A 50-something French dude that’s old enough to think blogs are still cool, if not cooler than ever. I also like to write and to sketch.
https://thefoolwithapen.com

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 26th, 2023

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  • While Firefox is a completely separate entity from Chrome, Mozilla does recognize that some things are better off standardized. So if you’re worried about your extensions not working on Firefox, that shouldn’t be a problem.

    ?!? What does that even mean?

    Most people will understand that as ‘my chrome extensions will work on FF’ or as ‘my chrome extensions are also available for FF’, which is not true. There are alternatives, yes, but there is real probability they will not find an exact alternative to whatver their most important chrome extension is. Yeah, there are also much better extensions available on FF (looking at you, my dearest and unrivalled uBO) but people usually don’t give a crap about that, or they would have ditched Chrome already.

    I am all from promoting FF but not by using so large an… approximations. I almost wrote ‘lies’ but those are not exactly lies, they’re just missing the whole point by trying to make things (uselessly) look better than they are.

    Edit: clarifications.


  • What desktop do you favour and why? Explain your thoughts.

    Xfce & Cinnamon.

    If I had to pick between KDE or Gnome, I would go KDE without any hesitation as I quite like it whereas I’m not really a fan of Gnome. Gnome UI is OK I guess, it’s just the way they want to decide for everything I am not a fan of (After 35+ years using Apple, I did not switch to let anyone else decide for me ;). If I don’t use KDE it’s mostly because it requires too much work to “tone it down” and make it behave like I want my DE to. Out of the box, there is too much features I have to turn off and configure, features that are also spread between too many (and not all of them… obvious) menus/settings. What’s great with KDE is that it’s at all possible to configure all that, it’s amazing. It’s just too much for me. Be it XFCE (on Debian on my desktop) or Cinnamon (on Mint on the laptop) I barely need to change anything to have them do what I wish.

    So, to summarize I would say it’s my untamed laziness that dictates my choice of a DE :p

    It’s also the reason why I do not use one of those tiling WM I know exist and I know, as a user spending my time with my fingers on the keyboard, I would love to use in place of the standard floating windows. Alas, having them correctly configured and running, and then having to relearn decades old habits, would require a time and an energy I have no desire to spend. So, I don’t. Still, I understand why some people like them so much ;)

    edit: clarifications


  • is this really that bad?

    As someone who slightly customize his Linux DE, I would say that the real but potential issue when using some non-official theming (or very niche ones) is that one does indeed risk having issues after a major system update, thing breaking off or just plain not working anymore. It’s no 100% certain, but the risk is real. And that is something that, on a work machine at least, is never an option (the machine is supposed to be available and work in a predictable and reliable manner, hence why I’m so madly in love with Debian plus it’s so well optimized :)). On a personal machine? Well, that’s up to anyone to decide what their priorities are.

    Luckily one is not required to use extreme theming. Personally, I limit myself to whatever is provided with my version of Linux in order to change font size, colors/theme, wallpaper, cursor appearance and so on. So, everything is easier to see for my old eyes.

    It works very well and since it’s part of the distribution I know it will not break after an update. The downside is that it’s often much more limited than what some other dude may have done somewhere on their own machine and then decided to share online. I don’t mind it ;)


  • 90% of those are nvidia related.

    I’m not a Fedora user (Debian and Mint are my go to) but I don’t have a similar impression. Also, my own NVIDIA GPU has always worked OOB (even without installing its proprietary drivers, it just works better after installing them) and still is, but it’s also considered old being a 970.

    Imho, a simpler advice would be along the line of what you mentioned already. Something like: don’t rush for the latest/greatest hardware. Often, new stuff will lack support.

    1. no theming. no icons, no fonts, no plymouth screens, nada. as few extensions/plugins as you can, run it as close to stock as possible.

    I agree with the idea of not wasting time but configuring the theme/look (which is part of the OOB experience, on Mint and Debian at least) can be essential to work in decent conditions.

    As a matter of fact, theming is one of the technical reasons why I switched to Linux from Mac. The ability to have the text as large as I wanted it to be: getting older, one slowly realizes that small thin light-greyish designer cherished fonts lose a lot of their appeal in favor of those non-fancy but larger and bolder dark fonts that are more easy to read :p

    So, I would object that theming can be a very legit, like 100% legit part of the process of turning a Linux machine into a usable working machine one will be able to work on for hours (like tweaking the keyboard layout would be for anyone, like me, writing in more than one language). And that is not even mentioning people with disabilities.

    1. don’t dual/triple/whatever boot.

    Unless one has too, sure. Try running any recent edition of Photoshop in Wine and do real paid work…

    My own solution was to keep a dedicated machine for anything like that: Photoshop and video. Note that for video one may decide to let go of FCP or Premiere and switch to DaVinci Resolve, instead.

    1. separate your system stuff from your applications as much as possible. purge all user-facing apps, like firefox and media players and such from the system’s package manager (apt or dnf) and reinstall them from flatpak

    Why would that be a good idea?

    I mean, I do my best to avoid all those third-party installer (like Flatpak) because they are not as well integrated to the system as the native installer is (in my case it is ‘apt’), and because they also waste much more disk space for the reason that, like you said:

    the apps include everything they need to work,

    Which, sometimes/often, means a real lot of extra stuff.

    the setup is easy to maintain and recreate

    That’s the exact reason why I use the native installer and not those third-party ones. That and the faultless integration with the system (menus, themes and stuff like that).

    And in the odd case I would have to reinstall Linux (an even stranger need on a work machine, since that machine I would not tweak it beyond what I deem necessary for me to be able to, well, work on it and therefore it would be rock stable), even in that case I would need to reinstall it, I find it so quick to reinstall all my apps by typing a single line: “sudo apt install app1 app2 app3 app9999”, no matter how many apps.

    I am keeping such a list in a text file, I update every time I start using a new app, just in case one of those days I truly am forced to reinstall my system. So, I know it would only be a matter to copy-paste said command line in a new shell. Not pretty but real easy and quick ;)

    Flatpak (…) upgrades are better (no reboots necessary)

    Once again, I’m not a Fedora user but does Fedora really need to reboot after updating a bunch of apps? I have hard time imagining that.

    Sorry if my comments sounds critical, it’s not my intention. But while I was reading your post I was very surprised how affirmative you were on certain decisions/choices and how much my own personal experience was different.

    greybeards dunking on you because you’re not a “real” linuxer?

    And if you’re wondering, nope, I am not one of those ‘real user’ either even though my beard would be grey, if not plain white now… if I had one. I come from 35+ years (happily) using Apple hardware and software for work and for personal stuff ;)

    Edit: clarifications.






  • Your source is missing a bunch of chromium-based browsers to add up to 100%, and there’s no methodology or statistics explanation.

    FFS… I listed the first four results of the first web search result I got. Also, may I remind you that me quoting only the four first results (unfiltered) of a longer list doesn’t change a thing on the ranking: on those 4 firsts (aka, the browsers occupying the 1st to the 4th places, aka the ones ranked before the 5th, 6th places and so on), two of them are not Chromium-based. That’s all I was saying.

    For the rest:

    1. Feel free to quote other sources, obviously. I would be happy to see other numbers with some more of that ‘methodology or statistics explanation’ you’re talking about.
    2. Have a nice day.



  • LibbtoLinux@lemmy.mlTuxedo-rs status update
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    10 days ago

    The rest of that blog post summaries with a lot more technical knowledge than I will probably ever have the reason why I chose not to go with Tuxedo when I switched to a Linux laptop, after 35 years being an Apple user.

    Back then, I had no idea about upstream, sharing of source code or those tech stuff mentioned in the blog post. I’m no dev, I am barely interested in my computer as a 50+ user that was looking for a laptop I could fix/upgrade (I decided I was done with Apple the day I realized all their machines were no more fixable/upgrdable), a machine I would truly and fully own.

    Since I was interested in two of Tuxedo’s machines but not at all in their own version of Linux, I started digging around their website to find more info about using their laptops and drivers/apps with any other distro and I ended up with more confusion and questions than I had to begin with. Once again, that’s coming from a non-expert user, no doubt someone else would have had better results, but still not the best experience.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure Tuxedo makes a nice OS that does its job well, it’s just that I did not care about it. I already knew which distro I wanted to use and it was not theirs.

    So, since I could not understand enough I gave up on their laptop altogether and simply purchased a used PC laptop I knew would be working fine with Linux and installed my distro of choice on it. So far, I have zero regrets even though I would have liked to buy one of those Tuxedo machines with their great/bright screen ;)



    • Debian + Xfce on the desktop, because it (mostly, see below) just works, it’s snappy, reliable, and I don’t need my apps being constantly updated (I have very simple needs and use cases)
    • Mint + Cinnamon on the laptop, because it’s still debian-based and because unlike Debian, Mint was able to connect my AirPods out of the box and I use them a lot when on the laptop… I also quickly learned to appreciate Cinnamon, I must say.

    edit: typos


  • Imho, the best way to help a beginner should have happened many years before they put their hands on any Linux distro. It should have happened when they were still a small child, at school. In the way they were taught how to… learn and how to get better… aka, by expecting difficulties and by expecting to fail, often.

    Failing should be expected as a beginner learning anything new. Like, say, we all learned to walk as toddlers. It was not by being told we walked perfectly but by falling on our diapered butt. Failing at outing one foot in front of the other and falling, over and over again.

    That sounds obvious but, to my old eyes at the very least, it also sounds almost like an heresy when compared to what I see kids being taught nowadays. That things should be frictionless and that nobody should fail at anything, ever. That’s such a poor choice that doesn’t prepare them much. Well, imho.

    When I switched (from 35+ years being an Apple user) to Linux, it was frustrating.

    Even when where things went smooth, it could still be frustrating and it often was. If only, because it required me to change 35 years old habits. And when it wasn’t going smooth, even when I was using the best docs and guides, at times it could be incredibly and utterly frustrating, when not completely maddening. Either nothing on my machine was ever exactly like described in the doc, or the app version was different and some setting had changed, or my issue was a somewhat different, or the solution simply did not work, or I missed a tiny detail or a word somewhere in the guide. Whatever. Frustration was a constant.

    That’s what people should be taught to expect and to be fine with. And not just with Linux, btw ;)


  • like for example, one time i was browsing through some neofetch screenshots and i found out that a lot of them have anime or furry stuff as their wallpaper or profile picture, but they use linux.

    younger me would’ve freaked out by the idea of having proprietary files, but i still enjoy linux. what do you think?? please

    What should they use in order to not freak younger you? A screenshot of some lines from the kernel source code? A picture of Stallman and Torvalds tenderly embracing (quite unlikely)?

    On my Debian and Mint computers, I have countryside pictures (I live in Paris, I miss seeing some real country landscape, mind you) and paintings (oil and watercolors, all works I admire) and some illustrations (comics, manga, whatever I appreciate enough to be wanting to look at it from time to time).

    Sorry for younger you but I don’t have a single image related to Linux nor to GNU philosophy, no matter how much I appreciate them.

    freaked out by the idea of having proprietary files

    I would suggest you read a little more about what the four essential freedoms are and how they relate to code and the user rights, not so much to do with art and wallpaper choice.


  • I understand. Maybe two things to consider:

    • It will depends how you installed your apps, but I have file containing a fe useful instruction in case I need to reinstall my system, one of them is just a ‘sudo apt install followed by the name of every single app I want to use’. I only need to copy and paste in a next terminal window to gat all my apps installed. All except the few that I don’t install using apt, say the few appimages I also use. For me it means three more apps, so it’s no big deal to download them by hand ;)
    • Most user settings and configuration should be stored somewhere in you home folder (for example, I know there many settings stored in the .config folders, others (related to the system and the DE you’re using maybe stored somewhere in .local, all my custom fonts are stored in ./fonts, and so on. I’m sorry, I’m no expert so I’m not very precise). All of that to say: by baking up your home, you probably also are backing up a lot of your configuration and tweaks.

    I have no idea how those settings are portable between two completely different distros, but I have once reinstalled my system and got most of my settings instantly back just by copying my home folder over to that fresh install. That plus the single line ‘sudo apt list-of-all-my-apps’ I was almost completely operational in mere minutes, including all my customer menus, panels, text size, themes,… The one thing I remember not working from that backup was my SSH keys. No idea why.


  • Wow. I hate that.

    Well, it’s not like Debian hides it in any way or form. Quite the contrary.

    It’s positively terrible but it explains so much.

    Depends what you’re looking for in your distro. I love that stability and lack of updates outside of security issues.

    And worst of all, I am in far too deep to switch distros at this point.

    May I ask why you don’t think you can change distro? It’s just a matter of installing Linux (which takes a few minutes) and, if it’s not done already, of backing up your personal files and settings (most of them probably in your home folder, already).