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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • It’s not a bad shout for beginners by any stretch, but it has a massively overdone reputation for beginner-friendliness that is not really deserved

    Cinnamon, for one. Yes, it looks kind of like Windows. But the similarity is surface deep, and it’s also pretty janky- by far the biggest resource hog of all the main DEs, lots of weird snagging bugs and stability issues. I’ve always found it very unsatisfying.

    I personally use MATE quite a lot and I enjoy it, but I wouldn’t really be recommending that to Windows users either; it’s pretty old school at this point.

    Keep recommending Mint to people by all means, though. If you like it and it’s what you use, that’s still a great recommendation. There is fundamentally no reason why beginners shouldn’t use it as their first distro.



  • Intel as a company isn’t going anywhere any time soon; they’re just too big, with too many resources, not to do at least OK.

    They have serious challenges in their approach and performance to engineering, but short of merging with someone else they’ll find their niche. For as long as x86-derived architectures remain current (i.e. if AMD is still chugging along with them) they’ll continue to put out their own chips, and occasionally they’ll manage to get an edge.

    The real question would be what happens if x86 finally ceases to be viable. In theory there’s nothing stopping Intel (or AMD) pivoting to ARM or RISC-V (or fucking POWER for that matter) if that’s where the market goes. Losing the patent/licensing edge would sting, though.



  • There’s nothing truly like a Framework, because they’re a whole unique category of one. But if you just want something that is user serviceable there are other options.

    I’m a big fan of my Star Labs laptop. It came with complete disassembly and reassembly instructions, and pretty much every part is available to buy individually as a replacement. It’s not magically “plug and go” like a Framework, but if you’re comfortable with a screwdriver you should have no trouble.

    They’re a Linux specialist small independent producer, too. And being based in the UK, imports to Switzerland should be more straightforward than imports from the States.


  • The corollary of that line of thought though is that by preventing tech companies from dabbling in microprocessors you reduce competition in the microprocessor space- a sector which has proven very prone to the formation of monopolies/duopolies. If anything, we want to encourage more new competitors in that space, not fewer.

    Also, it’d be essentially arbitrary. Is it OK for Apple to design its own microprocessors, but not Amazon- and if so, why? Is Google allowed if it uses them in phones like Apple, but not if it uses them in data centres like Amazon?



  • The UK isn’t quite that far, but it’s absolutely the dominant text messaging and calling app in the UK. Nobody uses the built in Android or Apple tools anymore, and I’m as likely to receive a WhatsApp voice call as an actual phone call these days.

    I have Signal on my phone, but I’ve literally never had a cause to use it; I’ve simply got no contacts on there.





  • A small set-top box (essentially a Steam Deck with the screen, controls and batteries removed, and with components that don’t have the space restrictions that come with a mobile device) would still be an interesting proposition. Particularly if they partnered with the main video streaming services to port their apps across, and implemented Chromecast/AirPlay support.

    I can see a market for it, as a “Chromecast and Apple TV competitor that also plays all your games”.


  • It’s a command that pulls a whole bunch of useful system information and sticks it on one page.

    Really, the biggest use of it is for showing other people your system- especially showing off. It’s a staple of “look at my system” brag posts.

    But to be generous, there are (small) legit use cases for it. If you manage a lot of machines, and you plausibly don’t know the basic system information for whatever you happen to be working on in this instant, it’s a program that will give you most of what you could want to know in a single command. Yes, 100% of the information could be retrieved just as easily using other standard commands, but having it in a single short command, outputting to a single overview page, formatted to be easily readable at a glance, is no bad thing.


  • I looked at Dino and another one mentioned here and they look dated. Windows 95 feel with better anti-aliasing, rounder corners, but same colors? Gtk 2 or something?

    Looks like a standard GTK4 app to me. Whether or not that is to someone’s tastes is obviously subjective, but it uses the same design language as every other GTK app under the sun.

    GTK apps always look out of place on Windows though. Looks far more sensible in its native environment (i.e. *nix running GNOME).




  • Realistically Google Search and Google Maps don’t provide anything unique that isn’t provided by competitors, although a) they may provide a superior experience, and b) the competitors are not necessarily much more palatable (that is, Bing Search and Bing Maps are hardly a great ethical improvement).

    YouTube is probably the only Google service where this is a genuine monopoly of sorts. That is, content that is on YouTube is not generally available on other platforms, and if you want to watch that content you have to watch it on YouTube. We might all live for the day when all content creators are dual-hosting in PeerTube or the like too, but we’re a long long way from that right now.

    Although I write that as someone who only very rarely actually uses YouTube, because largely the content isn’t to my interest. Other than my local football club’s channel, I can’t think of anything on there that I actually seek out.



  • An EULA is nominally a binding contract, in the sense that it is presented as such. No court has ever ruled and given precedent to the effect that EULAs are universally non-binding (because companies have always settled out of court for cases where it looks like they’re going to lose).

    It is well understood that the arguments against EULAs being binding are solid ones, and that the reason why so many cases settle is because companies are not confident of winning cases on the strength of EULA terms, but you still need to go through the rigmarole of attending court and presenting your defence case. That’s how court cases work.

    Edit: And perhaps more to the point of the OP, if you want to sue a company over some defect or service failure, it’ll be them who introduce the EULA as a defence, and it’ll be for you/your lawyers to argue against it. Which adds complexity and time to what might otherwise have been a straightforward claim, even if you win.