If this defaulted to off, then it would actually be useless.
Would just be the other way around with what posts you see online. Instead of OP you'd see "how can I find my newly installed apps" and the same "ahem" screenshot reply.
Except that if people don't know the feature exists, they might not ask about it. If you see the feature exists and you don't want it, it is easier to figure out how to turn it off.
There are many feature that are turned on by default - this is just one of them.
I see plenty of posts here, on the kde matrix, on the kde forums, on the bugtracker asking for non existing features.
I have no clue about the exact percentages, their motivations or feelings, so it's hard to conclude anything.
Personally, I more often ask for nonexistent features (and i feel no barriers there) than turning off something that is on by default - which is a good sign I guess?
But you don’t see all the people that does not ask for features, but could benefit from them. I worked IT support for years and I often suggested features or different workflow to users because I could see they were doing things that could be done easier.
The kind if person who would benefit from that shouldn't be using a computer. But then again, most smartphone users shouldn't be using a phone. How about choosing different default settings in an installation based on a central "expert" vs "newbie" setting?
People who find computers useful should be using computers.
This weird idea from some linux users that only people who see their computer as a hobby and have mastery over them should be allowed to use them, and that computers should be designed exclusively around the needs of computer-as-hobby users, is absolutely nuts.
Its a tool. It should be designed to be useful as possible to anyone who needs such a tool.
Sincerely, Another linux user who cares about UI/UX and is tired of this kind of junk. It's a dumb argument, let's all stop making it please. Linux supports all your "technical user" wildest dreams, let the average people have their features and design considerations too.
Its a tool. It should be designed to be useful as possible to anyone who needs such a tool.
Twenty years ago I might have agreed. Now, in hindsight, I can say that giving everyone access to computers & thereby the internet has brought out the worst in humanity, including mass-manipulation and authoritarian regimes thanks to people making even worse calls in elections than they used to.
The devil is in how things are made useful to users who just want to get things done. The problems comes with corporations making decisions about what users should need to understand, and what users want. There's been a lot of dumbing down and manipulation in that process, serving the needs of those corporations and advertisers and not the needs of the users.
Software can be made useful for those who don't want or need to undertand all the details, in a good, non-harmful way. The principle of separation of interface and implementation even demands it. But our society being what it is, that largely doesn't happen, so I'm inclined to agree with your pessimistic take.
I recently installer something, and KDE showed me where it ended up in the launcher, which I appreciated, and now I'm not supposed to use a computer. Really? Thanks.
At least me wife will be happy, but I'll need to find new work.
What qualifies as "expert" setting can be very divisive.. for me, it would be removing this menu entirely. Or even switching from KDE to sway or similar ^^U
But if I was the kind of people that do use this kind of menus I would probably find that kind of indication useful. It helps finding the category the app you just installed belongs to. If you install an educational app/game that teaches programming by giving instructions to a turtle in order to draw a graphic/picture (I think I have seen something like that before): which category should it be at? games? education? development? graphics?
My main point is: If the desktop environment "expert" toggle is set once, gimmicks like this one here would be disabled by default. On a default installation, with the "expert" toggle to "off", those same gimmicks might be enabled by default.
Everything in the desktop is a gimmick... remove all visible things of the desktop and only show apps. Settings can be handled in a text configuration file. Or are some of these gimmicks actually useful, even for "experts"?
I have many times, installing a new app on a Windows Server, just gone in and seen the latest installed app and clicked on it. Sorry, that is my best example as that is where I most often use this feature - I don't install that many apps on my desktops.
I’m glad there’s a toggle, it seems like it would actually be useful here but I’d probably turn it off.
With that said, there’s a special place in hell for the multitudes of apps that have red notification dots all over the UI with no clear indicator as to what they’re about or how to clear them 😁
I cannot wrap my head around the use case of this. Is the attention span of people really this degraded in 2025 that they need to be reminded what program they just installed?
I think the author has a valid point. This just clutters the UI and adds unnecessary mental load by directing your focus to the indicators every time you open the application menu.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against a "new" label in every context but in this specific case it just feels unnecessary.
*edit: If the use case is: Little Timmy installed a new program on grandmas PC and now she can see the new program better I guarantee you grandma will be super confused when the green dot disappears and from that time on can't find the program anymore. I support a couple of KDE systems with users like Grandma and a dynamic UI like this is contra productive in my experience. For grandma you put the app she is supposed to use in the taskbar as a starter and that's it. No "new" label needed.
Some apps have weird names and I forget what they're called. Showing a "new" badge, even if it's just for the first few times I open the app, makes it more likely that I'll remember the app's name.
It's more about which category a particular specific software belongs. If a kid installs an educational app/game that teaches programming by giving instructions to a turtle in order to draw a graphic/picture (I think I have seen something like that before). Which category should it be? games? education? development? graphics?
I personally don't use this kind of menus with categories, I prefer dmenu style launchers where you type to search what you need. But if I was the kind of people that do use these kind of menus I would probably find that kind of indication useful.
I was very annoyed when I got this, but remembered that it's KDE, and turning it off is 4 clicks. Proprietary software often doesn't allow you to turn this off (easily). Windows has this "feature", where is the setting?
I don't think it's a productive "feature", but considering it can be turned off so easily I don't consider it a complete showstopper.
The main issue is UX imo. On Windows 11, it's "5 clicks", but you have to open the settings app and find the setting two submenus deep. On KDE, it's right click > configure application launcher > toggle setting > apply.
Yeah, for some reason they've seemed to made it harder to find the actual start menu settings instead of more generic taskbar settings. So that's a fair point.
It sounds like the author of the article is more concerned with the incentive it creates for developers to push useless or sloppy updates ("impact driven development") than the UX.
My understanding is that this only happens in newly installed apps, not recently updates ones. They are only highlighted because the user installed them, not because the developer did anything.
It's a screenshot of the application launcher, the menu to launch apps already installed, not the software store.
Thing like this are why there's a million settings in KDE; every dev is prepared for the inevitable "but I hate it, make it go away" complaint. Granted, this complainer was pretty respectful and threw in a donation to soften the blow. Most people just act entitled, like the dev personally affronted them with their update.
I find this complaint very strange. It's a dot. It helps people find what they installed.
But if this person doesn't need it, how would they ever see it? Most power users I know never even look in the menu, so they would never know there is a dot in the first place.
It's all a show. Some people are just desperate for attention. "Oh, look at me, I'm OCD" as if that makes them cool or something. This person just spent €100 for literally nothing (glad it went to kde of course). Being annoyed by this is, IMHO, very stupid. It's a menu that can't even stay open. Who's sitting there sifting their menu all day long that this bothers them? 😂
I'll never understand why this "new/green dot" thing exist, but I'll also never understand why it would bother anyone. lol. Like, it's in kick-off. How often are you scrolling through kick-off? Does anyone keep that menu open at all times that it triggers your OCD seeing it? Am I missing something? Or is it just people seeking attention?
When I install a new application, I generally run it immediately. Having the new indicator might be nice to help find it - they don't always drop into the menu where I expect.
I agree, I can't see why it upsets the author so much. "You've installed a new app, here it is." "YYYEEEAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!"
Besides, it is the entirely wrong way to ask for commissions to begin with. If people want to commission you art, then they will seek you out and commission art from you. Stop randomly sending people DMs and asking for commissions. It is an entirely immoral way to get commissions and it is a great way for you to get blocked and reported. Just let the people who want to commission you come to you, not the other way around. I've already had to block and report several people on Bluesky for sending me DMs asking for me to give them money for art commissions. A real artist does not do that. And besides, each and every one of them had an AI generated profile picture, so I was immediately able to identify they were a scam. The last one I got, I groaned and said "ugh, not another art comm scam", and proceeded to pretend to fall for the bait, and as soon as they asked me for my budget, I stopped acting naive and unknowing and actually told them off, then blocked them. If you send DMs to people like that then you're going to get blocked and reported. Just let the people who want art from you to come to you and ask for commissions.
Huh, I'm not on discord often, but I did get some DMs begging me for a commission work, "it's cheap bro, only 10 dollars bro" - bro, I live in fucking Brazil and earn BRL, not USD.
Didn't know it was an actual scam attempt, just random spam from starving artists.
Makes no sense to target me as I'm not an admin anywhere and, afaik, you can always tell who's an admin or moderator on discord. But eh, these guys aren't exactly known for being smart
I had one too it was weird they were just asking for commission work, they provided a portfolio of fairly mediocre art and they were asking a good bit much even at “discount” for it so I declined and they left me alone. Might not have been a scam really
Yes, that's right, you have figured out what all international elite spies couldn't. You, some random guy, have undeniable proof that every country you don't like manipulates their GDP.
I'm going with @Sandouq_Dyatha here and say that you are not all international elite spies. And it's not that "countries I don't like manipulate their GDP". It's more that GDP measurements, including the PPP kind, are fundementally flawed and that's by design. China is around 2.5 times the economy of the US at this moment by looking how much they are manufacturing and how much electricity they use, surpassing the EU per person.
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Notice how everyone has given up on any discussion with you guys? I am the one dumbass who still occasionally shows up to get shat on. So be happy you still got me, otherwise you'd just be jerking each other off. Here I'll even help you guys out and downvote myself.
GDP is a terrible measure of genuine economic output, especially considering that it doesn't center production, but transaction and currency. A system highly financialized like the US, in reality, produces far less than China does, yet the US GDP is larger due to the dollar.
Neither system is perfect. Physical goods (except resources, food and medicine) can become obsolete, demand may drop significantly (especially for luxury products), can be boycotted if you piss off citizens of a rival country enough and they are subject to tariffs, which is obviously relevant with the arrogant dickhead in the white house.
Edit: I think it's still fair to say that GDP is certainly good rough indication of how well a country is doing economically. Otherwise what would be the point if everyone thinks it is useless?
These examples illustrate the disjuncture between GDP and societal well-being and the many ways that GDP fails to be a good measure of economic performance. The growth in GDP before 2008 was not sustainable, and it was not sustained. The increase in bank profits that seemed to fuel GDP in the years before the crisis was not only at the expense of the well-being of the many people whom the financial sector exploited but also at the expense of GDP in later years. The increase in inequality was by any measure hurting our society, but GDP was celebrating the banks' successes. If there ever was an event that drove home the need for new ways of measuring economic performance and societal progress, the 2008 crisis was it.
Political Economy is complex. What GDP aims to measure is overall production, it's an explanation of wealth, however it paints a very uneven picture as it overvalues financial transactions and undervalues raw productive capacity. As a consequence, imperialist countries are overvalued (like the US), while production-focused countries are under-represented.
GDP is often pushed by liberal, western countries as it makes them look good. A more honest look, however, is multi-faceted and takes into account other metrics like social services, which often run into negative "profitability" or break even, as they aren't producing for profit. There's also the fact that the US doesn't outproduce in non-physical goods either. The US certainly has popular media and software, but it doesn't have overwhelming productive capacity in these areas.
The point of focusing on BRICS is because if you remove the financialized, almost ficticious look at capital as displayed by GDP, BRICS is more economically strong and significant, and this better reflects the real world, not just US-based self-perception.
Imperialism is the highest stage of the capitalist mode of production, in which monopolies and cartels become the prevalent economic force of society. Lenin synthesized...
I think that is also a very one-sided view on this issue. The truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle. Germany for example has a lot of social services (universal healthcare, unemployment securities, etc.) and is still doing exceptionally well.
Germany is also imperialist. The countries that rely on imperialism have higher metrics by plundering the global south. It's kinda like looking at life expectancy of the rich vs the poor in any one country, the better metrics of the top come at the expense of the bottom.
Imperialism is the highest stage of the capitalist mode of production, in which monopolies and cartels become the prevalent economic force of society. Lenin synthesized...
They don't, really. Russia has like 6 of the world's top 500 companies, it couldn't rely on the same financial expropriation even if it wanted to simply because it utterly lacks the financial capital to do so. China is a production-focused economy, and the large firms and key industries are state owned. Even if we took the ideological aspects of Marxism-Leninism completely out of the picture, China is more economically incentivized to build up multilateralism so it can sell its products to the global south, and not rely so much on the US to offload its production to, as the US is constantly unreliable due to it wanting more capital penetration into Chinese markets (which the state rejects).
What facts did I disagree with? Are you operating with a different concept of what imperialism means, ie a semantical difference but not a logical one? Or am I wrong about Russia having relatively small financial capital and thus lacking the capacity to practice imperialism in the same way western countries do? Or am I wrong about China's large and key industries being state owned, and their economy incentivizing multilateralism in order to sell more?
The first would be a semantical difference, not a disagreement with facts, the latter 2 would be if you could provide evidence to the contrary sufficient to outweigh what I said.
Imperialism is the highest stage of the capitalist mode of production, in which monopolies and cartels become the prevalent economic force of society. Lenin synthesized...
Maybe, but that would be better than just saying I "disagree with facts" while being cagey about what those "facts" are. That's just ad hominem (and I mean that genuinely, you're trying to discredit me through insult, not just insult me).
Either way, ultimately, this topic has shifted entirely from the base of the conversation, which is trying to find a good measure of economic productivity, and how focusing on financialized capital masked by GDP obscures actual productivity. It's why imperialist countries are declining, and why the PRC is rising. I don't think we disagree that western countries are going downhill and that the PRC is improving, so identifying why is productive.
I think we have come to some kind of a conclusion that neither of us is willing to part from. Maybe I am the idiot and wrong, but I'm good on this for now. Maybe I'll have some more energy another day.
Fair enough. I recommend reading the ProleWiki page on imperialism I linked, it's much shorter than reading Lenin (though you absolutely should) and can help get you to look at the problems (presumably) we both experience in decaying western countries, and how we can chart a course for a better world. You can't find solutions without proper analysis of the underlying problems.
Seems like a very unbiased encyclopedia. If a methodology of analysis is skewed towards presenting what the author intended it is pretty much useless. I haven't read it yet, this is just a gut feeling, maybe I'll check it out tomorrow.
It's openly biased towards communism, it's a Marxist-Leninist encyclopedia. Wikipedia is also biased towards a western, liberal viewpoint. Truth is underlying and independent of interpretation, but how truth is presented is where bias shines through, and shine it does no matter where you find your source, as every source is biased. ProleWiki is nice because it includes its sources, even though it's a work in progress, and more importantly the article on imperialism is an explanation of the concept and how it exists in reality from the Marxist-Leninist point of view.
If someone has a different definition of imperialism, you can still read the ProleWiki article and appreciate it, just substitute "imperialism" with "Leninist imperialism," and read the article with that in mind. Saying a country does or doesn't meet the Leninist definition of imperialism doesn't mean it necessarily fits or doesn't fit other definitions of imperialism. The Leninist interpretation is widespread, however, because it's useful, and as such serves as an excellent explanation for how capitalism in developed countries functions and why it's simultaneously wealthy and declining rapidly.
What do you respond to "Fuck X" , if thats what you're talking about? Otherwise I have stated my reasoning. If one side isn't willing to give up anything, it isn't really a discussion
Centrism is rejection of political extremes. It is nuance and critically questioning everything. It means criticizing your own side. Contrary to popular belief It is the opposite of being a coward, because everyone will hate you.
No, centrism is the uncritical acceptance of the political extreme that is currently in power. It rejects nuance on and critical questioning, because that might lead to believes other than the current status quo.
It is the certainly not the opposite to being a coward, and it is synonymous with being intellectually lazy; like relying on thought terminating cliches such as "the truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle"
Rejecting political extremes on the basis of being extreme, and not the merits of the positions (or lack thereof), is the opposite of nuance. It's substituting critical thought for a rejection of the idea that one can both differ from the median viewpoint and be correct, which is logically absurd.
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What fucking america are you living in? That might be true in some cozy suburb of Burlington, Vermont, but as someone who’s lived in Chicago and St Louis, the “Le Indians” reality is FAR closer to the american experience
Once I was crossing a signalised intersection in Canada while the pedestrian light was on, and some jackass turning left on red (which is the most illegal way to run a red light btw) almost hit me and had to slam on the brakes, but what shocked me the most was that the driver behind them, also intending to turn left on red, fucking honked at the first driver for having the audacity to stop and get in their way instead of running me over.
I've also had multiple instances where I was about to cross an uncontrolled intersection and a driver (who's usually speeding to the point where I could tell with just my eyes) honks at me to get back on the sidewalk because they don't intend on stopping for me when the laws require them to. Also seen drivers turning right on red (which is legal here in BC for some reason) honking at pedestrians crossing with the light and demanding to go first when the laws say you're definitely supposed to wait until the cross walk clears.
This is why I hate drivers. They call cyclists and pedestrians entitled while doing shit like this.
Russia and Belarus intend to develop their own artificial intelligence model built on “traditional values” that would be “understandable” to citizens of both countries.
In late June, Syrians experienced the worst attack on a Christian church since 1860 On June 29, 2025, I attended a church service at St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. St.
It's like when the government of South Vietnam led by Catholics setup by the US/French governments started persecuting Buddhist though in that case in Vietnam, a lot more Buddhist than Christians
But they told me that these CIA/MI6/Mossad-backed Salafi Jihadists were moderate rebels. At least that terrible, horrible no good, very bad Bashar al-Assad is gone, though!
chemical weapons were done by the terrorists and the other a hoax. Proven by the OPCW factfinding mission evidence where the report was doctored higher up
One Lebanese citizen embraced martyrdom after an Israeli drone raided his (Rapid) car with two missiles in Deir Kifa town, South Lebanon.
In the context of the Israeli attacks on the border area since this dawn, at approximately 6:30 a.m., an enemy Israeli reconnaissance aircraft dropped a sound bomb near a fishing boat off the coast of Ras Al-Naqoura.
An enemy reconnaissance aircraft also dropped a sound bomb in the vicinity of a destroyed house in the outskirts of the town of Dhahira, before later dropping a second bomb in the same town.
In a related development, enemy bulldozers established a new, small site near the newly established “Al-Hamames” site inside Lebanese territory, opposite the city of Khiyam. Furthermore, during the pre-dawn hours, Israeli bulldozers paved a 200-meter dirt road inside Lebanese territory in the town of Kfar Kila, extending from the wall toward the road leading to the “Shalhoub” station.
The occupying forces also dropped an incendiary bomb in the woods of the town of Sheheen, sparking a fire in the wooded area.
Israeli warplanes intensified their assaults last night, launching an airstrike on the rugged outskirts of Bodai in western Baalbek District, then conducting two more strikes on the highland areas near Flawi in the same region.
These attacks come in the context of Israeli violations of the ceasefire signed in November of last year, as Israel blatantly disregards all relevant international agreements and laws.
On July 12, Taiwan's military began deploying one of its newest and most precise strike weapons as part of intensifying drills meant to showcase the island's determination to resist any Chinese invasion.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
The family of a US-Palestinian man beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the West Bank called for a US State Department investigation into the killing on Saturday. Saif al-Din Kamil Abdul Karim Musalat was attacked on Friday in the village of Sinjil, north of Ramallah, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
I think so. I lost count of the little things, it really was death by a thousand paper cuts.
I was a pretty rabid fan of Ubuntu, still have an x86 and ppc CD of 5.04 somewhere.
But by the time snaps started appearing, and then Ubuntu pro, Ubuntu decided to revert some of my customized configs in /etc after an upgrade, I had had enough. When snaps were reinstalled after an upgrade in 2021, I just flipped over to Debian, which has come a long way in being usable out of the box.
I have been using ffmpeg to convert audio files to MP3 format for my commercial web service and have found out that ffmpeg is no longer available in my version (12.
At the time, canonical was throwing its weight around and essentially bullying Debian upstream repos. Around this time, there was a mass exodus of the Debian leadership over this kind of thing.
The old guard of Debian wasn't as... enthusiastic about systemd either, but look what they use now.
Firefox has instructions on their website for adding their PPA and pinning it over Ubuntu's. I find it interesting that they made an official response that seems to say "yeah nonconsensual snaps are bad, here's another option"
I switched from Ubuntu to Debian, and it's basically the same thing, just faster since it uses native packages instead of Snaps. Ubuntu might as well run all it's apps in Docker containers.
You could rebrand Debian to Ubuntu and most users wouldn't even notice.
I've been enjoying CachyOS as well. I haven't gone digging into documentation too much but when I search I typically end up on Arch related forums. Chatgpt helps a lot too.
Arch requires reading the manual to install it, so installing it successfully is an accomplishment.
It's rolling release with a large repo which fits perfectly for regularly used systems which require up-to-date drivers. In that sense it's quite unique as e.g. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has less packages.
It has basically any desktop available without any preference or customisations by default.
They have a great short name and solid logo.
Arch is community-based and is quite pragmatic when it comes to packaging. E.g. they don't remove proprietary codecs like e.g. Fedora.
Ubuntu is made by a company and Canonical wants to shape their OS and user experience as they think is best. This makes them develop things like snap to work for them (as it's their project) instead of using e.g. flatpak (which is only an alternative for a subset of snaps features). This corporate mindset clashes with the terminally online Linux desktop community.
Also, they seem to focus more on their enterprise server experience, as that is where their income stream comes from.
But like always, people with strong opinions are those voicing them loudly. Most Linux users don't care and use what works best for them. For that crowd Ubuntu is a good default without any major downsides.
Edit: A major advantage of Ubuntu are their extended security updates not found on any other distro (others simply do not patch them). Those are locked behind a subscription for companies and a free account for a few devices for personal use.
Not really with archiinstall, but indeed as you say reading the manual is an expectation. Their philosophy is "creating an environment that is straightforward and relatively easy for the user to understand directly, rather than providing polished point-and-click style management tools", as well-summarized by Wikipedia.
wants to shape their OS and user experience as they think is best
tbh that goes for every distro. It's just that Canonical is more hands-on with its approach. The major complaint with Snap besides performance issues is Canonical making it so that only the Snap versions of popular apps (most famously, the bundled Firefox) are available by default.
I don't know about everyone else, but the last couple of years has had the most unstable Ubuntu releases, with the most unrecoverable releases when issues happen.
I've since moved to Fedora for desktop and straight Debian for server.
I used it a little way back in 2005-2006ish, and decided to give it a try again after a third reinstall of ubuntu within a year last year.
though, I'm about to get a "new" laptop and may toy around with Arch on the old one. I had previously tried setting up Arch in a VM but that's not supported and ended poorly.
I can't speak to Arch but I use Ubuntu every day. I hate on Ubuntu because I use it every day. They make terrible choices. They've got common, serious issues people have reported at least as far back as 2009 with no acknowledgement or plan to address. I'm on LTS and they push through multiple reboot requiring sets of updates a week, heedless of the impacts.
I don't feel like learning a totally new environment so I'll be switching my main computer to Mint whenever I get the time. So I can deal with someone else's annoying decisions for a while.
I feel your pain with Ubuntu, though last time I used it was about a decade ago. As bad as it is (relative to some other distros), it's still miles ahead of Windows. So, you've got that going for you!
I like arch because: - it is rolling release and I like having up to date software and not having to deal with distro upgrades breaking things - it is community run and not beholden to a company - packages are mostly unmodified from their upstream - the wiki and forums are the best of any distro
the wiki ~~and forums~~ are the best of any distro
If you don't participate in it that is. If you veer only a little off of their strict rules, then Arch forum will ban you and they won't allow you to even read the forum.
I don't really have a concise answer, but allow me to ramble from personal experience for a bit:
I'm a sysadmin that was VERY heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. It was all I worked with professionally and really all I had ever used personally as well. I grew up with Windows 3.1 and just kept on from there, although I did mess with Linux from time to time.
Microsoft continues to enshittify Windows in many well-documented ways. From small things like not letting you customize the Start menu and task bar, to things like microstuttering from all the data it's trying to load over the web, to the ads it keeps trying to shove into various corners. A million little splinters that add up over time. Still, I considered myself a power user, someone able to make registry tweaks and PowerShell scripts to suit my needs.
Arch isn't particularly difficult for anyone who is comfortable with OSes and has excellent documentation. After installation it is extremely minimal, coming with a relatively bare set of applications to keep it functioning. Using the documentation to make small decisions for yourself like which photo viewer or paint app to install feels empowering. Having all those splinters from Windows disappear at once and be replaced with a system that feels both personal and trustworthy does, in a weird way, kind of border on an almost religious experience. You can laugh, but these are the tools that a lot of us live our daily lives on, for both work and play. Removing a bloated corporation from that chain of trust does feel liberating.
As to why particularly Arch? I think it's just that level of control. I admit it's not for everyone, but again, if you're at least somewhat technically inclined, I absolutely believe it can be a great first distro, especially for learning. Ubuntu has made some bad decisions recently, but even before that, I always found myself tinkering with every install until it became some sort of Franken-Debian monster. And I like pacman way better than apt, fight me, nerds.
Arch has a very in-depth wiki that's the go-to resource for a lot of Linux users, and it offers a community-driven way to have access to literally anything that's ever landed on Linux ever through the AUR. It's also nice to have an OS that you never have to reinstall (assuming all things go well).
Why that turned into such a cult-meme is anyone's guess though.
About 10 years ago it was The Distro for first time linux users to prove they were a True Linux Enjoyer. Think a bunch of channers bragging about how they are the true linux master race because they edited a grub config.
Before Arch that role belonged to Gentoo. Since then that role has transitioned to NixOS who aren't nearly as toxic but still culty. "Way of the future" etc.
All three of have high bars of entry so everyone has to take pride in the effort they put in to learn how to install their distro. Like getting hazed into a frat except you actually learn something.
The Ubuntu hatred is completely unrelated. That has to do with them being a corporate distro that keep making bad design decisions. And their ubiquity means everyone has to deal with their bad decisions. (snap bad)
This is it mostly for sure. I used to be that True Linux Enjoyer. I still install arch sometimes but I only ever use an arch-derived distribution now that comes with an installer. I already feel like there’s not enough time in the day without having to manually copy files off a USB stick
I have a similar need for a "niche" install. I need Arch for it. I'm doing a laptop installation with LUKS2, TPM2, Secure Boot, systemd-boot with UKI, BTFRS, Apparmor and it has a Oculink eGPU dock station.
Last time I used EndeavourOS, I managed to get the graphical installer to install BTRFS on LUKS, it did require custom partitioning in the graphical installer, snapper just worked after that.
Zram (or was it Zswap?) was pretty easy to enable after installatiok
The bootloader might be beyond what the graphical installer can do though... I never really bothered switching...
To add, before the change the Gentoo wiki was a top resource when it came to Linux questions. Even if you didn't use Gentoo you could find detailed information on how various parts of Linux worked.
One day the Gentoo wiki died. It got temporary mirrors quickly, but it took a long time to get up and working again. This left a huge opening for another wiki, the Arch wiki, to become the new top resource.
I suspect, for a number of reasons, Arch was always going to replace Gentoo as the "True Linux Explorer", but the wiki outage accelerated it.
And here I am, just planning on going to Mint or something whenever win 10 support finally actually ends. I had Ubuntu like 15 years ago for a while, but I'm at a point where I want to do less learning about my operating system.
The way I see it, you can have an OS that breaks less often and is hard to fix, or an OS that breaks a little more often that is easy to fix. I choose the latter. 99/100 times, when something breaks with an update, it's on the front page of archlinux.org with a fix.
The problems I've faced with other distros or windows is the solution is often "reinstall, lol", which is like a 3 hour session of nails on a chalkboard for me.
How user friendly is the installation process? I've never tried, so I don't know. I'm curious now; just based on how people talk about it, I always perceived it as as distro that requires a lot of technical knowledge to use like Gentoo, which I unsuccessfully tried to install way back in 2010. I'm more knowledgeable and patient these days, so I may be able to work with arch.
You can use archinstall and it is dummy simple. Just have another computer or phone around to look things up and go down the menu like a checklist. My admittedly limited arch experience has so far been "run archinstall, use pacman to install tools as I run into things I'd like to have". I have a Framework 16 with the built in GPU, I imagine some hardware complicates this process but just look stuff up it's all out there unless you're on some really wild hardware. Even without archinstall you can follow the arch wiki and you're basically replicating what the tool does but using the wiki as your checklist and needing to type more
Well, Ubuntu uses Snap, which is a rather poor packaging solution that basically no other distro has adopted. By default it's a little bloated, it's made some controversial decisions (rust coreutils), and other distros just do what Ubuntu does better (like Mint)
People that got into Linux when most of the main distributions were easier to install than windows in most cases. Some people wanted to show off that they can install a Linux like it was when we did it back in the 90s for some reason I still don't understand till this day. I do like their wiki though. Works great for debian as well as arch.
I've been a slackware user since the late 90s. I take for granted how easy it is to install today. I've been tinkering with a socket 7 build, and nothing is easy. Installing slackware 8 is a pain in the ass. I can't even get half my hardware working on win95! It's not like riding a bicycle.
It's funny because I see the same cult behavior, but for Fedora. I've never understood the point of this distribution that has never worked well for me.
I'm on Manjaro by the way, because I love everything about Arch except the release style.
Funnily enough, I feel the opposite. Manjaro never worked reliably for me, but Fedora works great for my use case. Is it perfect? Fuck if I know. But it's a good, no-nonsense, extremely low maintenance, super reliable distro that I use daily with zero issues.
Also, they pioneered the atomic distro concept that has amazing use cases, and some fantastic projects are based on this technology. My gaming PC runs Bazzite for a zero-maintenance, immediate gaming experience. My dads laptop runs Bluefin and he hasn't broken it yet, and he's capable of breaking every single OS.
That said, never heard of fedora being a cult at all. Hell I feel it gets far less recognition than it should honestly for being cutting edge and stable.
But you're still getting updates every day, just two weeks later than Arch. The "testing" is just two other branches somewhat closer to the Arch package releases.
I'm using Fedora, but I'm not going to say it's my favorite. I liked MX and OpenSUSE a lot. Just had a hard time with running them on a computer. Fedora just worked out the box.
When I got fed up with windows 8.1 (and windows update bricked it), I first used ubuntu. How well or not it worked depended on the version. In version 19 it got some ugly white message boxes. I searched for how to change their color and found an angry dev saying no you cant change that. This was the final bullshit. Then I switched to arch, which lets me choose how my stuff looks and doesn't have the whole 3/4 versions are buggy thing. It works and ubuntu does not.
Arch is amazing for what it is, hence the love. It’s what you make of it; by default there’s nothing and you design your own system from scratch. This leads to a very passionate and enthusiastic community who do great work for one another, for everybody’s benefit. Anything under the sun can be found in the AUR, the distro repos are fresh and reliable, and every issue that arises has a hundred people documenting the fix before it’s patched.
Ubuntu has a bad reputation for inconsistency, privacy invasive choices, etc. I don’t think all the hate is deserved, as they corrected course after the Amazon search fiasco, but I still won’t use it because of Snaps. They have a proprietary backend, so even if I wanted to put up with their other strange design decisions I can’t unless I wanted closed source repos. That goes against my whole philosophy and reasoning for being on Linux to begin with, and many feel the same.
Normal people who use Arch don't bring it up much, because they're all sick of the memes and are really, REALLY tired of immediately being called rude elitist neckbeard cultists every time they mention it.
The Ubuntu hate is because Canonical has a long history of making weird, controversial decisions that split the Linux community for no good reason.
Unity would be the first example, and although Unity was actually a good DE, it was too bloated and almost non-modifiable.
People jumped ship to Linux Mint that had its priorities straight.
Mir and Snap were bigger issues though as Wayland and Flatpak were great replacements for X11 and AppImage and did not need another competitor.
But the privacy issues were the straw that broke the camel's back. People left windows for linux so they wouldn't have to deal with this kind of nonsense.
I actually jumped when Ubuntu jumped to Gnome 3. Gnome 3 was too bloated for me and it looked ugly.
I decided to see what Arch Linux was about and eventually settled for Manjaro Linux. Arch + Xfce for the win.
I left Ubuntu after Unity, it could have been the greatest thing ever, but Canonical deciding what was best for me felt too much like Microsoft just shoving whatever garbage they wanted to my system.
I'm quite experienced in Linux but I wouldn't use either. Arch is great if you like to tinker, Ubuntu sucks for the not so libre approach , corporate ties, telemetry etc. I distrohopped before but today I just install my debian based distro and shit works.. Ubuntu I've installed twice before when I was new to Linux, and have had a major issues every time due to official updates that broke internet drivers and other things, that's a fun one when you only have one PC . Not to mention its so bloated that shitty computers that I like to thinker with it have a hard time catching up. The arch thing is also mostly a kind of meme, targeting the more unbearable nerds. People I hated when I was a noob (they will let you know you are) But they are found everywhere and in general I don't think there's more of those people in arch community than anywhere else. It's more of a stab at elitism than arch specifically.
I feel like it isn't really specific to arch, every distro has a following, but some are more "passionate" about it than others. I think arch, NixOS, and gentoo are the most notable.
It has: - a great wiki - many packages, enough for anything you want to do - its the only distros that is beetween everything done for you and gentoo-like fuck you. - and the Memes.
pacman, seriously, I don't hear enough of how great pacman is. Being able to search easily for files within a package is a godsend when some app refuses to work giving you an error message "lib_obscure.so.1 cannot be found". I haven't had such issues in a long time, but when I do, I don't have to worry about doing a ten hour search, if I'm lucky, for where this obscure library file is supposed to be located and in what package it should be part of.
rolling release. Non-rolling Ubuntu half-year releases have broken my OS in the past around 33% of the time. And lots of apps in the past had essential updates I needed, but required me to wait 5 months for the OS to catch up.
Hmm, finding what package a file is in is absolutely possible on Ubuntu/Debian too. You can use the online Ubuntu/Debian packages search, or use apt-file.
"I run Arch btw" became a meme because until install scripts became commonplace you had to have a reasonable understanding of the terminal and ability to read and follow instructions to install Arch Linux to a usable state. "Look at my l33t skills."
Dislike of Ubuntu comes from Canonical...well...petting the cat backwards. They go against the grain a lot. They're increasingly corporate, they did a sketchy sponsorship thing with Amazon at one point, around ten years ago they were in the midst of this whole "Not Invented Here" thing; all tech had to be invented in-house, instead of systemd they made and abandoned Upstart, instead of working on Wayland they pissed away time on Mir, instead of Gnome or KDE they made Unity, and instead of APT they decided to build Snap. Which is the one they're still clinging to.
For desktop users there are a lot better distros than Ubuntu these days.
I left Ubuntu for Arch because I got sick of Arch having everything I wanted and Ubuntu taking ages to finally get it. I was tired of compiling shit all the time just to keep up to date.
Honestly glad I made the change, too. Arch has been so much better all around. Less bloat and far fewer problems.
I installed arch before there was the official install script. It's not that is was THAT difficult, but it does provide a great sense of accomplishment, you learn a lot, customize everything, and you literally only install things you know you want. (Fun story: I had to start over twice: the first time I forgot to install sudo, the second I forgot to install the package needed to have an internet connection)
All of this combined mean that the users have a sense of pride for being an arch user so they talk about it more that the rest. There is no pride in clicking your way though an installer that makes all the choices for you
IMO Despite some unjustified rumors Arch is a very stable distro. For me it feels the same as Debian stability wise while still being on the cutting edge side. The Arch wiki is the second most important reason.
The problem there is that stable vs unstable distro uses a slightly different meaning of the word stable than you would use to talk about a stable vs unstable system.
In distro speak, a stable distro is one that changes very little over time, and an unstable one is one that changes constantly. That's sort of tangentially related to reliability, in that if your system is reliable and doesn't change then it's likely to stay that way, but it's not the same thing as reliability.
I think Arch is so popular because its considered a middle of the road distro. Even if not exactly true, Ubuntu is seen as more of a pre-packaged distro. Arch would be more al a carte with what you are actually running. I started with Slackware back in the day when everything was a lot more complicated to get setup, and there was even then this notation that ease of access and customization were separate and you can't have both. Either the OS controls everything and its easy or you control everything and its hard. To some extent that's always going to be true, but there's no reason you can't or shouldn't try to strike a balance between the two. I think Arch fits nicely into that space.
I also wouldn't use the term "cultists" as much as "aholes". If you've ever been on the Arch forums you know what I'm talking about. There is a certain kind of dickish behavior that occurs there, but it somewhat is understandable. A lot of problems are vaguely posted (several times over) with no backing logs or info to determine anything. Just "Something just happened. Tell me how to fix it?". And on top of that, those asking for help refuse to read the wiki or participate in the problem solving. They just want an online PC repair shop basically.
I'm not sure either. I think arch used to be one of the less popular distros (because of the more involved install process, solved now by the arch-based distros with friendly installers), despite having some of the best features, so it required more "evangelism", that's unecessary now. Arch-based distros are now some of the most popular ones, so its not necessary.
Others have commented on why its so great, but the AUR + Rolling releases + stability means that arch is one of the "stable end states". You might hop around a lot, but its one of the ones you end up landing on, and have no reason to change from.
That is the main reason I use Arch. I am not a Linux expert but I am able to solve most of my problems reading the wiki. I used to use Ubuntu and Mint but those ended with me copy pasting stuff into the terminal and not really learning anything. When I switched back to Linux this time I went with Arch.
Because there are still people who have not yet seen the light. Once everyone has joined the fold they will not be able to remember why anyone resisted in the first place.
There are a lot of different reasons that people hate Ubuntu. Most of them Not great reasons.
Ubuntu became popular by making desktop Linux approachable to normal people. Some of the abnormal people already using Linux hated this.
In November 2010, Ubuntu switched from GNOME as their default desktop to Unity. This made many users furious.
Then in 2017, Ubuntu switched from Unity to Gnome. This made many users furious.
There's also a graveyard of products and services that infuriated users when canonical started them, then infuriated users when they discontinued them.
And the Amazon "scandal".
And then there's the telemetry stuff.
Meanwhile. Arch has always been the bad boy that dares you to love him... unapproachable and edgy.
Nix is great but not the saving grace I thought it would be. I daily it. Like it. Run cinnamon coming from Mint. But to be fair. It takes real effort and time to setup your config file, comment it thoroughly and then master the system. Once it's fully automated backups and all you can hop machine to machine and it's like you never left your OG machine. There's pros and cons for sure.
If there was a simple Debian based distro that I could declaratively manage via a single config file, I think I'd try it. I.e. not using Puppet or Chef that can only bootstrap a system state, but something to truly manage a system's entire life cycle, including removing packages and anything littering the system file tree. But since there isn't, I'm using NixOS instead.
Having a DSL to declare my entire system install, that I can revision control like any other software project, has been convenient for self documenting my setup and changes/fixes over time. Modularizing that config has been great for managing multiple host machines synchronously, so both my laptop and desktop feel the same without extra admin work.
Nixpkgs also bolsters a lot of bleeding edge releases for the majority of FOSS packages I use, which I'm still getting used to. And because of how the packaging works, it's also trivial to config the packages to build from customer sources or with custom features. E.g. enabling load monitoring for Nvidia GPUs from btop that many distros don't ship by default.
I've started with ubuntu/mint and it was always a matter of time before something broke then i tried everything from then all the major distros and found that I loved being on a rolling release with openSUSE Tubleweed (gaming and most new software works better) and BTRFS on Fedora (BTRFS let's you have boot time snapshots you can go back to if anything breaks).
After some research I found I can get both with arch so installed arch as a learning process via the outstanding wiki and have never looked back. Nowadays I just install endevourOS because it's just an arch distro with easy BTRFS setup and easy gui installer was almost exactly like my custom arch cofigs and it uses official arch repos so you update just like arch (unlike manjaro). It's been more stable than windows 10 for me.
Tldr: arch let's you pick exactly what you want in a distro and is updated with the latest software something important if you game with nvidia GPU for example.
I had moved from Slackware to Debian but by 2004 the long release cycles of Debian were making it very hard to use any Debian with current hardware or desktop environments. I was using Sid and dealing with the breakages. Ubuntu promised a reskinned Debian with 6 month release cycles synced to Gnome. Then they over delivered with a live cd and easy installation and it was a deserved phenomenon. I very enthusiastically installed Warty Warthog. Even bought some merch.
When Ubuntu launched it was promoted as a community distro, "humanity towards others" etc despite being privately funded. Naked people holding hands. Lots of very good community outreach etc.
The problem for Ubuntu was it wasn't really a community distro at all. It was Canonical building on the hard work of Debian volunteers. Unlike Redhat, Canonical had a bad case of not invented here projects that never got adopted elsewhere like upstart, unity, mir, snaps and leaving their users with half-arsed experiments that then got dropped. Also Mint exists so you can have the Ubuntu usability enhancements of Debian run by a community like Debian. I guess there is a perception now that Ubuntu is a mid corpo-linux stuck between two great community deb-based systems so from the perspective of others in the Linux community a lot of us don't get why people would use it.
Arch would be just another community distro but for a lot of people they got the formula right. Great documentation, reasonably painless rolling release, and very little deviation from upstream. Debian maintainers have a very nasty habit of adding lots of patches even to gold standard security projects from openbsd . They broke ssh key generation. Then they linked ssh with systemd libs making vulnerable to a state actor via the xz backdoor. Arch maintainers don't do this bullshit.
Everything else is stereotypes. Always feeling like you have to justify using arch, which is a very nice stable, pure linux experience, just because it doesn't have a super friendly installer. Or having to justify Ubuntu which just works for a lot of people despite it not really being all that popular with the rest of the linux community.
I don't really understand either. Where are the Gentoo and LFS elitists? It seams like there should be more of those than arch elitests. Maybe it's just because more people use arch.
Ok, I think I can provide some insight into this that I think it's missed on other replies.
I switched to Arch back when Arch had an installer, yup, that's right, Arch used to have an installer, then they removed it and you had to do most of the process manually (yes, I know pacstrap is technically an installer, but I'm talking about the original ncurses installer here).
After Arch removed its installer it began to attract more purists, and with that the meme was born, people online would be discussing stuff and someone would explain something simple and the other would reply with "I use arch BTW", which meant you didn't need to explain trivial stuff because the person had a good idea on how their system works.
Then Arch started to suffer from being too good of a distro, see those of us that were using it consistently saw posts with people complaining about issues on their distros that never affected us, so a sort of "it doesn't happen on my distro" effect started to grow, putting that together with the excellent wiki that people were linking left and right (even for non Arch users) and lots of people became interested.
This new wave of users was relatively new to Linux, they thought that by following a tutorial and running a couple of command lines when installing arch they had become complete experts in Linux, and they saw the "I use Arch btw" replies and thought they meant "I know more than you because I use Arch", so they started to repeat that. And it became common to see posts with people being L337 H4ck3r5 with no clue whatsoever using "I use Arch btw".
That's when the sort of cult mentality formed, you had experienced people who liked Arch because it was a good distro that didn't break on its own with good documentation to help when you screw up, these people suffered a bit from this and told newbies that they should use Arch. Together with that you had the other group who thought because they installed Arch they were hackers telling people Arch was waaaay too hard, and that only true Linux experts should use it. From the outside this must have felt that we were hiding something, you had several people telling you to come to our side or they couldn't help you, or pointing at documentation that looked specific for their distro, and others saying you weren't cool enough for it probably felt like a cult recruiting.
At the end of the day Arch is a very cool distro, I've tried lots of them but prefer Arch because it's a breeze to maintain in the long run. And the installation process is not something you want to throw at a person who just wants to install Linux to check it out, but it's also not complicated at all. There are experts using Ubuntu or other "noob" distros because at the end of the day it's all the same under the hood, using Arch will not make you better at Linux, it will just force you to learn basic concepts to finish the installation that if you had been using Linux for a while you probably already know them (e.g. fstab or locale).
As for Ubuntu, part of it stems from the same "I use Arch btw" guys dumping on Ubuntu for being "noob", other part is because Canonical has a history of not adoption community stuff and instead try to develop their own thing, also they sent your search queries to Amazon at some point which obviously went very badly for their image in the community.
I used Ubuntu as my first distro out of curiosity sometime around 2006. I've tried others (Mint, Pop OS, Debian, Fedora) but mostly settled with Ubuntu because it was just kind of ok for me and as another user said, there was a lot of articles that helped with getting things working because it became popular.
I had heard of Arch and to your point the it's complicated thing very much kept me away from it even though I have been using computers for around 30 years and was comfortable using a terminal.
The other thing is gaming, I consistently had problems with the nvidia cards that I've had over the years and never really cared to dig into trying to get things to work so Linux was kind of my testing ground for other things and just general learning about how things work.
Then I finally just had enough of Windows a couple of years ago, and with gaming support getting better I went back to Ubuntu and it just didn't feel good, I wanted something different that was setup how I wanted it so I looked into Arch.
I tried a couple of times to manually install it but my attention span (ADHD) kept me from focusing on the documentation enough to actually learn what I was doing. In comes the archinstall script, it was basic enough for me to follow and understand to get my system up and running.
I went through roughly 3-4 installs using it and testing stuff after I had it running and breaking stuff and just doing a fresh install since the script made it very easy. Since then I have learned a good bit more, and honestly don't think I will ever use another distro for my desktop. Just the ability to make it exactly what you want and things just work. Not to mention the documentation is massive and the AUR is awesome.
I do use Pop OS on my wife's laptop since it decided to automatically upgrade to W11 which crippled it and I just wanted something that I could just drop on there that would work with no real configuration since the only thing it needs is Citrix which works ootb and she can use all her office tools through that and has libre office if she wants to do something locally.
I do have a separate drive with W11 on my desktop, its used for one thing, SolidWorks. Which I use enough to merit having windows.
Arch was and still kind of is seen as the "I use Arch BTW" crowd, but it really shouldn't be that way. The install script isn't fancy, but it works. I think that would be one of the biggest barriers to break that mindset and open it to more people that are still fresh to Linux. I think that having even the most basic "GUI" for installing Arch would do wonders.
I don't use either now. I have tried both. When I started with Ubuntu i was great; fast, light, all the good stuff. Then it started to get bloated and wouldn't run on my old machine... So I moved to Arch and it saved me and I used it for years.
My way of thinking and working is incompatible with most premade automatism, it utterly confuses me when a system is doing something on its own without me configuring it that way.
That's why I have issues with many of the "easy" distributions like Ubuntu. Those want to be to helpful for my taste. Don't take me wrong, I am not against automatism or helper tools/functions, not at all. I just want to have full knowledge and full control of them.
I used Gentoo for years and it was heaven for me, the possibility to turn every knob exactly like I wanted them to be was so great, but in the end was the time spend compiling everything not worth it.
That's why I changed to Arch Linux. The bare bone nature of the base install and the high flexibility of pacman and the AUR are ideal for me. I love that Arch is not easy, that it doesn't try to anticipate what I want to do. If something happens automatically it is because I configured the system do behave that way.
Ubuntu? Its a can't make up its mind what it is trying to be while always becoming a crashy mess. When it first came out I remember trying it and immediately broke it.
The last time I installed it recently it had issues out of the box.
So I love Debian but it prides itself on stability so packages tend to be older. I think this is good for a server but probably not great for a desktop. Ubuntu came along and was like we'll be like Debian but newer packages. Everything was cool for a while but then they started doing shitty things. The first that I can think of was ads in the terminal. This was not great for an open source app. Then when you did apt install firefox it installed Firefox as a snap. WTF?!?!? (apt should install .deb files, not snaps). Because of this, lately I've decided to avoid Ubuntu.
I used Gentoo for a while and it was great but configuring and compiling everything took forever. I'm getting too old for that. Arch seems like a good alternative for people who want to mess with their system. So it's become a way for people to claim they know what they are doing without having to recompile everything. (Note: I haven't used Arch, this is just my perception)
Recently I got a new laptop and I had decided to put Linux on it and had to decide what distro. Arch was in consideration but I ended up going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it's got the latest but I don't really have to configure anything. If I had more time, I might go with something like Arch but I don't really want to do that much fiddling right now.
I wonder if it's just me or if other people who were around before Ubuntu feel the same way but the reason I hate Ubuntu is that it seemed to take over the Linux world.
A lot of the information about how to do something in Linux was drowned out by how to do it in Ubuntu. When searching for information you have to scroll down in the search results for something that sounds unrelated to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu material was often titled "how to do it in Linux" and you thought you had a good long tutorial until you read a few paragraphs in and realized it was for Ubuntu and wouldn't work for you for whatever reason.
Even some software that says it's available on Windows and Linux just means they have a Ubuntu package and if you're really good there's a chance you might be able to figure out how to use it on a non Ubuntu system.
It's like when Ubuntu came out, people just assumed that Linux was Ubuntu. I've never used Ubuntu so a lot of the information I've came across regarding it has just been in the way of me finding useful information.
Arch has a cult like following because it emphasizes simplicity and customizability. If you have the time to fully administer your own system, there is no better choice.
Ubuntu is corporate, frequently out of date, and sometimes incompetent. They got big a long time ago when they were a significantly easier option than their competitors, but I really don't think there's compelling reason for a new user to install Ubuntu today.
To add to the arch management, after a while you learn the golden rule - set it and don't fiddle with it too much. Nowadays there is very little maintenance to it. I run an update followed by shutdown. Once every 2-3 months there is some issue, that takes a forum search to fix and once a year it breaks to the level where I need about half an hour to an hour to fix it.
Maybe it's masochism, but I like Arch because it forces me to make mistakes and learn. No default DE, several network management choices, lots of configuration for non-defaults. These are all decisions I have to make, and if I try to cut corners I usually get punished for it.
However, I think the real reason I stick with arch is because this paradigm means that I always feel capable of fixing issues. As people solve the issues they face, forum posts and wiki articles (and sometimes big fixes) get pushed out, and knowledge is shared. That sense of community and building on something I feel like Arch promotes.
For me, Ubuntu is ugly as all hell and comes with so much I dont need. It also ran slow on the first machine I ever installed it on. I like Arch because I got my feet wet there. It was my classroom.
The Arch users being so vocal is more of a trope to me. Never fails to make me smile.
Ubuntu started as a great endeavour. They made Linux much more approachable to the less tech inclined user.
It is an achievement to get a distro capable of basically work out of the box that hides the hard/technical stuff under the hood and delivers a working machine, and they did it and popularized Linux in the process.
Unfortunately, they abused the good faith they garnered. The Amazon partnership, their desktop that nobody really enjoyed, the Snap push. These are the ones I was made aware of but I risk there were more issues.
I was a user of Ubuntu for less than six months. Strange as it may sound, after trying SUSE and Debian, when I actively searched for a more friendly distro, I rolled back to Debian exactly because Ubuntu felt awkward.
Ubuntu is still a strong contributor but unless they grow a spine and actually create a product people will want to pay for, with no unpopular or weird options on the direction the OS "must" take, they won't get much support from the wide user community.
I don't know if that ever was true but I definitely disagree with that nowadays because Arch is in my opinion significantly more approachable and easier to daily-drive than Gentoo.
I have to use Zoom for a online class and I was wondering how I can make my Zoom experience more private? Is there a Zoom client that I can use like how there are privacy-focused Discord clients? What privacy tips would you recommend?
Not much really. Separate profile on your machine or run it in a VM. Then maybe use a vpn. But that doesn’t really hide anything from zoom itself. Maybe use a throwaway email.
I refuse to use the Zoom client on my computer and instead use the web client. There might not be 1:1 feature parity, but it's never been a problem for me with other people.
The funds could come from the $3.85 billion remaining in Presidential Drawdown Authority from the Biden administration or from frozen Russian assets, current and former U.S. officials said.
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I'm in the process of getting a new printer and since I recently (December 2024) switched to Linux it would be nice if it would be Linux compatible. So far I've decided on the Canon PIXMA G550 printer but I can't find anything about it's compatibility so I figured I would just ask here in the hopes someone might have the same printer or knows someone who has the same printer and can tell me if this printer works with Linux. If all else fails I could still use the printer with my tablet or phone using Canons app but using it with my desktop would be much more comfortable.
I think network printer made by big manufacturer recent years should be fine with IPP driverless. They found Printer Working Group of IEEE, this organization maintains IPP standard and IPP Everywhere™ Certification. AirPrint can be treated as Apple version of IPP Everywhere, the difference between them is AirPrint requires Apple Raster but IPP Everywhere requires PWG Raster (and JPEG JFIF file format if color printer).
Ah, so they are actually differences between IPP Everywhere and AirPrint (apart from AirPrint including the whole autodiscovery stuff)? Good to know. The latter is usually more prominently advertised though which is why that’s the one I mentioned.
But yeah, it should be very common for these to be supported with anything remotely recent.
IPP Everywhere also include full autodiscovery stuff (mDNS and DNS-SD, of course, Apple call this combination as Bonjour). So I said raster is the only difference.
Raster is unimportant in Linux situation because CUPS support both PWG Raster (It's actually a subset of original CUPS Raster) and Apple Raster. Whichever one your device supports, CUPS will work fine.
When you say proprietary drivers, I assume that means they are only available for x86_64 platform... leaving ARM64/aarch64 devices, like Pi's and such, out of luck?
Something I've experienced with similar printer drivers. Hence the ask.
I've currently been messing around trying to make the Switch 2 Pro Controller work on Linux using the raw HID commands from this website, to potentially build into a driver as a bit of a project to get better at C. However, seemingly nothing I use can send any commands properly, or at least in a way that makes the controller work. I've tried both echo, sending bytes to the /dev/hidraw6 device (that device at least on my system, may vary on others), as well as hidapitester (a wrapper for hidapi). I know the device works, as a WebUSB tool that uses the same commands makes the controller work on this system. Is anyone more familiar with this, and can point me in the right direction? I'm on Fedora Linux 42 if that info helps.
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Hi all, I have tried everything, and now I am coming here for help. Hopefully someone can tell me what's happening here. So, I have this older pc that I have converted into a steam console, first with Bazzite and now with Chimera OS. Both work very nicely, but the one issue that persisted on both distros is that when I put the pc to sleep from game mode (press xbox button>power>sleep) then wake it up, the screen is not receiving a signal, it not even a black screen, just no signal. I would have to force reboot it to be able to get in. Nothing works. I can't even get into a tty screen or do anything. It is connected to a samsung tv 65mu8000 via HDMI cable. I have UHD color input enabled for that input, just to give more details.
I have tried disabling the wake up animation like some folks suggested and that didn't do anything. I have tried disabling the display core like some other searches suggested by putting amdgpu.dc=0 in modprob.d in its own file. I have tried blocking the intel iGPU, even though this CPU doesn't have one. Nothing works. It has an intel core i7 5930k and an AMD RX 6600. I would appreciate any help or suggestions Thank you
I've had the similar problems with bazzite in desktop mode coming back from sleep or screen off, first with Nvidia, then solved by switching to an AMD graphics card, but now it happens there too. I have two workarounds.
1) Try Ctrl+Alt+F1and Ctrl+Alt+F3. You should be able to switch to console then back to desktop/login screen.
2) In KDE Plasma, there's a way to map wake screen to a keyboard button. That worked for me until I reinstalled the OS and never bothered.
I think this is a Plasma or SSDM issue but idk how to report it properly.
It would allow SSH if the desktop is locked, they're separate. If you can get in via SSH then you can poke around logs like dmesg and see what's up. There will probably be some messages to give you something more specific to search with.
You think it's the screen/hdmi at fault, but it might not be. I've had the problem with two laptops in the past (the bug was with all distros I tried), and in one case it was a BIOS that Linux didn't like, and the second one was the internal wifi that its linux driver was buggy. For the first laptop there was nothing to be done, so I disabled sleep completely in the bios, while for the second one, I disabled the wifi modules in the kernel's blacklist, and then used a usb wifi that I knew it worked better. Both cases were appearing as a dead screen, but it wasn't the screen/hdmi/gfx card to blame. In yet another case, with a thinkpad laptop, the wake up was working, but it would wake up 30 seconds later than anticipated. In that case, it was the fact that its thunderbolt was dead (hardware had gone bad), and only when I disabled it in the bios completely the laptop would wake up correctly and fast.
In all those cases, I had to look at the kernel logs to see what was the issue. There were traces of the problem of which hardware exactly was creating the problem. It might look like a screen/hdmi problem, but most of the times, it's not.
There's an AUR open-tv package for Arch/Artix/..., and there's even an AUR open-tv-bin version, but I prefer looking at the build recipes if available, and if not using Arch/Artix/... one can read through the PKGBUILD and see how it builds.
Far less useful, far more dangerous, but maaan the people love it. 🤷🏼♂️ I guess, like the OG monkey bars and swing-set over old concrete slabs... it can stay. The people've spoken.
Expect a steep learning curve even if you know Linux inside out. Don't assume things work the way they did on Arch (or most other distros). If your hardware doesn't work well, or you otherwise need some proprietary stuff, check out gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix. Good luck!
Guix channel for packages that can't be included upstream. Please do NOT promote or refer to this repository on any official Guix communication channels.
Yep. Totally using nonguix. I'm trying out Guix for the reproducibility and system management, not (just) for the FOSS software.
From my initial research, I thought that Guix was only going to allow 100% FOSS software. But I've learned that's not the case. It's actually pretty easy to add additional channels in order to install non-FOSS software. The third-party channels integrate nicely!
I've not used Guix but I don't think any distro has anything close to number of desirable available packages as arch--- so be prepared for that. My ventures into debian, suse and fedora were made quite annoying by having to work around the many missing packages. Including user-facing applications, dependencies and background programs. I never quite got down with distrobox, maybe that's the cure.
this chart on wikipedia gives the impression that Debian has more packages but that's not the way it feels when you are looking for something. Maybe they have a lot of dot matrix printer libraries from 1992 or something which bring the number up.
Arch includes a lot of not-at-all-free packages (which it is impossible to distinguish in pacman or other tool as far as I can find), orphaned, new packages that haven't yet made it into other repos, and packages where no attempt has been made to submit them to other repos.
On arch I have virtually never had to go outside the repos for packages. It's very hard to give up once you are used to it. (Even though it's better to use properly libre/free stuff and other benefits of a more curated approach like security, stability and quality.)
The thing about Guix (and Nix) is that there doesnt need to be a package in the repos. You can either make your system automatically compile from source (which is how many AUR packages work) or use something like distrobox, bottles, flatpak to run extra software
You also need to source ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile.d/flatpak.sh in order to get the desktop icons to show up in the GNOME app launcher. (Using guix home for that!)
Need to work on getting distrobox setup next. I was able to guix install distrobox, but it requires some extra configuration apparently.
Btw, here's the guix home configuration file I used to add the contents of flatpak.sh into my ~/.profile, in order to update the XDG_DATA_HOME env var.
Neat. Although, I wanted to go through the installation ~~pain~~ experience. Eventually, I'm hoping to run Guix on a server. I'm starting with my laptop first.
– Hardware must be well supported in fully-libre-land - I was trying to install on a Mac Mini and had to go nonguix pretty much right away. That kind of spoiled the whole effort.
– Profound meditation and enlightenment on the essence of Scheme is a must. I had one of those 'no, this is where you don't want a closing brace' moments and my zen was blown out of the water.
I would have soldiered on, but personally I like Arch first and foremost because I can (and do) have a local repo by rsyncing a rotation of mirrors couple of times a week. Just in case the Internet dies one day, you know. I realised Guix was not really suitable for the apocalypse use case, so after that brace episode I decided to stick with what my spine already knows.
After all that is said – I really hope you fare better 😁
Hardware must be well supported in fully-libre-land ... had to go nonguix pretty much right away.
Yep, same here. I started with nonguix. I didn't realize it was easy to add additional channels.
Profound meditation and enlightenment on the essence of Scheme is a must. I had one of those ‘no, this is where you don’t want a closing brace’ moments and my zen was blown out of the water.
Aaaah. I juuuust had this happen to me. Took me a bit to balance the parens again! 😂 Although, so far Scheme seems nicer than Nixlang. I've also had curiosity to learn a functional language, so Guix gives me a reason to learn about functional programming.
personally I like Arch first and foremost because I can (and do) have a local repo by rsyncing a rotation of mirrors couple of times a week.
Are these mirrors for prebuilt packages? If not, you should be able to pull from other channels, create your own channel and include all your packages while building them locally.
Sure, but then I'd be downloading every single source 'package' and compiling for both x86 and ARM - not exactly feasible. Keeping just the sources might be an option though. The point is to have the whole repo, not just the packages I use, so that in the SHTF scenario I can help others install Arch and any software they may need on their machines. Muhahaha, Arch will prevail 👻
I've also wanted to try out Guix for a while.. part of the reason I'm leaving a comment is just so I can recheck these posts later 😛
But when I do I for sure will start out from nonguix because I'm quite confident that my hardware won't be supported (I even have a recently purchased Wifi 7 card that relies on ath12k module that I'm quite sure won't be in the official Guix repo.. maybe I'd even need to compile it myself..)
I see in the nonguix readme that there's a way to generate an iso that includes already a nonguix kernel, so I'll have a look at that.
It even looks like you can create a writeable image to run from a USB thumbdrive, which looks very interesting, I gotta try that!
I've been burnt by Arch before which is what has got me into exploring other distros. I might ultimately end up again in Arch like you, who knows, but it looks like the way Guix works is well suited for hosting your own repo too.. I think I've seen before someone hosting their own Guix repo in github, including also a bunch of configuration for their system, which got me curious.
Guix channel for packages that can't be included upstream. Please do NOT promote or refer to this repository on any official Guix communication channels.
I love it especially because of the guix shell and guix shell container for dev environment isolation. It is a whole different ecosystem from the ground up though so it's not an easy ride. But those two features make it worth it for me. Also it's GNU distro which imo is a plus.
guix shell and guix shell container for dev environment isolation
Yeah! This is one of the features I'm most interested in. I haven't gotten to using this feature yet, but I was curious about it.
Let's say I'm working on a project that requires Go, Node, maybe some C library, and GNU Make. Seems like I would be able to use guix shell for this, right? Great.
Now if a friend wanted to work on the project, could I share my guix shell configuration with him? (Assuming he's also a Guix user.)
I'm currently using distrobox.ini plus distrobox assemble for this kind of workflow, but of course this isn't totally reproducible.
Let's say I'm working on a project that requires Go, Node, maybe some C library, and GNU Make. Seems like I would be able to use guix shell for this, right? Great.
Iirc guix shell is for one off package or programs you want to test, say you want to quickly format a drive to exfat or so, when you exit the sub-shell, the installed packages are discarded
guix shell containers would work best for your scenario but I have little experience with them
yes, you would share with him guix manifest which is a file that specifies which packages should be present. What is important to note are inferiors which is a mechanism to version lock the packages.
thats it 😀 Now you need to pin package versions to guix versions via inferior so that you can share the manifest and be sure you have exact same stuff on the other machine. Otherwise the specified packages get updated everytime you update your system. I learned that the hard way by having to wait for latex to download everytime I updated my system.
You need to edit your /etc/config.scm or where ever you store your system config. Import the right modules/services, add your user to cgroup, add iptables-service-type to your services, add rootless-podman-service-type and configure it.
(use-service-modules containers networking …)
(use-modules (gnu system accounts)) ;for 'subid-range'
(operating-system
;; …
(users (cons (user-account
(name "alice")
(comment "Bob's sister")
(group "users")
;; Adding the account to the "cgroup" group
;; makes it possible to run podman commands.
(supplementary-groups '("cgroup" "wheel"
"audio" "video")))
%base-user-accounts))
(services
(append (list (service iptables-service-type)
(service rootless-podman-service-type
(rootless-podman-configuration
(subgids
(list (subid-range (name "alice"))))
(subuids
(list (subid-range (name "alice")))))))
%base-services)))
Then of course you run guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm.
Now you can do a simple guix install distrobox. If you install distrobox first, you don't end up using rootless podman and you run into more problems that way. (You have to use distrobox --root.)
After that command, everything should work like normal. Enjoy. 🍻
distrobox create --image docker.io/library/archlinux:latest --name arch-dev
distrobox enter arch-dev
Btw, here's how you configure HiDPI for GNOME. Unfortunately, my laptop has a hydeepeeay display, so it's not fully compatible with Linux. (It's 3840x2160, so at least 2x scaling is possible, hypothetically.)
Commands from the Arch Wiki, but also adds cursor scaling:
$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "[{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor', <2>}, {'Gtk/CursorThemeSize', <48>}]"
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2
The default GNOME configuration is some how missing that. I didn't have to do that in Arch, but I do in Guix. IDK. Anyway, if you don't run those commands certain apps will be tiny, including a tiny mouse cursor.
I want to love Guix (both the package manager and the distro). I want to love Scheme. But I can never find any good tutorials for Scheme and using it with Guix. The GNU documentation is more of a reference than a tutorial. I use Emacs on the daily, and I just can't get into Scheme.
Israel’s war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we – in the United States but also internationally – had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict. It seems no exaggeration to say that the foundation of the international order of the last 77 years is threatened by this change in the obligations governing our legal and political responsibilities to each other.
The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse
Yeah but alliances like NATO and the UN weren't built to prevent genocide. They were built to protect certain power structures and to keep certain nations in control. Stopping genocide was sometimes useful in accomplishing this but nothing more. They never actually cared about people and never will.
That's so true. 30 years ago the US, with the help of it's vassals, hid its Imperial wars and resource extraction under the banner of globalization and human rights.
BANGKOK (AP) — China said Sunday that European medical device companies will be barred from selling to the Chinese government as a countermeasure for the European Union’s restrictions on the sale of similar products from China.
After the commission found that China has asymmetrical trade barriers for EU medical devices, it recommended some actions. For the past year EU was trying to negotiate China opening their medical market to the same level EUs market is open to China. It failed.
More symmetrical tarrifs incoming (from both sides).
La Social Web Foundation ha partecipato al 20° Internet Governance Forum delle Nazioni Unite in Norvegia .
Abbiamo ospitato il workshop "Privacy Preserving Interoperability and the Fediverse", che ha riunito sviluppatori, esperti di policy e organizzatori di community per esplorare la crescente importanza – e complessità – della privacy nelle piattaforme social decentralizzate di Meta, Data Transfer Initiative e Social Web Foundation. Con l'espansione globale dell'adozione di Fediverse, questa sessione si è concentrata su come raggiungere l'interoperabilità senza compromettere la privacy e l'autonomia degli utenti.
Aside from the Ars Technica article in the xpost, there's a lot of "it depends."
It depends on not just the OS, but if it's a custom image built for Dell or HP or Asus etc. computers, what settings are on, what settings were on by default, what bloatware is pre-installed, etc.
Typically, all MS or Apple really want are to know what apps you have installed, zip code, email address, IP address, crash reports, and possibly keywords they can associate with advertising. That's their baseline wish list, which is all advertising fodder, and depending on your settings, that can quickly expand to "anonymized" (it's not) cookie use, tracking of websites visited, etc.
If you have a custom image (i.e. a Dell specific version of Windows) the laptop manufacturer will look for access to roughly the same data.
With the whole Copilot fiasco, recording things like keystrokes and screenshots really are potentially in play now. But, again, only if you have foolishly installed Copilot and turned that stuff on. And that only after huge public outcry. So there's always a non-zero risk of that, but do your due diligence to know you settings.
Can you strip out bloatware and tighten down Windows to a reasonable degree? Sure. But because MS can and does change system settings without your consent, you might find in 6 months an article about a setting you turned off, that they turned back on and you had no idea.
Even if you turn off the setting and it stays off in subsequent updates, how can you know that the setting actually does anything at all? That is to say how can you trust Microsoft does not ignore the setting and just gathers the data always.
It might be not sending any extra data - which can be verified via packet sniffing like Wireshark - but how do you confirm they are not saving the legit requests you do and collect it silently at the backend? It cannot be proven (beyond reasonable doubt).
Since they are closed source, we can't know. We can find out that messages are being sent at certain moments, but not what data is being contained in the messages, communications carrying this sort of data are always encrypted (for obvious reasons).
For legal reasons they often include some vague allusion in the terms of service about collecting information.. but they are never very clear on what data exactly they take when and how, so it's left up to interpretation.
There is so so so much, and they do get caught, and when they do we keep a peek into how invasive they are. As someone who has had to worry about being targeted by intelligence agencies and nation-states, I was completely blindsided by corporate/capitalist surveillance.
for example, look at this action by Meta, where they broke out of security sandboxes and exploited protocols in order to tie your browsing history (even private browsing) back to your identify saved in their databases back in meta land
the amount of data that is being harvested and sold, and resold, is absurd, and the greater threat is not just that they are exploiting you, its that they dont care who the data gets sold to. Bad actors (criminals, etc) can and will purchase information they can use against you.
So, consider the unintentional ramifications of all that info being harvested and available in addition to the intentional ramifications of hyper greed, and couple that with the amount of available compute and you will see that you do not need to be a person of interest, everyone is a data point that can be and will be exploited.
I would encourage everyone to take their privacy seriously.
I swear meta is just built different in terms on spying on people compared to everyone else. It's like they have a team of ex non ethical elite hackers to find security vulnerabilities in everything and exploit everything as much as possible.
This is the real issue. It's not so much the intentional sale of your info for profit, or, for the majority of people, the threat of surveillance states finding out you're one of their enemies of the month. Most people are hit by criminals using the info to target them. For example, if they know your adult child's information and have samples of their voice data from social media, they can make an AI bot to impersonate them and ask for money. Or, if robbers happen to be targeting a neighborhood, they can use your location information to determine when you aren't home. These are much more complex than most of these scams, though. Most are much simpler, but using some combination of info from social media, security breach data, location data, etc. All of that data is being bought and sold now. Mostly by "legitimate" companies. Things like that are the major consequences for the majority of people.
not sure about win/mac, but for android yes they do keep record of stuff like what apps are being launched and upload/sync to google account. it's not hidden though.. it is(was) literally available on google account history or something (was about 7 years ago)
regarding keystrokes there was a case of a famous chinese keyboard app doing dubious stuff. not sure if i can say it's on a os level but i'm pretty sure more than a few chinese phones ship with that. citizenlab.ca/2023/08/vulnerab…
In this report, we analyze the Windows, Android, and iOS versions of Tencent’s Sogou Input Method, the most popular Chinese-language input method in China.
Few people can be sure of that, because it would require digging in their assembly code which can take a lot of time, but they have a financial incentive to do that and they love money, so all sane people assume that they very much do. And they also get caught sometimes (multiple times!), so thinking they would just stop would be foolish.
Summer league is still getting started and I'm curious what y'all are thinking so far.
I haven't watched every game but I have some thoughts myself. I thought Tim Connelly was crazy for drafting another French center but I understand it now, Joan getting 7 blocks in his first game has convinced me that he can replace (and possibly exceed) Gobert in the future. Dilly, TSJ, and Clark were exciting too, the wolves' young core is looking nice especially on defense.
I had higher hopes for pistons' 2nd round pic Chaz Lanier, I'm hoping he gets some better catch-and-shoot looks going forward but those aren't as common in summer league. Ron Holland on the other hand might as well have been LebRon Holland. 28pts 11reb 3stl 4/5 3pt is impressive, especially the improved shooting, I hope it's not a fluke.
Speaking of fluke, all eyes have been on Cooper Flagg and Bronny James. We'll see in a couple hours if Coop can have a better game today, 5/21 from the field is rough though. Bronny was playing lockdown defense too which seems to be his new identity, we'll see if he can keep this up, he could be a rotational player going forward.
Anyways would love to hear what other people are thinking and feeling so far!
A new Yahoo/YouGov survey finds that about twice as many U.S. adults say they would vote for a candidate with Mamdani's platform (50%) than say they would not (26%). Could it be a blueprint for Democrats elsewhere?
You get told by every mainstream news everywhere on social media that this is an “evil socialist”.
It’s been a trend for atleast the past 30 years that policy wise the average US voter has been way further to the left than the average party they vote for.
Germany-funded long-range weapons to arrive in Ukraine by late July — Impeccable results: New Skynex video shows Ukrainian forces destroying Russian drones with German gun — Ukraine destroys Russian drone unit after Kherson infant killed, child should nev
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Russia’s war against Ukraine
Smoke billows above the city’s buildings following mass Russian drone and missile strikes in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on July 12, 2025. (Yuriy Dyachyshyn / AFP via Getty Images)
2 killed, 38 injured as Russia launchesmissile, drone attacksstriking Ukrainian cities far from front line. Russia continued its attacks on western Ukrainian cities overnight on July 12, striking communities far from the front line with drone swarms and missile attacks for the third straight night.
Germany-fundedlong-range weaponsto arrive in Ukraine by late July, general says. German Major General Christian Freuding confirmed that the weapons systems’ initial deliveries are expected by the end of July. The arms will be supplied in a “high triple-digit quantity,” he said.
Trump considering sendingnew funds to Ukrainefor first time since taking office, CBS News reports. The funds could come from the $3.85 billion remaining in Presidential Drawdown Authority from the Biden administration or from frozen Russian assets, current and former U.S. officials said.
Zelensky signals majorcabinet reshuffle, calls for defense reforms. Zelensky said Ukraine “requires more positive momentum in relations with the United States, alongside new steps in managing the nation’s defense sector.”
‘Impeccable results’ — NewSkynexvideo shows Ukrainian forces destroying Russian drones with German gun. Filmed in an undisclosed location at an unspecified time, the video published on July 12 shows Ukrainian soldiers shooting down multiple Russian targets with a German-made Skynex air defense system.
‘Cut off the head’ — Ukrainian intelligence accuses‘Putin’s favorite’ brigadeof another war crime. “Cut off the head, impale it on a pike, throw it the f**k away,” says the voice attributed by HUR to a company commander from Russia’s infamous 155th Marine Brigade. The intelligence agency said the order, intercepted on July 10, concerned a Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW).
Ukraine destroysRussian drone unitafter Kherson infant killed, child ‘should never have been a target,’ governor says. “Dmytro should never have been a target. I thank our soldiers for their just retribution. No occupier who brought death and destruction to our land will escape punishment,” Kherson Oblast Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Ukrainian doctors transplantorgansof deceased girl amid Russian strikes, saving 3 children. “This is a story about humanity, the incredible power of a parent’s decision, and the chance for life even in the most difficult times,” the hospital said in a statement.
Read our exclusives
Analysis: Russia is stepping up attacks. Allies are stepping back. What happens to Ukraine next?
Short of a massive injection of military aid, or crushing sanctions on Moscow, there’s little that Trump could announce that could help Ukraine bring Russia’s full-scale invasion to a swift end on terms favorable to Kyiv.
Photo: Drew Angerer, Saul Loeb, Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Image
Learn more Ukraine’s top anti-corruption activist faces charges that his team calls political vendetta
Vitaliy Shabunin, the chair of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board and member of the Armed Forces, was charged with evading military service and fraud — an accusation his team rejects.
Photo: Evgen Kotenko/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Learn more Ukrainians grapple with how to memorialize a war still being fought
While the improvised memorial reflects a public need to honor those killed in the war, designing a permanent monument for a conflict with no clear end presents a unique challenge for urban planners and designers.
At least13 killed, 46 injuredin Russian attacks across Ukraine over past day. Russia launched 623 aerial weapons overnight, including 339 Shahed-type drones, various decoy UAVs, and 26 Kh-101 cruise missiles, the Air Force said.
Hungarian foreign fighterkilled in Ukrainefighting against Russia, media reports. Benjamin Aser, originally from Hungary, was previously a contracted soldier in the Hungarian Defense Forces.
General Staff: Russiahas lost1,032,690 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022. The number includes 1,070 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day.
International response
Slovakia seeks EU guarantees onRussian gas phase-outahead of sanctions deal, Reuters report. While Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said the sanctions package itself is not objectionable, his government has blocked the proposal over concerns about a separate EU plan to fully phase out Russian gas imports by 2028.
Polish president-elect urges Ukraine to allowfull exhumationsof Volyn massacre victims, despite resumed work. Speaking at a ceremony in Chelm marking the 82nd anniversary of the 1943-44 Volyn massacres, Polish President-elect Karol Nawrocki said the victims “do not cry out for revenge, but for a cross, a grave, and memory,” and urged Ukraine to authorize further work across multiple sites.
Former Wagner fighter seeksasylum in Finlandafter fleeing across Russian border, media reports. The man, identified only as Yevgeny, reportedly served in a Wagner assault unit and fought in eastern Ukraine, including in Bakhmut and around Selydove.
French army chief says Russia sees France as‘main enemy in Europe’due to Ukraine support. The head of the French army, General Thierry Burkhard, attributed Russia’s view of Paris as a primary adversary largely to France’s unwavering support for Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Russia blamesWestern sanctionsfor collapse of UN food deal. A day earlier, the U.N. announced that the three-year agreement would end on July 22. The deal “will not be renewed” because of disagreements, a source close to the discussions told the AFP.
Russia’s Lavrov cautions West onNorth Korea security pact. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the U.S., South Korea, and Japan of military buildups around North Korea. “We warn against exploiting these ties to build alliances directed against anyone, including North Korea and, of course, Russia.”
In other news
Putin backs ‘zero enrichment’ in newIran nuclear deal,sources tell Axios. Russia’s position, conveyed to both U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian officials, marks a notable shift given Russia’s historical public advocacy for Iran’s right to enrich.
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Russia's position, conveyed to both U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian officials, marks a notable shift given Russia's historical public advocacy for Iran's right to enrich.
I got firstnamelastname@gmail.com when gmail was still 'invite only'.
The one drawback to that is there is a General in the U.S. Army with my exact name who doesn't understand how email works and apparently gives out my email address as his. I wish I knew what his actual email address was so I could let people know what it is. I bet he's missing out on a lot of VA functions and barber appointments because he couldn't be assed to remember his actual email address.
Zwei Jahre. 24 Monate. 730 Tage. So lange gibt es diesen Blog – und das nur, weil ich eigentlich nur für mich die Mediatheken durchforste, um Filme zu finden, die etwas riskieren. Filme, die weh tun, irritieren, begeistern, wütend machen. Filme, die nicht glatt gebügelt wurden, Filme für meinen ganz privaten Eskapismus. Ich schreibe darüber, weil sie mich beschäftigen. Weil ich etwas sehe, das nicht untergehen sollte im Strom der Flachware. Und weil ich glaube, dass Filmkritik viel mehr sein kann als Konsumberatung.
Zwei Jahre. 24 Monate. 730 Tage. So lange gibt es diesen Blog - und das nur, weil ich eigentlich nur für mich die Mediatheken durchforste, um Filme zu finden, die etwas riskieren. Filme, die weh tun, irritieren, begeistern, wütend machen.
L’altro giorno mi è venuta l’idea pazza che più pazza non si può etc etc… solito andazzo. Ma, per quanto l’andazzo sia sempre lo stesso del cazzo, il risultato delle mie macchinazioni è anche stavolta originale, e la primissima versione utilizzabile di esso è già in produzione da ieri sera. Occhi aperti sul nuovissimo gnammifico […]
Pignio pignatico si rende superpignastico per pignare cose e cosine
L’altro giorno mi è venuta l’idea pazza che più pazza non si può etc etc… solito andazzo. Ma, per quanto l’andazzo sia sempre lo stesso del cazzo, il risultato delle mie macchinazioni è anche stavolta originale, e la primissima versione utilizzabile di esso è già in produzione da ieri sera. Occhi aperti sul nuovissimo gnammifico pezzo di software che è Pignio.octt.eu.org!!! (Che per poco non rischiava di chiamarsi Octterest…) 💣💫💥 Questo coso spunta fuori dal fatto che, negli ultimi tempi, stava uscendo sempre più la necessità per me di avere un merdino per salvare ed organizzare elementi come link singoli o file multimediali, anche e soprattutto al volo, e potenzialmente renderli accessibili al pubblico… non so: memini, reference, cose da stampare, forse roba PDF file, tutto sotto il mio controllo a prova di sparizione. Ovviamente, una cartella con varie sottocartelle (magari sincronizzata su una repo Git pubblica), che in altri casi sarebbe l’opzione più ovvia, nel complesso qui non va bene, perché l’agilità va a farsi benedire… ma, io sono pur sempre una ragazza magica, dunque non devo accontentarmi delle soluzioni esistenti!!! 😍
In effetti, di software specializzati per salvare cose ce ne sono a bizzeffe… ne hosto io stessa da anni uno per link e articoli dal web, Shiori… però, non so, manca in tutti quella cosa in più per questo caso d’uso… Tra cui, il fatto che è bello facile a salvare elementi singoli dentro tutti quei robi, ma se io ipoteticamente (…e praticamente) avessi cartelle già piene di roba sul PC, che stracavolo dovrei fare? Quindi, beh, semplicemente ho progettato Pignio per operare direttamente sul file system, pescando e salvando sia file che metadati da e su file nella cartella del server, e ho fuso insieme quei due universi che mai devono toccarsi, rispettivamente della banalità informatica e dell’alta informatica… in altre parole, è flat-file, e sono negativamente stupita del fatto che non esista alcun altro software lato server per questo scopo qui ma con questa caratteristica. 🤥
Ora è davvero nelle fasi iniziali, e funziona bene… bisognerà vedere poi quanto regge, soprattutto con decine o centinaia di migliaia di file multimediali da trovare sul disco, con altrettanti file INI messi affianco da cui vengono letti i metadati (e quanto sarà l’overhead sul disco avendo tutti questi file da poche centinaia di byte ciascuno), ma la struttura del file system (per gli elementi creati dalla app stessa, identificati da un ID Snowflake, non i file tirati da fuori) penso di averla architettata bene. Sarà davvero la prova definitiva per l’architettura flat-file, se davvero finisco per riempire il sistema con questo passo… ma, in compenso, una repo Git sarà perfetta per fare il backup di tali questi miei preziosi dati (cosiddetto “mio tessoro“), non avendo blob di database. 🤤
Lo stile dell’interfaccia, e a breve anche il sistema di raggruppamento di elementi in collezioni, vabbé, l’ho copiato spudoratamente da Pinterest, e mi sembra ben ovvio… ma, differenza di Pinterest, Pignio ha vantaggi molto tosti… in primis è mio, quindi posso sistemarlo per non avere tutti i bug di merda (Pinterest ne ha infiniti!), poi è self-hostabile, quindi i dati sono già sempre fisicamente in mano a me; e, in più, funziona senza JavaScript, e quindi anche su browser vecchi (pur se con un layout mezzo rotto su quelli, per via del framework che ho usato, UIKit)… figurarsi se io trascuravo proprio una cosa del genere. 😤
Il lavoro da fare è ancora tantino però (e te pareva), perché, a parte le collezioni, ci sono cose solo da sistemare. Cose piccole, come l’importazione automatica di elementi da feed RSS esterni (…ed implementare i feed della roba dalla app stessa)… ma poi anche cose grosse ma assolutamente necessarie, come avere un OCR automatico sulle immagini, o più in generale il riconoscimento dei contenuti per fare tagging automatico, così da ottimizzare la ricerca e potenzialmente avere un algoritmo di suggerimento utile in un’istanza con più utenti. A proposito… ancora non ho nemmeno finito di implementare i permessi per gli utenti, quindi non posso invitare ancora nessuno a provare la mia istanza… però, ho reso pubblico il codice già da ieri (nonostante inizialmente pensavo di aspettare un po’, perché potrei cambiare alcune cose della struttura dati… ma francamente non freca): gitlab.com/octospacc/Pignio. GODETE!!! 😈😳
All analyzed dating apps collect your location, name, phone number, photos or videos, user and device IDs, purchase history, and sensitive information such as racial or ethnic data, sexual orientation, pregnancy or childbirth information, disability status, religious or philosophical beliefs, political opinions, genetic information, and biometric data. The most data-hungry dating app is Grindr, which collects 24 data types, followed by Bumble (22), Plenty of Fish (18), Tinder (16), Hinge (15), and Headero (9).
Dating apps not only collect extensive personal and sensitive information but may also combine this data with information from third parties to enable targeted advertising. Additionally, data collected from your app about you or your device can be shared with data brokers, further increasing your exposure and the risk of your information being used in unexpected ways. This practice is known as ‘tracking’. While all analyzed dating apps (except Headero) collect data for tracking purposes, Bumble is the leader, collecting four data points in total: email address, location, device ID, and advertising data.
We conducted a survey in the US, asking people about their use of various phone apps, including Bumble. Only 6% of respondents said they currently have Bumble installed on their phone, while 16% reported using it in the past but no longer do. Among those who have tried the app, usage is most popular among the 25–34 age group (32%), followed by 35–44 (28%), 18–24 (21%), and those aged 45+ (19%). Additionally, 60% of current or past Bumble users are male, and 40% are female. The majority of Bumble users, 68%, reside in big cities — while 20% live in small towns and 11% in rural areas. This suggests that while Bumble is aggressive in data collection and tracking, its actual reach remains relatively focused on younger, urban, and male demographics.
Besides potentially exposing your personal data when using dating apps, there is also a risk of interacting with fake profiles. It is estimated that around 10% of profiles are fake. To put this in perspective, Tinder has about 75 million monthly active users, which amounts to 7.5 million fake profiles. This means there is a very high probability of encountering a fake profile at some point when using dating apps. These profiles are often created with the intent to deceive, scam, or manipulate others, which could lead to financial loss or emotional harm.
Despite being the most data-hungry dating app and its past controversy over allowing users to filter matches by ethnicity⁵, Grindr is the highest-rated app in the Apple App Store, with a rating of 4.5 out of 5. Other analyzed dating apps are rated between 3.7 and 4.4. Grindr collects more data types than its competitors, including users’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, precise locations, sensitive information, email and text messages, search histories, and 17 additional data types. Nonetheless, Grindr’s high user rating shows that many still value the app’s experience over its data collection practices.
Headero, the least popular app among those analyzed, recently had a data leak that exposed 352,081 user records, 3,032,001 chat records, and 1,096,904 chat room records. That seems like a lot, considering it has only 100K downloads in the Play Store. While Headero collects just nine data types, it still experienced a large-scale data breach, showing that users should be careful not to share too much information with any dating app and be mindful of conversations in the app, as they may not be as private as you would expect.
All analyzed popular dating apps collect your location, name, phone number, photos or videos, user and device IDs, purchase history, and other sensitive information.
primo [strong]messaggio[/strong] :blush:
[img=https://cdn.bsky.app/img/banner/plain/did:plc:xgiwtxbtt6xc7low5vdz7dq4/bafkreihowoxwn5kuczf2lkerkgv55lblose3so6kwij7wjtwwiqr2v4ow4@jpeg]I ranger espongono la bandiera americana al contrario, simbolo di emergen
Per mostrare un esempio del dibattito sul deterioramento dell'insegnamento scientifico, diffuso in termini analoghi in tutto il mondo occidentale, riportiamo la storiella del "problema delle patate", che, nata in Francia, è stata riproposta recentemente in Spagna. [Nota. Il "problema delle patate", ripreso da una rivista spagnola, è stato riproposto in traduzione italiana da Ana Millàn Gasca nel numero marzo-giugno 1996 di "Lettera matematica". Ho abbreviato leggermente il testo. Fine nota.] Si tratta della descrizione delle successive modifiche di un semplice problema di aritmetica.
1960.
Un contadino vende un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas. Le sue spese di produzione sono i 4/5 del prezzo di vendita. Qual è il suo guadagno?
1970 (insegnamento "tradizionale").
Un contadino vende un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas. Le sue spese di produzione sono i 4/5 del prezzo di vendita, e cioè 800 pesetas. Qual è il suo guadagno?
1970 (insegnamento "moderno").
Un contadino scambia un insieme P di patate con un insieme M di monete. La cardinalità dell'insieme M è uguale a 1000 e ogni elemento di M vale una peseta. Disegna 1000 grossi punti che rappresentino gli elementi dell'insieme M. L'insieme S delle spese di produzione è un sottoinsieme di M ed è formato da 200 grossi punti in meno di quello dell'insieme M. Rappresenta l'insieme S e rispondi alla domanda seguente: qual è la cardinalità dell'insieme G che rappresenta il guadagno? Disegna G in colore rosso.
1980 (insegnamento "rinnovato").
Un contadino vende un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas. Le sue spese di produzione sono 800 pesetas e il suo guadagno è di 200 pesetas. Sottolinea la parola "patata" e discutine con il tuo compagno.
1990 (insegnamento "riformato").
Supponendo che degli agricoltori vogliano vendere un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas, fai un sondaggio per determinare il volume della domanda potenziale di patate nel nostro paese. Completa questa ricerca analizzando gli elementi del problema, mettendo in rapporto gli elementi fra loro e cercando il principio del rapporto fra questi elementi. Per finire, fai una tabella a doppio ingresso, indicando in orizzontale, in alto, i nomi degli elementi citati, e in verticale, in basso, diversi modi di cucinare le patate.
Lucio Russo, Segmenti e bastoncini - Dove sta andando la scuola? - Milano 1998
Per mostrare un esempio del dibattito sul deterioramento dell'insegnamento scientifico, diffuso in termini analoghi in tutto il mondo occidentale, riportiamo la storiella del "problema delle patate", che, nata in Francia, è stata riproposta recentemente in Spagna. [Nota. Il "problema delle patate", ripreso da una rivista spagnola, è stato riproposto in traduzione italiana da Ana Millàn Gasca nel numero marzo-giugno 1996 di "Lettera matematica". Ho abbreviato leggermente il testo. Fine nota.] Si tratta della descrizione delle successive modifiche di un semplice problema di aritmetica.
1960.
Un contadino vende un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas. Le sue spese di produzione sono i 4/5 del prezzo di vendita. Qual è il suo guadagno?
1970 (insegnamento "tradizionale").
Un contadino vende un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas. Le sue spese di produzione sono i 4/5 del prezzo di vendita, e cioè 800 pesetas. Qual è il suo guadagno?
1970 (insegnamento "moderno").
Un contadino scambia un insieme P di patate con un insieme M di monete. La cardinalità dell'insieme M è uguale a 1000 e ogni elemento di M vale una peseta. Disegna 1000 grossi punti che rappresentino gli elementi dell'insieme M. L'insieme S delle spese di produzione è un sottoinsieme di M ed è formato da 200 grossi punti in meno di quello dell'insieme M. Rappresenta l'insieme S e rispondi alla domanda seguente: qual è la cardinalità dell'insieme G che rappresenta il guadagno? Disegna G in colore rosso.
1980 (insegnamento "rinnovato").
Un contadino vende un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas. Le sue spese di produzione sono 800 pesetas e il suo guadagno è di 200 pesetas. Sottolinea la parola "patata" e discutine con il tuo compagno.
1990 (insegnamento "riformato").
Supponendo che degli agricoltori vogliano vendere un sacco di patate per 1000 pesetas, fai un sondaggio per determinare il volume della domanda potenziale di patate nel nostro paese. Completa questa ricerca analizzando gli elementi del problema, mettendo in rapporto gli elementi fra loro e cercando il principio del rapporto fra questi elementi. Per finire, fai una tabella a doppio ingresso, indicando in orizzontale, in alto, i nomi degli elementi citati, e in verticale, in basso, diversi modi di cucinare le patate.
Lucio Russo, Segmenti e bastoncini - Dove sta andando la scuola? - Milano 1998
The most data-hungry car app is Mercedes-Benz, which collects 17 different data types, followed by BMW (14), Volkswagen (13), Toyota (12), Hyundai (12), Honda (11), and Ford (10). These seven apps share a common pattern in their data collection practices: they all collect users’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, user IDs, device IDs, product interaction data, and diagnostic data. Additionally, all except Ford also collect location data. This suggests that many leading automakers are building comprehensive user profiles through their apps, likely to enable and enhance a wide range of connected features. > - However, the collection of location data and personal identifiers raises important privacy concerns, particularly if users are not fully aware of how their information is being used and shared or the potential risks involved.
In contrast, Audi’s app stands out as the least data-hungry, as it does not collect any user data. Tesla and Nissan also collect relatively little information. Tesla gathers two diagnostic data types and one related to product interaction, while Nissan collects the same data types as Tesla, with the addition of the device ID. This suggests that these manufacturers may be adopting a more privacy-conscious approach, either by limiting the functionality of their apps or by intentionally designing them to operate with minimal data collection.
BMW is the only analyzed app that collects audio data and a list of contacts from the user’s phone, address book, or social graph. Meanwhile, the Volkswagen app is the only one that collects payment information, such as form of payment, payment card number, or bank account number.
Major data leaks have occurred in the automotive industry in the past, and the more information companies collect, the greater the potential risk if that data is compromised. For example, Toyota experienced a significant data breach in 2024, exposing 240 GB of sensitive customer information, including names, email addresses, physical addresses, and vehicle data. Another data leak affecting 800,000 electric vehicles happened in 2025 to the German company Volkswagen Group. > - The data was stored in Amazon Cloud and included information on the cars’ location, battery levels, and engine activation and deactivation. The group that exposed the leak confirmed that the amassed data on the vehicles was easily accessible and could be matched to car owners’ personal data.
In 2024, the global sales of the analyzed car brands totaled 38.1 million vehicles. Toyota led with 10.8 million units sold, followed by Ford (4.5M), Hyundai (4.1M), Honda (3.7M), Volkswagen (3.3M), Nissan (3.3M), BMW (2.5M), Mercedes-Benz (2.4M), Tesla (1.8M), and Audi (1.7M). Considering that most official car apps began appearing in the mid-2010s, there are now potentially tens of millions of car owners who could use these apps.
Analysis uncovered what data 10 major car brand apps collect, with Mercedes-Benz’s app leading by gathering 17 different types of user and vehicle data.
lordnikon
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •IAmTheKernelError
in reply to lordnikon • • •clubb
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •HelloRoot
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •There is a setting, but I was equally annoyed that it is on by default.
Even more surprising - when I launched the new app miltiple times, it was still marked as new.
like this
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MentalEdge
in reply to HelloRoot • • •It's probably time based.
And this kind of thing isn't for the type of people who mess with settings. If this defaulted to off, then it would actually be useless.
like this
Endymion_Mallorn likes this.
HelloRoot
in reply to MentalEdge • • •Would just be the other way around with what posts you see online. Instead of OP you'd see "how can I find my newly installed apps" and the same "ahem" screenshot reply.
vandsjov
in reply to HelloRoot • • •Except that if people don't know the feature exists, they might not ask about it. If you see the feature exists and you don't want it, it is easier to figure out how to turn it off.
There are many feature that are turned on by default - this is just one of them.
HelloRoot
in reply to vandsjov • • •I see plenty of posts here, on the kde matrix, on the kde forums, on the bugtracker asking for non existing features.
I have no clue about the exact percentages, their motivations or feelings, so it's hard to conclude anything.
Personally, I more often ask for nonexistent features (and i feel no barriers there) than turning off something that is on by default - which is a good sign I guess?
vandsjov
in reply to HelloRoot • • •everett
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •KDE Devs, I Love You, But Please Remove This Feature
KDE DiscussEllie
in reply to everett • • •MyNameIsRichard
in reply to Ellie • • •raspberriesareyummy
in reply to MyNameIsRichard • • •How about choosing different default settings in an installation based on a central "expert" vs "newbie" setting?
Cris
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •People who find computers useful should be using computers.
This weird idea from some linux users that only people who see their computer as a hobby and have mastery over them should be allowed to use them, and that computers should be designed exclusively around the needs of computer-as-hobby users, is absolutely nuts.
Its a tool. It should be designed to be useful as possible to anyone who needs such a tool.
Sincerely,
Another linux user who cares about UI/UX and is tired of this kind of junk. It's a dumb argument, let's all stop making it please. Linux supports all your "technical user" wildest dreams, let the average people have their features and design considerations too.
raspberriesareyummy
in reply to Cris • • •Twenty years ago I might have agreed. Now, in hindsight, I can say that giving everyone access to computers & thereby the internet has brought out the worst in humanity, including mass-manipulation and authoritarian regimes thanks to people making even worse calls in elections than they used to.
0_o7
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •This is really getting that "old man screams at the cloud" vibe.
Are you okay?
blackbrook
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •The devil is in how things are made useful to users who just want to get things done. The problems comes with corporations making decisions about what users should need to understand, and what users want. There's been a lot of dumbing down and manipulation in that process, serving the needs of those corporations and advertisers and not the needs of the users.
Software can be made useful for those who don't want or need to undertand all the details, in a good, non-harmful way. The principle of separation of interface and implementation even demands it. But our society being what it is, that largely doesn't happen, so I'm inclined to agree with your pessimistic take.
MyNameIsRichard
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •Nailbar
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •I recently installer something, and KDE showed me where it ended up in the launcher, which I appreciated, and now I'm not supposed to use a computer. Really? Thanks.
At least me wife will be happy, but I'll need to find new work.
Ferk
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •What qualifies as "expert" setting can be very divisive.. for me, it would be removing this menu entirely. Or even switching from KDE to sway or similar ^^U
But if I was the kind of people that do use this kind of menus I would probably find that kind of indication useful. It helps finding the category the app you just installed belongs to. If you install an educational app/game that teaches programming by giving instructions to a turtle in order to draw a graphic/picture (I think I have seen something like that before): which category should it be at? games? education? development? graphics?
raspberriesareyummy
in reply to Ferk • • •everett
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •Welcome to a future of forever arguing which features are gimmicks.
This one, for example, is not.
vandsjov
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •Everything in the desktop is a gimmick... remove all visible things of the desktop and only show apps. Settings can be handled in a text configuration file. Or are some of these gimmicks actually useful, even for "experts"?
I have many times, installing a new app on a Windows Server, just gone in and seen the latest installed app and clicked on it. Sorry, that is my best example as that is where I most often use this feature - I don't install that many apps on my desktops.
Strit
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •like this
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MentalEdge
in reply to Strit • • •like this
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RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •Cas
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •I’m glad there’s a toggle, it seems like it would actually be useful here but I’d probably turn it off.
With that said, there’s a special place in hell for the multitudes of apps that have red notification dots all over the UI with no clear indicator as to what they’re about or how to clear them 😁
Deebster
in reply to Cas • • •mnmalst
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •I cannot wrap my head around the use case of this. Is the attention span of people really this degraded in 2025 that they need to be reminded what program they just installed?
I think the author has a valid point. This just clutters the UI and adds unnecessary mental load by directing your focus to the indicators every time you open the application menu.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against a "new" label in every context but in this specific case it just feels unnecessary.
*edit: If the use case is: Little Timmy installed a new program on grandmas PC and now she can see the new program better I guarantee you grandma will be super confused when the green dot disappears and from that time on can't find the program anymore.
I support a couple of KDE systems with users like Grandma and a dynamic UI like this is contra productive in my experience.
For grandma you put the app she is supposed to use in the taskbar as a starter and that's it. No "new" label needed.
dan
in reply to mnmalst • • •Ferk
in reply to mnmalst • • •It's more about which category a particular specific software belongs. If a kid installs an educational app/game that teaches programming by giving instructions to a turtle in order to draw a graphic/picture (I think I have seen something like that before). Which category should it be? games? education? development? graphics?
I personally don't use this kind of menus with categories, I prefer dmenu style launchers where you type to search what you need. But if I was the kind of people that do use these kind of menus I would probably find that kind of indication useful.
mnmalst
in reply to Ferk • • •deadcade
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •I was very annoyed when I got this, but remembered that it's KDE, and turning it off is 4 clicks. Proprietary software often doesn't allow you to turn this off (easily). Windows has this "feature", where is the setting?
I don't think it's a productive "feature", but considering it can be turned off so easily I don't consider it a complete showstopper.
raspberriesareyummy
in reply to deadcade • • •KDawful reminds me again why I ditched it for XFCE.
mriswith
in reply to deadcade • • •I assume youre talking about W11?
Because the "Show recently added apps" setting is third option in the start menu settings on W10.
deadcade
in reply to mriswith • • •mriswith
in reply to deadcade • • •Captain Aggravated
in reply to deadcade • • •atzanteol
in reply to Captain Aggravated • • •nightofmichelinstars
in reply to deadcade • • •Ferk
in reply to nightofmichelinstars • • •How does this give incentive for that?
My understanding is that this only happens in newly installed apps, not recently updates ones. They are only highlighted because the user installed them, not because the developer did anything.
It's a screenshot of the application launcher, the menu to launch apps already installed, not the software store.
nightofmichelinstars
in reply to Ferk • • •whaleross
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •For every change there is an angry Linux user. Even when it is easily disabled and never a problem again.
On the flip side - how often do you install new programs so this becomes an annoyance in the first place?
I install something new maybe once a month or less for desktop use. I have not even noticed this blip.
Somewhat more often in and for terminal use.
ikidd
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •floquant
in reply to ikidd • • •DonutsRMeh
in reply to floquant • • •Aristotelis
in reply to ikidd • • •NewNewAugustEast
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •I find this complaint very strange. It's a dot. It helps people find what they installed.
But if this person doesn't need it, how would they ever see it? Most power users I know never even look in the menu, so they would never know there is a dot in the first place.
DonutsRMeh
in reply to NewNewAugustEast • • •Grass
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •DonutsRMeh
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •limelight79
in reply to DonutsRMeh • • •When I install a new application, I generally run it immediately. Having the new indicator might be nice to help find it - they don't always drop into the menu where I expect.
I agree, I can't see why it upsets the author so much. "You've installed a new app, here it is." "YYYEEEAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!"
AnitaAmandaHuginskis
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •corsicanguppy
in reply to AnitaAmandaHuginskis • • •"Go edit the source" is starting to look like the new "let them eat cake".
How quickly you trivialize the work of the experienced kde devs that some pedestrian can wander in and mod a large project without fear.
Aristotelis
in reply to OsrsNeedsF2P • • •