Posts by ianbetteridge

New Jolla phone and Sailfish 5 offer a break from iOS-Android monotony

Re: GrapheneOS feel attacked

I like Graphene, but it's developers really do appear to be quite prickly.

Game on! Penguin levels up as Linux finally cracks 3% on Steam

Re: Oh how I wish...

Sadly, I have reached the stage of my career when I spend more time in Excel than Word. How did that happen?

Snap out of it: Canonical on Flatpak friction, Core Desktop, and the future of Ubuntu

Re: Just do it

I think you're correctly highlighting the unproven thing about immutable distros. There are clear advantages in some areas, but is reliability really one of them? If it's not, you end up with the Apple approach of "take it back to the shop"... which would be a bit difficult with Linux!

Re: Just do it

You have to remember, though, that for most users, almost everything about every operating system is pretty opaque. A lot of people want a system which requires zero tinkering, because they want to do things with their computer rather than do things *to* the computer.

If immutable distros meet the needs of people who just want something that works reliably without tinkering, great! The world is big enough for many different approaches.

Ubuntu 25.10 lands: Rustier and Wayland-ier, but Flatpak is broken

Re: Angst

When using Ubuntu -- which is most of the time these days -- I generally prefer using Snap packages. The launch speed issues are mostly gone, and I have fast-enough hardware that it's not really an issue for me anyway.

But boy oh boy 25.10 has some issues in that regard. Case in point: the Snap version of Tuba (the excellent Mastodon version) simply won't launch. The Flatpak is fine. That seems... odd.

Just as an FYI, as of today Flatpak support seems to work fine.

Zorin OS 18 beta makes Linux look like anything but Linux

Re: staying on 17.3

Fair enough, but if you are the kind of person likely to be installing Zorin, you're very much not the kind of person who is ever going to remove Pipewire.

Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire

"Wayland is being pushed by the same people who actively prevent improvement to X11"

I think, if you're going to make a statement like that, you ought to tell us who "those people" are.

Re: Code talks

If you think that the repercussions of slavery are not still being felt today, you really don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Re: Code talks

"kinda how you see it" demonstrates you really don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Re: Code talks

"They basically let the bigots hire more bigots"

and...

"Diversity needs to be organic"

How do you propose to get to your second state from your first one? Bigots hiring bigots who just hire more bigots aren't going to suddenly start to hire more diversely "organically".

Re: Code talks

"Agreed that I don't like to see the politicisation of software. However, a large segment of the loony left have made that point rather moot."

Ah, the "they did it first" argument.

LastOS slaps neon paint on Linux Mint and dares you to run Photoshop

Re: 1998

"It Just Works..."

For you. That's the important caveat.

And you know what, that's fine! But it's not true for everyone. Any time you have to reach for the command line – it's not "just works" for most people. Any time you have to do any kind of config in a text file - not "just works" for most people.

Part of the problem is that Linux users are perpetually stuck in the 1990s. Consider the sheer volume of comments on any article here which strays into Windows claiming that the peak of user interface design was Windows 97. And Linux "just works" to the same degree, largely, that Windows 97 "just worked". Mostly, it's fine. Run into something which requires tweaking - which you will do every now and then - and you're going to have to get a knowledgeable friend in. Or try and Google it, which will lead you down a rabbit hole of bad advice and waste a lot of time, if you're not careful.

None of this is *bad*. And for a couple of non-technical friends of mine, Linux works fine. But for a few months they needed hand-holding through it, and I would welcome any effort to make that handholding less.

Most modern operating systems – macOS, Windows 11, ChromeOS -- are fairly forgiving. Users can fumble around and find workarounds for doing things, even if they're not the optimal way of doing it. Linux is not forgiving, not at all. Try the same approach and it's still remarkably easy to break things in a way which will cost you a long time (I know, I've done it).

All of which is to say: I agree with a lot of the points that are being made here. If all the effort that's spread across a bazillion distros went into two or three of them, Linux as a whole would be in a better place. There are HUGE blind spots (accessibility being the biggest). The response you get when you point out Linux's failings tends to be a thousand different variants of "well it works for me, why you can't be more like me I don't know, you must be stupid".

Linux is *remarkable*. But it's not the one true operating system, and it won't be until we stop thinking that the peak of operating systems was nearly thirty years ago.

Apple to add fresh accessibility features for 2025

Re: Deaf aids?

Not really my area, but I think M2 Macs and beyond have the same support - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchle83953a5/mac

KDE 3 lives to fight another day as Trinity Desktop 14.1.4 hits the shelves

Re: Well done Trinity.

"Windows 95 was a design classic. There was only a single thing wrong with it: it was single-threaded."

Begging your pardon, guvnor' but I don't think that's right. Sort of. Windows 95 was multithreaded -- but only for Win32 applications, and only when specifically written to be so.

Mozilla is rolling Thundermail, a Gmail, Office 365 rival

Re: Email is dying

"I have about 20 different email addresses for different purposes, and a good email client (or even "Legacy" Outlook) allows me to see them all in one place."

Good webmail services let you do this now, too. For example, Fastmail can effectively act as an IMAP client to any account which supports it. Nothing wrong with preferring a proper application, of course, but the days when webmail services were one-account only are gone.

Dash to Panel lives on, thanks to Zorin sponsorship

Re: Gnome, a reference model for enshittification

Sigh.

I really do not believe you understand what enshittification is. It's not just "getting worse". And it's certainly not "getting worse in a way that's entirely subjective".

Photoshop FOSS alternative GIMP wakes up from 7-year coma with version 3.0

> And anyway I can't drive PhotoShop, which I find even more baffling than the GIMP, frankly. Which is why I do not accept claims that Photoshop has a better UI.

It's not designed for *you*, Liam. You're not, and never will be, a professional graphic designer.

Good UI in a professional tool is about serving its professional users, not people who, well, aren't.

I love that people here are downvoting you, an experienced Photoshop user pointing out the challenges with Gimp because they refuse to believe you're correct.

And you are, 100%, correct. Your point about shortcuts being different *matters* because people who use Photoshop everyday have memorised every single one they use and don't want to spend a long time unlearning that.

The obvious approach would be for Gimp to adopt, as far as possible, the same shortcuts. But NO, it cannot, because the kind of people who cheerlead for it would rather it's a tool that is less useful to professionals and more "their thing".

Re: names

So if I write a word processor and call it N**ger, then invent a backronym, it's fine because it's "a different context"?

I don't entirely disagree with your underlying point, but the way you're putting it is pretty silly.

If you were a Daily Mail reading paranoid alt-right Reform voter, you would probably have a gimp suit in your wardrobe.

Way back in the day, when I used to work for the illustrious Mr Proven, I tried getting some of our graphic designers who had the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop into their DNA to have a look at Gimp and give me their opinion. They disliked it, immensely.

There were two reasons for this. First, it couldn't do RGB to CMYK transformations at the time, and that was required for anyone who worked with print.

Second, though: the name. "It sounds like a f-ing joke by a teenager with spots" was uttered by one.

So yes, names matter. Especially for tools used by professionals.

Re: [citation needed]

The fact that it wasn't used as an ableist slur - which wasn't what the person you're criticising said anyway - doesn't mean it isn't one.

Words are wonderful things, and if you lack the imagination to use different ones if someone points out something is offensive, that's very much a "you" problem.

Re: [citation needed]

No idea why your post is being downvoted given that it's entirely factually accurate and a lot of the people complaining about what you're saying and getting quite upset are of the "facts don't care about your feelings" variety.

But when they say that, what they really mean is, of course, "I don't care about your feelings (but I'll sure as hell complain if you do anything hurt mine)".

I don't *entirely* agree with you, as it's clear that at the time of the backronym coming about, it's unlikely the original creators thought of it as derogatory. It was just a funny thing from a movie. But we're long past that now, and the fact that some people want to cling on to the past is their problem.

Dash to Panel maintainer quits after donations drive becomes dash to disaster

"Someone should tell the maintainer the difference between OSS and SHAREWARE!"

And you might want to look into why "free software" doesn't mean "as in beer". "LIbre", not "gratis".

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.en.html

Murena kicks Google out of the Pixel Tablet

Re: This...

Graphene OS supports the Pixel Tablet, although I haven't tried it myself.

LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab

Re: All you need

Define "you"?

Because I know there are lots of features I use every single day in Excel which LibreOffice lacks.

Agent P waxes lyrical about 14 years of systemd

Dorsey left Bluesky a while ago. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/07/jack-dorsey-quits-bluesky-board-urges-users-stay-elon-musk-x-twitter

Meta blocked Distrowatch links on Facebook while running Linux servers

Re: openKylin

If you're ordering it from China it might be cold when it gets to you.

Debian 12.9 arrives, quickly followed by MX Linux 23.5

Re: timeshift

Utterly baffled at the people downvoting this. You might not like snaps, but this is an entirely accurate description of why Canonical uses them. You might disagree, but the rationale Liam is giving you is what Canonical says.

Fedora Asahi Remix 41 for Apple Macs is out

Re: Locked out

At this point it doesn't make any sense to repurpose even a base M1 to Linux, unless you just want to play around with Linux on a very good ARM machine. The performance Is still excellent. I have an M1 Mac mini bought when it was first released, and it works really well and runs all the latest macOS stuff. Four years old it might be, but boy the performance is still good.

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

"Monopolies are usually short lived..."

Bell Telephone was effectively a monopoly for over 70 years, and regulated as such from the Kingsbury Commitment in 1913 to the break-up of AT&T in 1984. Monopolies are only short-lived if there is the political will to act against them because there are few economic forces which will knock a monopoly off its perch in any kind of short order.

Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

"Governments deciding what technology they want to succeed is even worse"

Let me introduce you to the entire history of capitalism, in which governments have been doing exactly this almost since the invention of the spinning jenny.

Elementary OS 8 'Circe' conjures Wayland magic

Re: The easy life

This x10000. There is no reason at all why a distro -- or any OS -- can't be very functional, easy to use, and look great.

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

Re: Let's not forget Oric-Calc

I've probably told this story before, but back in 1982 I had a job working at an electrical retailer on Saturdays. I was, of course, the only one there who knew anything about computers which were the hottest thing to buy that Christmas.

Every parent wanted a Spectrum -- or at least that's what their kids told them they wanted. Only thing was there weren't enough of them around. There were, though, lots of Oric-1's. We had crates of them and just before Christmas sold a tonne of them.

Then came the day after Boxing Day... and there was literally a queue outside waiting to return them. I had the job of testing them to see if they were faulty, and the first one was. As was the second. And the third... and so on. Every single one we sold was faulty. After testing about ten of them and all of them failing, my boss told me not to bother and just to give people their money back.

Happy Christmas kids!

Pop!_OS 24.04 and new COSMIC desktop reach alpha

The tiling in PopOS is pretty great if you fall into the same category as me: someone who wants occasional, keyboard-drivable tiling but a more conventional window manager most of the time.

I've test driven the alpha on both the PopOS release and using Fedora and while it's not ready for me to use all the time, it's promising. It also felt VERY responsive, much more so than either GNOME or KDE. Lots of rough edges, of course, but almost at the point where I could use it 90% of the time.

The graying open source community needs fresh blood

"Ultimately, these are the non-technical guys that decades ago wouldn't even be on a computer, so you can discard them from the pool."

And that elitist attitude sums up the actual problem.

Re: New Cow Theory?

"FORTRAN and mainframes? When you went to university 22 years ago?"

I absolutely believe it. I did A level computer science in 1984 and the curriculum still involved learning about ferrite core memory, which had been obsolete for a decade.

Re: New Cow Theory?

I worked for a German company in the UK for several years, and it was notable that their attitude towards apprenticeships was VERY different to every British business I have worked in. Not only did they encourage them at entry level: they encouraged them for existing employees, too (British apprenticeships go all the way up to level 7, which is Master’s degree equivalent - I did one in leadership when I was pretty senior, and it was hugely rewarding).

For once, I think this is only *partly* the government's fault. Every larger business pays the apprenticeship levy, and can draw that money back from HMRC if it sends its employees on certified apprenticeship schemes. Remarkably few actually bother, perhaps because they would rather not commit to allowing 20% of time for a period of training (even though that training can be on the job, and in fact, to satisfy the requirements of the apprenticeship actually has to be beneficial to the business).

British businesses just seem to want to devolve all training to universities, subsidised heavily by government.

OpenBSD enthusiast cooks up guide for the technically timid

"But then an actual MacOS vintage install might be more pleasant to use."

Yes. Yes it would.

Smartphone is already many folks' only computer – say hi to optional desktop mode in Android 15 beta

In the words of the bowl of petunias pulled into existence miles above the planet Magrathea, "oh no, not again".

Linux geeks cheer as Arm wrestles x86

If I can get a Linux-based laptop that gets even 75% of the battery life of my M2 MacBook Air, I will be a very happy camper indeed. And probably sell that MacBook Air.

After delay due to xz, Ubuntu 24.04 'Noble Numbat' belatedly hits beta

Re: These are decade-old machines now

Of course, you can still install 20.04 if you want – it's an LTS release, so it's got another year or so of security releases (and up to 2030 iirc if you sign your friends up for the free personal Ubuntu Pro thingy).

At that point their hardware will be 20 years old, so probably time for a replacement :)

Re: Minimal installation...

Some good digging there, thank you! I'm not sure whether this is just bad packaging on Mozilla's part, or an inevitable trade off from using a sandboxed system like Snap (or Flatpak?) – I'm sure someone can enlighten me ;)

If it's the former then shame on Mozilla. If it's the latter, though… well, I'll take that trade-off. My Linux machine isn't exactly short of storage, thanks to a 2Tb SSD upgrade.

GCC 15 dropping IA64 support is final nail in the coffin for Itanium architecture

Re: Take some credit

"You cannot assume everyone is going to be willing to port everything to a new target architecture."

I mean, that's exactly what Apple has done, and I think what Microsoft would love everyone to do with ARM when/if Qualcomm pulls its finger out. So it's possible, but the way Intel approached it was not ideal.

Re: Rolling rolling rolling ... rawhide

Linus did indeed work for Transmeta for a bit:

https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5021

Re: Third time lucky?

This one?

http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2003_03_26_Prescott_clues_for_Yamhill.html

Canonical cracks down on crypto cons following Snap Store scam spree

Re: Snaps just ruins the biggest advantage of Linux OS'es...

And you stil can?

Firefox 124 brings more slick moves for Mac and Android

Re: Consent-O-Matic add-on

Seconded. It's the first extension I install these days.

Fedora 41's GNOME to go Wayland-only, says goodbye to X.org

Re: in a [Linux] world that constantly hypes "user choice!"

Most of the Linux world may not use Fedora, but I would put money on most of the desktop Linux world* using a distribution which is either already or on the way to using Wayland as the default.

(* And while I know it's fashionable to insist that ChromeOS is Linux, I disagree with this slant)