Subj : Re: Old computer To : DustCouncil From : boraxman Date : Tue Jun 28 2022 23:54:55 Du> Well, this has been an interesting bunch of messages because I just Du> spent the last week migrating back to Linux after about a decade of Du> using Windows. Du> Du> Windows 10 Home Edition was a travesty of an operating system. A Du> travesty, for no other reason, than its forced-reboot crap, which caused Du> me initially to lose data in the event I left a document open (not a Du> good habit but it happened a few times), or in cases where I was Du> rendering a fractal or something and Microsoft made the decision for me Du> to reboot. This is intolerable. The idea that I have to pay more to Du> have Microsoft not forcibly reboot my system steams my proverbial clams. Du> Du> Du> I am sympathetic to Microsoft's reason for doing this, but my suggestion Du> to Microsoft is when people aren't installing updates and rebooting with Du> any regularity, change the theme to Hot Dog Stand and have an annoying Du> pulsing thing in the notification area or something until they do -- Du> don't reboot their damned systems forcibly so they lose work. Du> Du> I was also convinced that Windows 10 would be, in essence, the last Du> version of Windows, receiving endless incremental updates. When Windows Du> 11 came out, I thought, "you have to be kidding me." And, of course, it Du> won't run on my current system. By the time Win10 is officially EOL'ed, Du> I'll have a more current system but frankly that little blip a few Du> months ago where they were experimenting with ads in the file manager, I Du> thought, "Yeah...no. I think I am done with this company." Du> Du> I spent 2002-2009 running Gentoo on my desktop, and that was, in the end, Du> disastrous because while I loved the whole philosophy behind Gentoo Du> (it's like Linux for BSD fans), when it broke, it *really* broke, Du> disastrously. After one too many times of that happening I went back to Du> Debian Stable for two years and at the time there was no decent video Du> editing solution, and so I switched to Windows 7 out of disgust, keeping Du> a headless, shell-only Linux system on a separate system. This was a Du> nice combination. I lived in PuTTY all day and had the best of both Du> worlds. Du> Du> The best Linux desktop I've ever used was KDE 3.5.9 - it was probably Du> the high water mark for the Linux desktop, and, well, I'd hoped that Du> modern KDE would be even better. I'm typing this on Kubuntu now, and I Du> have to say the migration to it has been...irritating. Du> Du> I can't speak for the Linux desktop as a whole, but Kubuntu is sloppy. Du> Quirky. And full of little irritations, most of which I've fixed but Du> I've noticed my patience for these quirks is not what it once was. Du> There is an old saw that Linux is a great operating system if your time Du> is worthless. Well, that's absolutely *not* true for the shell, which Du> is the real draw for me, but as for the desktop (well, at least Du> Kubuntu), it has taken far too much time to get myself to where I'm at Du> now. Sound is still stupid; whole inputs are missing in Audacity, like Du> my line in, which I need to record from. Just doesn't show up. Du> Du> As to your point, though, workflow on operating systems is an issue. Du> How much can you stand to change workflow based on habits which may be Du> decades old? One truly infuriating thing I can't fix is desktop icons Du> will execute with a single click, which is not what I am used to (and Du> will never be used to), and the settings option will make Du> double-clicking necessary everywhere (like in Dolphin, the file manager, Du> for instance) - EXCEPT on the stupid desktop. Du> Du> And here's a major annoyance: Linux is fairly terrible with cloud Du> storage, except for Dropbox. And Dropbox has this piddly little free Du> plan, and then it wants me to pay $120 a year for way more storage than Du> I need. There is no lighter usage tier. Cloud storage is worth $60 a Du> year to me - $5 a month, so of course Dropbox doesn't have any such plan. Du> Du> I use an iPhone (I had three Androids before it, and I definitely prefer Du> the iPhone for a variety of reasons), and forget iCloud - at least, Du> forget mounting it as a drive anywhere (you can do this with Dropbox). Du> So now I have this clunky web-only interface with iCloud, and have had Du> to move various other resources over to the piddly free Dropbox tier. I Du> have two cloud services now and I don't want two. I want everything Du> integrated nicely, and Apple would, of course, like me to buy a Mac, Du> which I do not want to do. Du> Du> One of my tasks over the coming months, and I have little patience for Du> this anymore, is to try some other distributions, and especially window Du> managers/windowing environments, to see if they better suit my needs. Du> Du> I think have replicated about 90% of my needs in Kubuntu now, after a Du> lot of profanity and manual compiling, and that brings me to another Du> gripe. I don't like all of this chaotic packaging business, with Du> flatpaks, snaps, and the traditional package managers. I don't have any Du> problem with any *one* of them, but by now I really wish there was a Du> single standard way of packaging things. Du> Du> Then there are the multiple network configuration methods, and I need to Du> untangle all of that business at some point. Du> Du> I guess I could compare this to the pure ugly chaos of Windows 10's Du> weirdly inconsistent configuration/settings pages, the need to Du> *sometimes* go into the control panel and get those old Windows NT Du> looking settings dialogs...SOMETIMES, only for other things to be modern. Du> Du> Maybe it's just me but right now things really seem messy to me on both Du> the Microsoft end and the Linux end. Du> Du> I'd love there to be some order. The BSDs have order but what they Du> don't have is, oh, the ability to basic everyday things like play Du> Netflix videos, on account of the futile DRM Netflix insists on using. Du> I'd love to listen to the suits rationalizing that, like, oh if we don't Du> DRM our shows, people might pirate them. Du> Du> I can capture them with OBS just fine as it is. And I can, of course, Du> pirate the hell out of them with Bittorrent if I am so inclined. But Du> what I cannot do is play them legally in FreeBSD, which seems downright Du> stupid since, it is at least rumored, Netflix is using one of the BSDs Du> on the server side. Du> Du> Here is one last gripe: there is no equivalent of Irfanview for Linux. Du> Irfanview is, so far as I can tell, the best image viewer I've ever Du> used, and gwenview, the Linux alternative which is widely recommended in Du> its place, is fairly pathetic by comparison. Surprisingly, it won't Du> even display HEIC files, which is the default image file the iPhone Du> uses. I had to compile a plugin from github to enable that. I don't Du> know if it's a patent thing or what. In any case, it is a *major* gap, Du> to not be able to display the default image format of iPhones (whether Du> Apple should use this widely unsupported format is a fair question, but Du> it is what it is.) Du> Du> Anyway this is a VERY long whine, but it is fun reading this discussion Du> now as I am in the middle of moving my daily driver to Linux. I want to Du> like Linux. But it is slovenly on the desktop. Some of it may be my Du> distribution choice. I don't know. Du> I think software in general has regressed, both in the Windows and Linux world. There have been some changes in Linux which were less than welcome, some of which you alluded to, Snap, Flatpak. There is a tendency to want to reinvent thing, use new paradigms. The one saving grace of Linux is you have the option to have something more stable. KDE 3.5 was fantastic, and the shift to version 4 and 5 was not without friction, but I did get used to it. BUT, I moved to FVWM which hasn't changed in a long time, and is static. My FVWM configuration will just keep working for years and they don't see the need to reinvent things for the sake of reinventing it. Same for other software choices, I can choose software which is more stable. I use Emacs and vim, where the skills I learned 10 years ago are still usable today. Linux pays off for me because my workflows, using Z Shell, FVWM, Emacs, Groff, Awk, don't change. I try to avoid 'flavour of the day' software and solutions and use tried and true solutions, preferring to leverage generic tools. I would recommend not really worrying too much about distros, and just pick one and get to know it. Most of the 'spins', like Kubuntu are just the base distro with different defaults. Gentoo was probably not a good choice, as it was designed for those who want to spend time to tinker. You can just install regular Fedora, and use KDE instead, no need to move from Fedora to Fedora KDE Spin. I've only ever changed distro once on my laptop, and only because Fedora dropped 32 bit support. The base Fedora or Debian distro will have all the Window managers and desktop environments available, so you can try them all out without changing distros. Just install them from the repository and choose them from the login screen. By the way, I'm surprised Plasma/KDE doesn't support single click. I could swear I set mine up that way, but I don't have Plasma on this laptop so can't test it now. There is also the Trinity Desktop Environment, which is a fork of KDE 3.5! So if you really want that desktop, look into Trinity Desktop Environment. Admittedly sacrifices are made, but these are sacrifices I am willing to make. Sure, there is some software I don't have, but I can do without it. The payoff is being able to make my computer MINE, have a set up that I'm very comfortable with, and being free from having the rug pulled out from under me because some corporation has a different vision. Linux has taken some of my time, but if you invest your time wisely, the payoff is larger. I've spent some time setting up FVWM, some scripts, but they save me time now, over and over again ,for as long as I want them to, and the investment that you need to make now is smaller than it used to be. It also is different, in that the Unix philosophy lends itself towards using sepearate programs for different tasks, rather than big monolithic apps. I set up Linux on a Thinkpad for my wife, and it really was a breeze. --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64) * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101) .