories like this actually do get my hopes up

I’m really curious to know which version of KDE Microsoft was copying that gave them the idea to insert ads in the first place…

Win98 had themes, and they were absolutely fantastic!!

Opt in??! Before you know it, you’re going to suggest that we start to respect our users!!