Posts by jilocasin

A new version of APT is coming to Debian 12

Re: welcome home.... (clarification)

when I wrote:

"It would have been nicer without all of these proprietary blobs..."

I was referring to end user hardware, not Debian images. It's a shame that companies are tying to save a few pennies by using blobs, and too paranoid to release the contents of them since they are using blobs.

I'ts great that the Debian community has finally accepted that if it wants to be more approachable to the vast majority of computer users out there it had to start including these hardware blobs.

welcome home....

It's great to see the Debian team finally embrace reality. It would have been nicer without all of these proprietary blobs, but you have to play the hand you are dealt.

With any luck this will allow many more systems to "just work" after installing Debian. Folks will no longer feel that they must remain shackled to the whims of commercial companies for their OS.

Like the father of the prodigal child, Debian stands on the road to to say;

"Welcome Home"

Google taps Fastly to make cookie-free adtech FLEDGE fly

plus uBlock Origin

I also use Brave as one of my many browsers. I don't trust that a browser maker can be fully trusted no matter how well intentioned when it comes to ad blocking and the lucrative advertising revenue.

Just look what happened to AdBlock. Used to be a good extension, then the developer started selling AdBlock bypass passes for the right price. They claim they only sell these indulgences to 'responsible advertisers'.

As long as the browser API supports robust ad blocking extensions, I believe it's a good idea to have a choice in who you trust to block ads from your browser.

Google's already thought of that.

Google's thought of that. No NoScript, or similar extensions in the new age, new target ad paradigm.

Re: Am I reading this right?

Yep. just one more reason why Google's knee-capping the ability to control what javascript runs in your browser through extensions like NoScript.

Re: Just keep it simple

Those are known as content based ads. it's how ads were delivered since before the internet. Newspapers, television, radio, magazines, etc.

Some clever individuals convinced companies that by tracking increasingly more and more personal data about you, they could serve 'targeted ads' ads tailored to the individual and so the thinking went that since these were supposed to be more likely to get consumers to make a purchase they should cost more to place.

There's no actual proof that these targeted ads are any more effective than the good old fashioned content based ads they replaced online, we still use content ads in other mediums. But companies like Alphabet (re: Google) and others have made billions of euro pawning these questionable and yet vastly more expensive targeted ads off on companies.

Reverting back to content based ads would remove the need for all of this privacy invasion. It would most likely be just as effective as the new fangled targeted ads and as a bonus the companies would be saving ad dollars. The only folks that stand to lose out are companies like Alphabet and all of the middling privacy invading enablers in the targeted ad ecosystem.

By order of Canonical: Official Ubuntu flavors must stop including Flatpak by default

Re: Good Riddance

Perhaps, the believe that if they make application management a complete nightmare then users will be more willing to pony up ￡for their commercial offerings and professional services.

Can't wait for bookworm

If this comes as a surprise to anyone at all, then you haven't been paying attention.

Canonical is desperate to increase 'profits' and has decided to travel down the well worn path of Oracle and Microsoft (Canonical's new bff). The author's cheerleading aside, there's no legitimate reason for them to go down this path excepting that they want to exert more control, to raise the wall of their walled garden even higher. It's one thing for Canonical to make this change in their distro Ubuntu, maybe it will end up working for them, maybe not. Wielding what control they have over remixes to force them to comply, that move just reeks of desperation. It shows the world that they don't believe Snap can stand on its own. That the only hope it has of 'winning' is to kneecap the competition. If downstream distributions enable Flatpak, or any other alternative package manager, by default then users will have the ability to judge for themselves. Canonical is banking on the 'power of the default', it knows that most people that use Ubuntu or one of the various remixes either; won't know how to add support, won't bother to stray from the default Snap, or won't even know that there's an alternative to Snap.

Personally, I believe that all we really need are .deb, .rpm, and the ubiquitous .tar.gz. If people believe that there are problems with one of these, then they should strive to improve the existing formats. But of course, Canonical wouldn't have a built in leg up if they did that. They wouldn't have the control, and from that control the ability to excessively monetize.

I'm just glad that the folks behind Debian finally voted to include non-free firmware in their official images. Debian bookworm should 'just work' on many more systems as a result. I'll probably be switching my systems back to Debian when it's officially released.

With any luck, current Ubuntu remixes will have the strength to either forego 'official' status and buck Canonical in this and the other user adverse decisions inevitably coming down the pike. Perhaps they'll even make the jump from being dependent on the whims of a commercial entity and instead opt to base their futures on the much more ethical Debian proper.

APNIC calls in lawyers to handle election code of conduct breach allegations

Re: What's up with these people? China?

Why do I get the sinking feeling that it's Beijing's hand inside Lou Heng's sock puppets?

It's not like China doesn't want more control.

It's not like Hong Kong is a shiny democracy (or even representative republic) free of Chinese influence.

It's not like Beijing hasn't ever stooped to such tactics before.

Just saying......

Ubuntu Advantage is being wired deeper into the distro

Re: Debian makes things a little harder than neccessary

See Debian Bookworm.

Debian has now voted to include non-free blobs in the official installer.

Can't wait.

Waiting on Bookworm.... (Re: The "Windows" amonsgt Linuxes)

Ubuntu was (is?) much easier to get installed and running than Debian. Especially on modern hardware with it's plethora of non-free firmware.

Debian stable is very stable. Unfortunately, that means many of the programs in it are very old and dated. While that's fine for say a command line ftp client, it's a little more problematic for something like ssh, and downright deadly for something as quickly changing as a DE. Of course once it's installed there's always sid.

Ubuntu came on the scene with a drop dead simple way to get up and running with Linux on the desktop, that worked with all of your hardware, esp. WiFi, and had modern and updated software. Boom, instant popularity. Canonical unfortunately seems to be following down the path of a lot of less than reputable companies. Make a great product, build up an incredibly large user base, then start doing more and more ethically questionable, end user adverse things in order to increase their profitability. Partner with Amazon sell your user's privacy, inject ads, make packages your users dislike (hate) harder to remove. Prevent them from removing them entirely, insert more ads, partner with Microsoft, all things designed with Canonical's bottom line first and foremost in their minds.

I'm very happy to learn that Debian proper has voted to start including non-free firmware in their 'official' install media with the release of Bookworm. That should make getting it up and running on modern computers, especially laptops that only have WiFi much much simpler.

I've had more than my share of trouble getting stock Debian fully functional, both on old laptops and my cutting edge desktop. Assuming it works out as expected, it's good bye and good riddance to Canonical and all of the increasingly slimy tactics slowly infecting the various spins.

Re: @VoiceOfTruth - Users is the correct word!

or how about a simple opt-out even.....?

Ubuntu-advantage-tools should have been a standalone package. Maybe one that's installed by default, but one that's easily and cleanly removed by those that care enough to take the time.

There should be a simple and persistent mechanism to opt-out of ALL adverts of ALL types, including adverts disguised as 'informative messages' . There isn't, the only one they've given apparently only works for one program and for only those 'ads' tagged a certain way.

Bullocks.

I don't have anything against a company wanting to remain in the black, but it's how you do it that matters in the end.

Core-JS chief complains open source is broken, no one will pay for it

Re: broken?

That really depends on what you are talking about.

It is my firm belief and hope that the least restrictive FOSS licenses die out. It's the classic gratis vs libre debate.

Licenses like Apache & BSD are free for everyone and anyone to do with what they want. Incorporate it into their own closed projects, Fork it, lock out the original developers and commercialize it, anything. With the notable exception of things like standards, all you are doing is working as unpaid labor. There's nothing that anyone who's using your software has to do to re-compensate you for all of your hard work.

Licenses like the GPL, AGPL are also free for anyone to use, but, and this is the important part, if they want to change it, or improve it they have to share their changes with the rest of the world. If they want to make it a part of a commercial product that only they benefit from monetarily, they can't without convincing the original developer(s) to license it under different terms, probably involving the exchange of money. These licenses don't let other companies freeload off of the work of the original developers.

Think about it, the number of BSD desktops is exceedingly tiny compared to the number of Linux desktops, same with servers, same with cell phones. The main difference is the license the two are developed under. Where is most of the BSD code used? In commercial operating systems (hi Apple and Microsoft) in closed appliances, and ironically enough in Linux.

Completely unrestricted code, again excepting standards, begins with crazy rates of adoption as commercial and noncommercial entities start using it. Inevitably it leads to a dying off. Devs get burned out, commercial entities lock it up and monetize the heck out of it, and it gets adopted by exploitation resistant licenses like the GPL. The original unencumbered development dies and development instead continues in secretive companies or under more equitable licenses.

The sooner folks realize that crazy as he is at times, Richard Stallman was right about a few things. In the end you have three choices; get paid to develop for a company, get paid to develop free software in freedom, code, and possibly money, to develop software under an equitable licence, accept the fact that you're basically working as unpaid labor. If it's a hobby, something you just love doing, then there's nothing wrong with it. But realize which path you've chosen at the beginning of your journey.

Re: The Exploited

Which of course is why licenses like the GPL and AGPL were created.

Either pay up with *real* money, or pay with code, nobody gets to ride for free.

Re: Are these problems FOSS problems? Not at all - this is Denis problems

Unfortunately, it appears that Denis might be the main, or even sole, developer of a valuable bit of open source software that many many other bits of software are dependent upon.

So unless someone else steps up and either co-develops this bit 'o software with him, or forks it and begins maintaining it, his problems are unfortunately FOSS' problems.

Are you willing to take over development? Do you know someone who will?

That's the only way to make Denis' problem *not* a FOSS problem.

Re: Where were you?

The Iraq invasion, in my opinion was a thinly veiled attempt of moneyed interests to seize upon the chaos of 9/11 and try to and control the rich oil wealth of the country. If the US really wanted Saddam Hussein, they had the ability to do a surgical extraction, just like they handled 'pineapple face' in Panama.

It was wrong, it lasted entirely too long, and ended very reminiscent of Vietnam. It's a good thing that Biden finally ended that farce. It's a shame none of the other presidents had the strength to end it sooner once they conflict was started.

So no, the US invasion of Iraq wasn't 'justified'. But just as the actions of one murder can't be used to justify those of another, one unjust invasion can't be used to justify another. That said, the US wasn't trying "annex" Iraq.

Putin's ambitions have thrown a wrench into a lot of things ....

It's a shame that Putin's desire to have a legacy and recreate the supposed 'glory' of the former USSR is causing so much pain and suffering, not just to those directly involved in the conflict, but the collateral damage visited upon ordinary Russians who aren't directly involved and may not even support the actions of their country.

Even if the reasons, which I imagine is propaganda and a thinly veiled justification for invading a neighboring country, were true, that's not how things are handled in the modern civilized world. Annexing sections of countries, or even whole countries doesn't just happen and can not be justified just because *some* folks living there want it to be. Heck, just look at the province of Quebec, Canada. They've wanted to be their own country forever, or Catalonia from Spain. If the folks living in western Ukraine really wanted to be part of Russia, and if Putin's excuse was actually true, they could just emigrate to Russia. Easy peezy.

Ironically, it looks like one of the things Putin was afraid of happening, Ukraine joining NATO, is going to happen sooner than it might have done otherwise as a direct consequence of his unprovoked invasion.

At the end of the day, individuals living in Russia appear to have few choices; hope that the conflict ends, preferably with a Russian withdrawal, leave Russia. Otherwise, they'll just stuck in the cross hairs of this mess for the time being.

p.s. If the world, especially the US, had stood up to Putin in Crimea, I don't think he would have tried to invade Ukraine proper and the world would have been spared this mess.

How this database legal war could be decided by the name given to this license

Re: A fork is not a cleanroom implementation

Doesn't matter.

They chose to release it under a permissive licence. They didn't have to. They could have chosen any number of proprietary licenses, or had their lawyers draft their own. Instead they wanted to free ride off of the good will of releasing their software as open source. They got the accolades, the users flocked to their product and then **boom**, they want to bring down the hammer. Charge for their 'Enterprise Edition' and prevent anyone else from going around them.

So, if you release your software, your copyrighted works, under a permissive license; Apache, BSD, GPL, AGPL, etc. you no longer have the right, legally, to say it doesn't count anymore.

It's not ridiculous, it was a conscious calculated decision on their part. It doesn't effect any copyright holder who doesn't choose to license their works in this manner.

It's an 'open-and-shut' case, just not in the way that you and Neo4j had hoped for. Permissive licenses still give courts fits from time to time, this is unfortunately one of those times. Hopefully, it will be corrected in the end.

No more free love: Netflix expands account sharing restrictions

that would require work

But that would require Netflix to create an actual good, working, easy to use way to search through their content.

Apparently it's just cheaper to throw a half baked recommendation engine at their viewers.

Re: Infinitely worth every penny. Division by zero error!!!

Netflix is already charging per stream. Your plan includes one simultaneous stream, ... four simultaneous streams. If they really wanted to avoid freeloaders, all they had to do is divorce quality from quantity.

One stream 720p costs a, one stream 4k costs b.

Three streams 720p costs 3*a, three streams 4k costs 3*b.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Now there is no 'economic' incentive to be 'sharing' accounts and Netflix would still get its pound of flesh. People could get their own independent accounts, get two simultaneous streams one for you and one for your kids bedroom, or even four. Two for your physical house, one for your daughter off at college, and another for grandpa in the nursing home. You define your household as you see fit without all of this artificial complexity.

But that would require Netflix to think logically. Instead someone has been whispering into the ear of Netflix execs that there are millions of folks using Netflix without an account. If you can force them to all get their own accounts we'd be raking in billions of additional revenue.

The truth is going to be more like, tens of thousands of new viewers subscribe, but *millions* of frustrated viewers cancel. A pyrrhic victory if I've ever seen one.

Of course this doesn't even include all of those viewers who are tired of the relentless price hikes and the dwindling amount of quality programming and who were just looking for an excuse to overcome inertia and cancel their accounts.

"woke crap" your definition is displaying your bias

That definition isn't even close to what most people are complaining about.

"woke crap" is when programs prioritize diversity, inclusion, and anti-male, anti-straight (or even L&G these days it appears), anti-white rhetoric over quality.

Take a great, or even good, existing IP then race and or gender swap the characters and expect people to praise it. Little Mermaid, Ghostbusters, etc. Create your own IP.

Take an existing, usually male character, and deconstruct it. Make it out to be weak, incompetent, helpless. Usually paired with an all powerful, all knowing, invulnerable, never growing, never learning female character. Some examples include: James Bond, Luke Skywalker, heck even Dr. Who.

Prioritize a great story, expertly told. Cast and characters that make sense for the story and time period they are in. Realistic characters that have strengths and weaknesses, that get hurt and overcome, that grow and evolve.

Being tired of "woke garbage" has very little to do with whether or not your consume a steady diet of Fox, OAN or Newsmax but instead whether or not you evaluate the quality of programs based on their own merits instead of by how many squares you can fill in on your DEI bingo card.

A very recent Netflix example is the Witcher program. It started out decent enough, Cavill was a great choice to play Geralt. But the show runners openly despised the source material, each episode, each season saw the titular character become more of a supporting role. Geralt sidelined for a focus on the female characters. That's not the source material, that's not the program Netflix promised viewers. If they wanted to create their own show; "Women of the Witcher World" go for it, but don't butcher this show. Of course, judging by just how bad "The Witcher: Blood Origin" turned out, maybe they should skip that.

The list of horrific programs, both television shows and movies, that have been mutilated in order to service the alter of "woke" grows longer everyday. Ratings plummet, most don't even break even in the box office. Even the once great Disney has seen it's fortune tumble.

But until studios, producers, and others realize that pandering to a small, exceptionally vocal, occasionally violent minority is going to nothing but drive their works to irrelevance and their companies into bankruptcy, the vast majority of folks that just want to consume quality entertainment will take their eyeballs and their money elsewhere.

No amount of name calling is going to change that basic fact.

Google ready to kick the cookie habit by Q3 2024, for real this time

Re: OK, this looks like it could be easy to disable (not so fast)

Google's already anticipated your next move. It's probably one of the main driving forces behind Manifest V3. Remember, that's the change to plugins that will lobotomize ad blockers and in all likelihood keep plugins like NoScript from working at all.

If this goes through, your only hope will be to find and use a web browser that hasn't been contaminated by this drivel, or tempted by the lure of ad dollars and Google kickbacks.

Experts warn of steep increase in Java costs under changes to Oracle license regime

Re: Come on over to .NET people!

That'll be trading a devil for an imp, not much of an improvement and the imp has dreams of being a devil herself one day.

On a more serious note, .Net isn't as flexible as Java (though it does need a lot less boilerplate). In fact there's no official desktop GUI toolkit for Linux. They will try to force you into using their other properties, esp. if you are on a platform that they believe has the potential to compete with them. Windows is the primary OS, Microsoft SQL is the primary database, Azure is the primary cloud, anything else you'll have to do it yourself. Oh, as demonstrated with their attempt to pull features from the 'open source' version, reserving it for Visual Studio, they are not above sabotaging .Net if they think it might give them a commercial advantage.

Java, ever since Oracle took ownership, has been a disaster in waiting, if not in practice.

.Net isn't your savior, it's just another commercial enterprise trying to bait the trap with open source goodies.

If you are deep into Java, then switch to a true open source version, as others have mentioned, there are commercial entities that will provide support, for a price if you are nervous.

If you want to truly be free, take this opportunity to switch to a truly open language. There are plenty to choose from and more cropping up every day; JavaScript, Python, PHP, C, C++, FORTRAN, Rust, etc. etc.

JEDEC reportedly set to formalize Dell laptop memory standard

Re: "CAMM will allow 128GB of memory at DDR5/4800"

Well, I need a minimum of 64GB now, 128GB would be great.

Multiple db's, multiple IDEs, and what sucks up the lion's share of memory, several VM's running concurrently. Some Win10, some Linux.

I haven't played a PC game in decades.

Everyone has different needs, some of us are already feeling the pinch at 64GB.

ymmv.

Fresh version of Xfce, the oldest Linux desktop of them all, revealed in Xubuntu builds

Re: Has it fixed the 1px window edges yet?

Glad to hear that you dropped in to comment.

If you took the time to peruse the link in my original response you would have read that the issue is that they are too small, too difficult to change, and a major accessibility issue. Theme changes don't actually address the issue as the current mechanism XFCE uses requires deep and detailed knowledge and solutions currently available to end users don't fully rectify the problem.

Folks with fine-motor difficulties, forced to used alternative pointing devices, don't have the luxury of worrying about things being 'visually intrusive'.

Has it fixed the 1px window edges yet?

I used to use XFCE, unfortunately the devs have never addressed the 1px wide window borders and I got tired of constantly fighting this particular problem.

Last time I checked, there's an open issue that's more than a decade complaining about this particular problem. The devs want to redirect, belittle, blame theme designers, end users, and basically do anything possible to avoid having to address the issue. It's nice to hear that they are still adding bells and whistles to XFCE. At it's core it's a very nice DE, it's just too bad the devs don't seem to want to address the decidedly unsexy, but ultimately more important fundamental bugs.

If they ever get back to fixing these core concerns, I would love to give them a try agian.

https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/-/issues/176

.NET open source is 'heavily under-funded' says AWS

not everything's a webform

Not everything's a web form. There still doesn't exist a native .Net GUI toolkit for Linux *desktop* applications. If Microsoft gets their way, they never will be. .Net on Linux is for the server, and only because Microsoft's utterly failed at convincing folks to run their large scale enterprise apps on Windows Server.

You can't say that Microsoft doesn't recognize the value of desktop apps, it's 90% of their Windows experience, they are just not going to give anyone an easier way to get there. MAUI is their .Net GUI framework, it *doesn't* support Linux, by design.

As long as it's impossible to create the same type of apps, and that means *all* of them, on all of your *cross-platform* supported environments, it's not really cross-platform.

Microsoft is STILL not your friend

If anyone has had any experience with Microsoft, then none of this should be in any way surprising.

Admittedly, Amazon is coming at this from a position to make themselves more money, and that's O.K. Amazon isn't the group that's proclaiming to all the world the open source bona fides of .Net.

Microsoft is determined to get get as many developers as possible to use .Net. They know that to do that it needs to be seen as a 'safe and open' programming framework. Currently their biggest competition on the desktop and more importantly on the server is Linux. So what do they do? They partner with Canonical to make the inferior Linux environment, inferior to native Linux, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL, WSL1, WSL2). They leave key portions of .Net Windows only. Ironically, the new MAUI *universal* windowing toolkit for .Net, the one that Microsoft is determined NOT to work on a Linux desktop for Linux desktop apps, originated in Mono Forms. You remember that open source project created to bring .Net to Linux? It's come full circle. The Linux windowing technology has been repurposed, and limited, to only writing Windows, MacOS, Android, and IOS apps.

While Java is a bit long in the tooth, and there's always Sun's erratic legal presence, .Net isn't a safe, universal replacement. Unless you are willing to limit yourself to the Microsoft ecosystem.

We need to look for a truly open source, vendor unencumbered, free to use and contribute to languages and set of frameworks if we are ever going to have the freedom to create the best for our companies and ourselves. Right now these are the markedly unsexy old school languages; C, C++ and even old timers like COBAL and FORTRAN. Some newcomers are showing promise: Rust, Python, Go, etc.

Companies like Microsoft will only succeed if people let them. .Net, especially C# is a very nice language (I've done a bit of coding in it myself) and a nice evolution of Java. The problem is that C#, .Net and the entire ecosystem isn't actually, in any real sense, independent of Microsoft. Microsoft's goals will always take precedence. Even in the ostensibly 'independent' .Net Foundation, Microsoft retains out sized influence and direct behind the scenes powers.

Either Microsoft has to give up "all" control over .Net, or we would all (save those who realize and want to remain in a non-open Microsoft playground) do better to use something else.

Koch-funded group sues US state agency for installing 'spyware' on 1m Android devices

Almost....

Without the SCOTUS decision, it was thrown to the states, in the *absence* of a federal law. A sizable portion of the Republican party wants to pass a federal law outlawing abortion which would override any state laws to the contrary. Some in the Democratic party want to pass a federal law making it legal, which would also override any state laws to the contrary. Unfortunately, a not inconsequential portion of the Democratic party doesn't want to pass such a law, preferring to retain the threat as a means to mobilize a significant portion of their base.

Strong support for Snap and Ubuntu Core as Canonical meet IRL

Canonical's bumbled force feeding of Snaps has tainted them in my option.

The worst thing that Canonical has done, in my humble opinion, regarding Snap, is the heavy handed way they are trying to force it on everyone.

Yes it was developed for Core, yes they feel it's the best thing since sliced bread, then let it stand on it's own.

They should have never corrupted the dpkg/apt/apt-get system (and using it to advertise is a sin for another time). They should have never replaced existing natively installed packages with Snap versions. And if they want to counter the $$$ grab accusations, they should let Snap Stores flourish like PPAs and deb repositories before them. Keep the Canonical Snap store as the default, but let folks keep installing software from wherever they want as easily as from the Snap Store. The 'security' issue is a red herring in my opinion. We've been installing signed .debs for a very long time, whether they come from a PPA or an old school repository.

Until Canonical starts putting the needs of their users before their commercial ambitions, I don't feel that I can really trust them as stewards of my operating system any more.

Re: Snap is an infection

Doesn't matter who requested it, Canonical, as the operating system provider, should never allow it. If you request a Snap, your should get a Snap. On the other hand, if you request a native application via a .deb, you should get a native package installed via a .deb. The fact is that I can go to the Debian repository and still get an *actual* native .deb for Firefox. Actually, they've now got a properly named .deb to indicate that it's a snap. What Canonical seems to have broken is the dpkg/apt/apt-get subsystem on Ubuntu+.

The actual, real, Firefox deb is about 58 MB in size. The, now named, firefox_1snap1 deb is 71kB in size.

When you enter the command: "sudo apt-get install firefox", anywhere other than Ubuntu+ you get the 58MB real native application. Running the *exact* same command on a Ubuntu+ box will instead, silently, behind your back, install the Snap version.

If I wanted the Snap version I would have gone to the Snap store or typed the command: sudo snap install firefox.

The two aren't even close.

"sudo apt-get install firefox" should installed the native application.

"sudo snap install firefox" should install the Snap version.

If you are anywhere else, but Ubuntu+ that's what you get.

The most prevalent 'story' may be that the **Firefox maintainers** pushed for booby-trapped .deb files on Ubuntu+ and **only** Ubuntu+ machines, but I'm not buying it. They are producing native .deb, .rpm, Snap, Flatpak, and .tar.gz versions of Firefox. Probably some others as well. It's only on Ubuntu+ that "sudo apt-get install firefox" no longer does what it is expected and supposed to do.

Re: Snap!!! Trash!!!

Umm..... thanks for jumping in to these shark infested waters.

First, can *anyone* create their own snap store? Currently, anyone who wants to can create a PPA or repository to distribute software, can. As far as I know, short of using the --dangerous flag (designed for development use only) that isn't possible nor encouraged.

Second, I hate to contradict you, but Flatpak works just find *without* a GUI. I've set it up from a terminal, I've installed it from the terminal, I install applications from the terminal, I run them from the terminal, and I keep them updated from the terminal. Of course, if you install GUI applications, then you need a GUI. But, if you install CLI applications, they run just find from a terminal. Admittedly the 'use' of installed Flatpaks, especially from the command line could definitely be improved. I'm not recommending Flatpaks, I prefer native packaging, but I just wanted to point out that CLI Flatpak is definitely possible.

I've stripped all of the unwanted and unasked for Snaps from my Kubuntu installation. Canonical makes it needlessly difficult. To add insult to injury they *booby-trap* .debs to secretly install a Snap when you requested a native application. The final insult is to *remove* naively installed applications when upgrading Ubuntu family operating systems. Yes, I am referring to the now infamous Firefox replacement. It was wrong, Canonical should admit it and pledge never to do something like that again. I had to pack up my files, uninstall the unwanted Snap, rummage around for the *secret sauce* needed to install an actual .deb version of Firefox. As mentioned previously, Canonical has decided to go down the evil path of *booby-trapping* .deb files. That's something else that Canonical needs to apologize for and swear to stop doing. And *finally* reinstall the native Firefox that existed before I upgraded and Canonical so rudely pulled that stunt.

Finally, you really should not be conflating non-native application schemes, Snap, Flatpak, AppImage and containers management systems like Kubernetes. It comes across like comparing apples and monkeys.

Thanks for your time,

nope. Just the Canonical controlled store, kiss your PPA goodbye.

As far as Caonical's concerned, it's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re: Snap is an infection

Unfortunately, it will never happen until Canonical stops chasing the 30% snap store $$$.

There are too many ways to package apps in Linux, this is a given. The main problem I as I see it is that both of the *major* Linux families are currently run by commercial entities, IBM (RedHat) and Canonical. Neither wants to give up the commercial advantages that come with controlling the package format.

There are many, mostly commercial, software packages that are only distributed as .RPM, just look at IBM, RedHat, Oracle as examples. Either you are running in the RedHat family, or here's you .tar.gz good luck.

On the .deb side, Debian, and by extension the community, controls it. Since Debian, the distribution, isn't all that user friendly, especially when you have non-free hardware (which is pretty much most hardware these days), most users are running second or third generation distributions based on Debian. Ubuntu is one such distribution. Canonical has made it one of the easiest to get started, supports the latest software, and seamlessly 'just works' on most people's computers. This has made the Ubuntu family probably the most popular distro-family based on Debian and the .deb package format.

Canonical doesn't control the .deb format. So they need a format that they control, preferably one where they have gatekeeper ability (see Apple and the App Store). Welcome Snaps. All they need to do is to replace .deb as the primary package format with snaps. Now when you try to install Firefox on the current Ubuntu, even when specifically using the .deb package, it silently replaces it with the snap version. Their large user base makes it attractive for developers to create snap versions of their packages, and other distributions have added support for snaps, though not to the level of Canonical products, to support their users desire to install applications that are increasingly being distributed only in the snap format.

Even without the control Snaps gives to Canonical, it's a poor format. The loop back file system means it's slower than it should be. The locked down nature means that snaps have difficulties integrating into the wider system. Snap Firefox already has issues, besides being slower, with many extensions. It's documented how it doesn't play well with the kernel and snap 'adjustments' aren't being incorporated into the mainline kernel. And as any non-native package system, you end up with a plethora of duplicated files, libraries, etc. strewn across your system. Good luck finding all of the next log4j packages.

Personally I think it's a very bad idea to allow any one company, even Canonical, to have this much power of the Linux community.

Ideally, everyone should have picked the same native format. .deb is a great choice as it's mature, widely used, and not controlled by a single company. It's too bad Debian's current philosophy means it's destined to be the playground of die hard tinkerers and the source of many other distributions.

If you want to create a non-native package system for "applications" (kernel, DE, etc. are all BAD use cases for non-native packaging) then choose one that runs fast, doesn't take up too much space, plays well with the rest of the system, and can be installed from *any* repository or store. Currently that leaves us with Flatpak and AppImage. Flatpak's for control, AppImage for 'portable apps'.

I don't believe Canonical is going to open up Snaps anytime soon. The lure of $$$$$ is just too great. Snaps are going to become a cancer that infects every aspect of the Ubuntu system corrupting every developer seduced by the lure of the currently enormous user base of the Ubuntu family of distributions.

It's too bad, Canonical had a good run. Time to look for a distribution that's neither an Ubuntu flavor nor based on Ubuntu. Wish me luck.

Watchdog urged to sniff out any collusion, deception in rent-setting algorithms

Re: Let's think out side the algorithm....

yes, but if I recall, it's limited to whistleblowing on **government** waste.

KDE 5.26 gets a second point release (yes, already)

Re: Sadly? and Slackware

I did, for many years, many years ago. I'm not sure why I stopped using it. It could have been that it didn't support some bit of kit that I was running, perhaps it didn't support a DE I wanted to try. For whatever reason, I moved on.

Those were fond, though sometimes frustrating memories.....

Canonical displays controversial 'ad' in shell update prog

apt-get is infected as well

Just a minor point of correction, apt-get is also infected with this malady.

The devs have stated that they will move the ad to the bottom of the message output, in a minor concession to those who parse the output automatically.

They have also stated that they WILL NOT remove this 'functionality' since _this_ particular message will disappear in a short time on its own. You know, when the ad campaign runs its course.

Amazon ads, Snaps, now hijacking command line apps to spam users. Every day Canonical makes me question why I use their distros.

Perhaps Debian or even something in the RedHat family if they keep this up.

Merge shifts Ethereum to full proof-of-stake, price slumps

No longer useful for anyone but the already rich.

So while *this* crypto currency going from "proof of work" to "proof of stake" is great for the planet and energy usage in general, not to mention GPU prices, I feel it portends something deeper.

Originally anyone with access to electricity, a GPU, and time could get into the crypto coin generating game. How much money you had greatly altering the amounts of the previous three items.

Now with "proof of stake" it's been transformed into a rich man's game. You cannot make money unless you already have money. Like the stock market and every other part of the economy where the rich get richer, and the fools loose their money while helping the rich get richer.

Apple to pay $50m settlement for rotten butterfly keyboards

No systemic defect....

No systemic defect.... you're just holding it wrong.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Re: 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now

Visual Studio Code is as much Visual Studio as JavaScript is Java. Similar name, completely different products. VS Code is a massively stripped down IDE. It doesn't have the same feature set and is completely reliant on the open source command line SDK to work with .Net. You remember, that same open source implementation that Microsoft was caught trying to keep features out of to benefit Visual Studio.

Linux for Windows is their 'embrace'. Instead of porting their software to Linux, or making it work better with Linux, they took advantage of the license to give you a lobotomized Linux experience. Just enough to hopefully keep you from jumping ship, poor enough so that you get a bad impression of Linux as a desktop to discourage you from wanting to.

PowerShell doesn't do anything for Linux. Microsoft could have written it in a way that would make it useful on whatever platform it was running. The equivalent of bash, but for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. They didn't because they aren't really about playing nice in the open source community. If they did, you might be tempted to switch away from Windows to Linux. Using PowerShell as your default shell would make that easier. Instead Linux PowerShell is a subset of Windows PowerShell. Just enough features exist to get some server tasks done (so you don't feel the need to learn bash), but not enough that you would consider using it full time on a Linux desktop.

You seem to want to find ways to claim that Microsoft is really a big 'ol cuddly bear when it comes to their open source overtures.

They're not.

Once you are fully in their embrace, they'll break your back with their 'hug', and tear out your throat with those pointy teeth that moments before were so innocently smiling at you.

Re: Sometimes, it's the little things.

Um, what's wrong with running Linux directly as opposed to Windows 10 + WSL?

When does a Debian install, even with a LAMP stack, require a license?

Just asking for a friend.

Re: 'The Evil Empire' hasn't been evil for about eight years now

Sure they have.

They are still up to their tricks. Their goal is to have you running all Microsoft all the time, from the desktop, to the applications, to the cloud.

Some examples:

- Azure has a PostgreSQL service. It is perpetually behind actual postgres and doesn't support all of the features. Want real PostgreSQL, just run an entire VM complete with OS, or switch over to SQL Server.

- Visual Studio (any version) still doesn't run under Linux, Microsoft would prefer developers develop using a Windows box.

- Microsoft was caught withholding a feature from 'ostensibly' open source .Net 6. They wanted to reserve it for their Visual Studio product, which as mentioned previously, doesn't run under Linux.

- Microsoft's new MAUI .Net subsystem which claims to be a unified front end for application development on Windows, Mac, Android, IOs has conspicuously left Linux out of the list. Microsoft may reluctantly support .Net _server_ development, but they'll be dammed if they are going to make open source development with their open source framework work for desktop development. Oh, and they stole the name MAUI from an existing open source project of the same name. When approached by the project they were basically told to pound sand.

- Linux for Windows subsystem, another attempt to provide a way for developers and dev ops to stay on Windows if they need access to some Linux commands or features.

- PowerShell for Linux, another attempt to keep folks on Windows. It's fairly useless in a pure non-Windows environment. What it is good for is giving Windows dev ops and administrators a familiar _Windows_ environment to use when working on and with Linux servers.

- Microsoft was recently caught strong arming hardware vendors (again) to make it more difficult to get Linux to run on new hardware.

I could go on, but those are just a few examples of Microsoft being Microsoft. Microsoft isn't a *friend* to open source. Even their open source projects, like the .Net Framework, come with Microsoft strings attached. The only lesson they seemed to have learned over the years is that they can't act like the proverbial bull in a china shop. They may make some useful overtures to the open source community, but we trust them at our peril.

As someone famous once said:

"Trust but verify."

Apple must fix its self-service repair program, say critics

Re: We live in a free market economy

Actually, we don't.

If we did, then people would be free to do what they wanted with the products they had purchased. Instead, companies rely on the government, via mechanisms such as patent and copyright, to prohibit people from doing what they want with their private property.

So if you are *truly* advocating for a free market approach, then you would be clamoring to eliminate the government granted monopolies that companies use as a crutch to artificially inflate their control and by extension their profits.

In the interim, we need laws to be passed to reign in their baser instincts that are harming consumers, the country, and even the economy itself.

Thank you for playing.....

Microsoft under fire again from open-source .NET devs: Hot Reload feature pulled for sake of Visual Studio sales

Doesn't help....

Microsoft may:

"...give away the community edition of Visual Studio for free..."

but last I checked it's a Windows only product.

Mac users get the warmed over, rebranded Ximian Studio and Linux users are poop outta luck.

Of course, .Net is supposedly open source. One doesn't usually strip working features just to give your proprietary product a leg up on the community.

Texas law banning platforms from social media moderation challenged in lawsuit

Sorry, but no, **no** state can secede from the union. We even had this little thing called the Civil War that put that misguided idea to rest. The United States isn't the European Union. Members can't just decide to leave (see Great Britain) whenever they want.

Re: Someone

Sigh..... no matter how often you repeat it, it doesn't make it true.

Facebook et al aren't making any claims regarding their publishing status, nor do they have to. You should read the relevant section of the CDA yourself (it isn't that long, I'll wait....).

There is no proverbial cake that they have to either have or eat.

Re: Forced speech

Sounds like you've been listening to too much Fox and OAN.

They aren't claiming that they are passive anything. The section of the communications decency act just clarifies that liability resides with the creator of the content. The people who **post** their ideas are liable. Always were always will be. All it does is short circuit the usual vexatious lawsuit process. Instead of having to spend thousands or millions of dollars defending themselves from frivolous lawsuits, they can simply point to this law and get the case thrown out. You can *still* sue whoever wrote the possibly offensive post, you just don't get to sue the most visible (and often most wealthy) organization instead. No one would think it's O.K. to sue Ford, if someone robbed a bank in a Ford SUV, or drove a Ford F-150 pickup though a crowd killing people. You would sue whomever did those acts. In the same vain, you can't sue Twitter for a potentially libelous tweet, you would sue the person who wrote it. There is nothing stopping you from suing Facebook or Twitter for something either company **created** themselves. Unfortunately for you, moderating a platform (deleting posts, keeping posts) or even adding fact checks to a post, doesn't make the company libel for those posts. Twitter is a publisher for whatever Twitter creates, that doesn't mean that they are publishing, nor are they responsible for, things created by others.

Re: Conflicted

Then start your own; web site, blogging platform, etc. No one's stopping you. Mr. Trump tried, he was just upset because his own site didn't have nearly the audience as Facebook & Twitter.

You weren't CANCELLED (nor was Mr. Trump), they just decided, either individually or as a group, that you and/or what you were tweeting/posting/etc. made you more of an *economic* liability than you were worth. Don't fool yourself, major corporations don't really care about which side of the political isle you sit or how truthful (however you want to define it) your actions are. If you bring more engagement without offending their advertisers or the majority of their audience, it stays, otherwise it goes. It's that simple.

Re: Censorship (not)

Uggg.... Web sites are **NOT** public spaces. Beating that dead horse won't make it run.

There have been *many* *many* attempts to get Facebook or Twitter declared either a public space (a.k.a. like a public park) or a government agent, so that the First Amendment would apply to them in the manner that you are hoping. They have **all** been shot down by the courts.

Also, there's a difference between a private business of general accommodation physically excluding people based on a *protected* attribute (sex, age, race, religion) and a private business preventing people from posting flyers, posters, playing music, etc. on private property. While the grocery store can't refuse to do business with someone because of their protected status, they don't have to allow you to play the music of your choice or plaster the windows with whatever posters you want to put up.

It probably shocks you to know that a business that doesn't generally accommodate; a private club, religious institution, etc. can exclude anyone they want for any reason that they want. You can have a hunting club that only allows white men, a religious group that only allows Muslim women, or an anti-blue group that forbids anyone who wears any item of clothing containing the color blue.

Web sites are private companies who are protected by the First Amendment (at least in the United States) from having the government either require them to keep any information on their sites, or take down any information from their sites, barring a few limited illegal types. You are free to start your own blogging service or web page and host whatever you want. Former President Trump tried that. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't as popular as he had hoped.

What folks such as yourself want isn't so much a place to post their ideas, regardless of relative merit, what they want is access to the *huge* built in audience places like Facebook and Twitter provide.

More than three years after last release, X.Org Server 21.1.0 RC1 appears

Re: Not Really Off Topic!!!

Gotta give props to xfce here as well. Unfortunately, they still haven't fixed its issues with extending the desktop to the left. If you have, for example, two monitors and need to have the primary monitor on the right with the secondary monitor on the left, xfce just can't handle that. It's the main reason I've had to switch to KDE (I agree with your Gnome sentiments). I still use xfce on my laptops that only have a single screen.