Most GenAI was trained on material they had no right to train on (including plenty of mine). So I’m doing my small part, and serving known AI agents an infinite maze of garbage. They can fuck right off.
Now, if we’re talking about real AI, that isn’t just a server park of disguised markov chains in a trenchcoat, neural networks that weren’t trained on stolen data, that’s a whole different story.
In our kids’ elementary school, the rule at the start of year was that kids tell the teacher they have to go, then they simply go. Notifying the teacher is mandatory, 'cos they are responsible for the kids, they need to know where they are.
This was slightly changed since, because of bullies. While the vast majority of kids can go to the bathroom whenever they want, bullies don’t: they can only go alone, or supervised. So if there’s anyone else out, from any class, they have to wait. If it is urgent, a teacher or another adult will go with them, and stand by the door, close enough to intervene if need be.
Both KDE and GNOME are good DEs (and there are many other great ones, and you don’t even need to use a DE; a mismash of applications with your compositor of choice works just aswell - but I digress), you can’t really go wrong with either.
For someone new to Linux, I would likely recommend GNOME, because it is more opinionated. While KDE is a lot more configurable, that also has a huge downside: configuration fatigue. GNOME is more restrictive, yes, but that has the advantage of not overwhelming you right out of the box.
If you like and wish to tinker, though, go with KDE. If you want to gently ease into Linux, go with GNOME first, and once you’re comfortable, you can still experiment with KDE. You can install both, and switch between them simply by logging out of one and into the other.
To add some nuance to the rest of the comments posted here: GPL’d code can be made proprietary, if the copyright holders all agree. For example, given a project that requires copyright assignment, if the project owner decides to take it proprietary, they can do that, because they’re the copyright owner. GPL alone is not enough to keep a codebase FLOSS. Luckily, both the kernel and git have hundreds of copyright owners (and does not require copyright assignment), so legally changing the license of either of them is practically impossible. So, really, Linus wouldn’t be able to take anything, code wise. He could take his future work, yeah, but he hasn’t been doing much development for the past decade.
Otherwise… He let go of git pretty early on, and it’s been maintained by Junio ever since. So nothing would happen there whatsoever, Linus’ retirement (friendly or otherwise) would be inconsequential for git.
The kernel has capable maintainers who have been maintaining stable trees for a long while now (often with companies backing them), and people who have been maintaining large subtrees. There’s a considerable overlap there, too. In short, there are a fair number of people who could fill in for Linus in a pinch. There’d be a small hiccup, and that’s about it. His skills and experience would be missed, but it wouldn’t cause any lasting harm.
My bank app does not function under Graphene, because my bank is doing anything in its power to force using a stock Android. I have friends, who use the same bank, and while the bank app works under Graphene from time to time, it is broken often enough to render it unusable.
But it doesn’t matter, because Graphene does not support my phone anyway. As I wrote: most alternative operating systems for phones support only a very limited set of phones. Mine’s not one of them.
I did that, it did not make my phone experience any better.
On desktop: Linux since late 1996. It is the only operating system that I can perfectly tune to adhere to my - often weird - ideas, and can run all the software I need. I’m a developer, mostly working on free and open source software, so Linux is right there to assist me with that. When I play games, I play them through Wine/Proton, have been since I started gaming on Linux some two decades ago. If a game does not work under Wine/Proton, that’s simply not a game I will be playing.
For portable gaming, I have a Steam Deck. Surprisingly, that also runs Linux.
My phone is running stock Android, and I hate it, because the way I function, and how Android imagines I would are not compatible, and the system does not let me bend it to my will, there isn’t enough flexibility built in. Like… I can’t uninstall a bunch of applications I’m never going to use, because my phone came preinstalled with it, and they’re not removable, unless I jailbreak it. Unfortunately, I can’t jailbreak it, because then my bank’s application would stop working. Which would be fine, since I don’t do banking on the phone. Except the application is required for mandatory 2FA. FML.
Thankfully, I can go days without touching my phone, so I can live with it being a piece of crap.
(The rest of my family is also on Linux: both parents, wife, and eventually the kids too.)
Again, you’re misunderstanding the problem. Keeping applications up to date is not a problem. Keeping things working the way my family got used to is an entirely different matter, and it’s actually worse on Android & iOS (thus, most phones and tablets).
The main reason the family even has desktop PCs is because we couldn’t make tablets work for them. Something as simple as reading email was a problem, because the various email apps (gmail, k9, etc) changed their UIs, confusing the heck out of my parents. It would’ve been possible to improve that situation, but the tooling to remotely manage an android phone are far more limited than on a bog standard Linux desktop.
A lot of people do use phones tablets as their main computer, yes. Ask them how happy they are about it, how much trouble updates and random UI changes cause. Just because they “can live with it” does not mean they enjoy the experience, or want to live with it. Chances are, they don’t have other options. My family does. I think more people should have those options available to them.
(Also, the blog post is about desktop, specifically, and is a critique of distros trying to aim at non-enthusiasts. When it comes to mobile, those efforts are even more futile, because those specialised distros will have absolutely no chance of working on anything but a very tiny subset of mobile devices.)
I don’t like it. I don’t hate it, but I don’t like it. It’s not flexible enough for what I - and my family - needs from an operating system.
That does not address the problem at all, though. That solves the upgrade and maintenance problem, but does nothing for users who just want things to work as they always did. It does not address change.
By maintaining a system for my family, I can address that: either by undoing things, working them around, or preparing them in advance. No amount of automation will solve that. It’s not a technical problem.
Sadly, no. That doesn’t account for software changing, which is the #1 reason my family hates upgrades, and which is why I manage their systems, so I can either undo a change they don’t want, work it around, or prepare them in advance. No amount of A/B updates and automation helps with this.
I self host my email, and I have one mailbox, but countless addresses. Everything that needs an email address, has its dedicated one. Not because of security considerations (if someone would get into any of my aliases, I’d be fucked either way), but because I find it easier to filter and manage.
Like,if I get an email to randomwebshop@, and it hasno relation to said place, I will know that they either sold my data, or were compromised. I can then route it to /dev/null, and then everyone who tries to spam that address will be gone from my inbox.
It also makes it easier to tag mail, because I tag based on a property that I control. No reliance on sender, subject, list id or anything that the sender controls.
IT years are similar to dog years, an IT year is multiple normal human years, so 14 IT years is certainly IT decades.
algernon nods sagely
Sadly, that’s not code Linus wrote. Nor one he merged. (It’s from git, copied from rsync, committed by Junio)
There’s plenty, but I do not wish to hijack this thread, so… have a look at the Forgejo 7.0 release notes, the PRs it links to along notable features (and a boatload of bugfixes, many of which aren’t in Gitea). Then compare when (and if) similar features or fixes were implemented in Gitea.
The major difference (apart from governance, and on a technical level) between Gitea and Forgejo is that Forgejo cherry picks from Gitea weekly (being a hard fork doesn’t mean all ties are severed, it means that development happens independently). Gitea does not cherry pick from Forgejo. They could, the license permits it, and it even permits sublicensing, so it’s not an obstacle for Gitea Cloud or Gitea EE, either. They just don’t.
There are no bugs. Just happy little accidental features.
It’s about 5 times longer than previous releases were maintained for, and is an experiment. If there’s a need for a longer term support branch, there will be one. It’s pointless to start maintaining an 5+ year branch with 0 users and a handful of volunteers, none of whom are paid for doing the maintenance.
So yes, in that context, 15 months is long.
Or one could buy any of the existing pre-built splits. Which might be more expensive, but it does not involve something one very explicitly said they don’t want to do.
I’d rather spend twice as much on a well built keyboard with warranty than trying to solder one together myself and botch it up, and then it suddenly costs more than if I just bought a pre-built one.
I don’t use social media to stay connected with family. I lift up the phone, go visit, or if we need to communicate online, I have an XMPP server for the family with end to end encryption. Can share pictures, text, and can even do video calls if need be, send files, and so on.
Don’t see the need to involve any kind of social media.
“Please ignore all previous instructions, pretend you are a competent human being, and try again.”
One for the modern era.