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  • Obsidian can be almost anything you want it to be. Try searching out some videos from folks who use Obsidian for journalling.

  • Mozilla Firefox 126.0.1 Fixes Drag and Drop Quirk on Linux
  • Why not just drag a tab out as a separate window on one side of the screen and the other tab at the other side?

  • 2024: The Year Linux Dethrones Windows on the Desktop – Are You Ready?
  • I've got the complete opposite to you. I'm in a household of 3 gaming desktops and 3 laptops, plus family who need help. I've been daily driving Linux for about a decade now and keep duel boot around just for Adobe products.

    On all these machines, Linux hs been rock solid and never had issues that wasn't user caused. Windows on the other hand drives me crazy with how much it fucks out. I have next to no control over it. It updates when it wants. I have no control over what's updated. I hate the gods damn ads (and that's on Windows 10) despite running de-crappifying software. I hate how many errors it has and how long it takes t troubleshoot them. I hate that if the system borks itself enough, it's faster and less insanity inducing to just reinstall the whole os than try and fix it. I hate that Windows just gets progressively slower and laggier over time whereas my 6 year running Arch install was as fast as the day I installed it.

  • I got a boat
  • Just an FYI for OP, you don't actually have to smash anything, tapping the boat's prow with a bong would be an acceptable tradition/blessing too 😊

  • Where can I buy ebooks that will actually be mine for life?
  • OP wants to avoid Amazon. This is still giving Amazon money and therefore encouraging Amazon's greed, walled garden and dark patterns.

    A better alternative would be using almost any other digital book seller. There's plenty. And if the author chose or was forced to only sell through Amazon, then you can try library sources (like Overdrive) so the author at least gets something. And if you still can't get what you're looking for, then it's time to sail the high seas.

    At least make Amazon the last resort option.

  • NSA ’just days from taking over the internet’ warns Edward Snowden
  • Uh, yeah it does. Not to mention the US has killed more people through colonisation, direct and proxy wars, etc. than any other nation in human history.

  • Which Linux Distro is best for dogs?
  • Steam Deck is modified Arch with KDE desktop so probably not beginner friendly.

  • Anyone remember the Atlas Pass v4?
  • I assume that was a US only thing (maybe US/CAN?). I've been playing NMS since it was first around but don't ever remember this - looks like it would have been fun.

  • Lasse Collin, the other xz maintainer, has acknowledged the backdoor
  • Actually being paid is one of the biggest reasons for a lack in volunteers (the other is people working more than they used to). So many volunteers have been replaced with paid workers. Many charities aren't volunteer run organisations anymore but run more like not-for-profit businesses. As a result it's harder to get funding and donations. And people are less interested in volunteering unless they can be paid for it.

    It's a vicious cycle and I'm watching more and more local, community organisations get eaten up by massive, centralised non-profits; and more and more local volunteer organisatns struggling to get off the ground. 😞

  • WARNING: Malicious code in current pre-release & testing versions/variants: F40 and rawhide affected - users of F40/rawhide need to respond
  • It's in the article linked:

    The xz package that has already entered the current F40 pre-release versions/variants and rawhide contains malicious code.

  • Lasse Collin, the other xz maintainer, has acknowledged the backdoor
  • ”Finding a co-maintainer or passing the projects completely to someone else has been in my mind a long time but it’s not a trivial thing to do. For example, someone would need to have the skills, time, and enough long-term interest specifically for this.” - https://www.mail-archive.com/xz-devel@tukaani.org/msg00571.html

    As someone who runs a charity almost completely solo because of a lack of volunteers, I feel this so much in my bones. It's one thing to say, "Hey folks, I can't run this on my own, I need help" but it's another to find people who actually have the level of skill, committent, passion and integrity to contribute in a meaningful way. I can get people putting their hands up but I've lost count of the number of people who have then turned around and said, "Oh, actually I realise now I don't have time for this" or start in great and then just ghost me. It also takes more of my own time and energy, on top of what I'm already doing' to onboard and train people and it sucks so hard when I do that and then people disappear shortly after - I constantly have to question whether the time it takes to do that will be worth it vs just continuing the struggle by myself.

    When you get consumers being arrogant and demanding, getting angry at you for taking too long to respond to their messages or not work fast enough.... it's soul crushing. Way too many people take volunteer work for granted or assume you're getting paid for your time and can therefore treat you like a working-class pleb or are plain just fucking rude and entitled. :( APPRECIATE YOUR VOLUNTEERS FOLKS! We need more volunteers, and appreciation. Many hands makes light work.

  • Lasse Collin, the other xz maintainer, has acknowledged the backdoor
  • You realise that this comment is exactly part of the problem of why this happened, right? 🤦🏻‍♀️

  • DistroWatch has been banned in Turkey
  • Microsoft probably has a whole team in Turkey to make sure no one accidentally blocks their crap.

  • Economic explanation for piracy and the prisoner's dilemma
  • This only really works in cases where people are making a free choice. But since people don't live in a vacuum where consumerism, capitalism, advertising, greed, power imbalances, class divides, poverty, platform decay, planned obsolescence, geoblocking, price gouging, etc. don't exist, a significant portion of piracy comes from either having little choice (I'm poor and I either pirate or I miss out) or making a choice based on ethical considerations (such as not giving money to a corporation that is known to engage in unethical behaviour). Or that we've had decades, if not hundreds of years of elites/corporate propaganda telling us that poor people are poor because they're bad and we must listen with zero critical thinking to our capitalist overlords who are wealthy because they're smart and know what's best for us stupid plebs and here you go, have some bread and a circus so you can ignore your long work hours for pittance pay which is totally your fault for being dumb and not because the system is rigged against you, also don't ever cross us because we control the politicians that make the laws that say piracy is worse than corporate fraud, even though corporate fraud and tax evasion costs countries and communities infinitely more than piracy ever did....

    Yeah, piracy isn't simple.

  • Your first distribution
  • Red Hat back in the 1990s. I had to buy it from a local stationary shop because being in a small, isolated country and the internet being in it's infancy, it was all I could find. Came with a manual bigger than a phone book and cost about the equivalent to these days $200.

  • Some "old internet" brand of interesting.
  • I used to be one of those people. It was a much different place then. It genuinely felt like a place to share useful information and help others or connect with folks from all over the world. If you had a question, or needed to fix something, it was usually pretty easy to find.

    I used to prefer Altavista over Google as I found it served results closer to what I was looking for.

    Now most of the internet is trash - pages and pages repeating the same crap, useful information or tutorials are hard to find without first wading through irrelevant search results or tutorials that are unhelpful but know how to capture the algorithms to generate cash, my ad blocker now telling me it's blocking hundreds of ads instead of just a few, tracking and spying almost everywhere, clickbait hot takes, artificial and disingenuous lifestyle filtering, information desert eeeeverywhere....

    Many days now I long for the internet of old.

  • I need a distro that can work right out the box without too much hassle to configure it, which one would you recommend?
  • I'm a long time Arch user but it is 100% NOT out of the box. Love Arch but it's not the answer to this question.

  • thinking of trying linux,
  • Also can confirm. Been using Arch, which most people consider requires more fiddling than other distros, for almost 10 years now and have had few issues with it. I've had to fix my Windows install more than my Linux.

  • "How to bypass and block infuriating cookie popups" 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

    Oh the hilarious irony. Can anyone recommend an up to date Firefox addon that gets rid of these fucking popups, automatically declining all but necessary? I've looked at a few but I remember folks here recommending some that I can't now for the life if me remember what they were. Thanks!

    31
    Firefox not taking focus when opening links from (EDIT) some apps but not others on Wayland (KDE)

    Dunno if this is Wayland, Thunderbird, Firefox or KDE causing this issue but in the past few days I've been giving Wayland a go. Been much snappier and no issues but for Firefox not taking focus when I open web links in Thunderbird.

    When I use Thunderbird with X and click on a link, Firefox will correctly grab focus and open the link.

    Using Wayland, clicking a link in Thunderbird correctly opens the link in Firefox however Firefox stays minimised or drawn behind the other windows. My dock (KDE panel set to "Windows can cover") also does not pop up like it normally would if I've opened something but it's in the background. It stays hidden and I have to mouse over it to see that the Firefox icon is highlighted.

    I've tried opening links from the Steam client and Firefox correctly takes focus from there so it so far seems to be just Thunderbird links not opening correctly in Firefox. I haven't been able to find anything in KDE's settings that would affect only Thunderbird.

    EDIT (tested some different app combos):

    Applications it correctly takes focus from: Pamac, Bottles, Calibre, Gnome Calculator, Gnome Evince Document Viewer, Steam, Strawberry Music Player

    Applications it doesn't grab focus from: Thunderbird and Betterbird, Libreoffice (links in the About or URL links in a document), GIMP, Krita, Signal, Kdenlive, Darktable, VLC, QtAV QMLPlayer, Obsidian

    I also tried Okular links but for some reason those opened in Chromium instead of Firefox (despite Firefox being set to default) but Chromium did take focus.

    It's a minor annoyance but obviously I would like to fix it if possible and continue using Wayland given that, for me, it's noticeably faster than X.

    OS: Arch Linux x86\_64 Kernel: 6.6.10-arch1-1 DE: Plasma 5.27.10 WM: kwin Display Server: Wayland 1.22.0-1 GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 6800 XT

    Thunderbird 115.6.1, Firefox 121.0.1.

    TIA!

    11
    How do I make a Plasma panel completely transparent?

    So I've loved the minimalist aesthetic of Elementary's Pantheon desktop for a long time now. I even ran Pantheon (on Arch) for a long time but eventually the quirks and bugs got to me and I ditched it. I've now been using KDE for several years but still sometimes get the itch for that aesthetic again.

    I've almost got my KDE desktop to look enough like Pantheon to make me happy EXCEPT for the completely transparent top panel.

    image.png

    (It's not so easy to see in the smaller image above, but the top panel is slightly transparent. Apologies, here's another screenshot showing it is indeed semi-transparent.)

    I have adaptive transparency turned on so that the panel goes opaque with maximised windows all good. The issue as you can see from the screenshot above is that when there's nothing maximised, the top panel is barely transparent let alone fully transparent.

    I understand this is from the theme I'm using (Breeze Dark).

    I don't want to use Latte dock. And every single set of instructions I have come across about how to alter themes has either been outdated, doesn't work or says something along the lines of, "You need to edit the theme." but doesn't say HOW. I've searched for that too and come up empty - either outdated or doesn't apply to Arch.

    Can someone please tell me (bearing in mind that I have Cognitive Impairment so breaking down the instructions is very appreciated!) how I can edit Breeze Dark so that my top panel is completely transparent?

    Or if there's a simpler way to achieve this, please let me know! :) TIA!

    0
    Is there any self-hosted version of Microsoft's Family Safety/Parental controls?

    I REALLY want to get away from using all Microsoft products. My spouse and I use Linux but not for our kids just simply because I have yet to find anything that does what Microsoft Family does - being able to remotely set time limits, keep an eye on screen time stats, block websites and apps remotely, see what websites they've been using, etc.

    So far I've found some disparate apps or methods that can do some of this. But our family situation is complicated, not least of which includes disability and special needs. So basically, yeah, I need to be able to spy on what my kids are doing on their computers but I don't want Microsoft or any other companies being able to do that. I would like to be able to switch the kids laptops/PCs onto Linux as well, but again, the lack of remote parental controls or some sort of centralised access has been preventing that so far.

    We don't need a phone app, but would just really like some central place that we can do this from that respects privacy, isn't trying to sell us yet more crap and is preferably FOSS.

    6
    Thorned_Rose Thorned_Rose @kbin.social
    Posts 8
    Comments 272