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Latest Comments by Adutchman
Western Digital announce the SN770M NVMe for handhelds like the Steam Deck
13 Sep 2023 at 7:43 am UTC

Wasn't WD the company that recently shipped new broken ssds? Or am I mixing uo companies here.

KDE Plasma 6 to launch in February 2024
9 Sep 2023 at 8:57 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: GuestGetting KDE 6 in Feb? My birthday is in Feb! Coincidence? Yes.

I can't wait to take it for a spin. Though I still prefer Gnome, I love seeing what the KDE project puts out, good stuff.
Same here! The perfect birthday present!

Linux kernel 6.5 released
30 Aug 2023 at 7:17 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Linux_Rocks*kernel panic*

*Colonel panic* [External Link]

Epic Games' new exclusive deal gives devs 100% for 6 months
24 Aug 2023 at 5:44 am UTC Likes: 2

What I don't understand, is why they won't just hire a few good developers and make the platform enticing for users: if they would have feature parity with Steam, I would be a lot less hostile to them. Money can't be the issue because EG store has been a money sink for as long as it has existed.

Fedora considering adding in 'privacy-preserving' telemetry
9 Jul 2023 at 7:29 am UTC Likes: 4

I do agree with most people that this should be opt-in, but I disagree that telemtry cannot be private. In a literal sense this is true, but I don't think that Fedora knowing which setting I use is privacy-invading. Data is so valuable for developers to see what all users are doing, not just power users. No need to do as if Fedora is evil just for collecting a bit of user data. Imo, they should let the user choose at install, let them know what they collect, but let the default option be on. This way, the telemetry is on with more people and the data is actually useful.

Framework gives more detail on their AMD Ryzen laptop
6 May 2023 at 4:06 pm UTC

Quoting: PixelDropAs someone who uses a lot of AMD desktop CPUs, and then precedes to build computers for his wife, family, and friends with Intel CPUs because they tend to be vastly more stable. I tend to always recommend Intel for people who care about stability. At this point I think I keep buying AMD CPUs out of some morbid sense of masochism, and misguided hope that they'll get better like all the hype, buzz, and benchmarks get you excited to believe.

It would be nice if benchmarks and tech site reviews actually meant anything in the real world, but from my experience using systems side by side for entire years at a time, they usually don't and are more often than not a poor representation of (at least my) real world experience with hardware.

Though I actually think it might be the motherboards/chipset more than the CPUs. AMD motherboards even when I'm spending a small fortune on "the best" of them seem to be the root cause of almost all their most annoying issues. Whereas even relatively cheap Intel motherboards tend to last a long time, and have very few bios and chipset driver related issues. They also tend to get more updates and fixes issues faster.

Of course since picking your CPU also decides your motherboard/chipset options it's one in the same from a decision making stand point. You just rarely hear people talk about why they went with x CPU because x motherboard/chipset is better. It's pretty much always the other way around, because the CPU has all the big numbers to brag about.
I am running a Linux machine with only AMD since I was sick and tired of Nvidia shenanigans on Linux and I haven't had any issues I can think of, except the recent issue with random slowdowns which is now fixed. As such, I am genuinely interested to hear which kinds of issues are more common with AMD boards than Intel ones. My reason for preferring an AMD laptop has to do with my perception that AMD integrated graphics are miles ahead of Intel CPUs (I do not know if this is still true though), as it means you have a middle ground between Intel Integrated Graphics and an expensive and energy intensive dedicated GPU from either Nvidia or AMD. FYI, I am not planning to buy a new laptop any time soon, but I do keep an eye on Framework.

Roblox intentionally blocking Linux with Wine in their new update
23 Apr 2023 at 9:08 am UTC

Quoting: iskaputt
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: 1xokIt is sad that the children only find Windows and MacOS, if they can still get their hands on a desktop computer at all.

As far as possible, I equip all the children in my area with Linux computers (including Steam Deck). Modified Minecraft in particular runs much better on it than on Windows or MacOS.
Public education forces children to use microsoft products, microsoft office in particular. They teach chilren to use that, and require them to use that. I have no idea, why libre office is not used as the main office suite. I am not talking about rare cases with some excel built-in math functions, but 99.999999999% of cases, where libre office is good. That's why microsoft is so generous at providing "education" licences for free, of cheap price, so people don't even think or look for alternatives.
As much as I'm regularly telling myself "don't complain, LO is free software", LibreOffice is a !@#$%^& $#@! show. Unless it's some extremely basic stuff, I'm having issues with LO practically every time I try to use it for anything serious (and so do friends and colleagues). Doing a presentation for work with non-default layout? Have fun. Need SVG with hidden elements? Hope you're on that latest version. Doing anything remotely fancy in calc, like how about multiple data series in a chart with labels? Are you crazy? Creating (or god forbid hoping for it to already exist) a standardized letter layout in write? Good luck. Some of the issues I encounter have been a thing for years and sometimes you find comments from ages ago telling you "yeah, not a thing, but you can do this and that !@#$ backwards workaround". Doing stuff in LO is just way too often, way too unintuitive and cumbersome.

The current MS Office incarnation could be equally terrible or even worse (haven't touched it in many years), but I'd take 2010 era MSO over today's LO pretty much every day of the week.

What @PixelDrop wrote is very close to my experience in, sadly, too many cases. Have someone that is content with a browser, full stop? Great. My mother is happily running a Debian system as well (not like there are no problems with garbage abandoned printer drivers or anything...). Everyone else usually has one or more pieces of "functionality" (some software) for which it's impossible to find an equivalent on Linux.

Sorry for the rant, but LO touches a sore spot of mine and makes me appreciate the "WHY THE !@#$ IS THIS !@#% A THING" feelings I often have in my Linux life and usually successfully suppress after a short time.
Fully agreed. The sad thing is: Onlyoffice is not much better because it lacks a lot of features. It also doesn't really want to fully embrace FOSS (see Nextcloud Onlyoffice support). It is to the point where I see Google Docs as the only true alternative which is incredably sad. I personally use Markdown and Latex, but you can't expect the average Joe to learn that

Xwayland Video Bridge created to improve Linux screen sharing
24 Mar 2023 at 7:56 am UTC

Quoting: zany130
Quoting: JordanPlayz158I would recommend WebCord for the discord specific example but XWayland Video Bridge is better as you don't need independent forks of each app but if there is a FOSS fork and/or implementation of an app that has support for native Wayland, I'd say that is the better choice.
Webcord doesn't support game activities, nor does it support discord mods like better discord.

Used to use both the native client and web cord because of this.

Discord should just really update their electron version and use pipewire sharing 😔
I'm in the same boat, so I'm really happy this exists. It was pretty much the only reason I still sometimes switched to X11

Flathub in 2023, they have some big plans
8 Mar 2023 at 9:04 am UTC

Quoting: eldakingWhile those things are, in principle, all positive I still worry a bit that this move might end up going in a less than ideal direction.

Flathub is already pretty great now. And most app stores are complete garbage, filled with proprietary shovelware full of malicious functionality (spying, ads, lock-in...). Making flathub into an app store could easily mean a huge downgrade.

Similarly, Linux apps - in particular the simple apps that you'd get from an app store¹ - are already pretty damn good. PDF viewers, torrent clients, media players, image programs, system utilities, text editors, browsers, compression tools, it's all good; the only reason Linux isn't better than other systems is because open-source apps are generally multiplatform and make their way to Windows at least. It is definitely fair that those great apps could make their developers some cash, but I don't know if the "economic incentive" (or profit motive) would make for better apps. It would be an incentive for shovelware, for allowing bullshit into the repos/store, for showing ads "to help devs"... in my experience, the FOSS apps made with no expectation of payment are generally better than the commercial alternatives, despite the obvious advantages the latter enjoys. In the end, it depends on what posture Flathub will have - what it will allow, what it will promote, who it will hear, etc. But this "make everything into a market, it is the best thing always" mentality is suspicious.

¹ For big professional software suites like Adobe or Autodesk, they definitely aren't waiting for payment processing in an app store. For specific things like games, it's not like Flathub will replace the dedicated stores. And for many things like my city's bus app, local university or restaurant apps, and many others the barrier is not the distribution, just adoption of the system and people giving a fuck about it
I think the main goal is to allow for easy donation, which is a problem because open source requires time and effort. Making it easier to donate will reward devs for their work, which is a net positive in my book

Paradox announce Cities: Skylines 2, plus a The Sims-like game and more
7 Mar 2023 at 7:28 am UTC

Quoting: ElectricPrismCities: Skylines I was published with Tencent [External Link]

Is Tencent still involved with Cities: Skylines II ???
It says in the article you linked yourself that Tencent released CS in China, so no worries