There's a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline for the open source federated alternative to Tiktok and Vine, including a Web UI and a boatload of new features. Let's dive in, and see what's coming in the next release.
Loops, the open source Tiktok alternative for the Fediverse, is continuing to grow and evolve. Although the platform launched with a fairly limited featureset, development has ramped up to pull in some ambitious new features. Daniel Supernault has this to say:
With Loops, we saw an opportunity to bring short video to the fediverse in a way that feels familiar, fun, and safe — while building something new beyond Pixelfed: a community-first platform of its own.
Daniel Supernault, Pixelfed Development lead
There’s a lot of new features coming in to the video-sharing platform. Let’s break down some of the most significant ones:
Loops Comes to the Web
One of the most important updates of this development cycle concerns a new Web interface for the Loops platform. Soon, users will no longer be constrained to Android or iOS clients to make use of Loops and its social features. Demo courtesy of Daniel Supernault The new UI looks incredibly slick, and feels like an evolution of Pixelfed’s own design language. Bringing a Web interface to Loops feels like a smart idea, as it opens up the possibility for more people to use it. The new Web UI also ships with a Dark Mode, for those of you hoping to shield your eyes from a bright browser page. It’s clean, and really makes the video content pop.
Better User Controls
A big design focus for Loops (and presumably, Pixelfed) centers around giving users greater control over their online experience. This includes what they see on the timeline, who can interact with them, and whether posts can be interacted with in the first place. Taking further lessons from Pixelfed, Loops also brings in comprehensive tools for blocking bad actors, and keeping your timeline civil. A new user-wellness feature here is called Screen Time, which helps keep track of how often a person is logged into Loops and watching videos. While it’s something of a niche feature, it’s nice to know that there are ways to set daily time limits.
Self-Hosting
The backend code for Loops has been open to the wider community for a while, but the prospect of including a Web-facing interface solidifies the possibility that Loops will soon formally allow admins to host their own Loops instances. This boils down to a few critically important features for the network: admin controls, customization, and federation support.
A big focus of Loops development has involved encouraging admins to set up their own community instances. Loops takes a lot of the lessons learned from Pixelfed, and incorporates a lot of flexibility for admins to make their instances stand out, while providing necessary tools to keep communities safe. Custom Links and Pages in Loops Admins will be happy to see the addition of custom pages and navigation for instances. With the upcoming release, it will be even easier for admins to put need-to-know instance info front and center to their community. This could include sharing community messaging channels, donation links, methods for getting updates from the admin, or details pertaining to server status.
Federation Support
It might not seem obvious, but Loops technically already supports ActivityPub federation. It’s just that the flagship instance at loops.video only has the feature enabled for select accounts, for testing purposes. Nevertheless, federated following and interactions are possible, and seem to work. Dan’s account on Loops.Video does in fact federate. Here it is, as seen from Mastodon. The significance of Loops turning on federation capabilities cannot be understated. Short-form video is an extremely popular medium, and bringing it in to the Fediverse gives people a new way to talk to one another, and might just be the incentive needed to get more video creators on the network.
Loops Studio
One of the more exciting features coming in an update is Loops Studio, a creator’s dashboard designed for uploading and managing videos, viewing interactions, and keeping track of analytics and engagement. This could provide a solid incentive for content creators to commit to using Loops full-time, and allow them to better engage with their friends and followers across the network. Interestingly, the new composer for creating loops includes some unique capabilities that seem to be directly inspired from Tiktok: there are options to allow other users to stitch your video into theirs, allow users to perform a duet with you, and also disclose Not Safe for Work content. There’s even a way to tag whether something was created using generative AI.
Loops Sound Library
Details on this feature are scarce, but this NLNet-funded project is designed to allow Loops videos to incorporate music from Fediverse musicians that allow for remixing and resharing. The feature reportedly will allow users to select tracks from Funkwhale and possibly other federated music platforms for background music in their videos, while preserving attribution.
The idea of integrating with Funkwhale and other federated music servers is older than it sounds. Over the years, Dansup has experimented with various mockups and ideas on how to incorporate music capabilities into Pixelfed. It seems like some of that work may have eventually influenced this feature.
Comprehensive Data Export
Being an open and federated platform, Loops is aiming to include an export data for all of your videos, posts, and social connections. The goal here is to give users the ability to migrate to other Loops servers and retain their follower graph, much in the same way that Mastodon does. Hopefully, in the future, this might also give users the ability to pull in videos and activities from their old instances when moving.
In Conclusion
Loops is a massive, ambitious undertaking, and it’s exciting to see so much development effort finally bear fruit. While we still have to wait a little while longer for a release to ship and for the flagship instance to get updated, I’m extremely hopeful about the prospects of having a free and open Tiktok / Vine alternative for the Fediverse.
I spoke with the developer of Funkwhale to support audio from Funkwhale and other AP services. He still needs to do some work on his side before I can implement it, so I will be following this: htt...
A month after the end of the conflict between Iran and Israel, the damage caused by the Islamic republic remains unclear largely because of Israeli censorship.
Isn't a drawing tablet just a fancy touchpad that works with a pen? What excuse do they have not to work with tablets past a certain age when they all use the same USB signalling standard mice and laptop touchpads have used since USB came out? (We all know the real reason, but I'm curious about what they pretend is the reason?)
Basically yeah. It’s a bit more complicated because of touch sensitivity, but I think I’ll need to learn driver programming soon, because I can’t afford a new model (e: and there’s nothing wrong with this one). Then I’ll be able to say for sure.
e: Intuos 4. And to be fair, it would have died under windows like 10 years ago, apparently.
Connect my tablet is doing exactly that: It connects your Wacom (TM) tablet to your Mac and restores at least its critical functionality to be creative with Photoshop (TM) and other programmes in Sequoia, Sonoma, Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina…
e: have you updated past Ventura? I haven’t yet because I keep seeing posts where this tablet breaks at Ventura and later. If your 3 works in a more recent OSX, I’ll be able to breathe again, since my subscription services (Adobe, Sibelius) are complaining that I haven’t upgraded.
Yeah I’m currently on sequoia. Setting it up was pretty obnoxious from what I remember. I had to do it 3 times before my computer recognized it, but if you follow directions better than me (and if your specific tablet is supported), you should be good! If you have a friend on a newer version of Mac OS, see if you can test on their computer before upgrading your own since it might be very difficult to downgrade.
Apple don’t feel the need to give excuses in situations like this. They know you’re an edge case and your complaints will be so much piss in the ocean. Meanwhile else gets to talk about how great the new unreadable ui is. That skeleton at the bottom of the swimming pool meme could work here.
I don’t think that was a thing when I bought my Wacom, and this 12x8 tablet was the best you could get at the time for drawing and working with the Adobe suite in OSX, which was why I needed it.
I wish I could go back in time to when I could afford such things, but now I have to work with what I have. It’s still a very good tablet, it’s just getting outmoded for no good reason.
e: and I don’t mean something like an iPad, I mean a drawing tablet. This:
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Come pre installed. As much as it pains me, LTT guy is probably right to a degree as well. Shit needs to work without tinkering. Personally I don't mind some tinkering - enjoy it even. But the average Joanne does not.
There are already computers that come with Linux right out of the box. It’s needs more than that.
You need to be able to walk into a big box store, get a Linux computer right off the shelf, and take it home. That’s what’s needed here.
Once you get people to userstabdnits a different kind of computer they would take to it fine. iPad and chromebooks sell just fine and they don’t run windows or macOS. I refuse to believe Microsoft and Apple are the only ones who can sell a computer.
They exist yes. Go ask the average person on the street the name more than one of them. At best some might know system 76. But can they buy them at the local best buy, apple store, or micro center? Lots of places don't have a micro center. Micro center at least sells Linux and BSD media. I haven't been in 8 months. But for the last 30 years they haven't sold a pre installed system. Much less best buy or apple store.
by law in brazil every computer sold has to have alternatives to windows, which is usually linux. it DID drive some adoption, but past a certain point people are mostly choosing windows.
Being able to do everything a "normie" would do without the need to use a terminal.
And a way for companies to get flatpak as an alternative, i remember a friend of mine who tried to use 'buntu budgie for a while and he needed a software for cartographic stuff.
We got lucky the company of said software (and yes, it needed to be THAT specific software to avoid compat' issues, so no free alternatives were viable even if they were available) used to provide a .deb package, we got forced to change a lot of sys native binaries to make it work and ended up just breaking a lot of other stuff to do so. Flatpaks (fuck snaps) need to be the default option to be available across systems without caring about distros, so anyone can run it on "mandragora linux" if they want to
Some small but important taken-for-granted things functioning like screen and audio sharing/recording in wayland. Yes, I know sometimes with some apps/distros it works. But it needs to work all the time on all reasonably current hardware everywhere. Wayland is getting there, but we're still a ways off and X11 has its own issues. It feels like we're 80% of the way there for feature parity and stability vs Windows and MacOS, but this last 20% stretch is feeling like an eternity. The bugginess and lack of features stretches to multi-monitor support as well. Plus we've got a bunch of distros threatening off and on to remove 32bit libraries, which would really hamper software support that's already anemic to begin with... There's no one single blockbuster issue. It's just little everyday things that produce just enough friction to keep the unwashed masses away.
Multi-million dollar advertising budgets from apple and Microsoft. Coordinated campaigns to embed those systems in education institutions and workplaces.
I'd agree with the: come preinstalled. Most people buy a device and never change the operating system. So it needs to be the preinstalled operating system on the average computer or laptop, wherever people buy those.
(And mind that Linux completely dominates the market on servers. So technically, a lot of people use Linux in a way... Just not on desktop computers.)
Two things: 1. Obviously it needs to come pre-installed. This is a really tough hurdle to overcome and I'm not sure how it can be. 2. Security needs a lot of work if Linux is going to lose the small-target advantage.
Pre-installed distro needs to support one-click installation (like .app or .exe).
Pre-installed distro needs to have be easily searchable (for problems, and e.g. searching "chrome DISTRO_NAME" needs to pop up with a link to the one-click installer).
Pre-installed distro needs to run perfectly out-of-the-box, no fiddling with drivers, no needing to issue a random shell command for some random issue.
UI needs to be intuitive. Probably something like KDE. Could maybe do Elementary or GNOME with dash-to-dock or something.
Updates should be easy. Ideally apps can self-update or the apps will indicate if they need an update and have a button opening up an updater that can update all your apps/the OS.
Updates for minor programs need to be hidden/rolled into OS updates. Most people aren't gonna want to see that glibc updated.
Better management of stuff like VPNs (probably not important for the average user, but e.g. NetworkManager's GUI support is kinda shit).
If using GNOME, need to have app indicator stuff pre-installed (if I'm being honest, the fact it's not built-in is absurd).
Needs to come with good basic apps. Some of the default apps included with DEs are kinda shit. There is still no truly good mail client IMO (at least that doesn't look dated AF).
Probably more.
EDIT: Something like Lutris should probably be integrated into the OS. Installing non-Steam games is a minor hassle at the moment IMO.
Pre-installed distro needs to support one-click installation (like .app or .exe).
This defeats a lot of what makes Linux secure. The main reason you don't get malware is because you never run untrusted binaries from the internet and you install everything from trusted sources like your package manager. A non tech savvy person doing this will inevitably hit one of the super rare Linux malware in the wild. Clueless person downloads the wrong installer is the model malware entry case. I also don't see a benefit of just having an app store, you can even show proprietary software by default as long as they can be turned off (I suspect the main reason for one click installation is for downloading proprietary software).
Personally, basically no one I know uses the app stores on windows or macos much. These app stores are actually functional in that they have proprietary apps and allow purchases. There is basically 0 chance Linux will become popular if you can only install things through an app store (especially those that make it hard/impossible to buy proprietary apps). Additionally, desktop Linux is not particularly secure anyway. Flatpaks are helpful here, but most require manual tuning of their sandbox to actually be secure, which the average user is 100% not gonna do. On top of this, what do you do when an app is not available in your curated app store? Do you download it directly online? Do you trust some random repository you find online that can be filled with who knows what at a later point? Or do you just say "oh well sucks to be you I guess?" If you download it directly online, then it may not even have dependency information. If it doesn't embed dependency information, then it's basically useless to your average person. It also has the problem you mentioned of someone downloading the wrong executable. Likewise, the other two options are IMO just not viable.
IMO, the only way for a package manager/app store solution to work is: 1. The platform is built around it from day 1 2. The platform has a large number of developers submitting their packages to it (as opposed to the distro maintainers having to track down changes themselves) 3. The app store has payment methods 4. The app store has proprietary apps 5. The app store has a large number of reviewers that can check the apps submitted in a timely manner 6. Probably bundling dependencies with the apps. 7. The app store has a functional review system with users actually leaving reviews. 8. Going along with the reviews, going through the app store (as opposed to using the package manager directly) may need to be a requirement to encourage reviews, at least at first.
Basically, it needs to be an iOS/Android situation, with a similarly large company backing it. I should also note that it's possible to install malware on iOS/Android, just harder, and the scope is usually less severe because of sandboxing.
EDIT: Also, it's entirely possible to do one-click installs in a "safe" way, by requiring that developers get their apps signed by whoever makes the distro (like macos gatekeeper or whatever it's called).
EDIT 2: I should also note that just being "different" is enough for people not to use something. If something basic, like the way to install apps, is different enough, people may just decide they don't like it. My relatives would likely do this, for instance.
Zero reasonably priced options for support when things go wrong.
Breaking changes caused by updates that make that support necessary.
If my neighbor's Windows or Apple machine breaks they can call Microsoft or Apple, the PC manufacturer or a bunch of different support providers. Microsoft provides free support if one of their updates causes problems.
I can't find any Linux support aimed at home users, only very expensive enterprise support options.
It's amazing how much damage those scammers cause.
Last year I ran into a retired neighbor at Staples buying a new laptop because her existing machine had been hacked. She came back after leaving it running to find someone was logged in remotely. They drained $8k from her retirement account. Turned out 6 months earlier she got a call from "Microsoft" asking to connect to her machine because they "noticed it had a problem."
Have u ever talked to tech support of microsoft as usual user? With such quality ofsupport it would be better that it would none,in the end all their support coming please reboot computer.
Most of the people I know are computer illiterate. They know nothing about PC's and don't care to learn because they think of PCs as appliances. They want word processing, email, photos, and web, and don't give a damn what's going on under the hood. Microsoft support is generally pretty bad, but it's far better than none at all.
That lack of any support (except me) is the only reason I haven't moved friends and family to Linux.
Personally for elderely people I installed mint once and forgot it they using laptops from windows 7 era and they were getting dozens of ads malware so I was to reinstall os almost every half year now this problem gone entirely and yes I am aware very well too about what u are talking about such in my case where I am living nobody gonna ever call for tech support of Microsoft cause they don't know about that it exist and they will ask someone who they know for help about computer if something not work
Most of the comments here seem to be from the consumer perspective, but if you want broader adoption, you need to consider the corporate market too. Most corporate software these days is web-based, so the problem is less with the software and more with the people responsible for it.
The biggest hurdle is friction with the internal IT team. They like Windows because that's all they ever learnt and they're not interested in maintaining a diverse set of company laptops. They won't entertain Linux in a corporate environment unless it's mandated by management, and even if the bosses approve it, IT will want a way to lock you out of your laptop, force updates, do a remote wipe, etc.
There are (proprietary) tools to do some of this, but they generally suck and often clash with your package manager. Microsoft is just way ahead of Linux in the "bloatware that tours your hands" department.
This is it. Exactly it. Internal IT management wants a good, centrally managed system to lock down and control corporate devices. Heck, corporations often even contract this task (and help desk) to management companies.
Let's assume the tools and the experts are there to perform these remote management shenanigans, after this it only comes to "money talks". Don't have to replace a 2-4yo laptop with a new one if the old one still performs fine for another 2-4 years. So then you have to weigh the cost of expertise against slower amortization.
My company disabled VPN access for anything but macOS and Win11. Because even though the VPN we use is mandated to be used with a closed source app, and the app has a Linux version, the IT dudes couldn't exit vim when asked to manually edit /etc/environment
The vast majority of business apps and network admin apps are written for windows so you either can't run them on unix or they would require an additional layer of complexity that can't be justified "just to be on unix".
For dev and IT work I use a mix of windows and RHEL. Business apps in windows and terminal sessions on our linux servers. My db work is almost 100% linux.
I think part of the problem is that while Linux software is constantly getting more user friendly, the average user is getting less knowledgeable about computers at just as fast of a rate. People even understanding the concept of files and folders doesn't seem to be a given anymore.
Everything mainstream is a black box corporate ecosystem these days. Kids learn how to use specific programs and mobile apps, but don't learn anything about the OS or machine itself because everything is isolated and "just works".
It's a really weird spot to be in. We're used to the older generations being bad with tech, but now it's also the younger ones too.
Part of the problem there is that we don’t teach people how to actually use computers, we teach how to use specific programs instead usually.
A few months back I saw a post somewhere about how “kids these days don’t know how to read an analog clock”. And it’s the exact same thing, you have to teach people how to use them. You don’t just innately know how to use these things we created.
I grew up in the 2000s and got taught how to read an analog clock in like the first year of school.
I remember me teacher made a clock face on paper with the two arms pinned on. I brought up my parents had a clock with 'lines instead of numbers' and she taught everyone roman numerals on the spot.
A lot of teachers are really underpaid and have a lot of students to worry about. And that’s on top of parents wanting to meddle in their kids education and schools trying to cram more into the same amount of time. So it’s not always possible for teachers to be able to teach everything they need to, let alone other useful things to know.
And well what I said in my original comment about people just expecting others to know things without bothering to teach them. Years ago I was expected to know how to sign my name in cursive when the school district that I was in cut cursive when I was in kindergarten. Thankfully I had a teacher who actually taught me how to later on but otherwise I wouldn’t have known.
You use an interesting example- personally, I feel like while files and folders have their place, I prefer they be part of the background and not presented to the user. Take photos, for example. If I'm looking for pictures of my dog, I don't want to go into the 2022 folder, then the August folder, then look through all those files, back out into 2022 then go into the September folder, etc. I just want to type 'dog'. Or pick from a dropdown list of common tags, or anything other than digging through files and folders.
Yeah, I grew up in the 90s where schools and offices had physical filing cabinets full of folders and files. And in the late 90s when learning computers at school those same concepts were reinforced in the computer file system. So files and folders within the context of using a computer is ingrained and seems obvious to me.
But kids these days are born with iPads in their hand, they use Chromebooks in primary school, and all their files are automatically saved to the cloud and immediately available on all their devices. How would they ever learn the concepts of filesystems? It's not taught at school. It's not relevant to anything they do.
It used to make me so frustrated (it's a simple concept!) but now I get it. Maybe it's not as obvious a paradigm as we thought. Maybe there are better ways of organising files (eg, tagging, keywords, filtering) that are more human. Or using namespacing (ns prefixes, curies). Or even using non-local universal identifiers (ipfs locators). It makes me wonder if we might eventually even move away from hierarchical-directory based filesystems at the system level too.
Precisely- it's a concept that is ingrained in people to the point where anyone who doesn't understand it is viewed as lacking. However, it's needless.
I don't need to understand IP addressing subnet routing to go to a website. Why should I need to understand a file and folder structure to find an old tax document?
I mean hierarchy is how we find any specific item in the real world though, so it seems like the best way to organize things on a computer. If I'm looking for a pair of scissors I know to go into my house, into my kitchen, into the drawer, and take the scissors. You can use tagging and things to search, but having that be the main way of accessing files will never be as reliable or repeatable as just looking where you know the file is.
This is an unfortunate truth. I occasionally teach a short course on basic computer networking with a short segment on Unix/Linux to students ranging from ages 18-25 and only about 1 or 2 out of every class of 20 even knows what an "operating system" is.
Ok, let's hereby declare that Debian + Gnome is the official Linux. Everyone who wants Linux to have more users must run Debian and Gnome. First, how do we convince everyone to not use their favorite distros?
my point is thatfor us techie users (i use arch btw) having choice is good. But for the average user it's a big negative actually.
The linux ecosystem needs to standardize on more things to also allow linux development to be worthwile for devs.
Choosing one distro is not enough, when it can decide to rip out and replace half of its subsystems at will. The most stable api on linux for games is win32 ffs! I have linux native builds of games that simply don't run on linux anymore.
I think the problem here is the motivation. The techies are scratching their itches because they can, making more tiling wms and such, but few are motivated to work on things they aren't personally interested in, such as user-friendliness etc. So it's either up to us techies to work on systems we don't use ourselves, or it won't happen.
Normies can use it easier than gamers. Linux on the right hardware is stable as fuck and Linux has always been good at running a web browser, which is like 99% of what normies do on computers these days.
FreecCAD just released it's first full version and it's a pain to use. Back in 2018 somebody said FOSS CAD software was at least ten years behind the big windows commercial software. I think now it's about fifteen behind.
The software looks nice, but it seems there's no 3D capable hobby-tier. 3D modelling starts at Pro-tier, which is >$700 per year. That's a low price for commercial software, but not a good option for hobbyists
Either: 1. A smarter and wiser population able to discern and care enough that they're being cucked by Microsoft, overcoming the inertia to install Linux. 2. Linux invents a game/feature that is so goddamn appealing that everyone wants in on the action. 2. Preinstallation.
I think it is its image of lack of stability and features; I know there are out there stable distros and almost every well known program has a Linux version, but the image that Linux has had through the years is not that. If Linux overcomes this and gets a better reputation, it would be a great weight lifted for the road ahead of the OS. I hope Proton breaks through the mainstream public and Linux gets more exposed and known out there
I've been dragging my feet on making the switch. Some of it is i just doing feel like doing another OS install and desktop setup. Some of it is distro paralysis. There's a lot and I dont really know what to choose.
I downloaded Mint Cinnamon a while back and was too lazy to install it. Is this still a good choice for gaming and school work? I already use libreoffice.
I'm comfortable enough with configuring and settings, but by no means a superuser.
Mint is a pretty solid choice for like 95% of people. If you're already using LibreOffice then you're halfway there, and I've been able to run all the games I want through Steam or Lutris (the Flatpak versions are better for compatibility IME). A lot of people use Bottles for games as well, but I've never been able to get it to work properly. I think I started using Linux full-time at about the level you seem to be at, and I didn't run into any major issues.
There's quite a lot needed from peripheral manufacturers, regarding drivers and utilities. You still can't, for example, just buy any new printer or scanner - you have to check compatibility first.
For the vast majority of users Linux is just a worse deal. Only thing that really comes to mind that Linux does that users care about is that it will support that hardware that Windows 11 will leave behind, and even those users will happily just run Windows 10 without updates and if that bites them in the ass then maybe they’ll upgrade or just ask their IT friend to use a bypass to make Windows 11 at least work on their old hardware.
Otherwise, of the things users actually care about, Linux has worse app support to the point that even pro-Linux users would rather dual-boot that lose access to their games and worse hardware support. Linux also has a problem of not being well understood by a lot of tech folk so if you bring somebody onboard you better be ready to be their only point of support.
ChromeOS is probably the best example against this since it is basically just a browser, the laptops it sells on are substantially better value than their budget counterparts and realistically a lot of the people buying them are parents for their kids so the user’s preference is substantially pushed aside in favour of cost. The SteamDeck is another good counter-example since it essentially refuses to compete with the PC gaming market by calling itself a handheld.
Linux is stuck in the crappy position of needing more users to get more software and hardware support but users need better software and hardware support for Linux to make sense compared to Windows. It’s getting better and Valve’s efforts have steadily brought the Linux gaming percentage up but it’s still the enthusiast OS.
By all means encourage it’s usage though. Linux is a far more open and privacy-respecting option and the more tech folk and basic-usage users that adopt it the better!
I think the hardware compatibility issues may be overstated. It seems (to me) that besides apple silicon, the support for most consumer hardware is pretty robust. this seems especially true of the kinds of hardware casuals use. Im not a tester, but havent seen a dell, hp, or Lenovo with a hardware issue in ages.
For the vast majority of users Linux is just a worse deal.
The vast majority of users only need an office suite, an internet browser, and maybe the ability to play games. Linux does these just fine, with less bullshit than Windows to boot.
The real problem is inertia. People tend to go with what they're familiar with, and most of them are familiar with Windows. And those that might be willing to try a new OS get turned away from Linux due to outdated stigmas about it being harder to use than Windows. While that stigma may still be true for enthusiast distros like Arch, new users are generally steered away from them
I think the big thing that everyone is missing here is that schools and workplaces need to push it into people's lives. For that to happen Linux (or at least one of its distros backed by a hardware distributor) needs to develop killer features for those markets and successfully sell to them in large enough numbers that the average computer user - who does not care what their OS is because they only use it for email and work - will make sure that their at-home setup is compatible with their work machine.
That moment is when market forces will take over and drive real growth in desktop Linux, rather than the tiny little bumps we've seen the past few years thanks to the Steam Deck coming out and MS pissing its users off.
This is how Apple built its marketshare against the Microsoft domination of the 90s. For a long time it was the go-to "school computer", and then those kids grew up and now a huge piece of the tech industry and culture is more or less Apple only. It's unclear if this process can be repeated, since Apple's marketshare was carved out during a time of massive growth in the industry that is unlikely to repeat, but I wouldn't say it's impossible if the right conditions reveal themselves.
I will say that it is highly unlikely that the people here would like the change if it happens - imagine Google slinging fully locked down "linux" machines en masse and everybody else needing to download their kernel fork that's loaded with spyware ("for security reasons") in order to connect to Google Teams for work. Maybe I'm being pessimistic but I just don't see mass adoption of a new OS happening without some kind of fuckery like this that renders the version of Linux that gets mass adopted unrecognizable from the version we're all using now.
The other option is state intervention, as with NeoKylin in China, although the Chinese government seems to be limiting themselves to just government computers with that distro.
While I think that could be really helpful it is worth pointing out that schools in the US have been shoving Chromebooks into the hands of kids for over a decade and the market share sits at about 4%. Now Google's planning to merge Chrome OS into Android.
Yeah I was thinking about that, which is why I pointed out that Apple's plan only worked because of the massive growth in personal computing. Google was able to create marketshare for Android during the massive growth in smartphones, but those conditions haven't existed for anyone for a while.
Generally how these things go is that after the growth phase comes consolidation and monopoly - we're far more likely to see Apple and MS merge into one corporation than we are to see a third option emerge as a serious competitor.
At work us devs and IT folks use both windows and RHEL Linux. I'd say I use windows for business apps and Linux for everything development related except for terminal apps and visual studio. My database work is pretty much 100% linux. Everyone else in the company is likely using windows.
This question comes up every other week. I reject the premise that "more users" is a commonly held objective.
For most linux / OSS projects the objective is to be the best the project can be. Having an active community is usually part of that but "more users" is a low priority.
I remember when "the internet" was a bunch of older nerds and kids. My parents, aunts, uncles, etc didn't even know how to go online. It was great! More users made it much worse. Please don't become the mainstream OS.
A very large number of people believe Linux is difficult to get into. There are a number of publisher that somehow think Linux users are all hackers that will cheat in their online games. There are a not-so-insignificant number of Linux users who like Linux to remain niche, and small, and exclusive, and difficult to get into, and scoff at the idea of a "general user".
This most difficult one is probably the fact that 99% of people do not install their operating system.
The device they purchase needs to have a clean and elegant out of box experience like the Mac. Regular folk who are willing to stray from windows don't consider any computer that doesn't come off the shelf with sane defaults. Everything else is arcane to them.
We are not those people. I have to remind myself that not everyone likes to build their own systems.
I do have a friend who wants to buy a framework laptop with Fedora on it because that's what they use in the Laboratory he works in but he doesn't want to assemble it himself he just wants it to come like that.
I think the gap between what the average Linux user thinks is ease of use and what the average non Linux user thinks is ease of use is probably much larger and many devs seem to understand.
I think it would be beneficial to have a completely idiot proof installer that doesn't ask you about partitions or formatting or basically anything just point it towards a drive and it will set up a default installation.
More GUI based means of doing basic stuff. A casual who wants to access some photos from his laptop does not want to figure out how to manually configure samba shares by editing config files in their terminal based text editor.
I think codecs are a much bigger pain in the ass than is ideal. As I understand that there are legal reasons for this but the first time some casual goes to play a video and gets an error message their first thought may not be "let me search Google and figure out what this error message means" their first thought maybe "Linux sucks and can't play videos".
The permission structure that makes Linux so secure makes it a little annoying for casuals. For example, you actively and intentionally go to the default software store, navigate to the updates tab, update a package you've already installed and clearly want, and do so from the official OS repository... This requires that you enter your password to protect you from what exactly? It's not a big deal it takes one second to type my password, but how would you explain this to a casual in a way that makes sense? Your OS is protecting you from potentially rogue acts of official patches to your default text editor.
I think the folder structures are pretty big challenge for converts. On Windows you can find most of the files associated with any given program in your program files folder. On Mac there's an applications folder. On Linux... it's somewhere, don't worry about it. That's not really a fixable one it just is what it is.
For example, you actively and intentionally go to the default software store, navigate to the updates tab, update a package you've already installed and clearly want, and do so from the official OS repository... This requires that you enter your password to protect you from what exactly?
I have never had this happen before across 3 distros, and I really doubt any casual user will have this experience either
I have a brother who is not into computers. But he has a shitty laptop (with only 3gb of ram) so windows stopped working on it (because Windows update). So I installed a Linux on it, and he is very happy with it.
He even managed to change the desktop by himself. Installing some stuff was not obvious (like making a scanner work), but I did it guiding him by phone and text.
Command line is in fact much easier in this case than any gui. In a gui, you must know it by heart to correctly guide the person. A command line you can fine tune it on your side, send it on discord, and he only has to copy/paste. That is much more powerful.
And the security is not less than downloading an executable on a dubious website.
It is true that specialist tend to overestimate the skill of unknowing people. But when it come to computer, people also forget that normal people always went for the help of specialist for their technical needs. Nothing changed.
There are a lot of things an average consumer don't wa't to deal with, but that's true for windows as much as Linux. The question is not what they want to do, but what they need to do and if it seems difficult.
A command line can also be distributed as a bash script btw. The difference with an obscure executable that will edit the registry on windows it that the bash file can be checked much more easily.
Probably the best response here. I'd also add the moment the user has to deal with using the CLI that is it for them. I can't imagine the average consumer going into config files or even dealing with "chmod". It is like auto enthusiasts rolling their eyes at people who don't change their own spark plugs or oil.
I feel like we've been having the same conversation for 20 years. Meanwhile the linux family of operating systems is now the most widely deployed in the world.
I guess it would be reducing the need of terminal usage as much as possible. That's still the only thing a common user struggles with, in my opinion. The rest is just difference or has nothing to do with Linux.
With Linux gaming is rising currently, most common problem is kernel anti-cheat games and it's not Linux problem, for example. What are devs supposed to do? To develop literal Windows kernel compatibility layer or something? But Linux may do stuff on their end to make cheating difficult to keep game studio's happy but that would also mean to stray away from its philosophy. As a general platform, it would be hard to do this anyway. This would be possible per distro basis. Maybe Linux dev circles are already discussing this, maybe not, I don't know honestly.
I mean to be fair most modern distros have a gooey for everything from updating to obtaining new packages to installing and managing software settings everything
If you want to use a terminal, it is completely optional in most distros now.
Hell I installed God damn endeavor OS for my brother. He is not once needed to use a terminal in 2 and 1/2 years. He uses nothing but a GUI manager for packages gaming everything.
He's the kind of guy who doesn't understand the difference between his desktop and a web browser. Took him about 3 weeks to get used to KDE and other than being inundated with a bunch of questions at the start of just what the name of different applications were to be able to find settings. He seriously couldn't find the settings app called settings.
He hasn't had any issues that he wouldn't also have had on Windows. At this point everything is just game related and unique to the game he happens to be playing.
I could end of the day. Terminal usage is entirely not required. It's just easier to use the terminal for so much that a lot of people go straight to it or default back to it instead of fighting through the GUI. That's the real issue. It's not that the terminal is mandatory. It's that the GUI while they exist and are competent in, complete enough to actually cover all your use cases finally.
Still need a lot of work to get to the point where they are. So user-friendly that even my idiot brother can use them without help at the start of his learning experience.
To be fair 7 or 8 years ago GUI were not complete enough to cover all use cases in terminals were still very much required for some niche things. We've come a long way, especially in the last three or 4 years on that front.
Also, as someone who has helped probably 60ish people over the last 4 years convert to Linux. The thing I have learned the most stop recommending gnome. Like gnome is the least user friendly desktop experience to learn on for new users. It is far too restrictive and descriptive too new users.
It results in new users. Getting frustrated because things that they expect to be there or to be adjustable or to work like Windows or Mac just don't. You need too many extensions, tools, tweaks and things to get it to the point that new users can bring existing knowledge from other systems over and hit the ground running.
Gnome is gnome's way no one else is in that fundamentally is a bad new user experience in a very poor learning platform.
If we weren't in a world where windows and Mac were so widespread it would be fine. But because users already have a host, a lifetime of knowledge based on other systems, you have to be able to convert that knowledge to the new system for new users. Asking them to do something a specific and new way or to move outside of the officially supported methods immediately to be able to use that knowledge. Is bad.
I've put new users on mate Cinnamon budgie kde gnome and xfce.
My experience the ones that do the best for new users coming from Windows or Mac. Has been xfce for users who have been using computers since Windows 95-XP. Cinnamon and mate tend to do amazingly well for users that grew up on Windows 7.
While KDE has far and away with kde6 been the most reliable for Windows 10 and 11 converts especially kids between the ages of like 12 to 16.
I've put people on endeavor popos mint and even open suse that have all done very well.
Weirdly enough. Every time someone tries Ubuntu it breaks on them not immediately. Usually usually within about 3 months. It just always breaks and some stupid way. I have just started telling people to avoid Ubuntu.
People who convince themselves they "just aren't good with computers."
In the early 2000s, it was widely thought that everyone who grew up with them would be reasonably competent with them. We now have 20-30 year olds who are still stumped with basic computing concepts like how to reset a forgotten password. I literally ran into this a couple of months ago: Really? You haven't had to do this a dozen times in your life by now? How did you finish college (this person was highly educated)?
I had a similar problem with a couple of friends a few weeks back. They're a couple with a lot of debt, so they usually do everything they can to save money. Then the main water line started leaking.
I asked a few questions, and it turned out they could solder the pipes themselves and save hundreds on hiring a plumber. But the wife kept insisting that they were both too dumb to figure it out and by me saying it's easy to learn she just took it as me calling them stupid (which was a weird bit of gaslighting).
They didn't even look up a video on how to do it. I looked some up as a sanity check, and yeah it's fairly straightforward. .
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
just took it as me calling them stupid (which was a weird bit of gaslighting).
Glad I'm not the only one who notices this. It's not everyone I meet, but I know quite a few people who double down on their inability to do simple tasks or learn a basic skill... I mostly wonder where it started for these people.
Similar situation, had a buddy recently throw out a pair of $300 headphones because the cable broke.
Your response is short and quippy in a way that might be read as un-serious or dismissive, but its absolutely correct.
The users come first. The software is a tool and has no inherent "needs".
Your average user likely agrees with the statement " my device sending my data to big tech, and being cluttered with ads isn't nice", but they lack the time, knowledge, and interest to fix it.
Once installed, Linux (on supported hardware) is (to my best understanding and experience) no harder or easier than windows or Mac for most things.
I understand my tech expertise might give be blinders on the accuracy of that statement, but I have witnessed enough similar sentiment to begin believing it.
The challenge is getting over the installation hurdle, and putting users in the same mindset Mac users already instinctively have: "the instructions you find online might not apply to you because you are not in the majority".
Preinstalled by OEM is it. The final and ultimate hurdle to gain a loooot of traction.
You're absolutely right that individual users would benefit from Linux, the privacy, lack of ads, open source software, etc. And yes, the technical barriers are mostly solvable. But here's the thing, the Linux we'd need to build to get mass OEM adoption probably wouldn't be the Linux that provides those benefits anymore.
Well, it may be actually due to the fact that schools often lock down the Chromebooks so you simply cannot install another operating system on them, and if you do manage to it will be quite a headache and may even include fines (at least for my former high school). I couldn't even install real apps on my Chromebook (all I had was webapps and extensions), even though the feature was already technically out there (it was just locked down my school).
Also yes, as a Linux user, I really hated my Chromebook.
I disagree on one thing. I think gnome is actually better for laptops and kde is better for desktops. A laptops with gnomes gesture navigation is just so much nicer to use with a trackpad. And with people already being used to phones i think gestures will come naturally to them.
For beginners KDE is much more familiar, and is generally the better pick regardless. I'm not saying this is the best choice for everyone, but it's the best choice when you don't know anything.
Once again im gonna have to disagree. You are right only if someone is used to windows. But many people ONLY use a phone or tablet these days. Gnome is much more familiar when coming from Android or iOS on a mobile platform. Since its more gesture based just like those are.
Especially among younger people i think the main OS will not be windows but Android. Just look at how Samsung is testing out Samsung Dex on their devices and how Chrome OS is moving to android. Windows is more of the productivity, and desktop OS now imo. For daily use like web browsing, media consumption, etc, Android will be more and more common.
If trends continue as they are i expect Linux to be dominant in the server space still, and to gain ground in the gaming space. Mainly as Valve comes out with more plug and play Linux based consoles, and other companies copy them.
Windows will likely remain dominant in the professional and productivity space. Since they cater to companies and allow lots of remote control options, and the ability to monitor employees.
Android will probably be dominant in the casual media consumption, and web browsing space.
Apple kind of does their own thing and so i dont consider them for this. They are in a bit of everything, but mainly focused in the US specifically. Other regions have a lot more Android presence. But just assume Apple has a piece of each pie too.
Personally i do not think Linux can or should compete with Windows in the corporate space. What companies want is control. That control comes at the cost of features, privacy, and autonomy for users. Microsoft is happy to give those up to make more money. The Linux community isnt, and thats a good thing.
So the areas we can probably peel away some market share are in KDE powered gaming desktops, gaming consoles on something like Steam OS or Bazzite, and in touch friendly portable media machines. 2-in-1 Gnome powered laptops. Thats the way i see it anyway.
Flatpak is infinitely easier for people who don't know what they're doing, because it's sandboxed and separate from the native system. If you know what you're doing it's different though, I don't use them personally.
Flatpak is infinitely easier for people who don't know what they're doing, because it's sandboxed and separate from the native system. If you know what you're doing it's different though, I don't use them personally.
Flatpak is great for two groups of users: the ones who only use default settings in standalone apps and the privacy-oriented experts who know how to tweak things to their liking. In the middle is a large group of users who don't know or care how things work, but they want that one feature an app is supposed to do but mysteriously doesn't work with flatpak.
This password manager is supposed to work with my browser but it says it's not running.
App X says it needs app Y for feature Z, but I see both app icons installed on my desktop.
I found a guide online to enable feature D, but when I paste these arcane commands into the text box thingy, it just says ".config/AppQ no such file"
Even one of these occurrences is enough to make most users give up on that app or the OS entirely. I like the idea of sandboxing apps, and I use flatpak daily, but we have to acknowledge and hopefully improve some of its limitations or many users (yourself included, it seems) will consider it unusable.
My opinion on flatpak is that it only allows developers to be loosy with dependencies. I'm convinced it will fall appart in a decade or two because it's too messy and bloated as a technical solution.
But this one in particular vastly reduces maintenance, doesn't do anything at all to performance, and only arguably adds complexity, I think it needs to be case by case.
It does not reduces maintenance. And it costs hard drive, and with heavy use, probably ram too
Redundancy of dependencies in different versions, might also be loaded in ram in different version, which can add its own kind of problems in some circumstances.
Maintenance is only reduced on the surface level. The complexity you don't see as a problem is the actual maintenance problem. It's not a problem only if you're not the one dealing with integration, maintenance or security.
It absolutely does, package maintainers just have to maintain ONE package for all distros.
And it costs hard drive, and with heavy use, probably ram too
This isn't performance really, it's storage, and I don't think it actually impacts ram.
Maintenance is only reduced on the surface level. The complexity you don’t see as a problem is the actual maintenance problem. It’s not a problem only if you’re not the one dealing with integration, maintenance or security.
This is a case you're going to have to try a lot harder to make, I don't see what you're saying at all.
A multi-billion dollars marketing budget, anti-competitive practices and confidential agreements, blacklisting hardware vendors if they dare proposing an alternative, and of course a legal department the size of a small city to sue all competition out of existence.
Personally for me its compatibility and support. Too many of programs and hardware I use daily aren't compatible or even have a Linux version or have little to no support officially or not.
For an example I tried to use Mint on my main rig but i was having trouble with my two monitor. I wanted my right monitor to be the main display but i kept wanting to use the left one, issue with how i wanted them to be arranged virtually and a ghost third monitor showing up and it all reverting settings or just breaking when a program open in full screen
In Enterprise: manageability. It's hard to overstate how powerful Windows Group Policy is. Being able to configure every single aspect of the OS and virtually all major applications, Microsoft or otherwise, using a single application that can apply rules dynamically based on user, device, user or device groups, time of day, location, battery level, form factor, etc, etc. Nothing on Linux comes close, especially when simplicity is a factor, and until it does most large organisations won't touch it with a barge pole.
Came here to say this. My workplace used to offer a Linux workstation option (which I opted in for 9 years), but they had to remove that option to fulfill new security and management, compliance standards. They need to be able to manage exactly which applications are installed on a system, which binaries are allowed to run and when, the exact settings for every application, the exact version of the OS and the specific updates, and precisely when updates are installed. All of this needs to be applied based on the user, their organisational division, their security groups, clearance level, specific model of device, etc.
I know that using a combination of Selinux, Kerberos, and something like Puppet can get you close in the Linux world, but Microsoft group policy has been around for 30 years and is well understood and just works.
You need to dumb shit down for the majoirty. Jist look at the downward spiral of popular software, and how little the masses really care about ownership or ability to tinker and control what they use.
If you want the masses to use Linux, then you'll need a distro that is as useless as Windows. No technical errors, no forward-facing power user features.
Plus, you'll bring the big corps into Linux with a their shit ideas like rootkits, SaaS, etc. Because if the masses are in Linux, they'll be following the money.
As my employer has turned to almost exclusive webcrap over software - I see no hurdles really. Webapps run shitty either way. Fucking Salesforce and Opus bullshit... refresh.. refresh...
I think with any alternative to big tech the problem is most people are really unwilling to change their habits and make short term compromises. A lot of people know on a surface level that big tech is stealing their data etc. But actually changing their habits goes to far.
Another issue is that its more or less a systemic issue.
To many people aren't even awear of what FOSS even is. The state of Foss and is a bit complicated where you do have organizations and activists advocating for it but also gigantic corporations that use Foss technology and exploit the free labor that goes into it.
There definitely needs to be more activism for FOSS technology and alternatives to big tech. And those alternatives should be open to everyone like Linux is. Of course there are always multiple reasons why something isn't used but I do think it is important to look at a bigger perspective than individual consumer/ in this case users
Adding my voice to the hardware compatibility issue. While most hardware just works, Linux usually lacks the ability to configure the device. Audio interfaces are a good example of this. They work but you can't set the sample rate or enable any custom features on ANY of them.
I believe government regulators should step in and require hardware manufacturers to provide Linux support equal to Windows or Mac. This could be relaxed for low volume or highly specialised devices, but mainstream consumer stuff should be more universal.
They work but you can't set the sample rate or enable any custom features on ANY of them.
Not in my experience. I have a RME card that can be configured via alsamixer (which should work for most cards) and a Focusrite Saphire USB interface that someone wrote a little UI for in which you can even freely route audio to/from different channels and mix busses.
Are either of those accessible from the GUI in a fresh default install? I know exactly where in Windows to find that control panel (granted they make it more convoluted to get to in every successive version), but I don't know how I would do it with just what the OS provides in either Mint or Kubuntu (the two distros I have the most familiarity with).
I have only been rocking Linux as a daily driver for a year or two now though, so it could just be a gap in my knowledge.
No but now we get closer to the real problem. Meaning there is an accessibility problem, which is different than the (in my opinion wrong) statement that I wanted to correct.
Are you able to enable the Air function or doing any routing on your focusrite? I've found a way to handle sample rates on Topping Pro 2x2, and on my old focusrite 2i2. But input delays through the audio layers in linux are slower than windows and mac.
I should clarify my original comment. I'm looking for full feature parity out of the box and not having to devise some sort of work around or relay on a 3rd party and hope they don't stop maintaining it.
It is a real frustration, I use my linux install as must as I can but somethings are limited by the lack of 1st party support.
The problem with audio interfaces is that they function very different internally and have different kind of settings. Alsamixer does usually a decent job of listing all parameters but it is an old TUI tool and not nicely embedded into the desktop so I guess people just don't find it. Stuff like latencies just have to do with buffer sizes that are configured in your machines audio system, usually pipewire, pulseaudio or jack, which all work on top of alsa (which is where the drivers run). You can reduce the buffers there (in config files) to get lower latencies. This however means that your system needs to have a very tight scheduling for your audio processes, because if it fails to fill the buffer in time there will be glitches. Professional low latency audio does definetly not work out of the box on linux. It got a little better with pipewire, but I don't think it works well without a little bit of tinkering. If you decide to tinker I recommend you read this: wiki.archlinux.org/title/Profe…
I don't remember which tool I use for my Scarlett (I'm travelling). But I googled a bit and this looks good:
This all would be better if manufacturers would provide Linux config tools like they do on windows or at least information of their protocols. Until they do we have to be greatful for people reverse engineering that stuff (e.g. by analysing USB traffic on windows) and then writing uis for it. Edit: this site seems to make more sense as the arch wiki page (it is linked there):
If you’re into music creation, chances are you’ve heard of Focusrite Scarletts—they’re practically a staple in the industry. But here’s the kicker: while they’re adored by many, official support from Focusrite is limited to Windows and Mac users.
It CAN be configured, but you have to go hunting for the tools to do so.
I've got an old 5.1 surround sound speaker setup attached to my main rig, and in both Cinnamon and KDE (the only two I've tried), you can't use the normal DE's audio control panel to put the thing in 5.1 mode without first installing an old, probably unmaintained tool called ALSAJackRetask. Once you've retasked the jacks, several options for surround appear in the DE's audio control panel. It knows but it can't do.
Linux has only become much more user friendly in about the past 5 years. Installing Linux Mint in my experience was actually easier than Windows. It comes down to education and the misconception that using Linux is somehow more difficult than Windows or iOS. The hard truth is if someone is using Windows or iOS they are probably just too lazy to switch as long as it does what they need they don't care if they're being burdened with bloatware or spied on.
Do the same thing for CAD software engineers that was done for gamers and gaming. Quality CAD software would move companies to make the switch. Once people use it at work and school, they'll use it at home. I'm hoping the Chinese government's move to Linux will lead to their investing in FreeCAD.
I'm reminded of a video I saw of a woman talking about her dating prospects using M&Ms. She poured a bunch on the table as a metaphor for her dating pool, and slid away M&Ms as she ruled the people they represent out. "8 million people in the city. But half are women slides half of the M&Ms away of the remaining 4 million men, 20% are under 25, slides more M&Ms away" until she got to a point where she had one candy left, and then she shattered it with a meat tenderizer and continued sliding pieces of it away.
You can do that for potential adoptees of Linux, because there are a bunch of filters in series you have to pass through before successfully adopting Linux.
8 billion people on the planet.
Subtract the Sentinelese and Amish and North Koreans and everyone else who just outright doesn't have access to computers. Nothing we can really do about them and in some cases it would be unethical to try.
Now subtract out the people who only use a mobile device like a cell phone or tablet, which are locked to their OSes. Android or iOS is as much a part of the hardware as a microwave oven's firmware is to them. Linux on mobile devices (excluding Android) is in a severely rough state, there's basically no hardware and software combo that is ready for daily driving.
Now subtract out the people who do use a PC or other device, that won't ever install an operating system on a computer themselves. You'll get some of these folks by selling computers with Linux installed in stores and such, though I think you'll have to address a few other points later. I think SteamOS is demonstrating this.
Now subtract the people who might install Linux themselves, say PC builders who would have to install an OS anyway, but bounce off the process of choosing a distro and then installing. The big distributors like Canonical and Fedora tend toward marketing wankshit instead of human language. You can't tell their goddamn websites "I just want the normal end-user desktop version with KDE please." Does "Core" mean our main, central product, or the IoT embedded system version? You kind of have to know Fedora calls their Gnome edition "Workstation" and if you want "normal Fedora but with KDE" that's a "Spin." Then you get the Trendy Fork Of The Month, things like Bazzite and Nobara that pretty much are Fedora or Ubuntu with a theme applied, maybe some actual features in the OS, but often just a redone onboarding process, like I think it's Bazzite that offers a configurator on their website that lets you pick your desktop and such. Defuckulating the onboarding process of major distros might allow us to do away with the Trendy Fork Of The Month.
Now subtract the folks who get a Linux machine up and running and then bounce off of the unfamiliar UI. I'm pretty sure this is Gnome's fault more often than not, Gnome is deliberately hostile to both distro maintainers and end users to the point there are now four DEs that are "We can't do this anymore" forks of Gnome: MATE, Cinnamon, Unity and Cosmic. You'd probably see more people stick with Linux if it was less easy to stumble dick first into Gnome.
Now subtract the people who got this far and then said "My CAD/art/music/office/finance/whatever software doesn't run on this." and had to switch back. In a lot of cases, software like that exists in the FOSS ecosystem but it's significantly inferior, like FreeCAD or GIMP. These are often kept in a deliberately shitty state because some opinionated programmer likes how the code they wrote in 2004 looks in their IDE, so open software continues to be unadoptable and people continue to pay subscriptions to the Captain Planet villains in charge of Microsoft, Apple, Google and Adobe.
possibly, i'm not sure. i find it surprisingly hard to find information on nk in a language i can speak that's not obvious propaganda. i can tell they use linux because the os they use leaked, wish i knew more.
despite that, gimp's ui has been slowly but steadily improving for years. the latest iteration is not ideal but its a big qualitative jump and the best it has even been.
I’m gradually concluding that every decision in computer UI has been wrong. Peak UI happened in the 1990s; it’s been downhill ever since. People think terminals are scary, but come on—asking ChatGPT “how do I do this?” and getting three lines that have worked unchanged since 1989 is not harder than watching some tech-bro explain which menus to click… menus that get rearranged every six months so they can find new ways to wedge ads into your ribbon.
NEW YORK, Aug 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it ended its case accusing Ripple Labs of selling unregistered securities, leaving a $125 million fine intact and ending one of the cryptocurrency industry's highest-profile lawsuits. Ripple and the SEC agreed on Thursday to dismiss their appeals of the fine imposed by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan and her injunction against the sale of Ripple's XRP token to institutional investors. XRP is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value, trailing bitcoin and Ethereum, according to the market service CoinMarketCap. The SEC sued Ripple in December 2020, near the end of U.S. President Donald Trump's first White House term, accusing it of selling XRP tokens without registering them as securities. In a mixed ruling in July 2023, Torres said XRP was covered by securities laws when sold to institutional investors, while XRP that Ripple sold on public exchanges was not. She imposed the fine in August 2024.
Age verification has officially arrived in the UK thanks to the Online Safety Act (OSA), a UK law requiring online platforms to check that all UK-based users are at least eighteen years old before allowing them to access broad categories of “harmful”…
Lebanese people have taken to the streets in the capital Beirut, voicing support for the country’s resistance movement Hezbollah and protesting mounting US- and Israeli-led pressure towards the group’s disarmament.
The rallies took place in the city’s Dhahiyeh neighborhood on Monday night, with participants shouting slogans in favor of “the right to defense in the face of foreign invasion.”
The attendants, who included droves of bike-riding supporters, waved Hezbollah’s flags, hailing the movement as a “major” contributor to the country’s defense.
Hezbollah was formed in 1982 with a mandate to defend the country in the face of Tel Aviv, which has been occupying the country’s Shebaa Farms on the common border with Syria since 1967, as well as the regime’s increasing regional expansionism drive.
Ever since, both the regime and the United States, its biggest supporter, have been mounting pressure on the country to have the movement disarmed.
The pressure has grown since 2023 after Hezbollah began staging solidarity operations in support of the Gaza Strip that had come under a genocidal Israeli war.
It soon evolved into heavily Washington-backed escalated Israeli aggression against the country that went on to claim the lives of more than 4,000 people.
Participants in the Monday rally also held up pictures of the movement’s current officials as well as those who have been martyred, including the leading figures assassinated throughout the escalation.
Hezbollah itself has vowed to continue defending the nation, as it successfully has throughout both the escalation and two full-scale Israeli wars in the 2000s. It has warned the Lebanese against succumbing to the pressure tactics that are aimed at serving the regime’s expansionist ambitions.
"I am going to have a complete and total mental breakdown. I am going to be institutionalized. They are going to put me in a padded room and I am going to write... code on the walls with my own feces," it said.
Browsing for some hardware to assemble a new system, nn AMD MSI motherboard caught my attention.
Checking the motherboard compatibility list got me really miffed, as updating BIOS is apparently impossible if not on Window$ and all supported CPUs with integrated graphics require later updates.
MSI was the first brand where I ran Linux, on a Megabook. It installed smoothly, ran flawlessly and even improved battery life and hardware output above what the competition achieved.
I don't have experience with MSI recently, but I'd be really surprised if you couldn't flash a new BIOS off the system partition or FAT32 USB. You may not be able to update from Linux directly, but almost all motherboards I've seen support doing it from the BIOS interface.
I build with MSI stuff all the time. If you're concerned about BIOS utilities, all of their boards update directly from withing the BIOS utilities AFAIK. Haven't come across a board in years that doesn't.
Even if you do, it's quite easy to build a Live Windows USB disk to run utilities that doesn't require a license. That shouldn't be a barrier to entry for you for anything if you're looking to run Linux.
Which motherboard do you have? There is almost always a way to load from a flash drive via the BIOS. Many motherboards even have a way to do it from a flashdrive without the UI working at all via a button on the back (BIOS Flashback).
Currently, I'm running a Gigabyte AB350M-DASH and I was able to load several BIOS updates directly by USB. However, from a version onwards it requires loading from the OS.
I thought it was just an isolated case but it seem to be a more common situation.
I had a look at the support page for the mobo, and there is a BIOS update from Mar 11th. It contains a zip with a .F52q file inside. You should be able to use that file directly from a USB in the BIOS.
I don't think I've ever updated a BIOS from any operating system, always flashed via the BIOS itself. Most can flash the BIOS without even a CPU installed these days.
It's a good idea to validate the information before being outraged at it.
I have a motherboard that reaches a version that requires OS loading. It has an .exe file. No files directly loadable at BIOS level but I always assumed it an oddity.
I have an MSI laptop and MSI motherboard in a PC. Didn't have any specific compatibility issues, and I'm running Linux on both. You can update the BIOS with an usb stick straight from the BIOS. There's not really anything that 100% requires Windows.
More than 130,000 Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, and Other LLM Chats Readable on Archive.org
A researcher has found that more than 130,000 conversations with AI chatbots including Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, and others are discoverable on the Internet Archive, highlighting how peoples’ interactions with LLMs may be publicly archived if users are not careful with the sharing settings they may enable.
The news follows earlier findings that Google was indexing ChatGPT conversations that users had set to share, despite potentially not understanding that these chats were now viewable by anyone, and not just those they intended to share the chats with. OpenAI had also not taken steps to ensure these conversations could be indexed by Google.
“I obtained URLs for: Grok, Mistral, Qwen, Claude, and Copilot,” the researcher, who goes by the handle dead1nfluence, told 404 Media. They also found material related to ChatGPT, but said “OpenAI has had the ChatGPT[.]com/share links removed it seems.” Searching on the Internet Archive now for ChatGPT share links does not return any results, while Grok results, for example, are still available.
Dead1nfluence wrote a blog post about some of their findings on Sunday and shared the list of more than 130,000 archived LLM chat links with 404 Media. They also shared some of the contents of those chats that they had scraped. Dead1nfluence wrote that they found API keys and other exposed information that could be useful to a hacker. playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2… “While these providers do tell their users that the shared links are public to anyone, I think that most who have used this feature would not have expected that these links could be findable by anyone, and certainly not indexed and readily available for others to view,” dead1nfluence wrote in their blog post. “This could prove to be a very valuable data source for attackers and red teamers alike. With this, I can now search the dataset at any time for target companies to see if employees may have disclosed sensitive information by accident.”
404 Media verified some of dead1influence’s findings by discovering specific material they flagged in the dataset, then going to the still-public LLM link and checking the content.
💡 Do you know anything else about this? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
Most of the companies whose AI tools are included in the dataset did not respond to a request for comment. Microsoft which owns Copilot acknowledged a request for comment but didn't provide a response in time for publication. A spokesperson for Anthrophic, which owns Claude, told 404 Media: “We give people control over sharing their Claude conversations publicly, and in keeping with our privacy principles, we do not share chat directories or sitemaps with search engines like Google. These shareable links are not guessable or discoverable unless people choose to publicize them themselves. When someone shares a conversation, they are making that content publicly accessible, and like other public web content, it may be archived by third-party services. In our review of the sample archived conversations shared with us, these were either manually requested to be indexed by a person with access to the link or submitted by independent archivist organizations who discovered the URLs after they were published elsewhere across the internet first.” 404 Media only shared a small sample of the Claude links with Anthrophic, not the entire list.
Fast Company first reported that Google was indexing some ChatGPT conversations on July 30. This was because of a sharing feature ChatGPT had that allowed users to send a link to a ChatGPT conversation to someone else. OpenAI disabled the sharing feature in response. OpenAI CISO Dane Stuckey said in a previous statement sent to 404 Media: “This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations. This feature required users to opt-in, first by picking a chat to share, then by clicking a checkbox for it to be shared with search engines.”
A researcher who requested anonymity gave 404 Media access to a dataset of nearly 100,000 ChatGPT conversations indexed on Google. 404 Media found those included the alleged texts of non-disclosure agreements, discussions of confidential contracts, and people trying to use ChatGPT for relationship issues.
Others also found that the Internet Archive contained archived LLM chats.
Not going to argue with that, but it does pose challenging questions on how to govern digital archival so that certain lines are not crossed. Current restrictive laws push archival into the grey zone where it’s hard to effectively enforce privacy protections.
Personally I sort of wish absolutely everything was saved, with private things only being revealed after everyone involved is dead. It'd be a shame for anything to be lost forever. But doing that while preserving piracy for people who are still alive is hard.
I don't think that's what "sharing" refers to in this case. This is about users who did/didn't modify the settings of their chatbot to make their inputs and outputs publicly available via search. 404's previous reporting on ChatGPT suggested some users may not have understood what the sharing option actually meant in this context.
Nextcloud checks about 50 open-source apps—file storage, groupware, chat/video, notes, project management, and so on. Each tool is weighted the same, and then the category scores are averaged into a single national figure. That design favors a balanced ecosystem over dominance in just one niche.
However, according to Nextcloud, the method favors SMEs and hobbyists—servers hidden behind firewalls, VPNs, or hosted by large enterprises don’t always show up—yet the index still offers a “pretty loud signal” about grassroots tech choices.
Nextcloud’s Digital Sovereignty Index ranks countries by self-hosted tech use, with Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands leading the way in digital independence.
A San Francisco federal court jury on Friday found Meta Platforms Inc. violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act in a landmark data privacy class action, which accused the Big Tech giant of illegally mining sensitive sexual and reproductive hea…
In about:config media.peerconnection.enabled is set to true by default which, by my understanding and that of tools like ipleak.net, means both VPN and home IP addresses will be exposed during useage on platforms like PeerTube.
Is this an oversight, is my understanding wrong, or is this intentional for some reason? Seems like the opposite of user expectation, particulary given the WebRTC settings option is hidden on librewolf.
Jumilla has banned religious events in public sporting spaces, which is seen as a veiled attempt to prevent Muslim gatherings. Local authorities said the move was to "promote and preserve the traditional values."
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 meeting comes amid debates between Washington and London about the best way to end the wars between Russia and Ukraine, as well as Israel and Hamas.
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.
Someone has stolen Jason Hong's 1958 Cessna Skyhawk plane at least four times, taking the red single-engine plane for a joyride, and then returned it at airports in Southern California. Hong, and police, are baffled as to who, and why?
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 feel like I haven’t posted here in a while… basically I decided to take a break from drinking and thus home brewing for a bit. I want to get back into meme spirits, and I also want to make a 0 oxygen beer from ferment to filter to serving, but for now I made a berry wine for the girlfriend from some Aldi frozen fruit. This has been sitting in the fermenter on the fruit for a good 3 months (started it just before my break from alcohol) and then I moved it into a keg, no cold crashing or anything. I then ran it through a 5 micron filter and then a 1 micron filter just to see how it went, I gotta say, it turned out great. I was expecting the filter to clog but it went through like a champ. I also then wanted to try pasteurizing it in the keg using my mash and boil to see if I get some delicious glue and rubber in my mashing vessel but I didn’t! I back sweetened the wine and haven’t had any re-fermentation happen after a few weeks, so project fuck around and find out was a success. I might end up retrying a milk wine again (last one had a few tiny cheese curds floating in it that turned off most people from it) and I definitely want to try making a spicy imperial stout, but for now, I’ve gotta buy wine bottles or give out samples of this wine until my keg is empty.
Trust me it gets worse! I didn’t think to take a light up directly to the unfiltered product, but here you can get an idea of how bad it was pre filter. I imagine the haziness is from the pectin of the mariad of berries I used to make this wine
Yeah, to make things more equal here is that wine post filtering held up to the same light as the original image as of a few minutes ago. I don’t think there was any other filtration that happened with it since I kegged it since it’s been sitting in a warm keg in storage after filtration and backsweetening
next time add some pectinase to the ferment. You can try adding some to this wine now if you want, it works better during primary as the yeast keeps it stirred up in suspension, but it can still work post ferment.
Appreciate it! I will say I’m also super weird, it’s why I wanted to try pasteurizing this wine in one of my beer kegs vs adding stuff to kill the fermentation before backsweetening. Typically I when I make a beverage I try doing things not by the book, it also helps that I don’t mind having hazy beverages, I just turned a house water filter into a fermentation filter with some random fittings and dreams for shits and giggles and that’s definitely the vibe I take with all my brewing lol
Yeah, those whole house filters aren't too uncommon in the homebrewing world, I've also seen them stuffed full of hops or whatever and used as a randall. If you're keeping the keg cold I wouldn't even both with pasteurization.
What are you using for filtering? I'd also like to find a means to do a 1 micron filtering, but they don't sell industrial filter socks to consumers (used to work in chem engineering where I could have nicked one, but those days are past)...
Household water filters are an option, but at 125 € a pop and I'd need a pump and plumbing too. Gravity-run is what I'm hoping to keep it at.
This is my setup, it’s basically an in line/whole house water filter that accepts 10 inch filters. I connected two posts that go onto the liquid line of a Cornelius keg. I then use co2 to basically transfer it between the kegs and through the filter. Over all I think I paid like $40 USD for this set up, and the replacement filters are $5 or so.
Thanks! That's what I was looking at - probably need to shop around to get the price closer to what you paid 😸 Getting inspired here...
Any idea if these kind of filters would manage with the flow at around 80 °C (180 °F)? I'm thinking of running the filtration in a loop on the Kegmenter (a steel keg with a 2-post pressurising lid) for the duration of cooling the wort, which happens by immersing the whole keg in running water in my setup. Doing it like that wouldn't waste CO2 because the liquid volume would be constant, and the hour it takes to cool the wort would probably allow plenty of time to do a thorough filtration.
Edit. Realised this would take three posts on the lid. Oh well 🙄
I imagine it should be fine for the filter material and the plastic that it goes into. I pasteurized in my keg at 68 Celsius for an hour by tossing it into my electric boiling pot. I was expecting the glue on it to melt but it held up just fine. The plastic housing of my filter is also pretty thick, though I haven’t heated it up yet but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work!
From my experience, sqeezing fruit pulf through filter just makes coagulation harder. Just leaving it in fermenter for half year or more results in laser clear fluids upon gentle decantation.
Actually I saw guys filtering red wine into white. You need something like sterilization filter (0.04 um) and tangential flow so that it does not clog. We all should start using tff technology, it's just so awesome.
That’s actually on my list of stuff to try! I want to make a white wine they tastes like a red wine. I was thinking of using activated charcoal but I think that might remove all the flavors, so it might end up being a brandy that’s then watered back down into wine level strength. It’s lower on the list of dumb stuff to try, but definitely there lol
Dopo oltre un anno di analisi, indagini e confronti anche con esperti internazionali, l’Associazione Ricerca Italiana Aliena (A.R.I.A.), guidata dall’ufologo Angelo Maggioni, annuncia di aver risolto uno dei casi più misteriosi degli ultimi tempi: il segnale anomalo captato a Genova da un radioamatore nel febbraio 2024.
A supporto dell’inchiesta sono stati coinvolti vari consulenti, tra cui un esperto di effetti speciali e un ingegnere del suono che aveva individuato alcune anomalie nei dati. Fondamentale è stato anche il confronto con il SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), e in particolare con il dott. Graziano Chiaro dell’INAIF Milano (intervistato dalla stessa associazione qualche tempo fa) , referente per il SETI Italia. Fin da subito erano state avanzate due ipotesi: o si trattava di un segnale davvero anomalo… oppure di un’interferenza provocata da velivoli militari in alta quota.
Le più recenti informazioni confermano che in quei giorni erano attivi voli militari sopra il Nord Italia, probabilmente legati al conflitto in Ucraina e ai corridoi aerei utilizzati per missioni militari europee. Secondo quanto ricostruito, è molto probabile che il misterioso segnale si sia sovrapposto a una normale trasmissione tra radioamatori, creando un’anomalia solo apparente. «Non ci sono stati altri casi simili nelle stesse aree – da Loano a Genova, da La Spezia a Milano e Torino – nemmeno nei momenti in cui abbiamo registrato un picco di avvistamenti UFO tra giugno e luglio», spiega Angelo Maggioni. Tra questi, episodi degni di nota come l'avvistamento di un grande oggetto non identificato da parte di Nicolas P. a Genova, e un altro evento tra Ventimiglia e Nizza.
«Tutti questi elementi ci portano oggi a chiudere il caso: per noi, quel segnale ha un’origine spiegabile. Non c'è mistero, e non ha senso alimentare speculazioni inutili», precisa Maggioni. «A.R.I.A. lavora da sempre con serietà e rigore: evitiamo il sensazionalismo, perché non fa bene né alla ricerca né all’informazione».
L’associazione dichiara quindi ufficialmente declassato il caso da fenomeno anomalo a fenomeno identificato, prendendo le distanze da chi, ancora oggi, tenta di alimentare narrazioni esagerate e infondate.
Avrei potuto mettere il solito titolo :"Consigli da coach" ma anche no. Il consiglio che vorrei dare è molto semplice è strettamente legato a chi fa gare ma credo sia utile anche per chi corre senza nessun obiettivo ma solo per stare bene. Si tratta della periodizzazione, cosa vuol dire? Molto semplicemente chi sta preparando una gara di solito ha 4 fasi: - Preparazione - Carico - Scarico - Gara In poche parole ci si prepara al carico *di sforzo che il corpo dovra ricevere. In termini di chilometri e di qualità delle uscite e poi si da il tempo al corpo di *recuperare, nella fase di scarico e poi per chi gareggia c'è la gara dove il corpo è pronto a sfoggiare le migliorire ricevute nelle fasi precedenti. Per chi non corre invece si avra un bel avanzamento di qualità nella corsa.-
Keep up the good memeing though...
[img=https://community.nodebb.org/assets/uploads/files/1754665617840-0e9ff9ea-6cf0-4934-8160-76831236c48a-image.png]0e9ff9ea-6cf0-4934-8160-76831236c48a-image.png[/img]
::: spoiler Transcript A post by [object Object] (@zzt@mas.to) saying: courtesy of @davidgerard@circumstances.run, Proton is now the only privacy vendor I know of that vibe codes its apps: In the single most damning thing I can say about Proton in 2025, the Proton GitHub repository has a “cursorrules” file. They’re vibe-coding their public systems. Much secure! I am once again begging anyone who will listen to get off of Proton as soon as reasonably possible, and to avoid their new (terrible) apps in any case. circumstances.run/@davidgerard…
It has a reply by the author saying: in an unsurprising update for those familiar with how Proton operates, they silently rewrote their monorepo’s history to purge .cursor and hide that they were vibe coding: github.com/ProtonMail/WebClien…
given the utter lack of communication from Proton on this, I can only guess they’ve extracted .cursor into an external repository and continue to use it out of sight of the public :::
Proton Mail is famous for its privacy and security. The cool trick they do is that not even Proton can decode your email. That’s because it never exists on their systems as plain text — it’s always…
Depends on what you're doing with it. If it's just for normal privacy you could just get a vps and install any of the wireguard packages. If you're using it to evade copyright enforcement (or something similar) I don't have an answer for that, but a VPN with your name attached is no longer a good idea probably.
Yeah it's not just for privacy, hence the port forwarding requirement.
AFAIK nothing has shown issues with the privacy of either email or VPN? At least not something that wasn't caused by blatant idiot user error like the guy with his apple email as recovery email.
You should jump into the other threads about this before you take out your pitchforks. They’re using cursor, it doesn’t prove they are vibe coding. Visual Studio also has AI features, that doesn’t mean you are vibe coding.
Unfortunately so is Visual Studio and VS Code, yet we don't say anything made with them is 'vibe coded'. The text, big and bold, right the top of the screen for VS Code is literally:
Ok, but VS has been around MUCH longer and has been widely used long before any AI features were added. People who have been using VS for years, aren't likely to just switch, especially in professional environments where VS has largely dominated.
Cursor OTOH, was specifically made to leverage AI. You don't just start using Cursor.
You are an Senior SWE at Proton and make sure you do not send any information that is potentially secure in nature. You specialize in building highly-scalable and maintainable Frontend Systems.
what is a cursorfile? I’ve hit things like gpt when devdocs.io isn’t getting me what I want because lots of search engine things like “explain the google maps api” are becoming like searching for a dinner recipe; they contain 300 paragraphs of life story. When I just want to actually RTFM and shit’s hard to find. I don’t copy/paste code into projects just try to find better manuals.
VS Code also has AI features. Would you be telling people to not use other suites if they were being developed in VS Code? Why should they be forced to use an IDE that explicitly excludes AI?
Visual Studio and VS Code have an AI assistant as well, yet we don't decree all programs written with them as 'vibe coding'. The presence of an AI assistant in the IDE isn’t evidence of vibe coding.
Proton’s repo here is open source. What portion of it presents issues? Any?
Mastodon at it again with pitchforks and torches for the slightest inconvenience.
Using Cursor doesn't prove anything. Many people use Cursor as an advanced autocomplete, nothing else. It's not like they're hammering random AI-generated code and merging it without thinking. "Vibe coding" means generating barely-working code you don't understand to try and get thinks working.
This shit is why I hate the mastodon community, it's always strawmen and "you're one of THEM" style witchhunts with them
Yep, anyone who assumes that the presence of a .cursor directory automatically means that:
Developers are vibe coding
The entire team is using cursor
Is either arguing in bad faith or has no idea what they're talking about.
It could be something as simple as one dev trying out cursor (an editor thats literally just a vscode fork with ai features) and accidentally committing their .cursor directory (really easy to do).
The anti-AI circlejerk even here on lemmy is now just about as bad as the pro-AI circlejerk in the general public, no room for nuance or rational thinking, just dunking on everyone who say anything remotely positive about AI, like when I said I like the autocomplete feature of copilot.
People refer to generative AI when they just say "AI" nowadays.
There are a ton of small, single purpose neural networks that work really well, but the "general purpose" AI paradigm has wiped those out in the public consciousness. Natural language processing and modern natural sounding text to speech are by definition AI as they use neural networks, but they're not the same as ChatGPT to the point that a lot of people don't even consider them AI.
Also AI is really good at computing protein shapes. Not in a "ChatGPT is good enough that it's not worth hiring actual writers to do it better" way, in a "this is both faster and more accurate than any other protein folding algorithm we had" way.
Also AI is really good at computing protein shapes. Not in a “ChatGPT is good enough that it’s not worth hiring actual writers to do it better” way, in a “this is both faster and more accurate than any other protein folding algorithm we had” way.
Yeah, people don't realize how huge this kind of thing is. We've been trying for YEARS to figure out how to correctly model protein structures of novel proteins.
Now, people have trained a network that can do it and, using the same methods to generate images (diffusion models), they can also describe an arbitrary set of protein properties/shapes and the AI will generate a string of amino acids which are most likely to create it.
The LLMs and diffusion models that generate images are neat little tech toys that demonstrate a concept. The real breakthroughs are not as flashy and immediately obvious.
For example, we're starting to see AI robotics, which have been trained to operate a specific robot body in dynamic situations. Manually programming robotics is HARD and takes a lot of engineers and math. Training a neural network to operate a robot is, comparatively, a simple task which can be done without the need for experts (once there are Pretrained foundational models).
I'm a pretty big generative AI hater when it comes to art and writing. I don't think generative AI can make meaningful art because it cannot come up with new concepts. Art is something that AI should be freeing up time in our lives for us to do. But that's not how it's shaping up.
However, AI is very helpful for understanding codebases and doing things like autocompletion. This is because code is less expressive than human language and it's easier for AI to approximate what is necessary.
You're not alone. Nuance is just harder to convey, takes more effort to post something nuanced. And so people do it less, myself included. But I think truthfully that many people are not so stuck in one or the other circlejerks. It's lovely to see people in this thread who are annoyed by both.
I'm personally scared of AI (not angry or hateful, actually scared by just how fast it's advancing) and that definitely clouds my judgement of it and makes nuance difficult.
It's like a deal with the devil. You see all these amazing benefits but you just know you're the one being taken advantage of, because, like the devil, AI corporations by definition only think about how you can be of use to them.
Also I don't think most people understand just how ineffective true vibe coding is. I tried it a few times and could barely get something slightly more complex than a demo todo app working, and even if it was working it was barely prototype level quality of user experience, there is zero chance somebody is deploying vibe coded features into a large, serious production system and not suffering major and immediate consequences because shit just didn't work at all.
The best you're going to get out of it is it shortens the amount of time wasted on tiny adjustment to the UI or something.
The best you’re going to get out of it is it shortens the amount of time wasted on tiny adjustment to the UI or something.
This gets into the question of what, if anything, AI "should" be used for.
I've heard responses to this go both ways. Some people argue that saving time on repetitive simple tasks is what AI "should" be used for; but other people say that if you can't even do something as simple and repetitive as a tiny adjustment to the UI, you shouldn't be in a development job to begin with; or that you're stealing the work of other programmers who had their code scraped for training data who are not being paid while you are, and that maybe you should be fired and the people who had their code scraped be hired instead.
IDK what the right answer is, I think this is something I will struggle with for ages while the unscrupulous people use AI for everything and anything.
You are an Senior SWE at Proton and make sure you do not send any information that is potentially secure in nature. You specialize in building highly-scalable and maintainable Frontend Systems.
Here I am just thinking I'm a better programmer without AI (LLMs).
For me it's just glorified autocomplete. I haven't tried it in any real capacity, but my colleagues did and I've seen some examples. It's all basic shit I already know. In no way I felt compelled or even seen anything really useful. It can give you a head start, but I already have the knowledge to have a head start.
Some colleagues are using it for SQL, because they're unfamiliar with it, and I'm like, it's all good if it works for you, but you're not gonna learn properly if you don't try to write stuff yourself.
This touches on another point I don't see too often — I code because I like solving problems. If I outsource that, then what's the point? And it's exactly this that makes me a competent, and dare I say, good programmer. Another issue for me is this chat bot format. I don't what a chat bot! If I have to go out of my way to try and coerce a fucking chat bot into being a useful tool then it already lost its usefulness. The only acceptable format for AI coding is better autocomplete, i. e. ability to autofill boilerplate more, better and, most importantly, as seamlessly as current solutions in modern IDEs.
In general I don't feel threatened by AI and when the tools catch up I'll gladly use them or even retire and code just for fun.
Both are the same price, but one is handmade by a skilled professional with decades of experience, the other is made by a sketchy machine that even it's creators don't really understand... and sometimes uses square wheels instead of round.
"consumer privacy" in this case would be your safety while on said bicycle, imo, and square wheels will send you for a tumble.
AI slop comes with security holes (see recent Tea business, and countless other examples). As a user of Proton services, paying actually quite a bit of money annually for that — and being that they talk a really big game about how secure and private they are — I expect their app to be MORE secure than your average mail client, not the same, and not very possibly LESS secure.
I have tried Tuta out, it's fine from my very limited use, but kinda locked in in ways I don't really care to pay for. Last time I saw it brought up some other folks were recommending mailbox.org. I don't know about it too much, but might be worth looking into as well.
Not an issue, per se. In order to keep the team small they built most the app in a single codebase. It's mostly web code, and the apps are wrappers for it. So it keeps it unified between all clients but it definitely feels like a web wrapper, so it can feel a bit slow or clunky.
Does Proton really support Trump? A deeper analysis (and surprising findings)
Recently, allegations surfaced on Reddit that Proton (or at least Proton’s CEO) supports Trump. Hillary Keverenge from …
Speaking as someone who hates generative AI but has been forced to adapt to using AI in the programming field to stay relevant, this doesn’t suggest they’re vibe coding. The programming world is the only place AI has actually added value (I should note it’s done some neat stuff helping with diagnoses in the medical world too), but like everything, you get what you put into it.
Feed it enough instruction and context, and it can handle the drudgery of things like tech debt updates and other things a programmer knows how to do, but would rather offload to a tool. I’ve had Claude do refactors like that while stepping through and reviewing every single change. It has saved me hours, spared me from hell, and made me look good at work.
That’s my grounded take as a person that has worked with Claude a ton.
But AI everywhere else? Fucking worthless. The whole point is to do the bullshit mundane tasks so that us humans can do art and passionate work, not the opposite.
I’ve had the greatest success with Claude. The company I work for basically let us all go wild with a few to trial, and Claude has been the best for all of us—even better than GitHub Copilot.
I pay for my own pro plan outside of work and use the VSCode plugin. I’d say read the quickstart guide and experiment with it. Start off with having it do smaller changes and don’t be afraid to be verbose. The more context, the better. Point it to existing files you want to follow the patterns of and model after; give it links to resources for best practices, etc. You can also use it in “plan mode” if you want to see its proposed approach before it starts editing.
I also recommend leaving it so that each change it makes requires your approval (it will do this by default and you can step through everything). That way you always have some control and if it does something dumb, you can stop it at that step and pivot with a different instruction. Alternatively, if you want to see it go ham and carry everything out without approval at each step, you can enable auto-accept.
Once you get into it, start looking into how to craft instruction files. You can have those at your disposal for things like writing tests, language-specific guidelines and practices, etc. That way you can make sure it uses those as a reference so you don’t have to give it the same instructions over and over with every prompt.
If you hate writing tests, I’ve had really good luck letting it handle that. I tend to use it more for the bulk tasks that suck. For things where I want more control, I work with it on a piecemeal basis in my project.
Anthropic just dropped a feature that will change how engineers approach complex coding tasks. Plan Mode is fundamental shift toward more thoughtful, senior-level engineering practices.
I use it for obscure methods that I don't know immediately and searching the documentation would take longer than just letting the AI write a code snippet and then looking at the functions that it uses if I don't recognize any.
It's kind of like searching, except I can ask for things in a more vague manner.
The programming world is the only place AI has actually added value
I'd say this is mostly because you can immediately test the AI's results and rule out anything it got wrong, and whatever errors you generate can then be fed back into the AI so it can refine what it's already written. You never have to just trust the AI (assuming you yourself still know how to code) like you have to when using it for research or for solving problems where you don't get immediate feedback.
Whether this means programming is actually a viable niche for generative AI or whether this speaks more to the limitations and inherent unreliability of the "knowledge" the AI has, I can't say.
Also, I don't know if it's just me but I'm more scared by how fast AI is advancing rather than looking forward to what it can do for me. That definitely clouds my perception when something is AI generated and makes me a lot more dismissive of any real benefits AI might have brought.
Yeah, you get immediate feedback, vs a scenario where you have to manually check the “facts” it provides in order to ensure it’s not hallucinating. I’ve had Copilot straight up hallucinate functions on me and I knew that they were bullshit instantly.
I iterate with it a ton and feed it back errors it makes, or things like type mismatches. It fixes them instantly and understands the issue almost every single time.
That’s the trick. Iterate often and always give it new instructions if it does something stupid. Basically be as verbose as needed and give it tons of context, desired standards, pitfalls to avoid, whatever. It helps a ton.
It will allow you to see if the AI has made any syntax or runtime errors. It does not tell you about any logic errors.
Logic errors are already the most dangerous kind of programming error, and using AI just makes them even harder to find.
Using AI will only help you with syntax (which any good IDE should already be able to do) and finding information faster than a search engine (but leaving out important context). AI is not useful for programming anything that will be made public.
The danger of vibe coding is that the people doing it either don't have the skills to or don't think it's importsnt to review the AI changes.
If you work with an AI and instead of taking time typing through boring tasks, take time reading through the changes, them there isn't much of an issue. A skilled software engineer is capable of noticing logic errors in a code they read.
If the generated code is too unmecessarily complex to ensure its logic is okay, then scrap it.
I don't use it in that way (only use JetBrains' line completion AI) but I don't see a problem if it is used that way.
However, if I review a code that was partly generated by AI and notice that the dev let through shitty code without review, the review will be salty.
Just because they are using Cursor, it doesn't mean that they are vibe coding. Anyone grabbing their pitchforks for that and screaming "they are vibecoding" only shows their own incompetence.
If they would be vibecoding, their whole software would've gone to shit long ago.
Just because some random people without an engineering background are using vibecoding to push their broken slop, it doesn't mean that any kind of AI assisted coding is bad.
It's definitely badly communicated and suspicious, I just called out jumping to extreme conclusions based on a suspicion alone. There probably will be people who are gonna review the code and see how much of it is probably LLM generated, and then we will know. I still think that it's pretty much impossible to vibe code something on that scale, but I haven't seen their cursorrules either.
So when they do code reviews and a complete file sliped through what does that say about the quality of their reviews? Either they didnt want this file in there, then their qa is shit or theydid want that file in their, then they are vibe coding to an extend
Youre jumping to conclusions. Bigger companies missed bigger problems in their reviews and QA. Why should they be wanting their cursorrules in there, and what kind of mental gymnastics is it to conclude that they are vibecoding based on that. You don't need it committed, you don't even need it to be in the project directory.
You are an Senior SWE at Proton and make sure you do not send any information that is potentially secure in nature. You specialize in building highly-scalable and maintainable Frontend Systems.
Non programmer here: This is the first time I've seen a cursor file but I genuinely like how it reads. It's like a business analyst wrote a coding requirements doc. I'd be thrilled if my staff asked 4-6 thoughtful questions when given a goal with an open ended approach.
Cursor is just an IDE (integrated development environment), you can set it up to use all sorts of LLMs either directly through Cursor, or with your own API keys for the sources.
This file content just goes into the initial context to help the LLM act how you want.
God dammit, I wish I could reasonably roll my own email, but noooo, spammers and blacklists had to fucking ruin it. Now I get to research a new provider and change email on a bunch of accounts...
Spammers and blacklists may not be as big of an issue as you think, as long as you don't share you real email with untrusted apps (eg: only use email aliases from something like Simplelogin or anonaddy).
Nevertheless you could always setup your own domain with an email service, which lets you more easily migrate platforms.
I believe simplelogin lets you change your mailbox for aliases so in an even that you are changing email address, you can redirect those too.
Oh i guess thats what they meant by blacklist, was not thinking of ip reputation? If that's the issue, I have never experienced it, I believe there are tools you can use to see if your ip is bad and in that case u can probably ask ur isp for a new one (if u pay for static ip).
My other advice for using your own domain still stands, makes it a lot easier to swap around providers.
I dont see any problem with AI coding. It can be done without the editor supporting it by just asking for a function like please implement a sort function given a list of numbers.
Proton code is open source, so all AI agents have already read everything. You as user just have to do the code review, fix it and test. I am not seeing any problem here.
self-hosting email, text based clients and a deeper understanding of the protocol made me start to love email. I didn't think it was possible to love email.
I want to make posts that include video, and those videos I wish to upload on my own webserver to not rely on external links or expiration dates.
But I fear for bandwith, and I want to know if the videos will be cached on the instance or if every user will be a full web request of the video (that I can of course mitigate via good compression, and/or having a dedicated CDN that won't empty my pockets).
This depends on the instance of the video being used. Some instances clone a copy of the video, some use proxies, and some send the link directly to the user. I don't recommend it if you have limited bandwidth.
Parody of a popular clip from the American-Malayalee television series 'Akkarakazhchakal' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkara_Kazhchakal) advertising Debian. Those unaware, watch the the original...
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
👤 Quando parli di Linux, Fediverso, Privacy, ecc ... ti guardano strano
Ci sono momenti in cui ti accorgi che il mondo attorno a te non parla la tua lingua. Non quella fatta di parole, ma quella fatta di passioni. Quando dici "sto lavorando su un server", "gestisco un'istanza Fediverse", "mi piace la decentralizzazione", vedi subito gli sguardi cambiare.
Ti osservano come se stessi parlando in codice binario, come se stessi perdendo tempo in un mondo tutto tuo, inutile. E invece no. Quel mondo ha valore, senso, umanità, costruzione, appartenenza.
🧠 Non mi sto isolando: mi sto esprimendo
Quando scegli Linux, il software libero, il Fediverso, non lo fai per moda. Lo fai perché credere nella libertà digitale oggi è un atto rivoluzionario. Lo fai perché vuoi essere parte di qualcosa che non è controllato da pochi, ma costruito da molti, insieme.
Ma per chi ti sta vicino e non conosce questo mondo, sei solo quello "fissato col computer". Se poi – come me – sei anche in carrozzina, allora l’etichetta è servita: "poverino, si rifugia lì perché non ha altro da fare."
E invece no. Quello è il mio modo di essere utile. È lì che metto le mie energie, le mie idee, la mia voglia di contribuire a qualcosa.
🤝 La rete a cui contribuisco nella costruzione è fatta di persone vere
Nel Fediverso ho trovato relazioni autentiche, collaborazione, ascolto. Nel gestire server, istanze, spazi condivisi… ritrovo me stesso. In un mondo che spesso ti fa sentire inutile, lì posso essere parte attiva.
Non serve camminare per muoversi nel mondo digitale. Basta voler esserci davvero.
🙏 Non chiedo comprensione. Chiedo solo rispetto
Non tutti devono capire cosa faccio. Ma almeno, non giudicatelo. Non riducete tutto a "passatempi da nerd", a "roba da smanettoni". Perché per me – e per tanti altri – questo è un modo di vivere, di partecipare, di resistere.
E se qualcuno là fuori si è mai sentito guardato "diverso" per quello che ama, voglio dirti: non sei solo.
Se ti ritrovi in queste parole, rispondi, condividi, racconta. Perché non siamo pochi. Siamo solo troppo sparsi per farci sentire.
ehi che belle cose hai scritto, condivido in pieno e anche se di informatica e computer mi interesso da molto profano come sono (anche se da un bel po' di tempo: il primo incontro con linux fu negli anni novanta ed ero incuriositissimo) la vedo allo stesso modo come scrivi tu. Grazie 🙏 @ghim727
Anch'io condivido l'esser buon esemplare di linuxaro schiappa da almeno 10 anni. Ed anche se senza vanto, perché poi in ottica di riparabilità... 🙁 , la ritengo un'ottima strategia per insistere sui valori della decentralizzazione, cioè sull'uso appropriato di formati e licenze.
Ricordo quando provai a spiegare cos'è Mastodon ad un server Discord di giocatori di picchiaduro, e mi dicevano:
"Ah, ma Mastodon è un social per attivisti? No grazie"
Un discapito più stupido di così non l'ho mai visto. è la conseguenza devastante di quando ti ci abitui nei posti centralizzati dell'internet.
Ma ormai io ho ceduto nel tentare di portare qualcuno a conoscere Mastodon. Prima o poi se ne riparlerà quando l'internet centralizzato perderà credenza grazie a Trump.
@Snow Lemmy non sono uno smanettone, nel senso che non so programmare, ho qualche infarinatura di HTML e con fatica riesco a gestire il mio blog che comunque è una mia creatura, ma per gli altri sono quello "esperto in computer", che poi non sia vero non ha importanza, magari so qualcosa più di loro che in informatica sono fermi all'asilo, ma anch'io a volte ho avuto la stessa impressione tua. Quando ad esempio scrivo di linux mi sento dire "troppo complicato", no non è vero, è complicato spiegarlo a parole, come tutte le cose semplici, ma non è complicato usarlo. Provate a descrivere l'acqua che bolle, una cosa banalissima, non è mica facile, dovete parlare di chimica, fisica, termica, le molecole che impazziscono, ma cosa sono le molecole? Una cosa semplice come l'acqua che bolle spiegata diventa roba da Einstein, eppure basta aprire il rubinetto, riempire una pentola, accendere il gas e mettere la pentola sul fornello, un gesto che facciamo quotidianamente senza neppure pensarci, ma se devo dare una spiegazione la cosa cambia. Così è Linux, più facile a farlo che a dirlo, eppure per tutti (o quasi) è fuori dalla propria portata.
Da una parte c’è Qwant: elegante, europeo, semplice da usare... ma con un piccolo segreto: per anni ha preso in prestito i risultati da Bing. Negli ultimi tempi sta cercando di diventare più indipendente (anche grazie a Ecosia), ma il suo codice resta chiuso e un po’ misterioso. 🤫
Dall’altra parte c’è SearXNG: 💻 open-source, trasparente, senza tracking, personalizzabile al 100% e, se vuoi, pure ospitabile sul tuo server. Nessuna pubblicità invasiva, nessuna azienda curiosa a frugare tra le tue ricerche… insomma: la vera privacy è qui. 🚀
SearXNG: Richiede configurazione o uso di istanze pubbliche
📌 Conclusione? Se vuoi qualcosa di pronto e immediato → Qwant. Se invece la privacy per te non è uno slogan ma un requisito, SearXNG è il tuo migliore amico (anche se dovrai sporcarti un po’ le mani). 😉
By the way, if you're using software that supports following users(Like MBin), you can follow them @ecosia@mastodon.social. Their last post seems to be from a month ago, so I hope it's not abounded
European search engines Qwant and Ecosia said on Wednesday that they have both started serving search queries through an index they developed together, Staan, which aims to be a cheaper, more privacy-focused alternative to Google and Bing.
Last year, French privacy-focused search engine Qwant struck a joint venture with German non-profit search engine Ecosia, to develop a European search index. Called European Search Perspective (EUSP), the JV now aims to serve around 50% of French queries and 33% of German queries by the end of the year.
Qwant said it is using the new index to power some of its features, like AI summaries for search, and Ecosia has plans to add some AI features soon to its platform, too.
EUSP is also in talks with companies to spur the adoption of its index for enabling search within apps. Notably, it is targeting chatbots, presenting Staan as a cheaper alternative to Google and Bing.
“If you’re using ChatGPT or any other AI chatbot, they all do knowledge grounding with web search […] our index can power deep research and AI summary features. Google and Bing’s solutions are also pricey, and our index can offer power search features at a tenth of the cost,” Christian Kroll, CEO of Ecosia, told TechCrunch.
EUSP, like Proton, is pushing to develop a European tech stack that doesn’t rely on technology from the U.S. or China.
“The timing could not be more urgent. The outcome of the 2024 U.S. election has reminded European policymakers and innovators just how exposed Europe remains when it comes to core digital infrastructure. Much of Europe’s search, cloud, and AI layers are built on American Big Tech stacks, putting entire sectors – from journalism to climate tech – at the mercy of political or commercial agendas,” the companies said in a statement.
Kroll added that through this index, combined with European privacy laws, EUSP can offer a more privacy-friendly search solution as compared to its U.S. counterparts.
European search engines Qwant and Ecosia said on Wednesday that they have both started serving search queries through an index they developed together, Staan, that aims to be a cheaper, more privacy-focused alternative to Google and Bing.
It is an attempt at legitimizing it to prevent diplomatic action against it.
Israel is past the point where its allies have had elections and, generally, has either had people elected who maintained the status quo or allowed Israel to do more than the previous administration. Israel can now eat Gaza in diplomatic peace.
I feel like MX Linux has been at or near the top of Distrowatch forever, but I literally never hear it mentioned elsewhere on the web. Is it just people literally asking this question for them selves, clicking on it and bumping it up? Has anyone tried MX to see if it lives up?
I asked because I saw a video talking about Catchy and Edeavour, and had them near the top which I don't think of as super old, so it seemed like somehow newer ones here moving up the list.
I used MX Linux all of 2024 because I had previously installed antiX on an old netbook and I really liked the tools it came with that meant I didn't have to touch the console too much, and MX Linux is a sister project based on antiX sharing the same custom utilities. And I have no clue why it rose to the top of distrowatch, but once it was there it stayed there because people click the top distros on the list in the sidebar, which in turn gives it clicks making it stay on top. I do still believe it's a good starter distro, it's just that once you get a bit more comfortable with linux the old Debian packages become more and more annoying.
MX has become my go-to for low-power, outdated computers.
It runs on a toaster. It installs on 64-bit systems with 32-bit EFI. The base install supports touchscreens. It fits on a 16GB SSD with room to spare. 2GB RAM is plenty. It has an active development community.
If your computer is less 5 years old, there are better options. But if you're trying to keep a Chromebook out of the junk yard, MX is a good choice.
Why? What makes it good for þat? Is it because þe kernel is trim?
I ask, because MX isn't þe base for any leading LXC "mini" containers, AFAIK. Alpine was þe top choice for a long time, alþough þere are competitors for minimum-sized containers. And while containers aren't fully bootable images, and more is needed, probably þe biggest addition is þe kernel. If you stay away from systemd, you can add dinit, metalog, and crond for a smidge over 1 mibibyte (750Kib, 47Kib, and 230Kib respectively, vs systemd's 36MiB).
So I'm wondering: what makes MX so good for old computers?
Oh, now come on… 5 years is hardly where a system becomes “old.” It’s 2025 right now. Using a system made in 2020 hardly differs at all from one made yesterday. I’d say a cutoff for considering slim distros would be more like ten years ago. I’ve got some systems that are older than that even and they blaze. Only a few things really put that kind of thing to the test: games and heavy graphics editing. Am I wrong?
Indeed! It depends what you’re doing on it. Because there’s a wealth of computer activities that have not increased in actual power demand in decades. Sure they keep making software more bloated to keep the need up, but if you throw an efficient distro on a machine and only need it for basic office type things like office suites, email etc. and even basic graphics editing, you can use a 25 year old machine and do just fine. It will run, and it will do the job well, and you’re never going to feel like it’s slow. Maybe not as glitzy as newer ones, but that is where you’re already beyond need and into want.
The only things that are tricky are internet connections with anything using web protocols, due to certificate tech etc. and that can be handled by using a still-maintained browser such as a Firefox fork, and email can be done via software like Thunderbird, which doesn’t have to render the bloated front-ends of many email providers.
The issue ends up being a hardware limitation. I can't quite recall the specific issue but there was some sort of encoding thing on the CPU that prevented me from using most apps without severe performance issues. Of course browsing and so on was fine. I ended up using it as a server for some time (20 Years old at this point) and the energy costs were bad enough that I decided to put it to rest. Its now part of my own little museum of old ass computers that I let guests use for mostly for viewing pdfs and boardgame rules. I tell my family to ship me their old laptops and stuff I got like 15 of them at this point, and I have in fact used all 15 of them simultaneously when I invite a lot of nerds over. Most of them are running Fedora Atomic, a couple are running MX Linux, Alpine, and Damn Small Linux. I intend on going through the small distros at some point and do a comparison
Distrowatch popularity is a pointless metric. IIRC they measure clicks on their own site as popularity. That means that people that just want to check out that distro near the top that they never heard of actually ensure that it stays near the top.
I am using Linux since the 90s, used Ubuntu a lot at one time, then started using MX linux, 16.1 iirc was my first install. Then I continue to use it, I have always like Xfce (coming from mwm and such), and no systemd, no snap, no flatpak etc. MX is very stable, use the latest package in .deb format. I am using it for almost 10 years now, 24/7, I am using it as my work PC too.
There was a pretty good indication that Manjaro was click-botting it a few years back, then Mint, and now MX. While I actually like Manjaro, that team is totally not above having done such a thing. And pretty much as soon as the rumors about that started, it mysteriously started dropping in the ranking...
Why? For a long time, DW was considered a source of distro recommendation and popularity. With these "attacks", it's become a community joke and not considered much of a real indication.
I cannot understand why anyone would be so childish. It’s not even as though money is involved; it’s some kind of juvenile popularity contest by people who clearly don’t believe their work speaks for itself, and clearly don’t take pride in their product.
Manjaro defaults to a defective dock that is riddled with bugs if you customize it. I broke it dozens of times just by making some minor modifications in the preferences. It also slows down a little gradually. That’s only minor but the dock thing really irked me. Really? Can’t just get the dock settings finished so the thing completely works? Anyway, that was a few years ago and I haven’t touched it since.
Apparently my experiance has been the outlier here but I've seen a ton of MX talk in the last year. Even to the point of it being somewhat commonly recommended alongside mint for beginners but on older hardware
I think there is no ranking site that can be 100% trusted.
That said, I trust linux-hardware.org a bit more than distro watch, even if it's not as popular, because you have to intentionally download an app/script for it to scan and upload your distro/hardware data (so no page clicks or just traffic, you must have the distro installed), and if you repeatedly try to upload the same distro/hardware data, it doesn't count multiple uploads on its statistics, if they are not at least a month apart.
Edit: and even on linux-hardware you have strange results like OpenMandriva and ROSA as Distros on top 15, and I have never heard of them outside there, and from what I can find they are somewhat popular in Russia and some parts of Europe
But that just tells you all the people that have visited the site and downloaded a script.
I find it hard to believe that OpenMandriva is the most popular distro. I distrohop quite a bit and never even came across it (currently using Nobora on my PC, KDE Neon in the living room, tumbleweed on the kids laptops (though I may move them to silverblue or another immutable), and Pop on my laptop. It takes me a minute when I sit at any console to remember which package manager is the right one)
If you want honest results of actual use on general-purpose PCs...I'd wish for something like Alexa Page Rankings that could get deep enough to know Distro, but that's not possible (I don't think, without every distro having its own User Agent signature in the browsers), and Amazon bought Alexa and discontinued those services
As I said on the first line, no ranking of any kind can be trusted 100%, I pointed out an alternative to distrowatch, and why I would trust it a bit more, not saying I really trust it, or that I believe every result.
It is less popular so it could be a case like OpenMandriva has it integrated to upload automatically for all its users by default, or they found another way to game that ranking.
When I see any ranking, I do research when I see a distro that is suspiciously positioned, and I haven't heard about outside the place I saw it referenced, and even so I always stick to mainline distros.
Honest results would need a standard way that every distro adopts and make an opt-out (not opt-in) regular upload thing similar to what linux-hardware.org does, and be actively trying to mitigate or deny certain distros or specific actors from tampering with the results, and we don't have that.
Page rankings, clicks, scripts, etc. are not enough if every device doesn't ping it in a legitimate way (fake user agent or other means), and there is always the case of people that will opt-out or block this as they don't want to be tracked.
On your point of something like Alexa Page Rankings, the thing I would add is that, at least for me, if it is a ranking shown by a corporation, it is not trustworthy.
Oh for sure, but at least Alexa's rankings were rather transparent and somewhat trusted built up on a reputation.
I hadn't even realized Amazon bought and discontinued the service, but that's clearly exactly the type of instance that needs to be guarded against. I'm sure that a big part of why Amazon wanted that Alexa gone was because it would show rising competition, and Jeff can't have that.
and even on linux-hardware you have strange results like OpenMandriva and ROSA as Distros on top 15, and I have never heard of them outside there
As you have said they are REALLY popular in russia, and that alone makes a great ammount of people, specially since they still support i386 and older architectures with full support, thats why ALT linux is also really popular.
I tried MX a few times on different machines maybe a few weeks/months apart. Every time I did because of it being up there at the top and I was like “What am I not seeing?” It’s a decent distro, yeah, but some of the customization is distracting to be honest. I can say it’s good but the top? For what… more than a year or two even, it’s been in the top few.
I installed MX on an old Acer tablet/laptop Hybrid. It's one of the few that would run due to its 32bit bootloader but 64bit system. It works fine, but I wasn't blown away either.
I’ve found two distros I enjoy on really old stuff: Bodhi and Q4. They run fairly well and for the footprint, they’re pretty feature-rich. I love the Moshka desktop on Bodhi.
Distrowatch ranking is just the distros that are more commonly searched on the site. The FAQ says "The page Hit Ranking represents hits per day by unique visitors". It's just an attempt to see what's more popular among visitors.
Yeah, maybe there is a feedback loop where people will click on the top one just to see why it is on top, and in doing so they give the clicks necessary to remain on the top.
First, as MX is catered mostly for a bit aged computers, it is likely the demographics of users are a bit more aged that other distros like CachyOS (which by the way, it is now in the crest of a wave, signaling Distrowatch ranking is not correlated with market share.)
Also, the fact that many of us are pondering about MX's high ranking, we are also clinking on it more that we would on Ubuntu or Mint so feeding the impressions count.
Similarly, when a post like this is brought up, a bunch of use go to Distrowatch and click on it to see info about MX.
Also a regional popularity must be at place... distrowatch probably is more prevalent is certain countries that MX is favored. I don't see many in Asia using MX for instance, so western distrowatch distorts its global popularity. For instance if 3 users in the US use Mint and 3 MX but in China, that they barely go to distrowatch, 3 use Mint and 0 MX, distrowach would rank globally MX and Mint as same while in reality, Mint is clearly in top globally.
Of course, it is also likely MX developers have a bit of incentive of clicking on Distrowatch for their baby... I don't find it particularly too bad since many developers are doing far worse things... Using bots and dozens of different IPs would trespass the ethical boundaries for me though! MX is not the only ones that could potentially be doing this... it is not possible that Arch or Kubuntu are raked way bellow Q4OS, Lite, or Bluestar for instance. I see some artifacts among top famed distros too. It reminds me of the VW diesel scandal... VW was cheeting, but all other car makers were manipulating in one way or another their emissions too, it is just that US found it convenient to go for the foreign low hanging fruit.
Best thing is for us to stop reading those rankings as anything more than distros that trend up and down and that is it. I categorize all distros we all hear about, from MX to Cachy, from Nobara to deepin all as equally competitive and the difference just catered to the needs of different users. The more unwarranted credit we give to these rankings, the more incentive we are given to manipulations.
Distrowatch lists MX origin as "Greece, USA", but likely have developers from both the US and the EU mainly.
I would not consider MX a branch of antiX. Some developers are also working on antiX so they likely share the same ideology (mainly anti-capitalism), but while antiX is explicitly affirming so, MX, instead, keeps a neutral political tone on its portal and its communications on everything non-linux related.
I had used MX and it is a well-rounded distro, totally recommended in in a computer older than a decade, you don't like systemd, like Debian but dislike anything Ubuntu or if you like any of the specific tools they ship with MX with. Also, knowing the ideology of some of their developers, if you despise big-brother, this distro should be less likely to be compromised than, lets say Fedora or Nobara.
I've been wondering the same for a couple of years now. I tried it once, and it's garbage. I never hear about it in forums, YouTube, Mastodon, Lemmy or any other place, but they are always top 10. WTF? 🤣
I use MX since years. I did distrohopping before, started by Manjaro then Mint, NixOS, MX, Alpine... One day Archlabs, my distro at the time, was closed, I had to switch quickly and MX was an obvious choice because I can have a nice Xfce setup out of the box and it was the most reliable of all distro I tried without being a fork of a fork like Mint. One day I asked about a package update on the forum, and a maintainer quickly answered me that it shouldnt be a problem and the package was added in some test repo. MX is not a scam, I dont know why this distro dont make noise on the classic linux places, maybe because Mint took the place of the easy beginner distro ? Or also the average MX prefer to use its computer to do stuff, than talking about his OS on the internet 😆
MX is a nice distro. However, it is also true that it is just Debian with XFCE, KDE, or Fluxbox on top.
Your comment about not “being a fork of a fork” is ironic. MX Linux is a fork of AntiX which is a fork of Debian.
This is a not a criticism of MX. I love EndeavourOS and it is just Arch with a different installer and some sensible defaults. But I can also understand why some people look at MX and wonder why they don’t just install Debian with XFCE directly.
MX is a new name for Mepis. Part of MX and AntiX contributors are the same persons. MX got kernel compiled by AntiX, that particularily suits old hardware. Also the Xfce setup is more modern comparing to the default provided by Debian.
Custom Links and Pages in Loops
Dan’s account on Loops.Video does in fact federate. Here it is, as seen from Mastodon.
RotatingParts
in reply to AxiomShell • • •phoronix.com/news/Intel-More-O…
Additional Intel Linux Drivers Left Orphaned & Maintainers Let Go
www.phoronix.comMangoholic
in reply to RotatingParts • • •like this
sunzu2 likes this.
sunzu2
in reply to Mangoholic • • •I am sure they are not doing layoff on Israel the genocide state needs these jobs more!
US taxpayer is a useful idiot who funds their share buy backs 🤡
tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]
in reply to AxiomShell • • •I chuckled about this like the sicko that I am, then remembered my server is an old Intel... Fuk
Come to think of it, isn't Intel CPUs running some kind of Linux like... The backbone of the entire Internet?