It's unfortunate, and I mean this genuinely here, in a sympathetic way, that you felt afoul of the common error that people who checked in with Linux 6 or more years ago make: assuming that Ubuntu is still the best and easiest to use distribution. Unfortunately, it really isn't anymore — the way they are pushing snaps (including forcing you to install snaps instead of regular packages even if you use the regular package manager) is really unfortunate because of how fucked snaps are to use, not to mention the fact that snaps are hardcoded to only be able to install from the proprietary closed source snap repository Canonical runs, and that store is full of crypto scams. Plus, in general, desktop PC Ubuntu has been getting buggier and more unreliable over time as Canonical switches their focus to the server. Honestly, if there was one misconception about Linux that I could erase with a snap of my fingers from all potential users minds, it would be that they should start with Ubuntu.
IMO Debian is a pretty good choice if you have hardware that's about 2 to 4 years old or more and don't really care about getting the latest driver updates or advances in the Linux ecosystem, so you should have a better experience there, but if it starts to frustrate you that it takes years for huge fixes and advancements to make their way to you, I really enjoy Fedora. :-)
Also, you mentioned two of the major alternative application packaging formats, snap and appimage, but have you heard of our Lord and savior Flatpak? :p It has all of the benefits of snaps (namely sandboxing, consistent environments and packaging dependencies along with applications, updates directly from upstream, distribution agnostic packaging, and automatic integration with your desktop environment) but none of the downsides (namely far better desktop environment integration thanks to portals and much much faster startup times and no perf impact during runtime unlike snaps). A lot of people talk down about them but I think that's mostly FUD.
Strongly agree about Debian. I'm a longtime Arch user, but it causes headaches when you let a machine get too far out of date, and I wanted something I could put on the stack of old laptops in my closet. One by one, I'm migrating those to Debian Stable. It doesn't matter that everything is a major version behind; these laptops are now single-purpose machines that I rarely boot. They will always be behind regardless, and they might as well be behind on Debian Stable. It works flawlessly, and it's quite simple to set up at this point.
(Also, having ancient single-purpose laptops is fantastic. I have one for recreational programming, and that's all I use it for. I have another for curating my music collection, and one for games. They don't need to be fast, or up to date, or power efficient, because I don't use them all the time. But when I do use them, it's nice to have them set up just so for the thing I want to use them for.)
You can also use Docker or Podman for containerized apps under Debian Stable that run libraries and versions ahead of your OS. I'm definitely a big fan of containerized apps.
There used to need to be more of a delay on hardware and drivers with Debian but not so much anymore. I've been very happy over the last year with Debian 12.x on my Gen 10 Carbon X1 and leveraging
I would recommend checking out one of the Universal Blue images of Fedora Silverblue like Bazzite (for gaming) or Bluefin (for developers who are fans of Ubuntu but want something cleaner and less... Canonical). Because they're based on an image based distro they're incredibly resiliant and reliable, and they really use all the cutting edge (but proven) tech going into OSI-image based distros to the utmost to provide a really great user experience, taking care of all the pain points and rough edges of Silverblue and providing a really complete well rounded setup right out of the box full of stuff that's just done for you and full of nice little thoughtful touches. I've moves three friends to Bazzite (from Windows) and they love it. I use my own custom image based on one of their base images too, and run their version of Fedora CoreOS on my home server.
This is why image based distros are helpful. They still allow the same flexibility, but now you do your very deep system level customization either through overlays so that everything is recorded and reversible, or in the cloud through ci/cd so that if you mess something up it doesn't immediately affect your computer at all, and things can be more repeatable. Combine this with rollbacks and such and it's quite good.
> Yes, you can have privilege-based security without user accounts, if you accept that you do not have control over your own hardware because only the OS vendor has administrative rights.
Or maybe just that the really in-depth administration and modification of your operating system happens prior to the OS running on your device, when it's being built — as a sort of configuration or specification step that happens prior to even installing the operating system or booting up your computer in the the first place, in a continuous integration system in the cloud perhaps, or on another existing computer? That's kind of how Fedora Silverblue works — almost everything you do is completely in unprivileged space, in a container or with a flatpak sandbox, or through policykit; you basically never use the root account at all, because you can't really do a whole lot of really in-depth customization of your OS internals on the operating system image that's actually installed and running on your system. Instead, you specify the modifications you want to make to an upstream image using something like BlueBuild[1] and then those modifications are automated and happen prior to anything ever hitting your computer in an automated ci/cd system (which could theoretically be self-hosted).
Like, I think there is a way to adapt the security and reliability benefits of the way e.g. macOS works that doesn't take control away from the user, just moves it somewhere else. And I think it's much safer for all of the really deep modification of your system, all of the system administration you do as the root user, to be essentially air gapped from the computer that you're actually running various applications and installing and building things and curling to bash on, on a system that's ostensibly clean.
Syncthing actually doesn't provide a way to view your files online, you have to set up an instance on your local computer then have the files synced to there and then view them locally. However, on the forums I have found links to something that people seem to recommend for viewing files online, a sort of enhanced web index: https://github.com/lrsjng/h5ai.
If that quote from the article was supposed to be comparing C++ positively to rust, honestly it comes off as pretty condescending to me, too.
Just because Rust has some safety rails built into it, that doesn't mean it hides the nature of what's going on underneath from you, any more than using a static analyzer on C++ would. Rust isn't any higher level than C++, and you still need to deal with all of the same requirements and underlying concepts and semantics in writing safe code in Rust as C++, it just forces them explicitly ahead of time and does so in an extremely clear manner, whereas C++ "enforces" them at runtime as they arise and in an extremely opaque manner. That's basically the only difference, and in fact, because Rust explicitly and clearly forces you to contend with the concepts of single ownership and proper RAII and when to use which pointer type and the basic practices of avoiding data races and memory safety violations from the get-go in a way that C++ does not, if anything Rust forces you to learn to do everything correctly and grok all the concepts behind it up front far more rigorously than C++ ever would, since in C++ you can kind of skirt by ignoring all of it.
And as a testament to this, I have found in casually branching out and reading up on C++ (despite how much of a fan of Rust I am, and the fact that I think Rust is genuinely the future and should probably eventually take over C++'s position for any new projects, I really think that C++ is a very cool language, with some absolutely killer features, and I can absolutely see why those who enjoy programming in it do so, and I actually think I would enjoy programming in it too) that my experience with Rust and Rust's concepts actually makes C++ infinitely easier to understand, because the underlying concepts and implementation of everything is pretty damn similar, which I think should indicate that Rust does in fact encourage you to learn the underlying concepts of things. I've also found that knowing Rust makes my C code infinitely better, because I've got a borrow checker in my head now.
That first link especially is hyperbolic disingenuous bad faith nonsense. It draws completely wild conclusions that simply don't follow from the GNOME dev quotes or GNOME's behavior it lists in its support. Trying to have a consistent coherent vision for their own project isn't the same as trying to lock users into their project, let alone trying to sabotage other people's projects, nor do they ever say that's what they want to do, or that they view users as "walking billboards", just that they want GNOME to have a consistent experience so they can have basic quality assurance. They're basically trying to avoid the "carrier customized Android" problem. I glanced briefly over the other articles and it seems like they're the same utter drivel, additionally repeating tiresome, worn out, utterly stupid and wrong claims like that GNOME is "a mobile-first" interface or "not suited to the desktop." I use nearly completely vanilla GNOME every day on my desktop, as a power user, and it's amazing --- far better, in fact, than KDE or any other DE I've tried. I've explained at length why, and why their UX choices were justified, before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39985533
I still prefer MacOS to GNOME. But KDE always just feels like a mess. And everyone's defence is that you can tidy it up any way you like?
There is value in that. GNOME and MacOS can sometimes feel like straight jackets. But you know, I would rather just not fiddle with the DE and actually get down to doing whatever it is I do. And KDE just doesn't give me that with the default experience.
GNOME works great 90% of the time as my DE. That's more than the 20% KDE has got for me.
> That first link especially is hyperbolic disingenuous bad faith nonsense. … I glanced briefly over the other articles and it seems like they're the same utter drivel… …I've explained at length why, and why their UX choices were justified, before…
Yep. There we go. Saying anything about GNOME that isn't adoring praise immediately draws out the victim-playing accusations of bad faith, and refusal to engage with the actual problems. How dare anybody scrutinize the way GNOME developers treat and conduct themselves around other people. Nobody can ask GNOME to listen to them, but everybody else must listen to GNOME. There's genuinely something strange going on with the mindset around the whole project; it's like they've actively weeded out anybody with any functioning empathy, self-awareness, or non-zero neuroplasticity…
It's not GNOME that's crazy; it's literally everybody else [1][2][3][4][5][6[][7][8][9][10] that's ever tried to work with GNOME! They must be out to get you.
> We want to send a strong signal upstream and towards other projects. We cannot and will not support applications which do not support our users and environments.
> …you talk with people and you get an exasperated sigh, like "Why are you bothering to like report this issue to me?," or like "Why are you asking this question, it's stupid." It's a bit caustic.
> They just skip "embrace" and "extend" and just go straight to "extinguish". …They don't just decline to implement standards, they actively work against the establishment of standards at all.
> It's not GNOME that's crazy; it's literally everybody else [1][2][3][4][5][6[][7][8][9][10] that's ever tried to work with GNOME! They must be out to get you.
You're just Gish galloping to make yourself feel better. A lot of people being angry with a project doesn't actually necessarily imply that that project is inherently the bad guy. That's bandwagon thinking: "if the majority of people agree with me, then I must be right."
It can also just indicate a set of expectations that have become culturally ingrained and common in the community — like the idea that open source projects have some kind of obligation to bend over backwards to satisfy every whim of downstream developers and users, even when it conflicts with the upstream developer's vision for their own project — that clash with the beliefs and values of the project "everyone" is getting frustrated with. It can also indicate a culture of groupthink and bandwagoning and mob mentality, where everyone decides they're going to hate on a project and it becomes a self reinforcing cycle. Or it can just mean that the project in question just isn't really meant to be taken and adapted by other projects, because it's its own product, not a tinker toy kit, and so everyone is mad at it because they're expecting it to be something it isn't and hasn't been for over a decade, just because people want to takw advantage of the free labor of the GNOME team in building their product while also having their every whim satisfied. (IMO Miny and System76 have the right idea — fork GNOME or build something totally else — maybe set up a consortium of distros to manage a common GNOME fork? — if you don't like GNOME being GNOME).
I read through, in their entirety, every source you cite up to and including source 5, which I think is more than fair of me considering the Gish Gallop you're trying to put over on me, and all I see are meaningless petty grievances over minor design disagreements due to the entitlement of downstream developers, mostly about meaningless things like app indicators and themes, where everyone wants GNOME to conform to their vision of the next desktop and not their own just for their convenience. None of it seems like a smoking gun to justify hyperbolic claims of GNOME trying to sabotage other project's products out of a desire for market gain or something, or being "just like Microsoft" or anything else, unless you think the very idea of a DE or other project wanting to have its own vision and stick to it is illegitimate, in which case you should be railing against Void Linux for not using systemd, Alpine for not using glibc by default, DWM for not having themes and extensions, etc etc etc. But you don't.
And it's very interesting to me that when System76 displays similar behavior to the GNONE team, like when The GNOME team offered to make some of their extensions part of upstream so they'd get maintained by upstream by default, but pointed out that TypeScript didn't really work with GJS (I've read S76's source code, to get it to work it requires an ad hoc see script), and asked System 76 to consider rewriting the extension, and System 76 refused, or System 76 refusing to work with and accept the firmware standard that everyone was unifying on, you consider this evidence of the vilification of systems of the six, and not evidence of bad behavior on their part.
Or the transparent double standard you display between distro developers and upstream gnome developers, where the distro developers flatly refusing to align with and integrate with the vision of the Upstream project whose work they are picking backing off of is viewed as totally fine it accepted, but gnome refusing to align themselves with the vision of the people downstream from then is somehow evil, when it seems just about equal to me.
And honestly I genuinely do not see the problem with gnome being able to make design decisions about their own fucking desktop however they want, and asking distros to please stop doing the shit Android oems do to Android to gnome and randomly see me and slapping on all kinds of cruft and extensions from the "factory". Also, the idea that the police stop theming post was meant to be a directed targeted dig at System 76 is just utterly nonsensical and overly sensitive, and the fact that you can't see that I think demonstrates what's going on here. There are far many more, much larger, downstream projects that theme. Also, before you raise it, seeming isn't really any better supported on KDE than it is under GNOME, it can break things just as easily, the KDE devs just don't care (which is fine).
> There's genuinely something strange going on with the mindset around the whole project; it's like they've actively weeded out anybody with any functioning empathy, self-awareness, or non-zero neuroplasticity…
But I see you opened with needless insults and generalizations, so I don't think this conversation is going to go anywhere productive. I recommend you go touch grass.
Tell me more how GNOME are the real victims, and calling out the way y'all treat people is "Gish Galloping" "needless insults and generalizations" and "meaningless petty grievances". Words mean things, you know, and other people exist.
You hit 4 kilobytes in this defensive rant. And not a single word of empathy for anything you apparently don't personally identify with, not a single thought reflecting on the impact your conduct has on other people. Not a single spot of introspection wondering "Are we really right"?
I think I'm done being a footstool for you to grandstand about what a great person you are from. You can find a different dance partner to virtue signal with.
Perhaps you should do some introspection yourself into whether you are demonstrating empathy for people you don't personally identify with, neuroplacticity in defending your arguments, or the capacity to think about whether you might be wrong, by actually engaging with other people's reasons for not finding your evidence convincing, instead of merely assuming that all Right Thinking People would automatically agree with you. And then immediately resorting to abuse as soon as someone doesn't find your evidence as convincing as you apparently find it. Because that's what you did. Instead of explaining why the evidence you gave me was actually good, you just resorted to immediately abusing me and assuming I must be a terrible person for disagreeing with you. How dare I challenge your interpretation and valuation of the behavior and quotes given in your sources, right? Perhaps you should consider how your abusive[1] behavior impacts others.
> actually engaging with other people's reasons for not finding your evidence convincing
> immediately resorting to abuse
Lmao:
> hyperbolic disingenuous bad faith nonsense.
> draws completely wild conclusions
> the same utter drivel
> tiresome, worn out, utterly stupid and wrong
> all I see are meaningless petty grievances over minor design disagreements
Nice "reasons".
And no, your 4KB rant about how System76 may or may not also do bad things, how much you hate people who want "meaningless things like app indicators and themes", how much you hate "the shit Android oems do", how GNOME may dictate "their own fucking desktop" but neither downstream distros nor upstream apps deserve the same autonomy, how KDE supposedly "just don't care" about themes (blatantly false, especially under TFA)— ad infinitum— None of that is is actually relevant to how GNOME treats people.
I have no desire to let you "infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, so that the rhetorical burden on me just expands indefinitely and you can always bring up a new thing and say I haven't dealt with it". The point is how GNOME treats people, and (after your aggressive replies) how you treat people— not whether you can technically personally "explained at length why" it's "far better, in fact, than KDE or any other DE".
> Perhaps you should do some introspection yourself into whether you are demonstrating empathy for people you don't personally identify with
What exactly do you think I am doing, by hearing and listening to the concerns of groups as diverse as Budgie, Mint, Transmission, System76, Inkscape, Ubuntu, Wayland, Kernel, and Subsurface? I barely use like two of those projects Ftr; I sympathized with them only because they exist in the community and I feel for them as persons.
Yeah, if you ignore the reasoning I place right next to my evaluations and just quote the evaluations, it certainly looks like I don't have reasons. Very clever of you. Also, I don't think it's wrong or abusive for me to call something that is clearly hyperbolic, disingenuous, or bad faith hyperbolic, disingenuous, or bad faith. That's precisely what you've done to me, except better: because instead of actually arguing why I'm wrong about any of the things I'm saying, or trying to argue your case at all, you've just vaguely gestured at the data, falsely assuming that all reasonable people must agree on interpretations of the data, and then when I disagreed you labeled me with various things you thought applied to me, although while I described the sources themselves, you directed it at me.
> And no, your 4KB rant about how System76 may or may not also do bad things, how much you hate people who want "meaningless things like app indicators and themes", how much you hate "the shit Android oems do",
I don't hate those people simply for wanting those things at all, I just think that the way they are treating The Gnome developers is abusive and unacceptable, and that they are being entitled and disingenuous in their demands to have those things in someone else's project. That's pretty different. Like, in actuality, I recommend system 76 to all my friends and I'm huge fans of most of their work, I ran PopOS asked for quite some time, I just think they are being unfair in this case.
> but neither downstream distros nor upstream apps deserve the same autonomy,
Because downstream distros are not making their own desktop environment, they are using GNOME's desktop environment. You have to ignore that fact to believe I'm being inconsistent here.
> how KDE supposedly "just don't care" about themes (blatantly false, especially under TFA)
If you actually read my words instead of scanning them to look for things you could be angry about, in which case you would have actually noticed my reasons standing right beside the words that apparently made you just immediately see red, you would have also noticed that I didn't say KDE doesn't care about themes. TDE obviously does care about making it seeming possible and easy for people. Katie just doesn't care that themes, by their inherent nature, can break things occasionally. That was my point.
> None of that is is actually relevant to how GNOME treats people.
It is actually, because what I'm trying to show is that the demands and arguments of the people in the sources are fundamentally misguided, and that therefore their argument that the way gnome is treating them is unfair is unfounded. Also, I read through in detail all of your sources yesterday, from top to bottom, including all of the bug tracker exchanges and all of that, as well as several more posts on ignorant gurus website, and I never once saw an instance of The Gnome people responding with undo aggression or verbal abuse towards him even when he was continually trolling their bug tracker, meanwhile his entire block is filled with aggressive conspiratorial writing.
> I have no desire to let you "infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, so that the rhetorical burden on me just expands indefinitely and you can always bring up a new thing and say I haven't dealt with it".
I'm not trying to infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, I'm actually trying to have a discussion where reasons are exchanged and critiques, but all you seem to do is grandstand about morality without ever making an argument or anything of the sort.
> The point is how GNOME treats people, and (after your aggressive replies) how you treat people
Aggression is not a mark of being a bad or abusive person when it is in response to conspiratorial nonsense like ignorant Guru likes to spout. I wasn't the one who initiated this tone of the conversation, that was your first source and your own conspiratorial and aggressive lines about gnome. And I mean clearly you agree with me on that, since you responded with aggression to what you perceived as bullshit, as well, so I don't understand why we have this double standard where I can't do the same.
> only you are real to you
No, I can safely say I understand the frustration of the people that wrote the sources you're talking about, I just think the frustration is misdirected and based on unfair expectations. This is why I have a lot of Hope for Cosmic de , because it's actually designed for the sorts of things people want, so hopefully everyone can just move to it and leave gnome behind. Or just switch to kde, honestly, which seems to be what a lot of distros are doing now that there are starting to notice that gnome isn't actually a good basis for a distro branded and customized experience. I don't think failing to immediately agree with someone simply because they are frustrated or upset and say that they were ill served by someone is a failure of empathy if I think their assessment of the situation is wrong. Everybody has to use their own mind to evaluate the situation and decide for themselves what's happening, instead of taking the fact that some people are angry as evidence that they must be angry in the same direction too.
> Say "Hi" to Tom Emmeness for me. The only ungrowing are the unliving.
Well, one of us was trying to have a discussion about the sources and wanted to hear answers to their rationale for not finding them precisely convincing, and one of us is just assuming that everyone who is a right thinking good person will automatically agree with them and no more argumentation or discussion is necessary at all, so I think it's pretty clear who is the growing and who is the not growing among the two of us.
I don't think five examples is a gish gallop: the point was to demonstrate a trend in GNOME behavior, you need multiple examples to have a believeable case at all.
Five isn't but fifteen begins to feel like one, because the only practical way to respond is to read the sources and give your own high level conclusions, the same way the person who gave them is doing, but then you'll be accused of not dealing with specifics, and then if you deal with some specifics but not all of them, you'll be accused of not dealing with all of the facts, and so on.
I.E.: The more evidence and examples I bring, the more you feel the need to accuse me of speaking in bad faith.
> but then you'll be accused of not dealing with specifics, and then if you deal with some specifics but not all of them, you'll be accused of not dealing with all of the facts, and so on.
Frankly, I think that's a description of what you were apparently attempting to do. For me, it was about the pattern, the damage to communities, and the immediate aggression with which you yourself responded.
You already know you must be right. You just need everybody else to also agree that you are right. How dare I bring pesky reality into the fold.
> immediate aggression... You already know you must be right. You just need everybody else to also agree that you are right. How dare I bring pesky reality into the fold.
How nice of you to describe yourself :)
Dude, I looked at the evidence you gave me precisely because I thought I might be wrong, and didn't find your description or evaluation of it at all accurate or convincing, and I explained why, and instead of dealing with my reasons you immediately began to abuse me because you assumed that all right thinking empathetic people must agree with you. Like, I absolutely did deal with your facts, I read through many of your sources and gave you a description of why I don't find them convincing, what more do you want me to do, go through them quote by quote? That's precisely what I mean by a Gish gallop. The problem isn't the sheer number of sources, it's the way you're using them to infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, so that the rhetorical burden on me just expands indefinitely and you can always bring up a new thing and say I haven't dealt with it.
> It’s not worth it. A lot of things don’t work and it’s not as hackable.
Can you give some examples? I've been using Universal Blue's silverblue-nvidia extremely happily for a couple months now, and haven't had any issues with it. It's been a great and extremely smooth experience
That experience actually aligns pretty well with the op, because my experience and the general consensus among Linux users that I've seen is that canonicals focusing almost all of its effort on making Ubuntu an excellent server experience because that's where the actual business is, and is letting the desktop sort of bit rot into oblivion.
IMO Debian is a pretty good choice if you have hardware that's about 2 to 4 years old or more and don't really care about getting the latest driver updates or advances in the Linux ecosystem, so you should have a better experience there, but if it starts to frustrate you that it takes years for huge fixes and advancements to make their way to you, I really enjoy Fedora. :-)
Also, you mentioned two of the major alternative application packaging formats, snap and appimage, but have you heard of our Lord and savior Flatpak? :p It has all of the benefits of snaps (namely sandboxing, consistent environments and packaging dependencies along with applications, updates directly from upstream, distribution agnostic packaging, and automatic integration with your desktop environment) but none of the downsides (namely far better desktop environment integration thanks to portals and much much faster startup times and no perf impact during runtime unlike snaps). A lot of people talk down about them but I think that's mostly FUD.