Posts by Liam Proven

LibreOffice adds voice to 'ditch Windows for Linux' campaign

> Golly. Linux Mint has just upgraded me to 6.4.7.2 ...

What version of Mint are you on? Something very old but still receiving a trickle of updates, at a guess...

> Your machine's processor is able to do 64 bits, but one or more peripherals have only 32 bit drivers.

Good point, well made.

Re: As I've said before

> They need to PICK ONE and recommend that one distro

Go on then. What is the best car?

No, I am not going to tell you what I need, where I go, when, if I have kids, if I commute. Too much noise. Just TELL ME. What is the best car for me?

Re: That's bullshit

> Incidentally, a lot of Core2Duo machines have 4 DIMM slots, so will go up to 8 GB with 2G sticks.

Desktops, though.

I have a Core 2 Extreme, a quad-core, and yes, it maxes out at 8GB meaning it's still marginally useful... but not given the noise it makes, sadly.

Still, it was free, and I was very very grateful at the time. It made a fine Hackintosh.

But I have less use for a C2D desktop than I do for a C2D laptop, of which I have several, with lovely keyboards and lots of ports. One is even a convertible, and that's the DDR2 one.

*Very* few laptops have 4 *SO*-DIMM slots. I own a quad-core Thinkpad W520 which does, but it takes DDR3 and has 24GB in it already.

As RHEL clones hit version 10, Rocky and Alma chart diverging paths

> It is a very good explanation

You mean this article is a good explanation of the differences?

Thank you. That is good to hear. I tried.

Are you connected with this site at all?

https://www.unixmen.com/

Re: RHEL 10 "Documentation"

> dual AMD Opteron 4234 CPUs Valencia cores

> My computer only has v2

No, that is too old. RHEL and Rocky will not run on that.

> Apparently the v3 capability was added in VirtualBox 7.1.0.

No, I don't think so. I don't think an older CPU can emulate a newer one in any efficient way.

You can't run any x86-64-v3 OS on that, and never will.

But as I spelled out in the article you _can_ run AlmaLinux 10 on it. Alma still does an x86-64-v2 edition and it will get updates for the next decade or so.

That is why I highlighted the technological difference in the article you are commenting upon.

Re: I think it's time for me to call "time"

> So maybe it's time to switch

Yup, I started on RH around then as well. At that time the level of "polish" -- as in, more like "less encrusted in mud" -- than things like Slackware was apparent.

If you like RPM etc. then there are options.

- openSUSE is pretty good if you like something conservative and sane;

- Mageia or openMandriva if you want a fairly good KDE desktop;

- If you like APT as well as RPM and want a rolling distro, then PC Linux OS

> No, 'c' in the terrible hopes that you don't type 'cc'

That occurred to me as well. But...

$ cc "how do I list files?"

... is unlikely to do anything even as amusing as the famous:

$ make love

Re: The plus symbols are animated by replacing them with some other symbol, too fast to read.

> The fact that you traced this down

Just for clarity: I absolutely did not.

I just squinted at it and took an educated guess.

Re: The plus symbols are animated by replacing them with some other symbol, too fast to read.

> users booting SunOS remember seeing

A classic. :-) It appeared in other places too.

Nope. I _think_ it's doing

superscript plus

subscript plus

normal plus

and replacing that with

superscript decimal point

subscript plus

normal plus

superscript plus

subscript decimal point

normal plus

then

superscript plus

subscript plus

decimal point

The effect is a tiny row of twinkling stars. It's quite well done and the impression is magical fairy sparkles or something.

Not what I expected in a Linux distro in a sober suit, but hey.

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

Re: how to do it in half a dozen mouse clicks

> How long did it take before styles were easy to implement?

I taught MS Word in the DOS era. They _were_ easy. The thing is that it's a new and different and harder way to work.

Plain old formatting on the spot is just simpler and that makes it easier.

> And why are they not the default operating mode?

Because they're a pro tool and that's too hard for too many people.

If Word were more modular, or Office in general, then MS could do multiple lightweight subsets of Word... one with only dead basic features, like WordPad; one with only styles; maybe a standalone outliner, which I'd love; and so on.

But it isn't... and there's no motivation to redo it.

I'm sure the beancounters have a term for this, but... it's old and it's paid for its substantial development costs long ago, so now, the only desirable thing to do with it is keep refreshing it so it keeps generating enough income to pay for its own maintenance.

Same as Windows itself, really.

Those who don't know as much as they think they do about Macs and Apple decry the company's continual removal of features that are still useful, but it does mean that another vast ball of code does get an annual trim, and it has successfully stopped it becoming the unmanageable trichobezoar that is Windows.

Re: how to do it in half a dozen mouse clicks

> I have also met spreadsheets where the author inserted a hand-calculated total rather than using the spreadsheet to add things up.

Ye gods and little boarlets. In nearly 40Y of support work I've never seen that.

Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions

Re: NeWS

> I wonder if this has any implications for the GTK library in future?

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/05/gtk_5_might_drop_x11/

> Don't you mean a replacement for X.11?

Sorry, yes, you're right.

Office 1 through 95 had the same formats with only minor tweaks.

Then 97/2000/XP/2003 had the new formats.

Then 2007 and later has the 3rd gen.

> Ubuntu was his project to give back to the open source world

Exactly so.

> AFAICS the only vestige of Debian left in Ubuntu is .deb packaging

That's not true either.

Ubuntu began as a downstream of Debian, drawing software from Debian "Sid", and it still is and does. It feeds changes back upstream, and some Canonical developers are also Debian developers.

> That's Ubuntu & the OP asked about Fedora.

Doesn't matter. Exactly the same applies. Sorry, I should have made that clearer.

The GNOME versions won't include an X11 session.

"Session" means a login session: the desktop you see when you log in.

That does not mean they won't include X11. They still include Xwayland so you can still run X11 apps under them. It means that on the login screen you can't choose X11 and have GNOME render using X11 without any Wayland.

They have no choice; GNOME 49 is dropping X11 session.

No other desktop is except, allegedly, Budgie -- and I say "allegedly" because Budgie's plans around this have changed before. For a while it was going to move to Enlightenment's EFL and dump Gtk, then that idea was dropped and the plans change. At present the plan is that by autumn Budgie 10.10 will be Wayland-only but still using Gtk. But I confess I do not follow this closely, because Budgie is a bit of a niche desktop and one I personally don't use.

But all the other Ubuntu flavours with different desktops, from Kubuntu to Ubuntu Unity, still support X11. A couple support Wayland _as well_ but the only one for which Wayland isn't experimental is Kubuntu. That defaults to it but you can choose X11 if you prefer, e.g. if you only have GPU drivers for it.

> That's why they're dropping support for X11 specifically in Gnome - it will force the Gnome desktop tool developers to test/update their apps to work on Wayland.

I nod appreciatively at your noble hypothesis, but I think the real reason here is not software testing or integration.

It's money.

RH funds most of GNOME, Wayland, systemd, Pipewire, etc.

RH makes money from RHEL. It's a server. Most of the boxes are headless VMs. No screen = no GUI = admin over SSH.

They don't give a stuff about integration. They give a stuff about not paying engineers to maintain X.org.

Those engineers mostly don't know their history well, don't know the tech as well as they should, don't know that there already were better replacements for X11 such as NeWS, Display Postscript, Plan 9's Rio, etc.

No, what they know is Linux and Windows and nothing else.

So they came up with a simpler local-only replacement for Wayland that can be accessed over VNC or rdesktop, which is all they need.

But it's not good enough to succeed on its own merits so now X.org has to be killed to force people to move, just so that they can kill X.org.

Same as Microsoft switched the .DOC / .XLS / .PPT format from Office 95 to Office 97, forcing everyone to upgrade to the bloated new version. That worked so after a decade and everyone forgot, MS did it again and switched to XML as well as the Ribbon on Office 2007.

Only XML is huge so the files are zipped. So forget doing data recovery by looking for disk blocks with text in. That's over.

Worse for everyone, but it made people upgrade.

Wayland: the Office 97 "new file formats" but for a couple of the big-name desktops on the leading freebie Unix, and everyone else can FOAD.

> Stop spreading FUD, it's unbecoming.

You're right about that... which is especially bizarre in context because you just posted a load of unsubstantiated, and unsubstantiable, FUD about Ubuntu.

WTF, Jake? What are you playing at?

Fedora is at the end of the day a 6-monthly alpha for RHEL. CentOS is now something akin to a rolling beta. RHEL is paid-for. So it's true of Fedora.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed becomes openSUSE Leap which is SLES. So it's true of openSUSE.

Ubuntu is free. Desktop is free. Server is free. Core is free. Even Pro updates for a decade are free.

There is no payment in here anyway. The snap store, like or hate it, is free. Flathub is working out how to charge -- Snap isn't.

Nothing lines Mark Shuttleworth's pockets, which are exceptionally thickly lined as it is. He doesn't need it. Which is why he set up a freebie easy desktop project. Because he made $0.75 _billion_ when he sold Thawte to Verisign and never needed to work again.

He went to space, then set up a green eco-tourism company, then -- as far as I can tell -- basically got a bit bored and decided to do a freebie distro that was as easy as paid-for ones like SUSE Pro and Caldera.

To accuse that of being evil is _to think evil_.

Remember: honi soit qui mal y pense.

> Ubuntu is a bad copy of Debian

Wrong.

> it is not an entity of its own.

Wrong.

> The only reason it exists is to make money for the shareholders of Canonical.

Vastly hugely blatantly wrong.

This last statement is misleading, political hatred.

It is however 100% true of RHEL and of SUSE SLE. It is as a consequence partly indirectly true of Fedora and openSUSE.

Is it even worth my time to explain in detail why?

It makes me profoundly sad to see this kind of hate-driven "fake news" propaganda on the Reg.

You should be ashamed to post it. If you know no better, you should still be ashamed.

> how will that affect all those other Window managers that are listed as alternatives to gnome?

It won't.

(Apart from Budgie, which is also going Wayland-only.)

*All* the other desktops use X11. Most use only X11; Xfce and LXQt have _experimental_ Wayland support; KDE offers the choice and is not planning to drop X11 any time yet.

Install any other flavour of Ubuntu, you will get X.org.

Install Ubuntu GNOME, or Ubuntu Server, and add any other desktop, you will get X.org.

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

Re: DEI is not DEI anymore

> While they originally were well meaning, they've evolved into two very specific problems.

[[citiation needed]]

If this is real, prove it.

If you can't prove it, shut up.

Meantime, although I don't believe you, I think this anti-anti-nastiness school of thought, deranged as it is, might work to attract people to the project, and that's a good thing setting aside value judgements.

> His "unusual" opinions suggest that he might just get angry about something else

This is one of my main concerns.

Re: Personal view.

> which is why Xwayland exists

What? No it isn't! That is not even distantly related to what Xwayland is or does.

I invoke the spectre of Wolfgang Pauli upon you:

Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!

Xwayland is an X11 server for Wayland environments. It lets you run and display X11 apps under a Wayland compositor. That's all.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Wayland#Xwayland

Maybe, just maybe, you were thinking of Waypipe.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe

Re: Straw man

> I don't think we should confuse these new mRNA therapies with vaccines.

(All the rest trimmed.)

Yeah, no, none of this. Not a line of it. This is 100% conspiracy-theorist BS.

There are real conspiracies you'd be better off worrying about or spreading doubt about.

Here's a list of real bogus fake nonsense that should not be even entertained:

* generative "AI"

* anything to do with blockchains

* plastics recycling

* carbon offsetting/capture/storage etc.

* gradually transitioning from fossil fuels, or some being cleaner than others, or biofuels

All utter crap.

Vaccines: real, work, safe, effective. STFU with your raving.

> Sad to hear that Liam is in favour of racism and discrimination!

Thanks for clarifying for us that you don't know what any of these words mean. Not surprising you're an anonymous coward, though. We knew that.

Re: Unfair assumption?

> did he actually say "vaccines cause autism" or something along those lines?

No, not AFAIK.

I merely used the #1 antivaxxer dogwhistle.

What Weigelt said is that people treated with mRNA vaccines are no longer genetically human, and that is [a] 100% NOT TRUE and [b] millimetres away from a nightmare maelstrom of racist horror.

Any German born in the 20th century is _very_ well aware of that, more than perhaps any other nation's citizens.

That in turn means that if they publicly say such things, then either:

[a] They are very well aware of the resonances and consequences, and they're doing it knowingly, and that strongly implies other things about their beliefs.

Or

[b] They are unaware which means they are so disconnected from consensus reality that they are deranged.

A is worse than B, but neither is good.

Frankly Philip K Dick was disconnected from reality. Dude was as mad as a bagful of spiders. He still wrote some good stuff, though, and his reputation as a creative artist outlives him.

As I wrote: I like diversity. That includes diversity of viewpoints and beliefs.

"An it harm none, do as thou wilt."

But the *AN IT HARM NONE* part is very important.

Antivaxxers, for example, do massive harm.

Re: Personal view.

> It strikes me there is a degree of almost desperation on the side of the Wayland developers here.

Exactly so.

Wayland is old enough to drive a car and vote.

It still has serious problems in lots of areas, but the problems are in areas that the Wayland devs and the devs and users of Wayland environments don't care about. So they won't get fixed.

Which is why the big Wayland backers decided to start forcing us to use it. Make Wayland the default in the big 2 desktops, as it is today, and then next year, X11 support will be removed.

Fine. Doesn't personally bother me. I don't use either of those desktops and as long as nobody forces me to, I don't care.

I don't want Flatpak, or systemd, or Wayland, or Pipewire... but if they don't get in my way I can ignore them.

But I _do_ care if someone is going to keep working on the things I _do_ use. I am willing to swallow any political objections if their code is good.

That itself is a political statement. But then, the existence of FOSS is a political statement. Choosing to use it is another.

Re: Straw man

> Weigelt didn't say he was against vaccines

Weigelt said vaccinated people were not human any more.

That is a pretty damned clear position statement, and it is not a good one, and it is not one indicative of general sanity and understanding of reality.

_However_ saying that, there are several outstanding programmers who are, to be charitable, somewhat untethered from reality, and I don't just mean Terry A. Davis. Or indeed Richard Stallman.

It is entirely possible that Enrico Weigelt is a brilliant but erratic and idiosyncratic developer who is just what X11 and FOSS X11 servers need to drive them forward into a hostile future.

Yes there is an eternal problem with funding FOSS. Red Hat is a giant company that funds a tonne of FOSS. That's good. But RH is also a for-profit corporation and it is axiomatic that corporations are psychotic.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201103/why-corporations-are-psychotic

When your opposition is psychotic _and_ rich and powerful, maybe it needs someone crazy to go up against them.

It depends on your view.

Some will go "OMG he is an evil anti-vaxxer, so I will not use anything he writes!"

That's their choice.

I detest anti-vaxxers. I have ended friendships because people were anti-vaxxers.

But I am not trying to be Mr Weigelt's friend. I am, however, very interested in using an X11 server on my Linux machines in a few years' time. I do not personally want anything that runs under Wayland: I have tried them all and I find them all lacking.

Re: Code talks

> it will discourage politics

I think you're wrong. It _is_ politics. It is a direct political statement, and it will alienate some people. It will attract others, yes, but in my relatively limited experience of this area, the people it will attract are, as a rule, not good people.

Saying that: I am not personally a left-wing type of person. (I don't think it is all about the movement of small green pieces of paper. Indeed, I am not convinced anything really important is.) But most of my friends are leftie types. I also have a handful of friends who are very right-wing types. They are not bad people.

The fact I have capital-c Conservative mates shocks and upsets some of my leftie mates. That, IMHO, is their problem not mine.

But while there _are_ good, smart, well-intentioned very right-wing folks... I fear they're a minority on their side. Sending out a dog whistle to attract them is not a good move.

Having a code of conduct is problematic for some people. But then, some people are problematic.

A code of conduct that says "obey Wheaton's Law" ought to be enough -- but it's still a CoC and that will upset some folks.

RIP: Bill Atkinson, co-creator of Apple Lisa and Mac

Re: Watching the Old Guard fade...

> At some level, computer development is always going to be hard, because it's inherently hard. You're making a VERY complex machine do things.

I remain unconvinced by this.

I think it is, or should be, possible to compartmentalise the hairy stuff, and end up with something like Smalltalk. As Dan Ingalls put it, "an operating system is a collection of things that don't fit inside a language; there shouldn't be one".

That's wildly ambitious. But maybe the OS can, intentionally, be something incredibly tiny and simple -- like say Oberon -- and on top of it, there is something like Smalltalk with a rich array of classes, so that just like Smalltalk, children can assemble apps for themselves.

> Steve's reaction, "that is great, can we also do rounded corners on rectangles?"

Indeed so. TBH I thought I linked to that.

https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html

Re: Watching the Old Guard fade...

> IT, which has, basically, been done.

I think this is the single worst and most pernicious falsehood in computing.

IT hasn't been done. As Alan Kay said:

"The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet"

https://mprove.de/visionreality/media/kay-CRA2002.pdf

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the work of people like Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls at Xerox PARC, and Bill Atkinson at Apple, _nearly_ brought about a new, fourth generation of computers.

(As someone is bound to ask:

Gen. 1: mainframes and batch processing

2: minis and interactive computing

3: microcomputers and individual computing

Gen. 4 _should_ have been friendly graphical machines that were programmable by their owners (imagine Hypercard as the whole OS) but could also be dead simple appliances for those not so inclined (Raskin's Canon Cat).

Raskin was right: computers should no more need an "on" button than a toaster or a landline phone does.

Instead, we grafted 1960s minicomputer OSes like Unix and abominations like C onto high-end microcomputers. Instead of making the next generation of computers, we invented a bastard hybrid of gen 2 and gen 3 and foisted it onto the world.

They're so insanely hard to program only autistic geniuses can do it.

For those who are not, now, we have LLM bots that can autogenerate reams of this low-level bullshit, with the result that nobody understands anything.

Computing is not done. The computer revolution was brutally strangled just as it hit puberty. Now the inheritors sell the mushrooms growing from the pile of corpses.

Re: Grief About Times Past.............

> what we need now is yet another hype cycle

Please gods, no.

> Thank you Liam for this much needed and quite detailed eulogy. He was a great man.

Thank you. I tried to get in some of the less-well-known stuff.

> He was a great man.

Truly.

> And I'm rather sad there is no such exciting and creative, powerful yet simple tool like HyperCard anymore !

Hypercard was an important part of the Apple Mac's story and history... but like the Newton, it was a Sculley-period invention, and when he returned, Jobs killed that stuff.

That for me is a damned shame.

There were clones, of which one of the most notable was MetaCard, which over several name-changes became LiveCode.

https://livecode.com/

Its marketing seems sadly lacking, and the company killed its FOSS version just before the last major release, version 10.

HyperStudio is another.

https://www.mackiev.com/hyperstudio/

My personal favourite related project was Apple's unreleased, cancelled SK8:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SK8_(programming_language)

OpenMamba: Eat your greens, they're good for you

PCLinuxOS is a fork of Mandriva, just as Mandriva was a fork of Red Hat Linux with KDE.

It's diverged a lot but it's not a complete original project. When the other Mandriva derivatives went for URPMI as their dependency resolution tool, PCLinuxOS went with APT4RPM instead, for instance.

Thunderbird is go: 139 follows closely on Firefox's heels

Re: Don't like it at all

> For the people who actively like Outlook and Gmail there's already Outlook and Gmail. They're catered for.

You seem especially determined to miss the points here, so permit me to belabour you about the head with them.

Outlook is widely used but it's also proprietary, works best with a proprietary server over a proprietary protocol, and is native to a single platform and doesn't work well on anything else.

A FOSS alternative that's entirely open, talks umpteen open protocols, runs on all major desktop OSes, and which can talk to Exchange Server if the admin ticks a couple of boxes -- that is a GOOD THING.

If the bar to using it is that it lacks a couple of views, then add those views, yes.

Gmail is closed source and it's a web app that only works with one vendor's proprietary (albeit free) service.

If that service shuts down, you lose everything.

It has innovated in UI.

If adding those UI innovations to a FOSS client makes it easier for _me_ to switch then I will have some of that, thank you very much, and you can take your failed attempt at snobbish superiority and use your imagination for what I'd like you to do with it.

Secondly, if Google _does_ nuke someone's account, or Hotmail or Outlook.com or any webmail, then if they run Thunderbird, they get to keep all their mails and all their contacts and a local copy of their calendar... that is a huge win.

> A lot of other people actively dislike how Outlook and Gmail work. Shouldn't the purpose of other clients be to put them first?

NO it should not.

So long as it accommodates the old farts who have lost the neuroplasticity to adapt to a change, then if it only requires TWO CLICKS to change back that is 100% fine.

Re: For a GUI mail client it's OK

> lack of pre-release testing.

It's a 21YO project, now under new ownership and management, that's just made its release model 12x faster than it's been for years.

Give 'em a break.

Re: For a GUI mail client it's OK

> But I had calls yesterday from desperate people for whom this update ruined their day.

Yeah, the Mozilla bug about the update changing layouts is seeing some activity:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1968963

But it doesn't break the app. It still works. It just may not have the view they're expecting, but it is 100% functional. This is a purely cosmetic bug. It's still a bug, but not a bad one.

Re: Card View

> Card View is for Stupid People.

No... I see and sympathise with those who want a line or two of body-text content preview in the message list.

Gmail is a superb web app, one of the best around. The solutions the Gmail team came up with for mail in a web browser are often inspired.

Compare with Hotmail. I've had an account for 29 years, I think, gods help us -- man and boy less wrinkly less embittered man.

It was a dog-walking-on-its-hind-legs proposition when it was new, and it got worse when MS bought it. It's a horrible clumsy interface. The various Oath services are worse.

At least in Gmail I can bottom-post in plain text like a functional adult professional. Not on those others.

But I only have Gmail at Google's whim. Once they turned it off, for a few hours, and I panicked when I realised how much I was at their mercy. OK, sure, I had 4 other accounts to fall back on, but still.

Since then: keep a local backup. But gradually I am shifting back to T'bird first.

Re: I want to like Thunderbird

> But I just like Apple Mail better.

OK, fair enough. _De gustibus non est disputandum._

I ran Mail.app for years. I used apps like CageFighter to undo OS X "modernisations" like making all the buttons monochrome and the same shape.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050429044057/http://otierney.net/cagefighter/

I switched when I realised I had to futz around with a menu to mark a message as unread in Mail.app whereas in T'bird I can just click the little blue status button directly.

And, of course, the same mail UI whether I'm on a desktop Mac or a Linux laptop.

Re: Don't like it at all

> Don't change the ui on a whim, and add new functionality only when required.

I don't think it's on a whim.

A lot of people actively like the way that things like Outlook and Gmail work, and to tempt those folks to a local client, giving them the tools they've grown to like helps. That makes sense to me.

Things like menu bars missing are because we didn't teach the children how to use computers properly and so they don't know.

With a moving target like a FOSS email client, I think "release it on a fixed cadence" makes sense. It is a very big, old, complicated codebase, and there will always be some bugs. There is no way to say "it's ready", so it's better to have a fixed cycle of snapshots.

Also, personally, I like dual-cadence release cycles.

Ubuntu: we release the stable version every 2 years, but you can get a fresh tested working version every 6 months if you need the latest code.

Mozilla: we release a stable version annually, but you can get a fresh version every month.

I prefer this to:

Debian: we release every two years. Deal with the old stuff.

Red Hat: every _three_ years and we will fix it for a decade... if you pay us a thousand per seat per month.

Maybe it's just me?

Re: Don't like it at all

> Upgrade to a new changed version, and turn off the changes? Hardly seems worth it.

It's an internet-facing client app. I want all the latest security updates, please, and I also want any tweaks to make Javascript faster, any new chat or authentication protocols it supports, and if I have problems, I want to be able to ask and not be told "You're not running the current release. That was fixed last year."

I am happy to run a word processor that was released 28 years ago, but I'd rather not risk an email client that old, ta.

Re: "reply in plain text with bottom-posting very quickly sorts marketroids from techies"

Yes.

Does it?

It reverses the order of the conversation.

What is wrong with top posting?

> I don't like bottom-posting.

Re: Don't like it at all

> I don't like the fact the TB user interface has gone "full outlook" on us

The article specifically addresses how to turn that off.

Does the screenshot look like what you're thinking of?

Basically all the recent changes can be turned off again, and that is what I do.

> Don't think I've used a Desktop/Laptop email client since my days using Eudora.

So, mainly webmail, then?

Do you host and run it yourself? If not, you may want to consider using T'bird to maintain a local archive, just in case.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/26/new_betas_of_firefox_and_tbird/

I largely stopped using them for a decade or more, I must admit. I am slowly shifting back to doing more and more work in them.

1. It brings all of half a dozen different email accounts into the same place.

2. I get up to dozens of story pitches a day, and I find that asking people to reply in plain text with bottom-posting very quickly sorts marketroids from techies. If they can do it, they can tell me interesting things. If they can't do plain text and bottom-posting, they probably have nothing useful to say to me.

3. I get my laptop to sync before I travel, and I can work on my eternal email backlog when I'm offline.

4. I occasionally use Usenet. T'bird is still good for that.

5. I occasionally use Matrix. It's my default client for that.

6. It's a handy new mail notifier which also maintains a local archive should any of my accounts get closed down or disappear. I've been on email since 1985. It's happened several times.

Three ways to run Windows apps on a Linux box

> a full reboot is required

I know that, you know that, but it takes skill and judgement to know when it is or isn't.

I hang out in a lot of Linux fora across the internet and the most F of FAQs is along the lines of:

"X doesn't work"

[many posts of troubleshooting]

"Oh, I rebooted and it is working now!"

The erroneous message is out there that Linux doesn't need rebooting and people are installing apps, drivers, OS updates, all kinds, and expecting things will just work immediately without further intervention. It ain't necessarily so.

Just tell 'em to reboot in case.

This is about GUI desktops, not servers. There shouldn't be any background stuff to disrupt, no other users.

Also, many machines are set to auto-login. Users aren't use to seeing a login screen at all. Multiple distros do this by default. Another complication.

Reboots are free.

Remember the IT Crowd?

"Have you tried turning it off and back on again? Yeah? Good! You're welcome, mate."

Just reboot the damned thing and don't fret about whether it was strictly necessary.

Re: I thought...

> The usual suspects like Virtualbox and VMWare doesn't.

Point missed error.

No you cannot share the host's GPU on a GUI computer with the guest. That cannot work, as I described already.

But both _do_ offer 3D acceleration to guest OSes in VMs.

Firefox 139 arrives for non-Chromium browser fans

Re: Vivaldi has tiling

> why you would downplay how Vivaldi is unacceptable proprietary software

(?)

I am not sure what you're saying.

My position is this:

Vivaldi is a good app.

But it's an elaborate wrapper around Chromium that revamps the UI. I am not fond of much of its UI, and if I must use Chrome then why not just use the version from the source, rather than a derivative.

Sardina throws bait toward SUSE Enterprise Storage users

Re: Bingo!

https://longhorn.io/