Posts by Psy-Q

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

I think ExampleOne means well but plain vanilla SteamOS is not packaged for broad hardware support, easy installation or sustained desktop usage.

If you use the machine only or mostly for gaming, Bazzite should do it. It's a preconfigured SteamOS that installs anywhere except if you have an Nvidia GPU. You could also try ChimeraOS but I feel at the moment Bazzite is more polished. If you're stuck with Nvidia, waiting for PlaytronOS might be the only way forward.

If you also want to use it for desktop work and are a beginner on Linux, try any of the Ubuntus or Fedora, they're pretty much equally easy these days. On Ubuntu you'll have to contend with Snap packages for many basic components like web browsers, though, which are nasty, sad, stupid and evil (in some users' opinion) or the next messiah (in Canonical's opinion only). If that leaves a bad aftertaste for you, Fedora it is.

You'll find a lot of opinions in every direction so maybe head to gamingonlinux.com and join the forum, IRC channel or Discord.

Veeam researching support for VMware alternative Proxmox as backup buyers fret about Broadcom

XCP-ng/Xen Orchestra has this built in

This is essentially a true FOSS fork of XenServer and you get backup capability built in for free (beer and speech) thanks to Orchestra.

It seems underappreciated but it's the first place I'd look, skipping Proxmox completely, if I needed a VMware alternative. But Veeam won't mention or support it, of course, since Veeam isn't required there and so can't make any money off it.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

Re: installed on every machine

Almost all distros support firmware updates via fwupdmgr and many suppliers upload their firmware to the LVFS, so that's not really an issue. Lenovo is among those, I've updated EFI BIOS and Thunderbolt dock firmware many times without problems.

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

While BitWarden is great, also consider the competition such as Passbolt.

A risk with BitWarden seems to be that it's another one-man-show type of project, at least last I checked, Kyle was the only developer.

There's a truly open source version of BitWarden's backend server called Vaultwarden: https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden It's a lot lighter too and doesn't require Microsoft SQL Server. BitWarden's Docker setup will install MS SQL in a container for you, but still...

The ties to Microsoft exist because BitWarden (the company) was initially supported by MS and I think one of the stipulations was that MS SQL and C# be used.

Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

There's no need for a snap, maybe you are thinking of Canonical's decision to deliver it that way? That's an Ubuntu problem, though.

On other distros it's still packaged normally, and there's always the official Flatpak (lacks some tight system integration required for e.g. KeepassXC, though) and the option to use the tarball directly from Mozilla.

Microsoft: The deadline to get off Basic Auth is approaching

I wish they wouldn't call it basic auth when it has nothing to do with HTTP basic auth.

Ditching VMware over the Broadcom buy? Here are some of your options

No mention of Proxmox or OpenNebula?

Vivaldi email client released 7 years after first announcement

Re: Why is it so hard to find a good email program?

It's defanged enough considering that sync is always encrypted with a master password you set and Vivaldi shouldn't be able to read any of it.

Also, built-in adblock even on Android. It uses the same filter lists as everyone else and the "allow ads by our friends" feature can be switched off.

And if you have Google set as search engine, Vivaldi suggests you try a more privacy-friendly one (with DuckDuckGo and Startpage mentioned explicitly).

Valheim: How the heck has more 'indie shovelware with PS2 graphics' sold 4 million copies in a matter of weeks?

Re: OK, but how DID they sell millions?

The team was 1-5 people depending on the stage of development, and IGN's guess on why it was such a success is as good as mine (probably better, since they interviewed the developers): https://www.ign.com/articles/valheim-how-a-5-person-team-created-the-most-popular-game-on-steam

That syncing feeling when you realise you may be telling Google more than you thought

Re: @ArrZarr - Shrug

I've been a FF user since the age when is was named Phoenix (this is pre-Y2k for young people here)

Oh! Oh! We're playing old-person games! Let me play! I've been using Netscape since I had to buy Netscape Navigator on floppy disk. Came in a big mostly white box. Green icon with a lighthouse. It was pretty!

And before that, NCSA Mosaic. Came in a nothing, because 9600 baud modem and... ZMODEM transfers? My memory is cloudy around that time.

Hipster horror! Slack has gone TITSUP: Total inability to support user procrastination

That's why you don't put important communications channels into proprietary, centralized silos :P

Ubuntu wants to slurp PCs' vital statistics – even location – with new desktop installs

Re: Hmm

Canonical wants to collect a lot more data than what popcon gathers. Also, popcon on Debian is opt-in, this Canonical approach is opt-out.

Have three WINEs this weekend, because WINE 3.0 has landed

Re: Office 2016?

If you really need Office 2016 on Linux, you can buy Crossover and run it with that. You'd also be supporting the WINE project financially that way.

Smartphones' security enhancements just make them more dangerous

Re: Any Biometric is the least secure model I can think of.....

Although it's a different story when the best secret that people can come up with is 123456.

Windows Store nixed Google Chrome 'app' hours after it went live

Re: Final defeat in the Browser Continuation War

Remember when it was the same with Internet Explorer in the 90s, when people only used that to download Netscape Navigator or later Firefox? And then Microsoft aggressively made IE the default, and soon IE was the dominant browser.

Maybe it can happen again. Although Google is a powerful rival, they seem to shotgun the Chrome installer all over the place and bundle it with thousands of unrelated products. I've seen people using Chrome by default who usually don't even know how to install software, so they must have managed to install *that* somehow.

You lost your ballpoint pen, Slack? Why's your Linux version unsigned?

The multinational hotel chain I recently went to that wanted my credit card details sent in plain text said the same thing when I told them that this is bad security practice and surely a breach of PCI DSS. I think it's something that is taught to spokesdrones to always say as the very first thing when security is being questioned.

Microsoft's AI is so good it steered Renault into bottom of the F1 league

They need an AI to tell them what mood the driver is in? Can't you just, err, tell?

Slack re-invents the extranet and shared Notes databases with cross-company teams

Re: “channel members from both sides can … upload files”

Prior evidence seems to indicate that encryption is not any priority at Slack. Your chat history has to be stored unencrypted and indexed for their product to even work. They also can't encrypt at rest because they promise unlimited history. I expect any shared documents to be similarly indexed so to come with the same caveats.

Mobile industry begrudgingly accepts impacts of Apple, Google et al

Re: Moved to walled gardens?

I think (guess?) he was talking about the time when Android was new and open and upcoming, Google and Facebook actually endorsed open standards (XMPP etc.) and it all seemed like it was going to end well. At least that's what I like to assume in my happy dreams full of pink ponies and rainbows.

Re: Do one thing well

Interesting, it's Electrolux, V-Zug and Miele for white goods here. So let's rejoice, there is one market left with real competition!

Firefox doesn't need to be No 1 – and that's OK, 'cos it's falling off a cliff

Why don't you use the keyboard shortcut for reload if it is an important and often-used function for you? Even less mousing -- none!

Top tip for all you insider traders: Don't Google 'insider trading' from your work PC

A practical question: How did they get to his queries, since they're surely transmitted via HTTPS. Do they MITM every employee's computer? Keyloggers? Cameras filming the screen? I think none of this would even be legal here (Switzerland) unless done by the feds themselves and only with a court order.

Web inventor Sir Tim sizes up handcuffs for his creation – and world has 2 weeks to appeal

Re: Open Standards?

That has already happened. Look at how only Edge on Windows 10 gets 4K Netflix on PC. Everyone else gets 1080p or 720p (on identical hardware, mind).

Tanks for the memories: Building a post-Microsoft Office cloud suite

No one mentioned Collabora Office Online. Maybe it does that co-authoring better and has fewer formatting problems.

New Gnome emerges blinking into the sunlight

The release is called "Karlsruhe" (the location of the GUADEC at the time), not GUADEC.

Italian MP threatens parents forcing veggie diets on kids with jail

Pescetarians, they are (if they don't eat meat). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism

Open-source PowerShell?

It could be so much worse

This is the year when external powers force this smelly 20-years-of-Linux admin to learn PowerShell on Windows, and I think it could be much worse. PowerShell 2.0 was mostly atrocious, but from 3.0 on things have been solidifying and you don't even have to go to W32_ every 3 lines of code to accomplish things anymore.

I was wary and expected a shoddy thing, but when I started to use it I was surprised how much you can accomplish with this in a halfway legible fashion that perhaps even your team mates can decipher. The only nasty surprise was that piping things from one cmdlet to the other can reveal *more* information in the data that's piped. "Oh, so we're piping objects, not text?". Yeah, duh, apparently we are.

I struggle to think how they could abstract away the underlying OS, though. I'm writing a lot of Windowsisms, there's no way this code would run unchanged on Linux, but maybe that's not the point of an open source PowerShell anyway. Anyhoo. More FOSS is never wrong.

My Microsoft Office 365 woes: Constant crashes, malware macros – and settings from Hell

Re: Thunderbird with Lightening

If you run DavMail in the shop and have a benevolent admin there, they can set up a multiuser DavMail, run it in server mode and make everyone in the company happy by translating the string-of-netherworldly-incantations MS protocols to some real standards. This isn't even a hack, the DavMail people have all the features in place for it and I can vow that it works at least up to Exchange 2007. Don't know how beefy the server needs to be for what size of company, though.

Gnome shrinks the upgrade footprint with version 3.20 release

*Wacom tablets

Sorry to be that guy :(

'$5bn for Slack?! I refuse to pay!' You don't pay – and that's its biggest problem

The problem is open source?

The author suffers from some convoluted misunderstanding of open source/free software that is hard to untangle. Is he saying that Slack is open source? It isn't. Is he saying FOSS developers are cheapskates? That's hard to quantify, some teams of two really just can't afford to pay for any services through no fault of their own, some others spend their own money to provide services for thousands or millions of members of the community (Diaspora, Gitlab, etc.). Is he saying Slack is mostly used by FOSS developers? Where are those numbers to back that up? Or is he saying "having a free version of a service is like being open source"? In that case, reading and understanding an introduction to FOSS might be in order.

Microsoft sneaks onto Android while Android sneaks onto Windows

Re: In 2 - 10 years, Microsoft is going to gobble Cyanogen

It's not unusual that you have to pay someone more so that they do something they really don't want to do :)

In 2 - 10 years, Microsoft is going to gobble Cyanogen

Just like the Xamarin thing. That's my stupid speculation, anyhow. Let's meet back here in 2026 to see how it turned out.

OnePlus 2: Disappointing Second Album syndrome strikes again

Cyanogen OS, not CyanogenMod

The Wileyfox runs Cyanogen OS, not CyanogenMod. Cyanogen OS is the one that gets the Microsoft apps and deeply integrated Cortana at some point. Also, probably you won't have root on those phones. So definitely not as interesting as having a real CM.

Linux Mint 17.2: If only all penguinista desktops were done this way

Re: Goodness.

Maybe Arch isn't the most desktop-user-friendly distro of all time? Blasphemous, I know!

I've been remotely upgrading a series of desktops and laptops used as bait in a restaurant. People sit there and can use them for free, so they do all kinds of ungodly things to the machines. Every night a cronjob copies back a clean home dir and restarts the desktop environment. It's Debian. Never had issues like the ones you describe. To be fair, the machines have Intel graphics so that part just works with FOSS drivers.

Switzerland to set up 'Swiss cloud' free of NSA, GCHQ snooping (it hopes)

Cuckoo clocks? Never!

We just make expensive wristwatches. It's the Bavarians who make cuckoo clocks. Easy to get wrong, that's almost the same product!