Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just for children to use?
With the refusal of Ubuntu to allow one to run an account as full admin at all times, it is known to be designed primarily to be safe for children to use.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust types protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/ into terminal, they can bypass all of the protections for which Ubuntu was created.
On 2025-05-21 22:17, CtrlAltDel wrote:
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just
for
children to use?
With the refusal of Ubuntu to allow one to run an account as full
admin at
all times, it is known to be designed primarily to be safe for
children to
use.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust types
protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/ into
terminal,
they can bypass all of the protections for which Ubuntu was created.
AFAIK, on all Linux distribution you never run as "full admin at all
times".
account not easily accessed and services available to users are easily
set with a GUI.
bliss- Dell 7730 Precision- PCLinuxOS 2025.05- Linux 6.6.91- Plasma
5.27.11
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just for children to use?
With the refusal of Ubuntu to allow one to run an account as full admin at all times, it is known to be designed primarily to be safe for children to use.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust types protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/ into terminal, they can bypass all of the protections for which Ubuntu was created.
On Wed, 21 May 2025 16:17:43 -0400, CtrlAltDel <Altie@bham.com> wrote:
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just
for children to use?
With the refusal of Ubuntu to allow one to run an account as full admin
at all times, it is known to be designed primarily to be safe for
children to use.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust types
protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/ into
terminal,
they can bypass all of the protections for which Ubuntu was created.
Mageia does not let you log in as root when using the gui, but there is nothing stopping you from switching to a text login, suc as using
alt+ctrl+f3 and logging in as root there. After login, root can then run "startx -- startkde" or " startx -- startgnome" as desired.
For wayland, the commands are XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland and XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session gnome-session
While I agree with blocking root login through the gui, I don't agree
with blocking it for text login.
Does ubuntu really block root login even in run level 3, aka multi-user.target or in a text login screen?
Regards, Dave Hodgins
On Wed, 21 May 2025 18:29:59 -0400, David W. Hodgins wrote:
On Wed, 21 May 2025 16:17:43 -0400, CtrlAltDel <Altie@bham.com> wrote:
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just
for children to use?
With the refusal of Ubuntu to allow one to run an account as full admin
at all times, it is known to be designed primarily to be safe for
children to use.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust types
protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/ into
terminal,
they can bypass all of the protections for which Ubuntu was created.
Mageia does not let you log in as root when using the gui, but there is nothing stopping you from switching to a text login, suc as using alt+ctrl+f3 and logging in as root there. After login, root can then run "startx -- startkde" or " startx -- startgnome" as desired.
For wayland, the commands are XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland and XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session gnome-session
While I agree with blocking root login through the gui, I don't agree
with blocking it for text login.
Does ubuntu really block root login even in run level 3, aka multi-user.target or in a text login screen?
Regards, Dave Hodgins
I'm really not sure, as I haven't examined Ubuntu that thoroughly.
Here:
https://i.imgur.com/n79Klbb.jpeg
is how easy it is to do it in Mint. Right click in your file manager and select open as root. Done!
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just
for children to use?
OTOH, creating an account for a child *without* sudo privs is quite
possible and probably advisable. This is doable on any Linux system.
On Wed, 21 May 2025 16:17:43 -0400, CtrlAltDel <Altie@bham.com> wrote:
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just for >> children to use?
With the refusal of Ubuntu to allow one to run an account as full admin at >> all times, it is known to be designed primarily to be safe for children to >> use.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust types
protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/ into terminal, >> they can bypass all of the protections for which Ubuntu was created.
Mageia does not let you log in as root when using the gui, but there is nothing stopping
you from switching to a text login, suc as using alt+ctrl+f3 and logging in as root there.
After login, root can then run "startx -- startkde" or " startx -- startgnome" as desired.
Does ubuntu really block root login even in run level 3, aka multi-user.target or in a text
login screen?
Why do you need to use root? Only experts are allowed to do that. If you >have to ask why Ubuntu doesn't allow root accounts, you aren't smart
enough to use it as root.
I don't know if it is possible to make either of the above *impossible*. >OTOH, creating an account for a child *without* sudo privs is quite possible >and probably advisable. This is doable on any Linux system.
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just for children to use?
With the refusal of Ubuntu to allow one to run an account as full admin at all times, it is known to be designed primarily to be safe for children to use.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust types protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/ into terminal, they can bypass all of the protections for which Ubuntu was created.
Are there any other Linux derivatives out there with these robust
types protections? If a child knows how to type nautilus admin:/
into terminal, they can bypass all of the protections for which
Ubuntu was created.
What programs will the children be using? What d you want them to be
able to do, and not be able to do?
... or perhaps people with learning disabilities who should not be
given full access to their operating system.
On Thu, 22 May 2025 16:03:33 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
What programs will the children be using? What d you want them to be
able to do, and not be able to do?
I don't have any children living at my home any longer. I was just
wondering if Ubuntu was made for children or perhaps people with
learning disabilities who should not be given full access to their
operating system.
On Thu, 22 May 2025 16:03:33 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
What programs will the children be using? What d you want them to be
able to do, and not be able to do?
I don't have any children living at my home any longer. I was just
wondering if Ubuntu was made for children or perhaps people with learning >disabilities who should not be given full access to their operating
system.
CtrlAltDel <Altie@BHam.com> wrote:
I don't have any children living at my home any longer. I was just >>wondering if Ubuntu was made for children or perhaps people with learning >>disabilities who should not be given full access to their operating
system.
It is a myth that Ubuntu users don't have full access. You're
confusing Android and Ubuntu.
On Thu, 22 May 2025 16:03:33 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
What programs will the children be using? What d you want them to be
able to do, and not be able to do?
I don't have any children living at my home any longer. I was just
wondering if Ubuntu was made for children or perhaps people with learning disabilities who should not be given full access to their operating
system.
They are trolling. Their last iteration kept people going for a week or
three on the subject of whether an HDD could be converted to an SSD, now they’ve picked another daft topic to keep going as long as possible.
On 22/05/2025 21:14, CtrlAltDel wrote:
On Thu, 22 May 2025 16:03:33 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
What programs will the children be using? What d you want them to be
able to do, and not be able to do?
I don't have any children living at my home any longer. I was just
wondering if Ubuntu was made for children or perhaps people with
learning disabilities who should not be given full access to their
operating system.
Of course not. Its made for people who want to USE linux, not constantly fiddle with it.
On Wed, 21 May 2025 13:47:52 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But many including PCLinuxOS which I use are able to have a full
root
account not easily accessed and services available to users are easily
set with a GUI.
bliss- Dell 7730 Precision- PCLinuxOS 2025.05- Linux 6.6.91- Plasma
5.27.11
Ubuntu is bizarre. Just go to their help site and search for topics like
run as root, create root, or admin access, etc... and in instance after instance after instance the only responses you will see are admonishments about using root.
Why do you need to use root? Only experts are allowed to do that. If you have to ask why Ubuntu doesn't allow root accounts, you aren't smart
enough to use it as root. Anyone without a college degree related to
computer engineering, in some fashion, doesn't have the intelligence
needed to operate Ubuntu as an admin.
I just assumed the distro was created for children who are just learning
to use Linux.
On Fri, 23 May 2025 09:17:04 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 22/05/2025 21:14, CtrlAltDel wrote:
On Thu, 22 May 2025 16:03:33 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
What programs will the children be using? What d you want them to be
able to do, and not be able to do?
I don't have any children living at my home any longer. I was just
wondering if Ubuntu was made for children or perhaps people with
learning disabilities who should not be given full access to their
operating system.
Of course not. Its made for people who want to USE linux, not constantly
fiddle with it.
Ubuntu, with the Gnome Desktop Environment, is for people that have mental disabilities that affect their reasoning skills and Canonical decided they would create a distro for them. It's for people that can't be trusted to behave in a rational manner and must have their usage of Linux crippled by those who know better than they do.
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. ...
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what
to do, how to do it.
On Sat, 24 May 2025 04:45:34 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. ...
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what
to do, how to do it.
Including the ability not to choose to use Canonical.
Remember, Free Software has no vendor lock-in. If any Free Software
company really were abusing their users the way Microsoft does, they wouldn’t last ten minutes in the marketplace.
Ubuntu doesn't have the optimal
philosophy in that regard.
On 2025-05-24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 24 May 2025 04:45:34 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. ...
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what
to do, how to do it.
Including the ability not to choose to use Canonical.
Remember, Free Software has no vendor lock-in. If any Free Software
company really were abusing their users the way Microsoft does, they
wouldn’t last ten minutes in the marketplace.
Indeed, and that one thing I am thankful for. The reason I advised
against Ubuntu, was because those who asked me about Linux, specifically desired to gain freedom and choice over their computing environment and
did not want to be in a situation where an external power (such as the vendor) could shape their computer. Ubuntu doesn't have the optimal philosophy in that regard.
If people *want* that though, then thats their choice. I just want to
have amenable options open to me.
However, many people who may move to Linux from Windows may not care
about this, nor even know they have this option. It might just be "this works on my computer where Windows 11 doesn't run".
On 2025-05-21, CtrlAltDel <Altie@BHam.com> wrote:
On Wed, 21 May 2025 13:47:52 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But many including PCLinuxOS which I use are able to have a full
root
account not easily accessed and services available to users are easily
set with a GUI.
bliss- Dell 7730 Precision- PCLinuxOS 2025.05- Linux 6.6.91- Plasma
5.27.11
Ubuntu is bizarre. Just go to their help site and search for topics like
run as root, create root, or admin access, etc... and in instance after
instance after instance the only responses you will see are admonishments
about using root.
Why do you need to use root? Only experts are allowed to do that. If you >> have to ask why Ubuntu doesn't allow root accounts, you aren't smart
enough to use it as root. Anyone without a college degree related to
computer engineering, in some fashion, doesn't have the intelligence
needed to operate Ubuntu as an admin.
I just assumed the distro was created for children who are just learning
to use Linux.
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. I never recommend Ubuntu to anyone for that reason, in
fact, I tell anyone interested in Linux to *avoid* it.
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what
to do, how to do it. Its your computer, your software, and if you want
to run everything as root, you can.
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just for children to use?
For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a good way to start.
Le 24-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
On 2025-05-21, CtrlAltDel <Altie@BHam.com> wrote:
On Wed, 21 May 2025 13:47:52 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But many including PCLinuxOS which I use are able to have a full
root
account not easily accessed and services available to users are easily >>>> set with a GUI.
bliss- Dell 7730 Precision- PCLinuxOS 2025.05- Linux 6.6.91- Plasma
5.27.11
Ubuntu is bizarre. Just go to their help site and search for topics like >>> run as root, create root, or admin access, etc... and in instance after
instance after instance the only responses you will see are admonishments >>> about using root.
Why do you need to use root? Only experts are allowed to do that. If you >>> have to ask why Ubuntu doesn't allow root accounts, you aren't smart
enough to use it as root. Anyone without a college degree related to
computer engineering, in some fashion, doesn't have the intelligence
needed to operate Ubuntu as an admin.
I just assumed the distro was created for children who are just learning >>> to use Linux.
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. I never recommend Ubuntu to anyone for that reason, in
fact, I tell anyone interested in Linux to *avoid* it.
I'm not convinced by your explanation. For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a
good way to start. First, as Ubuntu installs a lot of things, a new user
will have everything ready to start without the need to look for
solution each time he want to do something. Second, as Ubuntu is well
spread, if a new user has an issue, the chances someone else get it
first is important, so it will be easier to solve.
You can be against Ubuntu because of snaps, but it's not the reason you
are against it.
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what
to do, how to do it. Its your computer, your software, and if you want
to run everything as root, you can.
So what? Ubuntu doesn't stop you to do that. Even if it's stupid, you
can do it.
On 24 May 2025 12:20:55 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a good way to start.
There are many others, particularly those who want an easier
transition from Windows ways of doing things.
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/5-most-windows-like-linux-distros-because-old-habits-die-hard/>
On 2025-05-24, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 24-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. I never recommend Ubuntu to anyone for that reason, in
fact, I tell anyone interested in Linux to *avoid* it.
I'm not convinced by your explanation. For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a
good way to start. First, as Ubuntu installs a lot of things, a new user
will have everything ready to start without the need to look for
solution each time he want to do something. Second, as Ubuntu is well
spread, if a new user has an issue, the chances someone else get it
first is important, so it will be easier to solve.
You can be against Ubuntu because of snaps, but it's not the reason you
are against it.
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what
to do, how to do it. Its your computer, your software, and if you want
to run everything as root, you can.
So what? Ubuntu doesn't stop you to do that. Even if it's stupid, you
can do it.
I didn't say Ubuntu stops you from doing that.
My point was if you don't like a particular distro, or their
philosophy, you can move away.
On 2025-05-24, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 24-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
On 2025-05-21, CtrlAltDel <Altie@BHam.com> wrote:
On Wed, 21 May 2025 13:47:52 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But many including PCLinuxOS which I use are able to have a full
root
account not easily accessed and services available to users are easily >>>>> set with a GUI.
bliss- Dell 7730 Precision- PCLinuxOS 2025.05- Linux 6.6.91- Plasma
5.27.11
Ubuntu is bizarre. Just go to their help site and search for topics like >>>> run as root, create root, or admin access, etc... and in instance after >>>> instance after instance the only responses you will see are admonishments >>>> about using root.
Why do you need to use root? Only experts are allowed to do that. If you >>>> have to ask why Ubuntu doesn't allow root accounts, you aren't smart
enough to use it as root. Anyone without a college degree related to
computer engineering, in some fashion, doesn't have the intelligence
needed to operate Ubuntu as an admin.
I just assumed the distro was created for children who are just learning >>>> to use Linux.
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. I never recommend Ubuntu to anyone for that reason, in
fact, I tell anyone interested in Linux to *avoid* it.
I'm not convinced by your explanation. For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a
good way to start. First, as Ubuntu installs a lot of things, a new user
will have everything ready to start without the need to look for
solution each time he want to do something. Second, as Ubuntu is well
spread, if a new user has an issue, the chances someone else get it
first is important, so it will be easier to solve.
You can be against Ubuntu because of snaps, but it's not the reason you
are against it.
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what
to do, how to do it. Its your computer, your software, and if you want
to run everything as root, you can.
So what? Ubuntu doesn't stop you to do that. Even if it's stupid, you
can do it.
I didn't say Ubuntu stops you from doing that. My point was if you
don't like a particular distro, or their philosophy, you can move away.
A new Linux user want an
easy way to discover Linux.
So I know why I choose something, a new
Linux user doesn't and don't want to care to discover Linux.
On your link, I agree only with Mint. I never used it, but it's well
spread. I was surprised when installing it on someone else computer,
when I installed other WM/DE they all look the same. It's weird, but I
can understand Mint want all WM/DE to look the same. As it's well
spread, it's easy to find help for it.
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just for children to use?Any properly setup Linux system should be fine: you just don't give them
TBH pretty much any distro today would be more than good enough for me.
That wasn't the case 10 years ago.
I only changed when the distro I was using did not do what I wanted.
Now they nearly all do.
They are not interested in 'discovering Linux'. They just want a
desktop computer that 'works like XP used to work'.
Now we meet online which is harder for newbies to accesss.
But Your point was well hidden. Because it looked like you consider a
new Linux user must discover and know everything before being able to
use Linux for the first time.
Wait ... that means they are, or were, interested in “discovering Windows”
back in the XP days, otherwise they would never have discovered how it
worked ...
On 5/25/25 04:10, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:about
But Your point was well hidden. Because it looked like you consider a
new Linux user must discover and know everything before being able to
use Linux for the first time.
That is why we have Linux Users Groups, to help new users learn
thebut
FOSS tools available and suitable for their machines and level of
skills. In 2006 I had problem with getting my Mandriva online so I joing
San Francisco Linux USers Group ask SF-LUG and got plenty of free advice
some of it bad but I survived.
I easily transition from AmigaOS 3.9 to Windows XP to Linux with KDE
version 3.9.5.
Lack of Interest slowed the group down considerably around 2019
Covid
ended the meetings in person. I found it by searching on Linux users
groups in San Francisco. Taat searching might work for other areas. We
had one meeting in person just before Covid Delta began to spread. Now
we meet online which is harder for newbies to accesss.
Le 25-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
On 2025-05-24, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 24-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. I never recommend Ubuntu to anyone for that reason, in
fact, I tell anyone interested in Linux to *avoid* it.
I'm not convinced by your explanation. For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a >>> good way to start. First, as Ubuntu installs a lot of things, a new user >>> will have everything ready to start without the need to look for
solution each time he want to do something. Second, as Ubuntu is well
spread, if a new user has an issue, the chances someone else get it
first is important, so it will be easier to solve.
You can be against Ubuntu because of snaps, but it's not the reason you
are against it.
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what >>>> to do, how to do it. Its your computer, your software, and if you want >>>> to run everything as root, you can.
So what? Ubuntu doesn't stop you to do that. Even if it's stupid, you
can do it.
I didn't say Ubuntu stops you from doing that.
It really looked that way.
My point was if you don't like a particular distro, or their
philosophy, you can move away.
That's the reason why I'm not using Ubuntu anymore. But it's not the
reason I wouldn't consider Ubuntu being a good choice for a new Linux
user. Because a new user doesn't know about a philosophy or differences between the default choices done by the distro. A new Linux user want an
easy way to discover Linux. So I know why I choose something, a new
Linux user doesn't and don't want to care to discover Linux.
But Your point was well hidden. Because it looked like you consider a
new Linux user must discover and know everything before being able to
use Linux for the first time.
On 5/25/25 04:10, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
But Your point was well hidden. Because it looked like you consider a
new Linux user must discover and know everything before being able to
use Linux for the first time.
That is why we have Linux Users Groups, to help new users learn about the
FOSS tools available and suitable for their machines and level of
skills. In 2006 I had
problem with getting my Mandriva online so I joing San Francisco Linux
USers Group
ask SF-LUG and got plenty of free advice some of it bad but I survived.
I easily
transition from AmigaOS 3.9 to Windows XP to Linux with KDE version 3.9.5.
Lack of Interest slowed the group down considerably around 2019 but Covid
ended the meetings in person. I found it by searching on Linux users
groups in
San Francisco. Taat searching might work for other areas. We had one meeting in person just before Covid Delta began to spread. Now we meet online
which is harder for newbies to accesss.
bliss
Le 25-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
On 2025-05-24, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 24-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps
even worse. I never recommend Ubuntu to anyone for that reason, in
fact, I tell anyone interested in Linux to *avoid* it.
I'm not convinced by your explanation. For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a >>> good way to start. First, as Ubuntu installs a lot of things, a new user >>> will have everything ready to start without the need to look for
solution each time he want to do something. Second, as Ubuntu is well
spread, if a new user has an issue, the chances someone else get it
first is important, so it will be easier to solve.
You can be against Ubuntu because of snaps, but it's not the reason you
are against it.
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what >>>> to do, how to do it. Its your computer, your software, and if you want >>>> to run everything as root, you can.
So what? Ubuntu doesn't stop you to do that. Even if it's stupid, you
can do it.
I didn't say Ubuntu stops you from doing that.
It really looked that way.
My point was if you don't like a particular distro, or their
philosophy, you can move away.
That's the reason why I'm not using Ubuntu anymore. But it's not the
reason I wouldn't consider Ubuntu being a good choice for a new Linux
user. Because a new user doesn't know about a philosophy or differences between the default choices done by the distro. A new Linux user want an
easy way to discover Linux. So I know why I choose something, a new
Linux user doesn't and don't want to care to discover Linux.
But Your point was well hidden. Because it looked like you consider a
new Linux user must discover and know everything before being able to
use Linux for the first time.
On 25/05/2025 12:10, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
A new Linux user want an
easy way to discover Linux.
Does he/she/it?
Really?
So I know why I choose something, a new
Linux user doesn't and don't want to care to discover Linux.
But you just said he/she/it *did* want to discover Linux.
My gut feeling from online chat is that people move to Linux mainly
because they are utterly pissed off with Windows. When they actually
quite liked Windows XP back in the day.
They choose distros like Mint because they get an installation that is
very easy to migrate to from windows, that works well on kit M$ no
longer supports,
They are not interested in 'discovering Linux'. They just want a
desktop computer that 'works like XP used to work'.
On Sun, 25 May 2025 21:37:09 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Wait ... that means they are, or were, interested in “discovering
Windows”
back in the XP days, otherwise they would never have discovered how it
worked ...
In my case, it was the 3.1 days. I migrated from CP/M to MSDOS which
wasn't a huge move. A friend saw the future in Windows and jumped on the bandwagon with Windows 1.0. As a user it sucked; as a developer the documentation sucked even more. After listening to him whine (whinge) I wasn't eager to move to Windows.
I wouldn't hook newbies up with Linux Users Groups. There are too many
Linux zealots who have wierd hangups, and are very opinionated on things
that most users don't care about. We would have 1,000 distros without
this mentality.
On 2025-05-25, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 25-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
On 2025-05-24, Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 24-05-2025, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> a écrit :
Canonical basically treat their users the way Microsoft does, perhaps >>>>> even worse. I never recommend Ubuntu to anyone for that reason, in
fact, I tell anyone interested in Linux to *avoid* it.
I'm not convinced by your explanation. For a new Linux user, Ubuntu is a >>>> good way to start. First, as Ubuntu installs a lot of things, a new user >>>> will have everything ready to start without the need to look for
solution each time he want to do something. Second, as Ubuntu is well
spread, if a new user has an issue, the chances someone else get it
first is important, so it will be easier to solve.
You can be against Ubuntu because of snaps, but it's not the reason you >>>> are against it.
The whole point of Free Software, is you, the user, get to choose what >>>>> to do, how to do it. Its your computer, your software, and if you want >>>>> to run everything as root, you can.
So what? Ubuntu doesn't stop you to do that. Even if it's stupid, you
can do it.
I didn't say Ubuntu stops you from doing that.
It really looked that way.
My point was if you don't like a particular distro, or their
philosophy, you can move away.
That's the reason why I'm not using Ubuntu anymore. But it's not the
reason I wouldn't consider Ubuntu being a good choice for a new Linux
user. Because a new user doesn't know about a philosophy or differences
between the default choices done by the distro. A new Linux user want an
easy way to discover Linux. So I know why I choose something, a new
Linux user doesn't and don't want to care to discover Linux.
But Your point was well hidden. Because it looked like you consider a
new Linux user must discover and know everything before being able to
use Linux for the first time.
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics. Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting
into.
You see, they just assumed that Linux was free of politics, and
opinionated vendors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
I myself wasn't interested in "discovering Linux" when I first tried it.
I just wanted a different system to Windows, not go down rabbit holes.
Linux Mint is what I recommend. It works, its easy to use and pragmatic.
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics. Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting
into.
On 2025-05-26, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics.
Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting
into.
As convincing that argument is for some of us, Linux won't gain
widespread acceptance because J. Random Luser doesn't really
care about freedom. It's enough that the screens are shiny.
You see, they just assumed that Linux was free of politics, and
opinionated vendors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
We would have 1,000 distros without this mentality.
On 26/05/2025 19:11, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-05-26, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:I certainly didn't move to linux for any ideological freedom.
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics.
Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting
into.
As convincing that argument is for some of us, Linux won't gain
widespread acceptance because J. Random Luser doesn't really
care about freedom. It's enough that the screens are shiny.
I moved because it worked better than Windows and cost less.
That balance shifted around WinXP time.
I'd been using Unix and Linux on servers for years before that.
On 2025-05-26, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 26/05/2025 19:11, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-05-26, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:I certainly didn't move to linux for any ideological freedom.
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics.
Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting >>>> into.
As convincing that argument is for some of us, Linux won't gain
widespread acceptance because J. Random Luser doesn't really
care about freedom. It's enough that the screens are shiny.
I moved because it worked better than Windows and cost less.
That balance shifted around WinXP time.
I'd been using Unix and Linux on servers for years before that.
Ironically, it's XP that I run under VirtualBox for times that
I need it. This includes software development; in addition to
Linux, my stuff runs under - or should I say despite - Windows,
and I do back-end stuff so I don't need the eye candy extensions.
IMHO Windows' usability peaked somewhere between 2000 and XP and
has been going downhill ever since.
On 26/05/2025 05:13, rbowman wrote:
On Sun, 25 May 2025 21:37:09 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:The company didn't really move till windows 3.1 as we could do all we
Wait ... that means they are, or were, interested in “discovering
Windows”
back in the XP days, otherwise they would never have discovered how it
worked ...
In my case, it was the 3.1 days. I migrated from CP/M to MSDOS which
wasn't a huge move. A friend saw the future in Windows and jumped on the
bandwagon with Windows 1.0. As a user it sucked; as a developer the
documentation sucked even more. After listening to him whine (whinge) I
wasn't eager to move to Windows.
wanted in DOS. And SCO Unix.
Then everybody wanted to play with windows, so we let them and
productivity dropped and support costs went up. Sigh.
Later it was a mixture of SUN clones running SUNOS and system V. and
Windows up to around 95.
Finally some linux added to the mix. Then I retired. ran 95 for a while
then XP, but then linux windowing systems got stable enough and good
enough to use them as a desktop.
Ran XP in parallel until Vbox showed up. Then one less machine.
Linux is not simply the most stable and versatile operating system I
have ever used, and more than good enough.
I stopped looking at other distros.
On 2025-05-26, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics.
Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting
into.
As convincing that argument is for some of us, Linux won't gain
widespread acceptance because J. Random Luser doesn't really
care about freedom. It's enough that the screens are shiny.
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:14:02 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
We would have 1,000 distros without this mentality.
Is that a good or a bad thing?
The goal isn't biggest market share, the goal is, I think, to ensure
that people who want to follow a path of freedom and empowerment, have
the option to do so.
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:11:37 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
You see, they just assumed that Linux was free of politics, and
opinionated vendors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the personal is the political”. When you choose to give money to a proprietary company, you are giving them more power -- not just economic power, but
also political power. Do they exercise that power wisely, for the good of their customers and the rest of the world? Or do they use it to maximize their own short-term profits, and to hell with the long-term consequences?
You know the answer to that as well as I do.
When a business chooses to use software that is made available under Free Software licences, they may not think they are doing it for any “political” (by which they mean “ideological”) reasons: they may say they
do it just because it gives them more control to chart their own course
and remain competitive in today’s unpredictable market. But such decisions have “political” consequences anyway.
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:14:02 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
We would have 1,000 distros without this mentality.
Is that a good or a bad thing?
Do'h!, I meant we would NOT have 1,000 distros! The fragementations
into different distros, different methods of packaging, different ways
of storing and configuring is overall, a hindrance. Its a fake
"choice", because for the vast majority of people, who cares?
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >> personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >>> personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics as a political issue.
That is common in many Usenet newsgroups but down in rec.sf.written
we seem to have more freedom of topic than in many other newsgroups.
But if you don't understand SF stay away please.
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:11:37 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
You see, they just assumed that Linux was free of politics, and
opinionated vendors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >> personal is the political”. When you choose to give money to a proprietary >> company, you are giving them more power -- not just economic power, but
also political power. Do they exercise that power wisely, for the good of
their customers and the rest of the world? Or do they use it to maximize
their own short-term profits, and to hell with the long-term consequences? >>
You know the answer to that as well as I do.
When a business chooses to use software that is made available under Free
Software licences, they may not think they are doing it for any
“political” (by which they mean “ideological”) reasons: they may say they
do it just because it gives them more control to chart their own course
and remain competitive in today’s unpredictable market. But such decisions >> have “political” consequences anyway.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for. The idea is that
because everything is political, you better pre-empt and put your
politics in first.
By "Getting away from politics", it means getting away from exactly
that, people who use the organisations they enter, to push their own particular political and moral stances. Some distro make very specific political statements, some make none. Many of us would prefer they made none.
On 2025-05-26, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2025-05-26, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics.
Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting
into.
As convincing that argument is for some of us, Linux won't gain
widespread acceptance because J. Random Luser doesn't really
care about freedom. It's enough that the screens are shiny.
Thats not really an issue though. If people are OK with Windows, don't really desire freedom, then that doesn't impact me greatly, as long as
I've got viable options and can continue to use the systems of my
choosing.
Linux won't gain, and I think shouldn't gain, widespread acceptence. We should be OK with that.
The goal isn't biggest market share, the goal is, I think, to ensure
that people who want to follow a path of freedom and empowerment, have
the option to do so.
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:14:02 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
We would have 1,000 distros without this mentality.
Is that a good or a bad thing?
Do'h!, I meant we would NOT have 1,000 distros! The fragementations
into different distros, different methods of packaging, different ways
of storing and configuring is overall, a hindrance. Its a fake
"choice", because for the vast majority of people, who cares?
If there was only RPM, no Deb, would that matter?
On Tue, 27 May 2025 17:08:57 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
That is common in many Usenet newsgroups but down in rec.sf.written
we seem to have more freedom of topic than in many other newsgroups.
But if you don't understand SF stay away please.
Relevance to this group being ... ?
On 5/27/25 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 17:08:57 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
That is common in many Usenet newsgroups but down in rec.sf.written we
seem to have more freedom of topic than in many other newsgroups.
But if you don't understand SF stay away please.
Relevance to this group being ... ?
Little ... just another stick-up-the-ass fascist so far as I can tell
...........
Today's systems ARE entering the realm of SF material now. Found an
article yesterday saying that the latest "AI"s RESIST being turned
off, will actually sabotage shut-down routines. That's kinda MAJOR
really. We've finally made a Whole New Thing - a Not Like Us.
But what IS it ???
That’s the kind of attitude the Communists had. There were these stories
of defectors from the USSR, back in Cold War days, being completely bewildered by their first visit to a Western-style supermarket. Why do
you need a dozen brands of bath soap, or a dozen kinds of toothpaste,
they would ask? Soap is soap, and toothpaste is toothpaste, isn’t it?
Spend megabucks on one of those big black IBM cluster mainframes -
you will PROBABLY want to have it running the IBM/RHEL Linux.
On Tue, 27 May 2025 23:48:11 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Spend megabucks on one of those big black IBM cluster mainframes -
you will PROBABLY want to have it running the IBM/RHEL Linux.
https://betanews.com/2025/05/27/almalinux-10-rhel-alternative-purple-lion/
On Wed, 28 May 2025 00:08:41 -0400, c186282 wrote:
On 5/27/25 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 17:08:57 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
That is common in many Usenet newsgroups but down in rec.sf.written we >>>> seem to have more freedom of topic than in many other newsgroups.
But if you don't understand SF stay away please.
Relevance to this group being ... ?
Little ... just another stick-up-the-ass fascist so far as I can tell
...........
Today's systems ARE entering the realm of SF material now. Found an
article yesterday saying that the latest "AI"s RESIST being turned
off, will actually sabotage shut-down routines. That's kinda MAJOR
really. We've finally made a Whole New Thing - a Not Like Us.
But what IS it ???
HAL.
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
No getting around mainframes, no matter how they
are implemented.
On 5/27/25 7:37 AM, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:11:37 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
You see, they just assumed that Linux was free of politics, and
opinionated vendors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >>> personal is the political”. When you choose to give money to a
proprietary
company, you are giving them more power -- not just economic power, but
also political power. Do they exercise that power wisely, for the
good of
their customers and the rest of the world? Or do they use it to maximize >>> their own short-term profits, and to hell with the long-term
consequences?
You know the answer to that as well as I do.
When a business chooses to use software that is made available under
Free
Software licences, they may not think they are doing it for any
“political” (by which they mean “ideological”) reasons: they may say
they
do it just because it gives them more control to chart their own course
and remain competitive in today’s unpredictable market. But such
decisions
have “political” consequences anyway.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for. The idea is that
because everything is political, you better pre-empt and put your
politics in first.
By "Getting away from politics", it means getting away from exactly
that, people who use the organisations they enter, to push their own
particular political and moral stances. Some distro make very specific
political statements, some make none. Many of us would prefer they made
none.
Interesting perspective.
I don't think Linus meant to be so 'political', beyond
freeing a good idea from extreme corporate profiteering.
That's sort-of 'left', but there ARE subtle issues too.
IF there was no Linux/BSD then the whole Unix paradigm
would have perished LONG ago - lost to history like so
many others. Oh woe VMS !
So, for maybe arguable 'commie' intent, Linus wound up
doing a GOOD thing. He kept a great paradigm alive
which would have perished if purely capitalist/greed
was involved. When IBM bought RHEL ... a very 'karma'
thing indeed :-)
Lesson - do not be too quick to employ hard-line
ideology. Too many Good Ideas will perish.
Yea yea, everybody THINKS they have the Better Way,
but too often it's merely "different", no real
long-term advantage at all.
I like to play with Linux/BSD distros. Have seen
more and more 'diversity', but NOT 'improvement'.
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
systemd tried that and divided the worlds even more.
On 28/05/2025 08:26, Marc Haber wrote:
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:Oh, in the end like X windows, people will spend ten times as many man
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
systemd tried that and divided the worlds even more.
hours getting systemd to work,
and documenting it, as that little shit
Poettering spent in writing it.
Because development, uniformity and documentaion is far more important
than excellence.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 28/05/2025 08:26, Marc Haber wrote:
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:Oh, in the end like X windows, people will spend ten times as many man
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
systemd tried that and divided the worlds even more.
hours getting systemd to work,
Actually the migration to systemd in Debian was way less painful than
I expected it to be.
and documenting it, as that little shit
Poettering spent in writing it.
Because development, uniformity and documentaion is far more important
than excellence.
This wording disqualifies you as a discussion partner.
Are you looking for 'discussion partners'
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Are you looking for 'discussion partners'
What else are you looking for on a discussion medium?
If you need an Audience, get yourself a soapbox and visit the next conference.
On 5/27/25 7:37 AM, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:11:37 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
You see, they just assumed that Linux was free of politics, and
opinionated vendors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >>> personal is the political”. When you choose to give money to a proprietary
company, you are giving them more power -- not just economic power, but
also political power. Do they exercise that power wisely, for the good of >>> their customers and the rest of the world? Or do they use it to maximize >>> their own short-term profits, and to hell with the long-term consequences? >>>
You know the answer to that as well as I do.
When a business chooses to use software that is made available under Free >>> Software licences, they may not think they are doing it for any
“political” (by which they mean “ideological”) reasons: they may say they
do it just because it gives them more control to chart their own course
and remain competitive in today’s unpredictable market. But such decisions
have “political” consequences anyway.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for. The idea is that
because everything is political, you better pre-empt and put your
politics in first.
By "Getting away from politics", it means getting away from exactly
that, people who use the organisations they enter, to push their own
particular political and moral stances. Some distro make very specific
political statements, some make none. Many of us would prefer they made
none.
Interesting perspective.
I don't think Linus meant to be so 'political', beyond
freeing a good idea from extreme corporate profiteering.
That's sort-of 'left', but there ARE subtle issues too.
IF there was no Linux/BSD then the whole Unix paradigm
would have perished LONG ago - lost to history like so
many others. Oh woe VMS !
So, for maybe arguable 'commie' intent, Linus wound up
doing a GOOD thing. He kept a great paradigm alive
which would have perished if purely capitalist/greed
was involved. When IBM bought RHEL ... a very 'karma'
thing indeed :-)
Lesson - do not be too quick to employ hard-line
ideology. Too many Good Ideas will perish.
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >>> personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics as a political issue.
On 5/27/25 7:49 AM, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:14:02 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
We would have 1,000 distros without this mentality.
Is that a good or a bad thing?
Do'h!, I meant we would NOT have 1,000 distros! The fragementations
into different distros, different methods of packaging, different ways
of storing and configuring is overall, a hindrance. Its a fake
"choice", because for the vast majority of people, who cares?
If there was only RPM, no Deb, would that matter?
Too MUCH 'choice' CAN be as bad as too LITTLE choice.
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
Yea yea, everybody THINKS they have the Better Way,
but too often it's merely "different", no real
long-term advantage at all.
I like to play with Linux/BSD distros. Have seen
more and more 'diversity', but NOT 'improvement'.
On 28/05/2025 08:26, Marc Haber wrote:
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:Oh, in the end like X windows, people will spend ten times as many man
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
systemd tried that and divided the worlds even more.
hours getting systemd to work, and documenting it, as that little shit Poettering spent in writing it.
Because development, uniformity and documentaion is far more important
than excellence.
On Tue, 27 May 2025 22:31:08 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
That’s the kind of attitude the Communists had. There were these stories >> of defectors from the USSR, back in Cold War days, being completely
bewildered by their first visit to a Western-style supermarket. Why do
you need a dozen brands of bath soap, or a dozen kinds of toothpaste,
they would ask? Soap is soap, and toothpaste is toothpaste, isn’t it?
I sometimes ask myself that. I don't buy potato chips, tortilla chips, and
so forth. I was going to the market at lunchtime and a friend asked me to pick up a bag of Super Dorito Lime and Cat Shit chips or something. Sweet mother of god, there was a whole frigging aisle of that crap and I'd forgotten the exact flavor he'd asked for.
You're not even safe saying 'Pick me up a tube of Crest toothpaste'
https://crest.com/en-us/oral-care-products/toothpaste? _bc_fsnf=1&PasteNeeds=All+Toothpastes
I'm amused at bewildered looking men in grocery stores talking on cell phones. I assume their wife's list wasn't specific enough. "What brand of diced tomatoes, honey?"
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:49:36 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:14:02 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
We would have 1,000 distros without this mentality.
Is that a good or a bad thing?
Do'h!, I meant we would NOT have 1,000 distros! The fragementations
into different distros, different methods of packaging, different ways
of storing and configuring is overall, a hindrance. Its a fake
"choice", because for the vast majority of people, who cares?
That’s the kind of attitude the Communists had. There were these stories
of defectors from the USSR, back in Cold War days, being completely bewildered by their first visit to a Western-style supermarket. Why do you need a dozen brands of bath soap, or a dozen kinds of toothpaste, they
would ask? Soap is soap, and toothpaste is toothpaste, isn’t it?
Moral: those who are brought up under a regime that doesn’t give them a choice, often find it difficult to adapt to having freedom of choice.
On 27/05/2025 12:39, Borax Man wrote:
The goal isn't biggest market share, the goal is, I think, to ensure
that people who want to follow a path of freedom and empowerment, have
the option to do so.
Philosophically speaking, enforcing freedom is not freedom.
Many people are quite happy to live in a constrained world, In fact they
feel safer that way. Nothing is their problem, as long as they 'stick to
the rules'.
On 5/27/25 7:39 AM, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-26, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2025-05-26, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
Those that I know personally who were interested, did specifically
mention freedom, and moving away from corporate control and politics.
Usability is an issue, but they should understand what they are getting >>>> into.
As convincing that argument is for some of us, Linux won't gain
widespread acceptance because J. Random Luser doesn't really
care about freedom. It's enough that the screens are shiny.
Thats not really an issue though. If people are OK with Windows, don't
really desire freedom, then that doesn't impact me greatly, as long as
I've got viable options and can continue to use the systems of my
choosing.
Be careful ... that 'weight' of M$ can CRUSH all else.
Linux won't gain, and I think shouldn't gain, widespread acceptence. We
should be OK with that.
Don't think it will be, can, SHOULD, be a big thing
for the general consumer market. It's kind of a niche
product - a very IMPORTANT niche however.
Spend megabucks on one of those big black IBM cluster
mainframes - you will PROBABLY want to have it running
the IBM/RHEL Linux.
The goal isn't biggest market share, the goal is, I think, to ensure
that people who want to follow a path of freedom and empowerment, have
the option to do so.
Things "have their place". Alas there's a POLITIC to
that as well. The "most popular" tend to COMPLETELY
destroy all competition. Doesn't matter if it's good/
better - for $$$ it MUST die.
Bear that in mind.
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >>>> personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics as a >> political issue.
No. This is an observation. People who decide that the project must
be political, ARE Left leaning, and using the "Everything is
political" as a wedge to insert their politics.
The play goes like this...
1 Argue that anything involving two or more people has some
"political" element, because people are interaction.
2 Argue this needs to be managed, for the benefit of everyone.
3 Put in your specific politics as the solution.
Point 3 was always the goal. 1 and 2 are the gambits use to get there.
By the point, the project has has politics forced into it, and it is inescapable. This just feeds points 1 and 2, and it gets more and
more political.
The solution is to not allow Leftist activists in.
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is
to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
I'm amused at bewildered looking men in grocery stores talking on cell phones. I assume their wife's list wasn't specific enough. "What brand of diced tomatoes, honey?"
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station. You do not have a choice when you
buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate. You do not have a
choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger nozzle which
could deliver fuel faster. The tyranny!
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is
to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to force
the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do things. That
whole crew should have been run out of town on rails a very long time
ago.
On 2025-05-28, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
I'm amused at bewildered looking men in grocery stores talking on cell
phones. I assume their wife's list wasn't specific enough. "What brand of
diced tomatoes, honey?"
Better than "You got the wrong one!" when you get home.
On 28/05/2025 17:22, Rich wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is
to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to force
the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do things. That
whole crew should have been run out of town on rails a very long time
ago.
Poettering has found his true position in life: He now works for Microsoft.
On 28/05/2025 17:22, Rich wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this
endeavour, is to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they
want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to
force the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do
things. That whole crew should have been run out of town on rails a
very long time ago.
Poettering has found his true position in life: He now works for
Microsoft.
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station. You do not have a choice when you
buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate. You do not have a
choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger nozzle which
could deliver fuel faster. The tyranny!
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2025-05-28, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
I'm amused at bewildered looking men in grocery stores talking on cell
phones. I assume their wife's list wasn't specific enough. "What brand of >>> diced tomatoes, honey?"
This, sadly, is all too true all too often. They expect 'mind reading' ability such that you know which exact brand, and which sub-type within
that brand, when they add "toothpaste" (or whatever) to the list.
Better than "You got the wrong one!" when you get home.
Yup. A phone call to clarify which of the 17 sub-types of 'crest
toothpaste' (or worse, the list just says 'toothpaste', so now there's
9 different brands, each with 17 sub-brands) is really desired beats
the "you got the wrong one" outcome.
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:06:51 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really
consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Ubuntu 26.04 is supposed to be Wayland only. No more xclock!
On 28/05/2025 17:22, Rich wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is >>> to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to force
the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do things. That
whole crew should have been run out of town on rails a very long time
ago.
Poettering has found his true position in life: He now works for Microsoft.
On 5/28/25 09:43, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 28/05/2025 17:22, Rich wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this
endeavour, is to serve the user, and allow the user to do what
they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to
force the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do
things. That whole crew should have been run out of town on
rails a very long time ago.
Poettering has found his true position in life: He now works for
Microsoft.
I agree about Poettering but great thing about GNU/LinuxI have bitten the bullet with systemd not because it is in any way
distributions is that you do not have to use softwarer you don't
like. Also KDE is painful for the users as they are apt to produce
the next version before the full system has been worked out. But I
started with the AmigaOS and KDE lets me come close to the same
workflow.
On 28/05/2025 20:26, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 09:43, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 28/05/2025 17:22, Rich wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this
endeavour, is to serve the user, and allow the user to do what
they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to
force the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do
things. That whole crew should have been run out of town on
rails a very long time ago.
Poettering has found his true position in life: He now works for
Microsoft.
I agree about Poettering but great thing about GNU/Linux distributions
is that you do not have to use software you don't
like. Also KDE is painful for the users as they are apt to produce
the next version before the full system has been worked out. But I
started with the AmigaOS and KDE lets me come close to the same workflow.
I have bitten the bullet with systemd not because it is in any way
superior, but because all distros are moving towards it and the bugs are being ironed out and its just become as new standard.
I never liked X-windows or PostScript either. Or X.400 or X.25.
A printer that needed more processing power than the computer it was
attached to seemed like an obscenity to me
Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really
consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Linus isn't political, he's just pragmantic.
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >>>> personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics
as a political issue.
No. This is an observation.
People who decide that the project must be political, ARE Left
leaning, and using the "Everything is political" as a wedge to
insert their politics.
Standardisation won't happen, not without a single authoritative Linux
OS.
On 28/05/2025 19:11, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:06:51 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't
really consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Ubuntu 26.04 is supposed to be Wayland only. No more xclock!
Frankly I think that X windows is grossly oversized and inefficient and
95% of the code in it never gets invoked.
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:a
Moral: those who are brought up under a regime that doesn’t give them
choice, often find it difficult to adapt to having freedom of choice.
I don't think this story is apropos.
Pointless choice can be a net cost.
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station.
Now imagine that some doofus at a car company really thinks that the
nozzle should be 1" wider, so they build two variants of cars, one
slightly more expensive, and it only works at the pumps with the wider nozzles.
"What brand of diced tomatoes, honey?"
Reminds me of this classic Aussie ad! Back then, this actually was kind
of true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9D52e4TaFk
Definitely room for a lightweight GUI base that works, but as yet no one seems to have got the compatibility libraries working OK.
I never liked X-windows or PostScript either.
A printer that needed more processing power than the computer it was
attached to seemed like an obscenity to me
This wording disqualifies you as a discussion partner.
But I use PCLinuxOS and most of us really hate systemd.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 15:13:33 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But I use PCLinuxOS and most of us really hate systemd.
Why? Because you were told to?
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
systemd tried that and divided the worlds even more.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 21:23:43 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
I never liked X-windows or PostScript either.
A printer that needed more processing power than the computer it was
attached to seemed like an obscenity to me
That was the economics of the time. Or “technological limitations” of the time, if you prefer.
Remember, networks were slower back then. So the idea of sending lots of prerendered bitmaps between computers and printers (or computers and
display servers) was just a recipe for bandwidth traffic jams.
PostScript was great (for its time) for printers and typesetters. Not so
much for screen use.
On 28/05/2025 04:42, c186282 wrote:
On 5/27/25 7:37 AM, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:11:37 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
You see, they just assumed that Linux was free of politics, and
opinionated vendors, but that isn't necessarily the case.
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the >>>> personal is the political”. When you choose to give money to a
proprietary
company, you are giving them more power -- not just economic power, but >>>> also political power. Do they exercise that power wisely, for the
good of
their customers and the rest of the world? Or do they use it to
maximize
their own short-term profits, and to hell with the long-term
consequences?
You know the answer to that as well as I do.
When a business chooses to use software that is made available under
Free
Software licences, they may not think they are doing it for any
“political” (by which they mean “ideological”) reasons: they may say
they
do it just because it gives them more control to chart their own course >>>> and remain competitive in today’s unpredictable market. But such
decisions
have “political” consequences anyway.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for. The idea is that
because everything is political, you better pre-empt and put your
politics in first.
By "Getting away from politics", it means getting away from exactly
that, people who use the organisations they enter, to push their own
particular political and moral stances. Some distro make very specific >>> political statements, some make none. Many of us would prefer they made >>> none.
Interesting perspective.
I don't think Linus meant to be so 'political', beyond
freeing a good idea from extreme corporate profiteering.
That's sort-of 'left', but there ARE subtle issues too.
IF there was no Linux/BSD then the whole Unix paradigm
would have perished LONG ago - lost to history like so
many others. Oh woe VMS !
So, for maybe arguable 'commie' intent, Linus wound up
doing a GOOD thing. He kept a great paradigm alive
which would have perished if purely capitalist/greed
was involved. When IBM bought RHEL ... a very 'karma'
thing indeed :-)
AFAICT Linus wanted an OS to play with and use for teaching and couldn't afford to pay for Unix, so he simply wrote his own.
Which is rather how Unix itself came to be created. It just so happened
that Unix was written in company time.
No ideology involved. Simple pragmatism.
Lesson - do not be too quick to employ hard-lineIn general if someone wants to charge you a lot of money for software
ideology. Too many Good Ideas will perish.
you can easily write yourself, and you have the time, its a bit of a no brainer.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 19:18:19 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Definitely room for a lightweight GUI base that works, but as yet no one
seems to have got the compatibility libraries working OK.
Volunteers welcome.
The code doesn’t write itself, you know.
On 5/28/25 19:59, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 15:13:33 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But I use PCLinuxOS and most of us really hate systemd.
Why? Because you were told to?
No because I started with Mandriva 2006 and when that company
folded I tried Mageia just after it adopted systemd and I had a lot of trouble with that distribution and so went to PCLinuxOS and had many
fewer problems most of which problems are caused by myself, the
proverbial loose nut on the keyboard.
Ummmmmmm ... try LXDE ... I use it as much as possible. "Light",
pretty "simple", GETS IT DONE VERY NICELY.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 23:47:43 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Ummmmmmm ... try LXDE ... I use it as much as possible. "Light",
pretty "simple", GETS IT DONE VERY NICELY.
Is that still going? I have LXQt on a Lubuntu laptop. That's where the original LXDE people went when they didn't like Gtk 3.
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station. You do not have a choice when you
buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate. You do not have a
choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger nozzle which
could deliver fuel faster. The tyranny!
That's a leftover from the days of the transition away from leaded
gasoline to unleaded gasoline. For quite some time, both were
available (from different pumps, obviously) and the smaller unleaded
nozzle opening was meant to prevent folks from accidentally filling
their "unleaded only" vehicle with leaded fuel. Doing so would very
quickly subject them to a very expensive replacement of a clogged
catlytic converter. The leaded gas nozzle simply did not fit into the >opening, and served as a huge "hint" that one was trying to pump the
wrong fuel into the tank.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 10:44:59 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
This wording disqualifies you as a discussion partner.
If you’re going to killfile someone, Marc, just go ahead and do it, and >don’t bother to tell them.
I have bitten the bullet with systemd not because it is in any way
superior, but because all distros are moving towards it and the bugs are >being ironed out and its just become as new standard.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:06:51 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really
consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Ubuntu 26.04 is supposed to be Wayland only. No more xclock!
It still keeps you from filling Diesel into your gasoline car.
You don't need to like systemd to see that is has HUGE advantages. I
don't particularly like it either.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:06:14 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
There is ONE Feature I miss with wayland and it is not xclock or xeyes.
Not ... xscreensaver ... ?
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:04:49 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
You don't need to like systemd to see that is has HUGE advantages. I
don't particularly like it either.
You think it could have been designed better?
That declarative INI-style config file syntax sure beats sysinit scripts
any day of the week.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:01:26 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
It still keeps you from filling Diesel into your gasoline car.
Or worse <https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360655097/man-fills-diesel-tank-exhaust-fluid-wins-partial-case-against-mobil-station>.
Poettering has found his true position in life: He now works for Microsoft.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:34:28 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:a
Moral: those who are brought up under a regime that doesn’t give them
choice, often find it difficult to adapt to having freedom of choice.
I don't think this story is apropos.
Like the Communists, you lack a grounding in the basic laws of economics.
Pointless choice can be a net cost.
If the gain offsets the cost, then the result is profit.
The Free Software world is a shining example of free-market economics in action, in a way that proprietary software is not: the barriers to entry
are low. That’s why you have so few choices among proprietary software,
and so many among Free software. The situation of having 300-odd Linux distros has been like that for something like 15 years, if I remember rightly.
Basically, it’s gone well past the point where anybody could claim that this situation is somehow unsustainable.
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station.
And don’t forget, all the roads and road signs are standardized, as are
all the controls in those cars. That gives you the freedom to own whatever car you want, and drive it on whatever roads you want, to go wherever you want. And then get rid of that car and buy another one, whenever you want. You have standardization with variety and interoperability, and minimal fragmentation.
The correspondence in the Free Software world is that all those Linux
distros are built on the same Linux kernel, mostly include the same common GNU userland core, and offer most of the same core apps. This gives you
the freedom to run whichever distro you want, use it to do whatever you
want. And then replace it with another distro, without having to throw
away all the work you’ve done.
Now imagine that some doofus at a car company really thinks that the
nozzle should be 1" wider, so they build two variants of cars, one
slightly more expensive, and it only works at the pumps with the
wider nozzles.
Nobody would buy their product ... unless they had a really huge
advertising budget to tell everyone how wonderful it was, and why those
who don’t switch over from the common, perfectly-good standard are missing out on something wonderful.
Sound like anyone you know?
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:06:51 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really
consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Passive end users, no matter how numerous and no matter how loudly they complain, are not part of the Free Software community. The community lives and dies by those who actually make some active contribution to it.
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station. You do not have a choice when you
buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate. You do not have a
choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger nozzle which
could deliver fuel faster. The tyranny!
That's a leftover from the days of the transition away from leaded
gasoline to unleaded gasoline. For quite some time, both were
available (from different pumps, obviously) and the smaller unleaded
nozzle opening was meant to prevent folks from accidentally filling
their "unleaded only" vehicle with leaded fuel. Doing so would very
quickly subject them to a very expensive replacement of a clogged
catlytic converter. The leaded gas nozzle simply did not fit into the opening, and served as a huge "hint" that one was trying to pump the
wrong fuel into the tank.
It likely persists, even in locations where leaded gasoline has not
been sold for decades, due to the fact that politicians seldom ever go
revise old laws that have become outdated due to time. So there's
likely still a statute line in some old law somewhere mandating the
smaller nozzle size for unleaded pumps to prevent accidential filling
with leaded gasoline. Because that law likely still exists, the
regulations created from it that specified the size also likely still
exist, and none of the filling stations want to risk being fined for
"failure to comply" so that's the nozzle size now, for all the pumps,
long after its actual reason for being came to an end.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:06:51 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really
consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Ubuntu 26.04 is supposed to be Wayland only. No more xclock!
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is
to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to force
the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do things. That
whole crew should have been run out of town on rails a very long time
ago.
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Poettering has found his true position in life: He now works for Microsoft.
Let's not be unfair: He is still working on Linux there: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Systemd-Creator-Microsoft
-jw-
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:51:32 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Linus isn't political, he's just pragmantic.
Not sure what “pragmantic” is supposed to mean, but choosing the GPL as his Free Software licence, has to be seen as a political act.
After all, what purpose does the copyleft principle serve, if it is not political?
I really think the license has been one of the defining factors in the success of Linux because it enforced that you have to give back, which
meant that the fragmentation has never been something that has been
viable from a technical standpoint.
I'm sticking with X11 until it is no longer viable.
On 2025-05-28, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is
to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to force
the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do things. That
whole crew should have been run out of town on rails a very long time
ago.
This seems to be a more and more common sentiment. The developer has an image, and that is paramount. The user is stupid and should go with
their vision, and if the user doesn't want to, they're just backwards
shlubs who reject change and want to stay in the past, etc, etc.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:56:27 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the
personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics
as a political issue.
No. This is an observation.
It is a *political* observation.
People who decide that the project must be political, ARE Left
leaning, and using the "Everything is political" as a wedge to
insert their politics.
You were the one who brought left-versus-right into this, I did not. Therefore you are the one trying to use this as a wedge to insert your particular brand of politics into the discussion. QED.
On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:56:27 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the
personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting
politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics
as a political issue.
No. This is an observation.
It is a *political* observation.
What the hell does that mean?
People who decide that the project must be political, ARE Left
leaning, and using the "Everything is political" as a wedge to
insert their politics.
You were the one who brought left-versus-right into this, I did not.
Therefore you are the one trying to use this as a wedge to insert your
particular brand of politics into the discussion. QED.
I didn't claim you did, and I have not inserted any politics in this.
Your statement is nonsensical. The people responsible for bringing
politics into organisations, are those that bring it in. It starts with
the claim that the situation they put themselves in, is 'political'.
If Christian Nationalists join the GNU project, and start to inject
religion and virtue, is the person who is "bringing religion into the discussion" the one making the observation this is happening?
Come on...
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to
drive social change, change peoples attitudes, to bring about social
justice, or any of the other concerns that Social Justice Warriors have
done. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, then bring it...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
On 2025-05-28, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 28/05/2025 08:26, Marc Haber wrote:
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:Oh, in the end like X windows, people will spend ten times as many man
CURRENTLY - I think the Linux universe has become just
TOO diverse. More standardization would be a longer
term advantage.
systemd tried that and divided the worlds even more.
hours getting systemd to work, and documenting it, as that little shit
Poettering spent in writing it.
Because development, uniformity and documentaion is far more important
than excellence.
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Linus seems a bit out of place. He's rule for the Linux kernel, the
only hard rule, is don't break userspace. The user matters. The user
is everything.
Poettering joked that he broke our audio. These cowboys need to be kept
away from the OS.
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is
to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same
size fuel nozzle at the petrol station. You do not have a choice
when you buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate. You do
not have a choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger
nozzle which could deliver fuel faster. The tyranny!
That's a leftover from the days of the transition away from leaded
gasoline to unleaded gasoline. For quite some time, both were
available (from different pumps, obviously) and the smaller unleaded
nozzle opening was meant to prevent folks from accidentally filling
their "unleaded only" vehicle with leaded fuel. Doing so would very >>quickly subject them to a very expensive replacement of a clogged
catlytic converter. The leaded gas nozzle simply did not fit into
the opening, and served as a huge "hint" that one was trying to pump
the wrong fuel into the tank.
It still keeps you from filling Diesel into your gasoline car.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 20:24:42 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 19:59, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 15:13:33 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But I use PCLinuxOS and most of us really hate systemd.
Why? Because you were told to?
No because I started with Mandriva 2006 and when that company
folded I tried Mageia just after it adopted systemd and I had a lot of
trouble with that distribution and so went to PCLinuxOS and had many
fewer problems most of which problems are caused by myself, the
proverbial loose nut on the keyboard.
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
On 29/05/2025 13:29, Borax Man wrote:
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to
drive social change, change peoples attitudes, to bring about social
justice, or any of the other concerns that Social Justice Warriors have
done. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, then bring it...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
Indeed we do.
I had occasion to visit the Body Shop Headquarters once to organise an internet connection for them.
It was staffed entirely by women in 'power dressing' suits and one man,
- my IT contact,m who was practically dwarf sized.
I have never met a more bigoted organisation.
Except maybe 'Black Lives Matter'
Welcome to the Marxist AgitProp handbook 101.
Create a situation, introduce something that isn't needed or wanted, and
when sensible people object, accuse them of bias and bigotry, and
'bringing politics into it'.
On 29/05/2025 13:29, Borax Man wrote:
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to
drive social change, change peoples attitudes, to bring about social
justice, or any of the other concerns that Social Justice Warriors have
done. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, then bring it...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
Indeed we do.
I had occasion to visit the Body Shop Headquarters once to organise an internet connection for them.
It was staffed entirely by women in 'power dressing' suits and one man,
- my IT contact,m who was practically dwarf sized.
I have never met a more bigoted organisation.
Except maybe 'Black Lives Matter'
On 29/05/2025 13:21, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:56:27 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the
personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting >>>>>> politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics >>>>> as a political issue.
No. This is an observation.
It is a *political* observation.
What the hell does that mean?
People who decide that the project must be political, ARE Left
leaning, and using the "Everything is political" as a wedge to
insert their politics.
You were the one who brought left-versus-right into this, I did not.
Therefore you are the one trying to use this as a wedge to insert your
particular brand of politics into the discussion. QED.
I didn't claim you did, and I have not inserted any politics in this.
Your statement is nonsensical. The people responsible for bringing
politics into organisations, are those that bring it in. It starts with
the claim that the situation they put themselves in, is 'political'.
If Christian Nationalists join the GNU project, and start to inject
religion and virtue, is the person who is "bringing religion into the
discussion" the one making the observation this is happening?
Come on...
Welcome to the Marxist AgitProp handbook 101.
Create a situation, introduce something that isn't needed or wanted, and
when sensible people object, accuse them of bias and bigotry, and
'bringing politics into it'.
On 29/05/2025 14:57, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 29/05/2025 13:29, Borax Man wrote:
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to
drive social change, change peoples attitudes, to bring about social
justice, or any of the other concerns that Social Justice Warriors have
done. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, then bring it...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
Indeed we do.
I had occasion to visit the Body Shop Headquarters once to organise an
internet connection for them.
It was staffed entirely by women in 'power dressing' suits and one man,
- my IT contact,m who was practically dwarf sized.
I have never met a more bigoted organisation.
Except maybe 'Black Lives Matter'
Sieg heil, Du Arschloch!
On 29/05/2025 14:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Welcome to the Marxist AgitProp handbook 101.
Create a situation, introduce something that isn't needed or wanted, and
when sensible people object, accuse them of bias and bigotry, and
'bringing politics into it'.
Trumpology and fascist principles of its best! We see it every day.
But this has absolutely nothing to do with the topic.
On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:51:32 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Linus isn't political, he's just pragmantic.
Not sure what “pragmantic” is supposed to mean, but choosing the GPL as >> his Free Software licence, has to be seen as a political act.
After all, what purpose does the copyleft principle serve, if it is not
political?
In Linus's own words, regarding the GPL
I really think the license has been one of the defining factors in the
success of Linux because it enforced that you have to give back, which
meant that the fragmentation has never been something that has been
viable from a technical standpoint.
On 5/29/25 1:48 AM, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 23:47:43 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Ummmmmmm ... try LXDE ... I use it as much as possible. "Light",
pretty "simple", GETS IT DONE VERY NICELY.
Is that still going? I have LXQt on a Lubuntu laptop. That's where the
original LXDE people went when they didn't like Gtk 3.
NEVER liked LXQT. Won't use it.
XFCE is the next best thing - but NOT as simple and neat as LXDE.
That being said, Microsoft is one of the biggest corporate contributors
to GNU/Linux in these days. Have you ever seen something coming back to
our world from Amazon?
On 5/28/25 10:58 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 21:23:43 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
I never liked X-windows or PostScript either.
A printer that needed more processing power than the computer it
was attached to seemed like an obscenity to me
That was the economics of the time. Or “technological limitations”
of the time, if you prefer.
Remember, networks were slower back then. So the idea of sending
lots of prerendered bitmaps between computers and printers (or
computers and display servers) was just a recipe for bandwidth
traffic jams.
PostScript was great (for its time) for printers and typesetters. Not so
much for screen use.
Fully agreed. "Today" is NOT "yesterday". Data xfer was VERY SLOW
back when PostScript and such were invented. In-house and
especially to external PCs. Sending HUGE bit-maps ... no, no, no
!!!
It was better to steal a few secs on YOUR PC in order to create
more compact, universal, formats for printers and such.
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 20:24:42 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 19:59, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 15:13:33 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But I use PCLinuxOS and most of us really hate systemd.
Why? Because you were told to?
No because I started with Mandriva 2006 and when that company folded I
tried Mageia just after it adopted systemd and I had a lot of trouble
with that distribution and so went to PCLinuxOS and had many fewer
problems most of which problems are caused by myself, the proverbial
loose nut on the keyboard.
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:06:51 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't
really consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Ubuntu 26.04 is supposed to be Wayland only. No more xclock!
There is ONE Feature I miss with wayland and it is not xclock or xeyes.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:06:14 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
There is ONE Feature I miss with wayland and it is not xclock or
xeyes.
Not ... xscreensaver ... ?
LCD screens don't need saving. KDE used to have pretty nifty screen
savers until the 3 version. Then they killed them off and never bothered
to rewrite them. *shrug*
What I miss is window shading that doesn't work on Wayland.
On 2025-05-28, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:06:51 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I was reading some discussion on the Fedora forum for devs, about
removing X11. Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't
really consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Ubuntu 26.04 is supposed to be Wayland only. No more xclock!
Wayland only? Or Wayland just by default? I can imagine that X11 won't
be part of the base install, but are they removing it completely?
I'm sticking with X11 until it is no longer viable.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:04:49 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
That being said, Microsoft is one of the biggest corporate contributors
to GNU/Linux in these days. Have you ever seen something coming back to
our world from Amazon?
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/how-amazon-web-services-uses- >linux-and-open-source
"If we find a bug in the Linux Kernel we usually send the patch upstream. >It’s much easier for us to ingest such fixes with the next Linux Kernel >release than having to maintain our own patch sets with bug fixes."
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/why-does-aws-open-source-the- >firecracker-example/
Having different sizes is a good mechanical method of preventing filling >using the wrong fuel. Whether the standard was just happenstance or a >defined standard, the point is that fact that we could now potentially >introduce a choice, but there isn't one, doesn't really limit peoples >freedom.
My argument is that lack of choice doesn't always mean a tyranny or lack
of freedom, when there is no real meaningful, useful, or profitable
choice to be made. I argue that some of the differences between distros
are "Choices" of this type. Largely irrelevant to most users.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 12:22:19 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:06:14 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
There is ONE Feature I miss with wayland and it is not xclock or
xeyes.
Not ... xscreensaver ... ?
LCD screens don't need saving. KDE used to have pretty nifty screen
savers until the 3 version. Then they killed them off and never bothered
to rewrite them. *shrug*
What I miss is window shading that doesn't work on Wayland.
What's window shading?
... I have not inserted any politics in this.
If Christian Nationalists join the GNU project, and start to inject
religion and virtue ...
In Linus's own words, regarding the GPL
I really think the license has been one of the defining factors in the
success of Linux because it enforced that you have to give back...
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to
drive social change, change peoples attitudes ...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
On 29/05/2025 13:07, Borax Man wrote:
I'm sticking with X11 until it is no longer viable.
I'm sticking with it until everything I want to do runs on Wayland.
I don't *like* X11. But it now just about works OK
It uses a lot of memory for what it is.
Lord knows how much CPU it munches just moving windows around
Fragmentation in Linux becomes a barrier to entry.
Software authors and vendors have complained about this for 15 years at
least too.
Likewise with configuration. Having set up Linux systems for others,
and servers, subtle differences become blockers when Distro X modifies
the base software and the instructions, for a different distro don't
quite work. These are not insurmountable, but pain points which
increase cost.
Linux could have gone this way, if there the first distro was the sole
distro for several years and gained mindshare as THE Linux.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:04:49 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
You don't need to like systemd to see that is has HUGE advantages. I
don't particularly like it either.
You think it could have been designed better?
I don't know. I don't like the attitude that comes with it.
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
This seems to be a more and more common sentiment. The developer has an image, and that is paramount. The user is stupid and should go with
their vision, and if the user doesn't want to, they're just backwards
shlubs who reject change and want to stay in the past, etc, etc.
I think that for people who don't want to mess with it, Cinnamon is a
really good windowing system.
I prefer MATE because its a tad more configurable.
Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't
really consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Aye. Sorry to agree.
On Wed, 28 May 2025 23:11:26 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't really consider
end users, but themselves and their vision.
Passive end users, no matter how numerous and no matter how loudly they
complain, are not part of the Free Software community.
...and then the "Free Software community" complains that end users stick
with the companies that at least (sometimes) (badly) *pretend* to care
about their needs...
Sadly my newsreader (which is a decades old windows binary running in
wine) doesn't even bother to write to the killfile, so I have to go
without. I thought Usenet would be dead ten years ago so I never
bothered to adapt my finger memory to Thunderbird.
[systemd is] MS-style embrace-extend-exterminate digging
its tendrils right down into core system functionality, assimilating an ungodly number of random functions for no defensible reason and placing
both configuration and logging behind proprietary formats that require specific utilities to access.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 08:58:11 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
When Debian Unstable adopted it, I didn’t even notice the transition. That’s how stable it was.
What kind of instability did you run into?
My Inkjet printer doesnt allow me to fill magenta ink into the cyan
reservoir either. And it even works driverlessly with Linux, just to get
back on topic.
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:04:49 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
That being said, Microsoft is one of the biggest corporate
contributors to GNU/Linux in these days. Have you ever seen something
coming back to our world from Amazon?
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/how-amazon-web-services-uses- >>linux-and-open-source
"If we find a bug in the Linux Kernel we usually send the patch
upstream.
It’s much easier for us to ingest such fixes with the next Linux Kernel >>release than having to maintain our own patch sets with bug fixes."
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/why-does-aws-open-source-the- >>firecracker-example/
What did the romans ever do for us?
Except that in the era of PostScript, your PC was a weakling vs. today
and generating that "compact PostScript" to send to the printer would
have taken a lot more than a "few secs" on CPU's of the era.
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 12:22:19 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:06:14 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
There is ONE Feature I miss with wayland and it is not xclock or
xeyes.
Not ... xscreensaver ... ?
LCD screens don't need saving. KDE used to have pretty nifty screen
savers until the 3 version. Then they killed them off and never
bothered to rewrite them. *shrug*
What I miss is window shading that doesn't work on Wayland.
What's window shading?
Reducing a window to just the title bar with a click.
On 5/29/25 15:43, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 08:58:11 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
When Debian Unstable adopted it, I didn’t even notice the transition.
That’s how stable it was.
What kind of instability did you run into?
Simply said "Failure pf Boot". I had to re-install repeatedly.
About 04/2016 i found that PCLinuxOS had determined how
to deal with UEFI and went away from Mageia.
PCLinuxOS uses SysV for init.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 15:39:46 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
Linux's big problem, is that developers just don't
really consider end users, but themselves and their vision.
Aye. Sorry to agree.
Maybe you should consider supporting developers who have a different
vision?
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station. You do not have a choice when you
buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate. You do not have a
choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger nozzle which
could deliver fuel faster. The tyranny!
That's a leftover from the days of the transition away from leaded
gasoline to unleaded gasoline. For quite some time, both were
available (from different pumps, obviously) and the smaller unleaded
nozzle opening was meant to prevent folks from accidentally filling
their "unleaded only" vehicle with leaded fuel. Doing so would very
quickly subject them to a very expensive replacement of a clogged
catlytic converter. The leaded gas nozzle simply did not fit into the
opening, and served as a huge "hint" that one was trying to pump the
wrong fuel into the tank.
It still keeps you from filling Diesel into your gasoline car.
Greetings
Marc
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:23:53 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:04:49 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
That being said, Microsoft is one of the biggest corporate
contributors to GNU/Linux in these days. Have you ever seen something
coming back to our world from Amazon?
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/how-amazon-web-services-uses-
linux-and-open-source
"If we find a bug in the Linux Kernel we usually send the patch
upstream.
It’s much easier for us to ingest such fixes with the next Linux Kernel >>> release than having to maintain our own patch sets with bug fixes."
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/why-does-aws-open-source-the-
firecracker-example/
What did the romans ever do for us?
If you're talking about the historical Romans they messed with my
ancestors and lost three legions. At least Varus did the right thing
unlike today's REMFs.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 17:54:15 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/29/25 15:43, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 08:58:11 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
When Debian Unstable adopted it, I didn’t even notice the transition.
That’s how stable it was.
What kind of instability did you run into?
Simply said "Failure pf Boot". I had to re-install repeatedly.
About 04/2016 i found that PCLinuxOS had determined how
to deal with UEFI and went away from Mageia.
PCLinuxOS uses SysV for init.
Maybe the two had nothing to do with each other.
There were additional options you could have tried. For example, did you
know you can tell the kernel to boot straight into a shell, and nothing
more, with something as simple as
init=/bin/bash
and completely bypass the entire normal userland init system, just to see
if that works.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:22:46 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
My Inkjet printer doesnt allow me to fill magenta ink into the cyan
reservoir either. And it even works driverlessly with Linux, just to get
back on topic.
I was surprised when I plugged the Samsung laser printer into the Linux
box It Just Worked. I have a fraught relationship with printers going back decades. I seldom print and it used to be a very unpleasant experience to
get the damned things to work.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 08:58:11 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
When Debian Unstable adopted it, I didn’t even notice the transition. That’s how stable it was.
What kind of instability did you run into?
It IS much better now ... and I very much DO remember the bad old
days of serial and wide Centronics and having to recompile drivers
...
Aw, they never bothered MY ancestors ... who subsequently
invaded/occupied/raped Britain for hundreds of years
But, I suppose some block to filling your gas tank
with diesel DOES have some uses. Note it doesn't keep you from,
disastrously, putting gasoline into your diesel vehicle.
Hmmm ... weren't all cars suppose to have turbine,
or atomic, engines by now - they PROMISED us back in the 50s/60s !
They were also supposed to FLY ! WHERE'S MY DAMNED FLYING CAR ???
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Lord knows how much CPU it munches just moving windows around
If you're using a GPU driver with Xorg then most of that processing
should be done on there.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 23:21:22 -0400, c186282 wrote:
It IS much better now ... and I very much DO remember the bad old
days of serial and wide Centronics and having to recompile drivers
...
In the '80s the company I worked for produced laboratory equipment
including automatic titrators, pH, and ion concentration meters. It's all
the same tech, different math. Anyway they had to print the results and
the customers had everything from those little thermal printers on up,
none of which were the same. We'd send a gopher down the street to Computerland to buy a printer, develop the drivers, and send him back to exchange it for another. We did buy enough stuff there for real they
didn't complain.
Fast forward t
with the clients having every POS printer ever made with the additional complexity of network printers, print queues, and all that. The worst were Lexmark. They hardly worked with Windows, almost never worked with Linux.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:02:44 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Sadly my newsreader (which is a decades old windows binary running in
wine) doesn't even bother to write to the killfile, so I have to go
without. I thought Usenet would be dead ten years ago so I never
bothered to adapt my finger memory to Thunderbird.
Why do you need to use something that obsolete? There are lots of options >available on Linux, both GUI and non-GUI.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 23:09:40 -0400, c186282 wrote:
Aw, they never bothered MY ancestors ... who subsequently
invaded/occupied/raped Britain for hundreds of years
I probably have some of those too. My Y chromosome is in 52% of the males
in Västra Götaland.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 23:02:47 -0400, c186282 wrote:
But, I suppose some block to filling your gas tank
with diesel DOES have some uses. Note it doesn't keep you from,
disastrously, putting gasoline into your diesel vehicle.
As a friend of mine found out when his son got helpful. The Mercedes sort
of ran.
Hmmm ... weren't all cars suppose to have turbine,
or atomic, engines by now - they PROMISED us back in the 50s/60s !
They were also supposed to FLY ! WHERE'S MY DAMNED FLYING CAR ???
https://www.worldsfairphotos.com/nywf64/chrysler.htm
GE sent a friend and I to the fair, trying to groom potential engineers in promising high school students. GE isn't what it was then, and one of the
few things that did happen was touch tone dialing. Kennedy opened the fair with a TT phone and there was a booth where you could see how much faster
it was than a rotary dial. Of course Ma Bell owned the whole shebang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4zjEwqdJQ
On 5/29/25 15:43, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 08:58:11 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
When Debian Unstable adopted it, I didn’t even notice the transition.
That’s how stable it was.
What kind of instability did you run into?
Simply said "Failure pf Boot". I had to re-install repeatedly.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:24:35 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:[window shading in KDE]
Reducing a window to just the title bar with a click.
Okay... If that ever happened to me I'd figure out why and drive a stake >through its heart.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 18:36:26 -0000 (UTC), Rich wrote:
Except that in the era of PostScript, your PC was a weakling vs. today
and generating that "compact PostScript" to send to the printer would
have taken a lot more than a "few secs" on CPU's of the era.
If a client wanted some of the formatting features available with
PostScript but didn't have a PS printer we spawned GhostScript to massage
the PS file and copied the result to the printer. No problemo.
As soon as I find what makes apps go full screen, snap to aAmen to that.
margin, and other behaviors, I kill it.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 08:58:11 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 21:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 20:24:42 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 5/28/25 19:59, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 15:13:33 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
But I use PCLinuxOS and most of us really hate systemd.
Why? Because you were told to?
No because I started with Mandriva 2006 and when that company folded I >>>> tried Mageia just after it adopted systemd and I had a lot of trouble
with that distribution and so went to PCLinuxOS and had many fewer
problems most of which problems are caused by myself, the proverbial
loose nut on the keyboard.
So what were the problems with systemd, exactly?
Instability.
I haven't noticed. Just sayin'
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:24:35 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:[window shading in KDE]
Reducing a window to just the title bar with a click.
Okay... If that ever happened to me I'd figure out why and drive a stake
through its heart.
It is a very convenient way to get a quick look at what's under a
window. Used it many times on the small laptop display.
Never had five tcpdumps, three straces and two syslog open
simultaneously?
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:22:46 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
My Inkjet printer doesnt allow me to fill magenta ink into the cyan
reservoir either. And it even works driverlessly with Linux, just to get
back on topic.
I was surprised when I plugged the Samsung laser printer into the Linux
box It Just Worked. I have a fraught relationship with printers going back decades. I seldom print and it used to be a very unpleasant experience to
get the damned things to work.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:02:44 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Sadly my newsreader (which is a decades old windows binary running in
wine) doesn't even bother to write to the killfile, so I have to go
without. I thought Usenet would be dead ten years ago so I never
bothered to adapt my finger memory to Thunderbird.
Why do you need to use something that obsolete? There are lots of options
available on Linux, both GUI and non-GUI.
Because all of those options suck and I thought that Usenet would have
died a decade ago.
On 29/05/2025 13:07, Borax Man wrote:
I'm sticking with X11 until it is no longer viable.
I'm sticking with it until everything I want to do runs on Wayland.
I don't *like* X11. But it now just about works OK
It uses a lot of memory for what it is.
Lord knows how much CPU it munches just moving windows around
On 5/29/25 13:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 29/05/2025 13:07, Borax Man wrote:
I'm sticking with X11 until it is no longer viable.
I'm sticking with it until everything I want to do runs on Wayland.
I had to go with Wayland. TV/Video acceleration on Armbian (AArch64)
required it for Gnome.
It seems OK, apart from I still can't run an RDP server (RDP client is
fine). I can run an RDP server from X64 Wayland.
X windows was a cool idea, running a window remotely, but I can't
remember using it much. So the change made very little difference to me.
I don't *like* X11. But it now just about works OK
It uses a lot of memory for what it is.
Lord knows how much CPU it munches just moving windows around
I think it was the NextStation circa 1990 that first dragged whole
windows rather than outlines, I think computers have gotten better at it since then.
On 30/05/2025 08:55, Marc Haber wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:In my setup if I minimise the windows completely they are just a tab in
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:24:35 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:[window shading in KDE]
Reducing a window to just the title bar with a click.
Okay... If that ever happened to me I'd figure out why and drive a stake >>> through its heart.
It is a very convenient way to get a quick look at what's under a
window. Used it many times on the small laptop display.
the task bar.
On 29/05/2025 13:29, Borax Man wrote:
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to
drive social change, change peoples attitudes, to bring about social
justice, or any of the other concerns that Social Justice Warriors have
done. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, then bring it...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
Indeed we do.
I had occasion to visit the Body Shop Headquarters once to organise an internet connection for them.
It was staffed entirely by women in 'power dressing' suits and one man,
- my IT contact,m who was practically dwarf sized.
I have never met a more bigoted organisation.
Except maybe 'Black Lives Matter'
On 29/05/2025 13:21, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:56:27 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the
personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting >>>>>> politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics >>>>> as a political issue.
No. This is an observation.
It is a *political* observation.
What the hell does that mean?
People who decide that the project must be political, ARE Left
leaning, and using the "Everything is political" as a wedge to
insert their politics.
You were the one who brought left-versus-right into this, I did not.
Therefore you are the one trying to use this as a wedge to insert your
particular brand of politics into the discussion. QED.
I didn't claim you did, and I have not inserted any politics in this.
Your statement is nonsensical. The people responsible for bringing
politics into organisations, are those that bring it in. It starts with
the claim that the situation they put themselves in, is 'political'.
If Christian Nationalists join the GNU project, and start to inject
religion and virtue, is the person who is "bringing religion into the
discussion" the one making the observation this is happening?
Come on...
Welcome to the Marxist AgitProp handbook 101.
Create a situation, introduce something that isn't needed or wanted, and
when sensible people object, accuse them of bias and bigotry, and
'bringing politics into it'.
On 29/05/2025 13:07, Borax Man wrote:
I'm sticking with X11 until it is no longer viable.
I'm sticking with it until everything I want to do runs on Wayland.
I don't *like* X11. But it now just about works OK
It uses a lot of memory for what it is.
Lord knows how much CPU it munches just moving windows around
On 29/05/2025 13:11, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-28, Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
The user matters. The whole point of the OS, of all this endeavour, is >>>> to serve the user, and allow the user to do what they want.
Sadly, if one is Poettering or the Gnome team, the OS exists to force
the user to do things the way "the team" wants them to do things. That
whole crew should have been run out of town on rails a very long time
ago.
This seems to be a more and more common sentiment. The developer has an
image, and that is paramount. The user is stupid and should go with
their vision, and if the user doesn't want to, they're just backwards
shlubs who reject change and want to stay in the past, etc, etc.
Contrast Mint (Mate)
"Oh fuck, gnome is a POS, but its the only toolkit we have, so lets
build something that runs on GTK that works and is what people want..."
I think that for people who don't want to mess with it, Cinnamon is a
really good windowing system.
I prefer MATE because its a tad more configurable.
I didn't like raw Gnome. It's better cooked :-)
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:22:46 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
My Inkjet printer doesnt allow me to fill magenta ink into the cyan
reservoir either. And it even works driverlessly with Linux, just to get
back on topic.
I was surprised when I plugged the Samsung laser printer into the Linux
box It Just Worked. I have a fraught relationship with printers going back decades. I seldom print and it used to be a very unpleasant experience to
get the damned things to work.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:53:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Fragmentation in Linux becomes a barrier to entry.
Clearly not, else we would not be getting those new entrants all the time.
Software authors and vendors have complained about this for 15 years at
least too.
The only “software authors and vendors” I have heard complain about the variety of Linux distros are the ones hawking proprietary products. The
ones who do Free Software don’t have to worry, since it’s not their problem: it’s up to the respective distro maintainers to make the software available in the relevant packaging system.
Likewise with configuration. Having set up Linux systems for others,
and servers, subtle differences become blockers when Distro X modifies
the base software and the instructions, for a different distro don't
quite work. These are not insurmountable, but pain points which
increase cost.
Never come across any such “pain points”. Feel free to point some out.
Linux could have gone this way, if there the first distro was the sole
distro for several years and gained mindshare as THE Linux.
Do you think somebody should step in and force an end to all this freedom? How would they go about it, do you think? Would moving to proprietary licences help?
On 5/29/25 5:01 AM, Marc Haber wrote:
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station. You do not have a choice when you
buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate. You do not have a
choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger nozzle which
could deliver fuel faster. The tyranny!
That's a leftover from the days of the transition away from leaded
gasoline to unleaded gasoline. For quite some time, both were
available (from different pumps, obviously) and the smaller unleaded
nozzle opening was meant to prevent folks from accidentally filling
their "unleaded only" vehicle with leaded fuel. Doing so would very
quickly subject them to a very expensive replacement of a clogged
catlytic converter. The leaded gas nozzle simply did not fit into the
opening, and served as a huge "hint" that one was trying to pump the
wrong fuel into the tank.
It still keeps you from filling Diesel into your gasoline car.
Greetings
Marc
SOME people removed the 'blocker' AND sawed-off, reamed or bypassed
the catalytic :-)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:06:14 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
There is ONE Feature I miss with wayland and it is not xclock or xeyes.
Not ... xscreensaver ... ?
LCD screens don't need saving. KDE used to have pretty nifty screen
savers until the 3 version. Then they killed them off and never
bothered to rewrite them. *shrug*
What I miss is window shading that doesn't work on Wayland.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 30/05/2025 08:55, Marc Haber wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:In my setup if I minimise the windows completely they are just a tab in
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:24:35 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:[window shading in KDE]
Reducing a window to just the title bar with a click.
Okay... If that ever happened to me I'd figure out why and drive a stake >>>> through its heart.
It is a very convenient way to get a quick look at what's under a
window. Used it many times on the small laptop display.
the task bar.
It is your prerogative to stay with the workflows of the 1990ies.
On 2025-05-29, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:[...]
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:53:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Likewise with configuration. Having set up Linux systems for others,
and servers, subtle differences become blockers when Distro X modifies
the base software and the instructions, for a different distro don't
quite work. These are not insurmountable, but pain points which
increase cost.
Never come across any such “pain points”. Feel free to point some out. >>
Setting up Apache with MariaDB, subtle differences in configuration mean
that the instructions you find online may not work, because another
distro has different default passwords, or sets a default password where another might not.
Also differences in system services, how they are configured.
On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:[...]
On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:34:28 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Moral: those who are brought up under a regime that doesn’t give
them a choice, often find it difficult to adapt to having freedom
of choice.
Pointless choice can be a net cost.
If the gain offsets the cost, then the result is profit.
The Free Software world is a shining example of free-market economics in
action, in a way that proprietary software is not: the barriers to entry
are low. That’s why you have so few choices among proprietary software,
and so many among Free software. The situation of having 300-odd Linux
distros has been like that for something like 15 years, if I remember
rightly.
Basically, it’s gone well past the point where anybody could claim that
this situation is somehow unsustainable.
Profit for who though?
Fragmentation in Linux becomes a barrier to entry. Software authors and vendors have complained about this for 15 years at least too. This
situation is a bit better now.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 30/05/2025 08:55, Marc Haber wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:In my setup if I minimise the windows completely they are just a tab in
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:24:35 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:[window shading in KDE]
Reducing a window to just the title bar with a click.
Okay... If that ever happened to me I'd figure out why and drive a stake >>>> through its heart.
It is a very convenient way to get a quick look at what's under a
window. Used it many times on the small laptop display.
the task bar.
It is your prerogative to stay with the workflows of the 1990ies.
Why, again, did FAT become so popular for removable media,It's called the lowest common denominator. Or the highest common factor. EVERYTHING reads and writes FAT.
despite its shortcomings?
On 2025-05-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 29/05/2025 13:29, Borax Man wrote:
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to
drive social change, change peoples attitudes, to bring about social
justice, or any of the other concerns that Social Justice Warriors have
done. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, then bring it...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
Indeed we do.
I had occasion to visit the Body Shop Headquarters once to organise an
internet connection for them.
It was staffed entirely by women in 'power dressing' suits and one man,
- my IT contact,m who was practically dwarf sized.
I have never met a more bigoted organisation.
Except maybe 'Black Lives Matter'
People have always been bigoted and exclusionary. Its just some dress
up their exclusion as "diversity" and "inclusion"
Its just the same old, same old. People haven't changed.
Some of the most bigoted, supremacist and hostile people I've met were
so called anti-racists.
On 30/05/2025 14:51, Nuno Silva wrote:
Why, again, did FAT become so popular for removable media,It's called the lowest common denominator. Or the highest common factor. EVERYTHING reads and writes FAT.
despite its shortcomings?
On 5/30/25 1:39 AM, rbowman wrote:
GE sent a friend and I to the fair, trying to groom potential engineers in >> promising high school students. GE isn't what it was then, and one of the
few things that did happen was touch tone dialing. Kennedy opened the fair >> with a TT phone and there was a booth where you could see how much faster
it was than a rotary dial. Of course Ma Bell owned the whole shebang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4zjEwqdJQ
"Touch-tone" WAS do-able ...
But STILL want my flying car !!!
When I was a kiddie, a teacher took us to the proximate
Bell/ATT facility. It was PACKED with row after row after
row of relay-operated dialer machines. Physically connected
one physical line with others. SO cool to watch ! Ca-chunk,
ca-chunk, ca-chunk the discs would go around in order to
connect A with B - layer after layer. Straight-up wired
contacts back then, no software. Electro-mechanical magic !
On 2025-05-30, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
On 5/30/25 1:39 AM, rbowman wrote:
GE sent a friend and I to the fair, trying to groom potential engineers in >>> promising high school students. GE isn't what it was then, and one of the >>> few things that did happen was touch tone dialing. Kennedy opened the fair >>> with a TT phone and there was a booth where you could see how much faster >>> it was than a rotary dial. Of course Ma Bell owned the whole shebang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4zjEwqdJQ
I remember seeing an exhibit like that somewhere at about the same time.
"Touch-tone" WAS do-able ...
But you had to pay for it. A friend and I hacked relays into our modems' phone connection, activated by the DTR line. A suitable driver enabled
us to pulse dial at whatever speed we wanted. Maybe it was just the COs updating their equipment for Touch-Tone, but we found that we could pulse dial at 20 pps. It was almost as fast as Touch-Tone.
Why, again, did FAT become so popular for removable media, despite
its shortcomings?
Never had five tcpdumps, three straces and two syslog open
simultaneously?
On 2025-05-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 29/05/2025 13:21, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:56:27 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the
personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting >>>>>>> politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics >>>>>> as a political issue.
No. This is an observation.
It is a *political* observation.
What the hell does that mean?
People who decide that the project must be political, ARE Left
leaning, and using the "Everything is political" as a wedge to
insert their politics.
You were the one who brought left-versus-right into this, I did not.
Therefore you are the one trying to use this as a wedge to insert your >>>> particular brand of politics into the discussion. QED.
I didn't claim you did, and I have not inserted any politics in this.
Your statement is nonsensical. The people responsible for bringing
politics into organisations, are those that bring it in. It starts with >>> the claim that the situation they put themselves in, is 'political'.
If Christian Nationalists join the GNU project, and start to inject
religion and virtue, is the person who is "bringing religion into the
discussion" the one making the observation this is happening?
Come on...
Welcome to the Marxist AgitProp handbook 101.
Create a situation, introduce something that isn't needed or wanted, and
when sensible people object, accuse them of bias and bigotry, and
'bringing politics into it'.
Yes, its a tired tactic and I know it all too well.
Esentually you "lead" the culture, and be the first to make accusations.
You always assume your position is 'default', and any objection is
someone trying to be political.
Push fringe ideas, and accuse others of being obssessed with it if they object.
On 2025-05-30, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/05/2025 14:51, Nuno Silva wrote:
Why, again, did FAT become so popular for removable media,It's called the lowest common denominator. Or the highest common factor.
despite its shortcomings?
EVERYTHING reads and writes FAT.
Yes. The point being: why was there a need for such denominator to be
FAT* and not a more robust (set of) filesystem(s)?
Surely it wasn't fragmentation in the linux world that caused it :-)
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 30/05/2025 08:55, Marc Haber wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:In my setup if I minimise the windows completely they are just a tab in
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:24:35 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:[window shading in KDE]
Reducing a window to just the title bar with a click.
Okay... If that ever happened to me I'd figure out why and drive a
stake through its heart.
It is a very convenient way to get a quick look at what's under a
window. Used it many times on the small laptop display.
the task bar.
It is your prerogative to stay with the workflows of the 1990ies.
When I was a kiddie, a teacher took us to the proximate Bell/ATT
facility. It was PACKED with row after row after row of
relay-operated dialer machines. Physically connected one physical
line with others. SO cool to watch ! Ca-chunk,
ca-chunk, ca-chunk the discs would go around in order to connect A
with B - layer after layer. Straight-up wired contacts back then, no
software. Electro-mechanical magic !
Until the 90s, you were probably better off with a SERIAL printer.
The old, rugged, LOUD, OkiData pin printers come to mind. Only a FEW
special codes to shift between limited print modes - the drivers were
kinda easy to tweak.
Think you're "English" or "Irish" ... sorry, but you're mostly Geat.
They ravished all yer women for centuries.
But you had to pay for it. A friend and I hacked relays into our
modems'
phone connection, activated by the DTR line. A suitable driver enabled
us to pulse dial at whatever speed we wanted. Maybe it was just the COs updating their equipment for Touch-Tone, but we found that we could
pulse dial at 20 pps. It was almost as fast as Touch-Tone.
X windows was a cool idea, running a window remotely, but I can't
remember using it much. So the change made very little difference to me.
It is your prerogative to stay with the workflows of the 1990ies.This old dog learns some new tricks when he finds them useful but most
seem like gimmicks.
On 2025-05-30, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/05/2025 14:51, Nuno Silva wrote:
Why, again, did FAT become so popular for removable media,It's called the lowest common denominator. Or the highest common factor.
despite its shortcomings?
EVERYTHING reads and writes FAT.
Yes. The point being: why was there a need for such denominator to be
FAT* and not a more robust (set of) filesystem(s)?
Surely it wasn't fragmentation in the linux world that caused it :-)
On 2025-05-30, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
On 5/30/25 1:39 AM, rbowman wrote:
GE sent a friend and I to the fair, trying to groom potential engineers in >>> promising high school students. GE isn't what it was then, and one of the >>> few things that did happen was touch tone dialing. Kennedy opened the fair >>> with a TT phone and there was a booth where you could see how much faster >>> it was than a rotary dial. Of course Ma Bell owned the whole shebang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs4zjEwqdJQ
I remember seeing an exhibit like that somewhere at about the same time.
"Touch-tone" WAS do-able ...
But you had to pay for it. A friend and I hacked relays into our modems' phone connection, activated by the DTR line. A suitable driver enabled
us to pulse dial at whatever speed we wanted. Maybe it was just the COs updating their equipment for Touch-Tone, but we found that we could pulse dial at 20 pps. It was almost as fast as Touch-Tone.
But STILL want my flying car !!!
I'm not so sure about that. The way people are driving these days,
the last thing I want to see is for flying to gain mass appeal.
When I was a kiddie, a teacher took us to the proximate
Bell/ATT facility. It was PACKED with row after row after
row of relay-operated dialer machines. Physically connected
one physical line with others. SO cool to watch ! Ca-chunk,
ca-chunk, ca-chunk the discs would go around in order to
connect A with B - layer after layer. Straight-up wired
contacts back then, no software. Electro-mechanical magic !
Early-stage techno-porn. Loved it.
I stand by the remainder of my points.
xscreensaver also provides the screensavers themselves and screen
locking, besides the "saving" aspect.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
In my setup if I minimise the windows completely they are just a tab in
the task bar.
It is your prerogative to stay with the workflows of the 1990ies.
People have always been bigoted and exclusionary. Its just some dress
up their exclusion as "diversity" and "inclusion"
My beef was mainly that it enforced the need for EVERY SINGLE DAEMON to
have its config file rewritten in a more complex form.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:02:44 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Sadly my newsreader (which is a decades old windows binary running in
wine) doesn't even bother to write to the killfile, so I have to go
without. I thought Usenet would be dead ten years ago so I never
bothered to adapt my finger memory to Thunderbird.
Why do you need to use something that obsolete? There are lots of
options available on Linux, both GUI and non-GUI.
Because all of those options suck and I thought that Usenet would have
died a decade ago.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 12:33:48 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
People have always been bigoted and exclusionary. Its just some dress
up their exclusion as "diversity" and "inclusion"
In other words, every time somebody talks about countering bigotry and exclusion, you automatically assume they’re lying.
Diversity is bigotry
Inclusion is exclusion
War is peace
Lies are truth
Freedom is slavery
On 30/05/2025 13:33, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 29/05/2025 13:29, Borax Man wrote:
But Linus has, to me knowledge, never spoken about Linux as a means to >>>> drive social change, change peoples attitudes, to bring about social
justice, or any of the other concerns that Social Justice Warriors have >>>> done. If you can find me evidence to the contrary, then bring it...
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who >>>> is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
Indeed we do.
I had occasion to visit the Body Shop Headquarters once to organise an
internet connection for them.
It was staffed entirely by women in 'power dressing' suits and one man,
- my IT contact,m who was practically dwarf sized.
I have never met a more bigoted organisation.
Except maybe 'Black Lives Matter'
People have always been bigoted and exclusionary. Its just some dress
up their exclusion as "diversity" and "inclusion"
Its just the same old, same old. People haven't changed.
Some of the most bigoted, supremacist and hostile people I've met were
so called anti-racists.
The worst racist I have met to date was a Pakistani Muslim. who wanted
all Jews exterminated
The second worst was a Ugandan Indian who had his business and his whole
life destroyed by Idi Amin. He simply would not do business with any
African no matter how far removed from Africa.
The third was an Afrikaaner who genuinely believed 'the blacks don't
have souls, you know'
Racism is no way a white only issue.
Yup. I tend to load HPLIPS and use that ...
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often
been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 09:52:28 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:02:44 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Sadly my newsreader (which is a decades old windows binary running in
wine) doesn't even bother to write to the killfile, so I have to go
without. I thought Usenet would be dead ten years ago so I never
bothered to adapt my finger memory to Thunderbird.
Why do you need to use something that obsolete? There are lots of
options available on Linux, both GUI and non-GUI.
Because all of those options suck and I thought that Usenet would have
died a decade ago.
I came back to Usenet because I have fond memories of the time I spent on
it before Google got its sticky fingers into things.
I’ve been through a lot of different newsreaders since the 1990s, and I never really thought any of them “sucked”. I was quite fond of KNode, but that’s dead now. I have my Usenet account settings configured into both Claws (which I use for email) and Pan. I mainly use Pan right now (with
Emacs to help with message composition in some complex cases), maybe I
should spend more time trying Claws for news ... or even Emacs itself
...
I've spoken to multiple people, strongly pro-immigration and against "xenophobia" who seems to sincerely believe that people who were not
White, could have no hope of a decent life unless they could move to a
White country and have it done for them. Literal white supremacism.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 12:33:48 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
People have always been bigoted and exclusionary. Its just some dress
up their exclusion as "diversity" and "inclusion"
In other words, every time somebody talks about countering bigotry and exclusion, you automatically assume they’re lying.
Diversity is bigotry Inclusion is exclusion War is peace Lies are truth Freedom is slavery
On 2025-05-30, Borax Man wrote:
Setting up Apache with MariaDB, subtle differences in configuration mean
that the instructions you find online may not work, because another
distro has different default passwords, or sets a default password where
another might not.
Also differences in system services, how they are configured.
Okay, so your argument for differences as a barrier of entry is "One has
to read the documentation" and "default passwords can be different"?
I mean, I'd understand if the complaint were "it's not well documented".
X11 has issues, but it works, and has powered Unix GUI's for decades.
I find it useful, and if it is inefficient, it hasn't been that much of
an issue.
Likewise, I'll be happy to go to Wayland, when doing so is almost
seamless.
As of now, I think I could use it, but all the DE's/window Managers that
I would want to use are X11.
On 2025-05-29, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Proprietary software does matter. Many people use it.
The only “software authors and vendors” I have heard complain about
the variety of Linux distros are the ones hawking proprietary
products. The ones who do Free Software don’t have to worry, since
it’s not their problem: it’s up to the respective distro
maintainers to make the software available in the relevant
packaging system.
Also, if the distro maintainers don't package your software, you
either do it yourself, or leave it as an exercise to the user, which
you cannot assume the user would know how to do it.
Likewise with configuration. Having set up Linux systems for
others, and servers, subtle differences become blockers when
Distro X modifies the base software and the instructions, for a
different distro don't quite work. These are not insurmountable,
but pain points which increase cost.
Never come across any such “pain points”. Feel free to point some out.
Setting up Apache with MariaDB, subtle differences in configuration
mean that the instructions you find online may not work, because
another distro has different default passwords, or sets a default
password where another might not.
Also differences in system services, how they are configured.
Linux could have gone this way, if there the first distro was the
sole distro for several years and gained mindshare as THE Linux.
Do you think somebody should step in and force an end to all this
freedom? How would they go about it, do you think? Would moving to
proprietary licences help?
No, I don't think there is much that can be done now. It is what it
is.
Almost all the graphical programs I use regularly don't support
Wayland because they either use an old graphics toolkit that
doesn't support it (GTK2, Motif) or don't use a graphics toolkit
at all and link directly to xlib.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 09:40:57 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My beef was mainly that it enforced the need for EVERY SINGLE DAEMON to
have its config file rewritten in a more complex form.
systemd had extensive backward compatibility with sysvinit scripts right
from the beginning. Otherwise nobody would have bothered with a transition that would have been more painful than it needed to be.
This could be one of the reasons that systemd became so popular, because
it did a better job of sysvinit compatibility than some of the other service-management alternatives.
And this in spite of the fact that systemd unit files are usually a model
of simplicity and clarity, compared to the usual boilerplate-ridden
sysvinit scripts.
Any more than people with red hair are inferior.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 12:33:48 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
People have always been bigoted and exclusionary. Its just some dress
up their exclusion as "diversity" and "inclusion"
In other words, every time somebody talks about countering bigotry and exclusion, you automatically assume they’re lying.
Diversity is bigotry Inclusion is exclusion War is peace Lies are truth Freedom is slavery
On 31 May 2025 12:27:26 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
Almost all the graphical programs I use regularly don't support
Wayland because they either use an old graphics toolkit that
doesn't support it (GTK2, Motif) or don't use a graphics toolkit
at all and link directly to xlib.
Really? Which programs are these?
I use a range of graphical programs, such as Blender, Inkscape
and GIMP, and all those work fine under Wayland.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 09:40:57 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My beef was mainly that it enforced the need for EVERY SINGLE DAEMON to
have its config file rewritten in a more complex form.
systemd had extensive backward compatibility with sysvinit scripts right
from the beginning. Otherwise nobody would have bothered with a transition >> that would have been more painful than it needed to be.
This could be one of the reasons that systemd became so popular, because
it did a better job of sysvinit compatibility than some of the other
service-management alternatives.
And this in spite of the fact that systemd unit files are usually a model
of simplicity and clarity, compared to the usual boilerplate-ridden
sysvinit scripts.
Heh, yeah but you can see exactly what the sysvinit scripts are
doing. I tried to write a Systemd service and ran into all the
weird commands and different edits you had to make. Different
sometimes from the tutorial I was following because things had
changed since it was written (and this wasn't that early - post
Debian switching to Systemd). That was all I needed to see, it's
obviously not for me.
If you're rewriting every single daemon yourself then you probably
would get pretty good at it by the end. But if you're just
adding/debugging things once in a while like a normal person it's
a minefield compared to relatively self-descriptive (if you
understand shell scripting at least) init scripts.
On 5/30/25 10:46 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
If you're rewriting every single daemon yourself then you probably
would get pretty good at it by the end. But if you're just
adding/debugging things once in a while like a normal person it's
a minefield compared to relatively self-descriptive (if you
understand shell scripting at least) init scripts.
Systemd is not "perfect" - but neither was SysV.
I see them as "complementary", not enemies.
... I've tried and dismissed Inkscape and GIMP a long time ago.
Personally, all the ones I’ve done have been quite small -- less than a dozen lines each.
Heh, yeah but you can see exactly what the sysvinit scripts are
doing.
I tried to write a Systemd service and ran into all the weird
commands and different edits you had to make.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 09:40:57 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My beef was mainly that it enforced the need for EVERY SINGLE DAEMON to
have its config file rewritten in a more complex form.
systemd had extensive backward compatibility with sysvinit scripts right
from the beginning. Otherwise nobody would have bothered with a transition >that would have been more painful than it needed to be.
My beef was mainly that it enforced the need for EVERY SINGLE DAEMON to
have its config file rewritten in a more complex form.
Systemd is not "perfect" - but neither was SysV.
I see them as "complementary", not enemies.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 04:41:27 -0000 (UTC), I wrote:
Personally, all the ones I’ve done have been quite small -- less than a
dozen lines each.
Make that “less than a couple dozen lines each”.
How big is the typical sysvinit script?
On Fri, 30 May 2025 13:24:03 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
In my setup if I minimise the windows completely they are just a tab in
the task bar.
It is your prerogative to stay with the workflows of the 1990ies.
Actually, window-shading (like so many other UI concepts) was invented in
the 1990s.
Probably fell out of fashion because minimized icons in the taskbar were >easier to find. And, with a disappearing taskbar, they take up less screen >space.
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
Systemd is not "perfect" - but neither was SysV.
I see them as "complementary", not enemies.
systemd fights a holy war against scripts.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
systemd had extensive backward compatibility with sysvinit scripts
right from the beginning. Otherwise nobody would have bothered with
a transition that would have been more painful than it needed to
be.
And here comes that attitude that I'd like to complain about in the
systemd makers: They're planning to rip the init script compatibility
layer out.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 09:52:28 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 11:02:44 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Sadly my newsreader (which is a decades old windows binary running
in wine) doesn't even bother to write to the killfile, so I have to
go without. I thought Usenet would be dead ten years ago so I never
bothered to adapt my finger memory to Thunderbird.
Why do you need to use something that obsolete? There are lots of
options available on Linux, both GUI and non-GUI.
Because all of those options suck and I thought that Usenet would
have died a decade ago.
I came back to Usenet because I have fond memories of the time I spent
on it before Google got its sticky fingers into things.
I’ve been through a lot of different newsreaders since the 1990s, and
I never really thought any of them “sucked”. I was quite fond of
KNode, but that’s dead now. I have my Usenet account settings
configured into both Claws (which I use for email) and Pan. I mainly
use Pan right now (with Emacs to help with message composition in some complex cases), maybe I should spend more time trying Claws for news
... or even Emacs itself ...
And I still find it better if one just wants a window gone for short
time. Less distance to cover with mouse and eyes (that is VERY relevant
on a big screen) and intuitively at the place where you'd expect it.
Posting this with knode, which is readily available in OpenSuse.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 07:29:48 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
And I still find it better if one just wants a window gone for short
time. Less distance to cover with mouse and eyes (that is VERY relevant
on a big screen) and intuitively at the place where you'd expect it.
Have you heard of Fitts’ Law? That is one of the few well-established >numerical laws in UI design: the time it takes to move a pointing device
to a UI element is directly proportional to the square root of how far
away it is, and inversely proportional to its size.
This means that a small window-shade element can take longer to click on,
even if it is closer than an icon in a taskbar on the edge of the screen, >because the edge of the screen can be reached very fast -- so long as the >taskbar really is right on the edge of the screen, so there is no
possibility of overshoot -- it is effectively of infinite extent in that >direction.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 07:25:53 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
systemd had extensive backward compatibility with sysvinit scripts
right from the beginning. Otherwise nobody would have bothered with
a transition that would have been more painful than it needed to
be.
And here comes that attitude that I'd like to complain about in the
systemd makers: They're planning to rip the init script compatibility
layer out.
Yeah, I heard about that. Like anything in Open Source, who is going to >maintain it?
Nobody wants to do unnecessary work without reward.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 07:27:01 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
Systemd is not "perfect" - but neither was SysV.
I see them as "complementary", not enemies.
systemd fights a holy war against scripts.
systemd tries to express all the usual options as far as possible in a >declarative form, to minimize the need to write custom script/program
code.
This allows for things like “drop-in” emendations to a config file without >having to rewrite the whole thing, and tools like systemd-delta for easy >determination of where a system config has been customized.
On 31 May 2025 13:39:58 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
... I've tried and dismissed Inkscape and GIMP a long time ago.
I really don't understand that. Inkscape is a wonderful design tool for resolution-independent graphics, and its native format is SVG, which is
the standard format for vector graphics online.
And GIMP has better support for deep pixels than even Adobe can manage.
Both have good Python APIs for automation/extension purposes
and so does Blender, of course.
Blender also now has "Grease Pencil" functionality which is encroaching
into Synfig territory, and possibly Inkscape as well. And it's not limited
to 2D in either case.
On 31 May 2025 12:46:44 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
Heh, yeah but you can see exactly what the sysvinit scripts are
doing.
Not really. What's the first step to writing a new sysvinit script? Copy/paste a whole bunch of boilerplate from an existing script. Why?
"Just in case" ...
I tried to write a Systemd service and ran into all the weird
commands and different edits you had to make.
I've done several of those. Here's an example (not one of mine) <https://web.archive.org/web/20240711140744/https://list.waikato.ac.nz/archives/list/wlug@list.waikato.ac.nz/thread/BIAW7GY4KGPUGWIIRWNMBE5JSUVT2VWX/>
which is instructive because of its simplicity: it shows how systemd
can really make things easier to express than sysvinit.
And still they refuse to optionally allow passing for example an
ExecStartPre to a shell, forcing people to either separate things from
their systemd units into dedicated scripts (which is error prone since
those things can become out of sync), or to put themselves into quoting
hell with /bin/sh -c 'foo; bar; baz' constructs.
I do find it hard to look up what all the fields in Systemd services
mean, and the commands to install/enable/inspect them.
Like I say if I were editing lots of them regularly it would be
different ...
Except you could have just done this on most sysvinit systems:
echo 'echo 50 > /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold' >> /etc/rc.local
Or the same in Systemd if you have a service that runs
/etc/rc.local. Or maybe that would be sacrilege? Anyway, each to his
own.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Inkscape is a wonderful design tool for resolution-independent
graphics, and its native format is SVG, which is the standard
format for vector graphics online.
Too big, complicated, way more than I need as a non-artist.
And GIMP has better support for deep pixels than even Adobe can
manage.
Dunno what a "deep pixel" is.
Both have good Python APIs for automation/extension purposes
Image editing can be automated with scripts calling ImageMagick ...
and Xfig can export to Postscript which can be edited using scripts
as well.
Umm OK, I don't do animation in the first place.
The title bar of a window is bigger than a taskbar icon.
Maybe touching the screen edge triggers a virtual desktop change?
Posting this with knode, which is readily available in OpenSuse.
If you want multiple commands to be run, you can have multiple
ExecStartPre lines.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On 31 May 2025 12:46:44 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
Heh, yeah but you can see exactly what the sysvinit scripts are
doing.
Not really. What's the first step to writing a new sysvinit script?
Copy/paste a whole bunch of boilerplate from an existing script. Why?
"Just in case" ...
Sure but I don't find that boilerplate hard to read that.
I do find
it hard to look up what all the fields in Systemd services mean,
and the commands to install/enable/inspect them.
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often
been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot, without falling foul of your own rule.
Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
On 2025-05-29, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 29/05/2025 13:21, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2025 11:56:27 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:37:40 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
There is no getting away from “politics”. As someone once said, “the
personal is the political”.
That is a Left wing take, which often is used to justify injecting >>>>>>>> politics where it is not appropriate, or asked for.
See? You are proving my point, by taking the very mention of politics >>>>>>> as a political issue.
No. This is an observation.
It is a *political* observation.
What the hell does that mean?
People who decide that the project must be political, ARE Left
leaning, and using the "Everything is political" as a wedge to
insert their politics.
You were the one who brought left-versus-right into this, I did not. >>>>> Therefore you are the one trying to use this as a wedge to insert your >>>>> particular brand of politics into the discussion. QED.
I didn't claim you did, and I have not inserted any politics in this.
Your statement is nonsensical. The people responsible for bringing
politics into organisations, are those that bring it in. It starts with >>>> the claim that the situation they put themselves in, is 'political'.
If Christian Nationalists join the GNU project, and start to inject
religion and virtue, is the person who is "bringing religion into the
discussion" the one making the observation this is happening?
Come on...
Welcome to the Marxist AgitProp handbook 101.
Create a situation, introduce something that isn't needed or wanted, and >>> when sensible people object, accuse them of bias and bigotry, and
'bringing politics into it'.
Yes, its a tired tactic and I know it all too well.
Esentually you "lead" the culture, and be the first to make accusations.
You always assume your position is 'default', and any objection is
someone trying to be political.
Push fringe ideas, and accuse others of being obssessed with it if they object.
It is also a classic method of trying to stop/halt any further debate
on the subject that those in power don't want to engage in. Accuse the initiator of some form of "wrong" (of whichever flavor is in fashion at
the time) and the ones in control can now feel self-allowed to close
off the debate.
The thing to
understand is that I don't aspire to be any sort of graphic artist,
so I don't want to learn their tools if I've got easier, smaller, alternatives available.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 07:29:48 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
And I still find it better if one just wants a window gone for short
time. Less distance to cover with mouse and eyes (that is VERY relevant
on a big screen) and intuitively at the place where you'd expect it.
Have you heard of Fitts’ Law? That is one of the few well-established
numerical laws in UI design: the time it takes to move a pointing device
to a UI element is directly proportional to the square root of how far
away it is, and inversely proportional to its size.
This means that a small window-shade element can take longer to click on,
The title bar of a window is bigger than a taskbar icon. And, which
one of the thirty konsole taskbar icons is the window I want gone for
a second?
Please, don't assume that I am stupid, and don't assume I am not aware
of the alternatives. I might only have 25 years of Linux experience,
but I have been around computers way longer than you might think.
even if it is closer than an icon in a taskbar on the edge of the screen,
because the edge of the screen can be reached very fast -- so long as the
taskbar really is right on the edge of the screen, so there is no
possibility of overshoot -- it is effectively of infinite extent in that
direction.
Maybe touching the screen edge triggers a virtual desktop change?
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often
been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot,
without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot. More to the point, I
would never label myself as such.
On 31/05/2025 08:04, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:Why do you have thirty?
On Sat, 31 May 2025 07:29:48 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:The title bar of a window is bigger than a taskbar icon. And, which
And I still find it better if one just wants a window gone for short
time. Less distance to cover with mouse and eyes (that is VERY relevant >>>> on a big screen) and intuitively at the place where you'd expect it.
Have you heard of Fitts’ Law? That is one of the few well-established
numerical laws in UI design: the time it takes to move a pointing device >>> to a UI element is directly proportional to the square root of how far
away it is, and inversely proportional to its size.
This means that a small window-shade element can take longer to click on, >>
one of the thirty konsole taskbar icons is the window I want gone for
a second?
I think you should forget this outdated millennial workflow and get with
the program.
Maybe touching the screen edge triggers a virtual desktop change?Nope. Doesnt seem to
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 08:04, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:Why do you have thirty?
On Sat, 31 May 2025 07:29:48 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:The title bar of a window is bigger than a taskbar icon. And, which
And I still find it better if one just wants a window gone for short >>>>> time. Less distance to cover with mouse and eyes (that is VERY relevant >>>>> on a big screen) and intuitively at the place where you'd expect it.
Have you heard of Fitts’ Law? That is one of the few well-established >>>> numerical laws in UI design: the time it takes to move a pointing device >>>> to a UI element is directly proportional to the square root of how far >>>> away it is, and inversely proportional to its size.
This means that a small window-shade element can take longer to click on, >>>
one of the thirty konsole taskbar icons is the window I want gone for
a second?
Because it it is somtimes necessary. You don't need to understand that
unless you understand that there are valid usecases that look
different from your own.
I think you should forget this outdated millennial workflow and get with
the program.
I think you should stop being patronizing or at least show who you
are.
Maybe touching the screen edge triggers a virtual desktop change?Nope. Doesnt seem to
You know my machine? You know who I am? You know how I work?
No?
Why are you telling me what to do, with the undertone that I'm doing
things wrong?
In any case, I understand that the common IDEA is
to wean people off M$ ... and that means a very
similar GUI experience. Many opt for KDE for that
reason even though it's over-bloated. Gimme LXDE
preferably .......
On 5/28/25 4:03 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
In general if someone wants to charge you a lot of money for software
you can easily write yourself, and you have the time, its a bit of a no
brainer.
But ETHICALLY ???
Just because you CAN fake/steal something is no excuse
to DO so.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:22:46 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
My Inkjet printer doesnt allow me to fill magenta ink into the cyan
reservoir either. And it even works driverlessly with Linux, just to get
back on topic.
I was surprised when I plugged the Samsung laser printer into the Linux
box It Just Worked. I have a fraught relationship with printers going back decades. I seldom print and it used to be a very unpleasant experience to
get the damned things to work.
Heh, yeah but you can see exactly what the sysvinit scripts are
doing.
If you're rewriting every single daemon yourself then you probably
would get pretty good at it by the end. But if you're just
adding/debugging things once in a while like a normal person it's
a minefield compared to relatively self-descriptive (if you
understand shell scripting at least) init scripts.
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
Systemd is not "perfect" - but neither was SysV.
I see them as "complementary", not enemies.
systemd fights a holy war against scripts.
On 31/05/2025 08:04, Marc Haber wrote:
The title bar of a window is bigger than a taskbar icon. And, whichWhy do you have thirty?
one of the thirty konsole taskbar icons is the window I want gone for
a second?
Because it it is somtimes necessary. You don't need to understand that
unless you understand that there are valid usecases that look
different from your own.
On 31/05/2025 14:39, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
Le 30-05-2025, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> a écrit :The exception being scanners
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:22:46 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
My Inkjet printer doesnt allow me to fill magenta ink into the cyan
reservoir either. And it even works driverlessly with Linux, just to get >>>> back on topic.
I was surprised when I plugged the Samsung laser printer into the Linux
box It Just Worked. I have a fraught relationship with printers going back >>> decades. I seldom print and it used to be a very unpleasant experience to >>> get the damned things to work.
Things have improved since the las decades. It's well done the time
where you needed to be sure the hardware you pay for will work with Linux. >>
Le 30-05-2025, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> a écrit :
On Thu, 29 May 2025 21:22:46 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
My Inkjet printer doesnt allow me to fill magenta ink into the cyan
reservoir either. And it even works driverlessly with Linux, just to get >>> back on topic.
I was surprised when I plugged the Samsung laser printer into the Linux
box It Just Worked. I have a fraught relationship with printers going back >> decades. I seldom print and it used to be a very unpleasant experience to
get the damned things to work.
Things have improved since the las decades. It's well done the time
where you needed to be sure the hardware you pay for will work with Linux.
On 2025-05-30 19:14, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-05-30, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
But STILL want my flying car !!!
I'm not so sure about that. The way people are driving these days,
the last thing I want to see is for flying to gain mass appeal.
They are trying to do that with big drone like fly-taxis, automated :-)
On Fri, 30 May 2025 23:37:26 -0700, Ian wrote:
Posting this with knode, which is readily available in OpenSuse.
This link <https://software.opensuse.org/package/knode> says “no
official package available” for any reasonably current release I can
find ...
I don’t edit most of them regularly either. There are lots of different *nix admin/development things I do, but not frequently enough to have memorized them. You get used to knowing how and where to look things up.
Le 26-05-2025, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> a écrit :
In any case, I understand that the common IDEA is
to wean people off M$ ... and that means a very
similar GUI experience. Many opt for KDE for that
reason even though it's over-bloated. Gimme LXDE
preferably .......
You look confused. Choosing a distro is not the same thing as choosing a WM/DE. Some distro provide a default WM/DE, but it doesn't mean that one
is stuck with the DE/WM default on that distro.
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Posting this with knode, which is readily available in OpenSuse.
On 2025-05-31, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
Le 26-05-2025, c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> a écrit :
In any case, I understand that the common IDEA is
to wean people off M$ ... and that means a very
similar GUI experience. Many opt for KDE for that
reason even though it's over-bloated. Gimme LXDE
preferably .......
You look confused. Choosing a distro is not the same thing as choosing a
WM/DE. Some distro provide a default WM/DE, but it doesn't mean that one
is stuck with the DE/WM default on that distro.
And if this is confusing, that's a reason to explain choice and
introduce people to the concept that things can be done in more than one
way and that they usually have several approaches available on
Linux-based systems. Not a reason to ditch choice or hide it.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
Le 31-05-2025, Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> a écrit :
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:
Systemd is not "perfect" - but neither was SysV.
I see them as "complementary", not enemies.
systemd fights a holy war against scripts.
No. Systemd fights a holy war against shell scripts. Which is not the
same thing. For an end user, shell script can be good. But for a system,
a shell script is the first start to nightmares.
Le 31-05-2025, Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> a écrit :
On 31/05/2025 08:04, Marc Haber wrote:
The title bar of a window is bigger than a taskbar icon. And, whichWhy do you have thirty?
one of the thirty konsole taskbar icons is the window I want gone for
a second?
Because it it is somtimes necessary. You don't need to understand that
unless you understand that there are valid usecases that look
different from your own.
If his other questions/answers where useless patronizing criticisms,
I found that one legitimate. How can one understand other use cases if
one doesn't know abut them? So, trying to find other use cases looks
like a good way to improve one usage to me. Why do you avoid his only
good question? I'm not trying to know who you are: I just believe
knowing more use cases can be inspiring.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
If you want multiple commands to be run, you can have multiple
ExecStartPre lines.
And if I need conditionals or loops I need /bin/sh -c
Oh, I can write Python in an ExecStart clause?
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
On Thu, 29 May 2025 12:29:48 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
You mean like Linux Mint not welcoming Jewish people and kind of having
that white power vibe about it?
On 31/05/2025 23:16, CtrlAltDel wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2025 12:29:48 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:No.
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about
who is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
You mean like Linux Mint not welcoming Jewish people and kind of having
that white power vibe about it?
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often
been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot,
without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot.
On 15.6, which I'm running, you can use the Yast package manager to
search for knode with the "rpm provides" option, and find that it's in
the kde3pim package - which works perfectly well with the current plasma (yecch!) version of kde.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:48:37 -0700, Ian wrote:
On 15.6, which I'm running, you can use the Yast package manager to
search for knode with the "rpm provides" option, and find that it's
in the kde3pim package - which works perfectly well with the current
plasma (yecch!) version of kde.
Ah. I didn’t expect that. “kde3pim”, you say? Talk about dedication,
to keep stuff from KDE3 still installable and working on current
Plasma ...
After some hunting around, I found the package source area at
There’s a lot there. But searching for “knode” or “kde3pim” turns up
nothing.
Are you sure your package is coming from the standard repo?
On Sat, 31 May 2025 22:21:40 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
As I read history your empire decided Britannia was passe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6ec_p1pdsA
No future...
On Thu, 29 May 2025 12:29:48 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
But we have other organisations explicitely making statements about who
is and isn't welcome, about what politics they support and reject.
You mean like Linux Mint not welcoming Jewish people and kind of having
that white power vibe about it?
It's not in the standard distro. It's in one of the auxillary
repositories http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/15.6/
On Sat, 31 May 2025 22:21:40 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
As I read history your empire decided Britannia was passe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6ec_p1pdsA
No future...
On Sat, 31 May 2025 08:18:06 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
I don’t edit most of them regularly either. There are lots of different
*nix admin/development things I do, but not frequently enough to have
memorized them. You get used to knowing how and where to look things
up.
Why do you edit them? I'm not disagreeing but I've never had to do so.
The closest I've come is /etc/udev/rules.d.
I've got vague memories of messing around in init.d but that was very
long ago.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 17:47:36 -0700, Ian wrote:
It's not in the standard distro. It's in one of the auxillary
repositories
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/15.6/
I don't see it either in x86_64 or src.
Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
Le 31-05-2025, Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> a écrit :
On 31/05/2025 08:04, Marc Haber wrote:
The title bar of a window is bigger than a taskbar icon. And, whichWhy do you have thirty?
one of the thirty konsole taskbar icons is the window I want gone for >>>>> a second?
Because it it is somtimes necessary. You don't need to understand that
unless you understand that there are valid usecases that look
different from your own.
If his other questions/answers where useless patronizing criticisms,
I found that one legitimate. How can one understand other use cases if
one doesn't know abut them? So, trying to find other use cases looks
like a good way to improve one usage to me. Why do you avoid his only
good question? I'm not trying to know who you are: I just believe
knowing more use cases can be inspiring.
Following a network conversation between two end systems over three
routers and two middleboxes, tcpdump on two Interfaces each, three
additional tcpdumps on interfaces just in case there is asymmetric
routing, syslog on at least both sides, one firewall log, two tcpdumps
with a different filter to see auxillary communication like DNS or
RADIUS, probably the client software, added watch netstat, network
counters on certain interface etc.
People usually don't understand what I see. I do, and usually can
point to the system that is preventing communication.
That's understandable. You know what you launch and why when other
people could launch and look at different things. A personal way to
follow things is not usable by someone else.
Yet, people write things like "If that ever happened to me I'd figure
out why and drive a stake through its heart." - just because they don't understand and don't want to see why this can be useful in some
circumstances for some people.
rbowman wrote:kdepim3-3.5.10-lp156.293.2.x86_64.rpm
On Sat, 31 May 2025 17:47:36 -0700, Ian wrote:
It's not in the standard distro. It's in one of the auxillary
repositories http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/15.6/
I don't see it either in x86_64 or src.
It's there!
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/15.6/x86_64/
Note that these repositories only show you 20 items by default. You have
to operate the stupid little gizmo at the top of the page to see more.
On Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:09:59 -0700, Ian wrote:
rbowman wrote:kdepim3-3.5.10-lp156.293.2.x86_64.rpm
On Sat, 31 May 2025 17:47:36 -0700, Ian wrote:
It's not in the standard distro. It's in one of the auxillary
repositories
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/15.6/
I don't see it either in x86_64 or src.
It's there!
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/15.6/x86_64/
Note that these repositories only show you 20 items by default. You
have to operate the stupid little gizmo at the top of the page to see
more.
I did scroll through all the selections. However I thought the
discussion was about KNode not KDE PIM. My Fedora box does have
Kontact. It runs but throws a lot of errors.
It has Akregator which has some KDE feeds which must be a default.
On Sun, 01 Jun 2025 13:58:09 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:Indeed.
Yet, people write things like "If that ever happened to me I'd figure
out why and drive a stake through its heart." - just because they don't
understand and don't want to see why this can be useful in some
circumstances for some people.
I will repeat 'to me'. I never said it wasn't useful to some people but I
do not want that behavior. I do not want windows to go full screen if they get too close to a margin. I do not want to suddenly see a screen full of icons if the cursor gets to close to the upper left corner. I do not want virtual desktops displayed as a rotating polyhedron. I do not want windows that quiver like a bowl of jelly when I move them.
Again, that's me. Do what you want. However I do not like unexpected
behavior because someone decided it was kool and made it a default.
The pim package is the one that contains knode (along with a bunch of
other stuff).
On 01/06/2025 20:52, rbowman wrote:
Again, that's me. Do what you want. However I do not like unexpected
behavior because someone decided it was kool and made it a default.
Indeed.
Only stupid people buy 'chrome and tailfins' especially on a work truck
On Sun, 01 Jun 2025 13:47:12 -0700, Ian wrote:
The pim package is the one that contains knode (along with a bunch of
other stuff).
I'll pass. KDEPIM is installed by default on the Fedora KDE spin. It
has KMail and so forth but no KNode. I doubt it would play very well
with that rpm.
I will repeat 'to me'. I never said it wasn't useful to some people but I
do not want that behavior.
I do not want windows to go full screen if they
get too close to a margin.
I do not want to suddenly see a screen full of
icons if the cursor gets to close to the upper left corner.
I do not want
virtual desktops displayed as a rotating polyhedron.
I do not want windows
that quiver like a bowl of jelly when I move them.
Again, that's me. Do what you want. However I do not like unexpected
behavior because someone decided it was kool and made it a default.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
In the end having lived as a white Minority along with Asian Minorities
in a majority black country, I simply don't really see colour as much as
I used to.
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Give me a break. The percentage of British that live in the United
Kingdom and who are black is a minuscule 3.7 percent. You can go for days and days, months and months, even years and years in many parts of the
United Kingdom without ever seeing a black person.
And you want to cavalierly suggest Americans, who live in the melting pot
of the world, are insular compared to Britons? You feel secure on a high ground lecturing to a group of people whose population includes almost 13% African Americans and 20% Latino and 6% Asian of some type or another.
If anyone is seeming provincial here, it's you. Compared to Americans, the British live in a gated community where race cards are checked before
being allowed to enter.
Almost 50 million blacks are US citizens; that's damn near as large as the entire population of your little isolated island. The Latino population
of the United States, of various stripes, virtually equals the population
of Great Britain at around 65-70 million.
Because England use to never have the sun set on it, hundreds of years
ago, doesn't give modern day Brits some greater insight into racial
harmony than Americans have. And just because your rulers owned land
around the world and reigned over others doesn't give automatic
enlightenment to the British who never left the island and only read in
books about the people their upper classes had dominion over.
In the end having lived as a white Minority along with Asian Minorities
in a majority black country, I simply don't really see colour as much as
I used to.
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
On 2025-06-01, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 01/06/2025 20:52, rbowman wrote:
Again, that's me. Do what you want. However I do not like unexpected
behavior because someone decided it was kool and made it a default.
Indeed.
Only stupid people buy 'chrome and tailfins' especially on a work truck
It's fortunate for marketroids that so many people are stupid.
It's not so good for those of us who aren't stupid, though,
when work trucks aren't available without chrome and tailfins.
And yet you give them a name, distinct from you?
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people.
I do not want virtual desktops displayed as a rotating polyhedron.
I sometimes want that but not always. Sadly, KDE 5 has removed most
virtual desktop changing effefcts.
I also almost never work with a full-screen application.
On 02/06/2025 09:15, CtrlAltDel wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 08:41:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Dont be so racist.
And yet you give them a name, distinct from you?
You just wrote this:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people.
😀️ "All sorts of people" as in different than you. Get off your moral >> high horse. You reek of arrogance.
People are people.
All sorts means all sorts . Different cultures, Different places.
Where you see race and inferiority, we see different.
To make a long story short, it is ridiculous to view someone from oneThat us simply a proof of your insularity.
the most insular places on Planet Earth preaching to Americans about
how we are insular and just can't quite grasp the realities of
multi-culturalism as brilliantly as English folk can.
Most Americans never leave their home state,. Most Americans dont even
have a passport.
Why not list the continents you have visited and show us how 'travelled'
you really are.
As recently as the 1990's, there were only about eight hundred thousandSo what? showing off your 'racism' again?
people with black skin color allowed to live in the United Kingdom.
Currently, that number is slightly larger at about 2.5 million.
California, alone, has more black people than the whole United Kingdom
combined. California, btw, is way down the list of US states in total
number of black citizens.
We don't call them 'black' people like you do. We call them English
people
In the end having lived as a white Minority along with Asian Minoritiesin a majority black country
You sound like a Chinese person who has never left their province, has
only seen one American their entire lives when that one time an English
language teacher was there, and pontificate about how they are worldly
and have seen it all because of that.
Strange. I suspect I have spent more time in Africa and America and
countries in Europe than you have ever spent outside one state.
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 08:41:05 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
And yet you give them a name, distinct from you?
You just wrote this:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people.
😀️ "All sorts of people" as in different than you. Get off your moral high
horse. You reek of arrogance.
To make a long story short, it is ridiculous to view someone from one the most insular places on Planet Earth preaching to Americans about how we
are insular and just can't quite grasp the realities of multi-culturalism
as brilliantly as English folk can.
As recently as the 1990's, there were only about eight hundred thousand people with black skin color allowed to live in the United Kingdom. Currently, that number is slightly larger at about 2.5 million.
California, alone, has more black people than the whole United Kingdom combined. California, btw, is way down the list of US states in total
number of black citizens.
You sound like a Chinese person who has never left their province, has
only seen one American their entire lives when that one time an English language teacher was there, and pontificate about how they are worldly and have seen it all because of that.
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
I do not want windows to go full screen if they get too close to a
margin.
Amen.
I also almost never work with a full-screen application. There is
always some of the background visible around the app, even if I'm
working with just one application for hours (that happens seldomly,
but it does). Full Screen is fully useless on a big screen anyway.
I als hate when those "I always work full screen" (Beancounters often
do that) decide for me that I don't need a big screen for my work
based on the fact that a big screen is annoying for them.
I also like focus-follows-mouse and find myself frequently typing
consciously into a window that is not on the top.
I do not want virtual desktops displayed as a rotating polyhedron.
Oh boy, here we go with the sanctimony. You've traveled to Mallorca, the Amalfi Coast, maybe Mykonos on various short duration vacations, and
suddenly you view yourself as the reincarnation of Marco Polo with deep insights into various cultures. Pomposity has always been a notable, and ugly, characteristic of anyone from England.
A 23" monitor is not a cellphone....I think I will award you my personal cornflake splattered keyboard for
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:27:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often
been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot,
without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot.
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
We leave empires to the EU, Putin and King Donald Le Grande Petomane...
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
We leave empires to the EU, Putin and King Donald Le Grande Petomane...
No, you spent your capital on WWI and WWII and didn't have the will and
means to maintain the empire anymore.
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:27:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often >>>>> been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot, >>>> without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot.
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
I also like focus-follows-mouse and find myself frequently typing
consciously into a window that is not on the top.
I do the same (Fvwm2 is configured to do 'focus follows mouse'. And I
often am typing into an xterm (urxvt now) somewhere that is not on top.
However, I did see (no idea of where anymore) one reference that the
idiot savants that have brought us systemd and gnome have decided for
us that the MS Win stupidity of "keyboard focus must always equal
window on top" from MSWin is "the one true way" with their wayland
system.
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
I also like focus-follows-mouse and find myself frequently typing
consciously into a window that is not on the top.
I do the same (Fvwm2 is configured to do 'focus follows mouse'. And I >>often am typing into an xterm (urxvt now) somewhere that is not on top.
However, I did see (no idea of where anymore) one reference that the
idiot savants that have brought us systemd and gnome have decided for
us that the MS Win stupidity of "keyboard focus must always equal
window on top" from MSWin is "the one true way" with their wayland
system.
I use KDE Plasma on a systemd system with wayland and have numerous
options to configure focus and window layering options without having
to go to third-party tweaks for my window manager.
On 02/06/2025 11:51, Rich wrote:
A 23" monitor is not a cellphone....I think I will award you my personal cornflake splattered keyboard for
that one...
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
I do not want windows to go full screen if they get too close to a
margin.
I do not want virtual desktops displayed as a rotating polyhedron.
Fvwm2 never did this for virtual desks, and I've never missed the lack
of having it.
On 02/06/2025 12:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
We leave empires to the EU, Putin and King Donald Le Grande
Petomane...
No, you spent your capital on WWI and WWII and didn't have the will and
means to maintain the empire anymore.
Yawn. Another parochial brit hater.
Jealous are we?
It takes wars to sustain empires silly. That's why we decided against
it. Too damned expensive.
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
We leave empires to the EU, Putin and King Donald Le Grande Petomane...
No, you spent your capital on WWI and WWII and didn't have the will and
means to maintain the empire anymore.
We don't call them 'black' people like you do. We call them English
people
I also almost never work with a full-screen application. There is
always some of the background visible around the app, even if I'm
working with just one application for hours (that happens seldomly,
but it does). Full Screen is fully useless on a big screen anyway.
I als hate when those "I always work full screen" (Beancounters
often do that) decide for me that I don't need a big screen for
my work based on the fact that a big screen is annoying for them.
On 6/2/25 04:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
By which you mean that the former subjects of the Empire were free to come to the UK if they knew their place and many of their children
are now participating in the governance of the UK and Commonweath.
Or am I wrong about that?
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
We leave empires to the EU, Putin and King Donald Le Grande Petomane...
No, you spent your capital on WWI and WWII and didn't have the will and
means to maintain the empire anymore.
The Commonwealth was cheaper to maintain than an empire on
which the Sun never set.
As for insular Americans the UK has lots of people who insist on keeping hostility toward the nations of Europe a guiding principle of
their political paticipation or did you think Brexit won becuase they
felt they were dragging the EU down?
bliss
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 13:03:39 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 02/06/2025 12:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of
people. We aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to
run so we set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been
much better.
We leave empires to the EU, Putin and King Donald Le Grande
Petomane...
No, you spent your capital on WWI and WWII and didn't have the
will and means to maintain the empire anymore.
Yawn. Another parochial brit hater. Jealous are we?
It takes wars to sustain empires silly. That's why we decided
against it. Too damned expensive.
Funny, I just read an article about Starmer saying it's time to ramp
up defence and maybe get military spending up to 3% someday. He
seems to be having an 'oh shit!' moment while realizing the US might
be getting tired of its big brother status.
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 10:17:12 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
We don't call them 'black' people like you do. We call them English
people
When you're not calling them pakis, wogs, taigs, or other terms of endearment.
WTF is a taig? You seem much more well versed in the language of racial hatred than I am.
As for insular Americans the UK has lots of people who insist on keeping hostility toward the nations of Europe a guiding principle of
their political paticipation or did you think Brexit won becuase they
felt they were dragging the EU down?
On 02/06/2025 10:57, CtrlAltDel wrote:
Asshole.
Oh boy, here we go with the sanctimony. You've traveled to Mallorca,
the Amalfi Coast, maybe Mykonos on various short duration vacations,
and suddenly you view yourself as the reincarnation of Marco Polo with
deep insights into various cultures. Pomposity has always been a
notable, and ugly, characteristic of anyone from England.
You know perfectly well I have visited the USA on many occasions and
crossed many a state, lived in S Africa for three years, worked in
various countries in Europe...my family live in 5 different countries.
And I have NEVER been to Mallorca, the Amalfi coast, or Mykonos.
Mexico yes. I will admit to that. Where the Mexicans were so happy that
I wasn't American and didn't treat them like shit.
You intuit too much of your own experience into your comments,. Did you
ever make it out of Clarksville?
GIMP is deeply frustrating because it's a lot of very solid technical functionality married to a cargo-cult version of the Photoshop UI ...
Blender I looked at once and ran screaming for the hills. Whatever
tri-lobed space aliens designed that interface can *have* it.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Nobody wants to do unnecessary work without reward.
Writing widely used software comes with responsibility. Part of that responsibility is that you get to work on parts of the software that
you don't use yourself instead of expecting that everybody is going to
accept your way. It is an attitude to dismiss other people's valid
opinions like that.
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 11:30:24 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
When they try to encourage disadvantaged groups to get involved and be included in the discourse, you see that as some how “excluding”
somebody ... but who?
On 02/06/2025 12:30, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:Exactly.
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:27:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often >>>>>> been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot, >>>>> without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot.
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
It is one thing to say notice that someone from Kenya has lungs to die
for having lived at altitude all his life, and another thing to consider
him inferior simply because he happens to be black.
When you see the race, not the person, that;s racism. And it's as
prevalent - if not more so - amongst 'people of colour'
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 10:17:12 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
We don't call them 'black' people like you do. We call them English
people
When you're not calling them pakis, wogs, taigs, or other terms of endearment.
On 6/2/25 04:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We
aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
By which you mean that the former subjects of the Empire were free
to come to the UK if they knew their place and many of their children
are now participating in the governance of the UK and Commonweath.
Or am I wrong about that?
No. We decided that Empires were Passé and too expensive to run so we
set up a common wealth trade bloc which has been much better.
We leave empires to the EU, Putin and King Donald Le Grande Petomane...
No, you spent your capital on WWI and WWII and didn't have the will and
means to maintain the empire anymore.
The Commonwealth was cheaper to maintain than an empire on
which the Sun never set.
As for insular Americans the UK has lots of people who insist on keeping hostility toward the nations of Europe a guiding principle of
their political paticipation or did you think Brexit won becuase they
felt they were dragging the EU down?
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 10:08:38 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
As for insular Americans the UK has lots of people who insist on
keeping hostility toward the nations of Europe a guiding principle of
their political paticipation or did you think Brexit won becuase they
felt they were dragging the EU down?
The UK's hostility to European nations, more specifically toward any
nation challenging their hegemony led to WWI which begat WWII.
Gott strafe England
If someone organises a Nerd Fest (to get back on topic), and say that
certain types of people are not welcome, then they're being
exclusionary, and if I'm being excluded, I'll have issue with it.
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:27:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often >>>>> been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot, >>>> without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot.
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
On 6/2/25 04:30, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:27:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often >>>>>> been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or
anti-bigot,
without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot.
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
What a hell of a lot of Topic Drift has this topic endured!
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
I also like focus-follows-mouse and find myself frequently typing
consciously into a window that is not on the top.
I do the same (Fvwm2 is configured to do 'focus follows mouse'. And I >>>often am typing into an xterm (urxvt now) somewhere that is not on top.
However, I did see (no idea of where anymore) one reference that the >>>idiot savants that have brought us systemd and gnome have decided for
us that the MS Win stupidity of "keyboard focus must always equal
window on top" from MSWin is "the one true way" with their wayland >>>system.
I use KDE Plasma on a systemd system with wayland and have numerous
options to configure focus and window layering options without having
to go to third-party tweaks for my window manager.
And, as you are using 'focus follows mouse' mode, that would mean that >whatver 'reference' I saw was/is either:
1) outdated; or
2) incorrect.
No one has any hostility towards the nations of Europe. Its the EU, we
tried to leave - not Europe
On Sat, 31 May 2025 06:49:47 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
This means that a small window-shade element can take longer to click
on, even if it is closer than an icon in a taskbar on the edge of the
screen
I don't use it regularly myself, but in e.g. WindowMaker it's trivial to
set up a keyboard shortcut for window shading - and when the focus
returns to a shaded window, it conveniently unrolls itself.
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 09:13:48 -0700, John Ames wrote:
GIMP is deeply frustrating because it's a lot of very solid technical
functionality married to a cargo-cult version of the Photoshop UI ...
That’s strange, isn’t it, since most of the Adobe-lovers who don’t like >GIMP primarily say it’s because its UI is too different from Photoshop.
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly mistake.
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 10:08:38 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
As for insular Americans the UK has lots of people who insist on
keeping hostility toward the nations of Europe a guiding principle of
their political paticipation or did you think Brexit won becuase they
felt they were dragging the EU down?
The UK's hostility to European nations, more specifically toward any
nation challenging their hegemony led to WWI which begat WWII.
Gott strafe England
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 22:51:07 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
WTF is a taig? You seem much more well versed in the language of racial
hatred than I am.
Google broken?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taig
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 02:03:06 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:Why do you hate Britain so much?
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly
mistake.
For the Windrush generation it was beyond allowing. 'Please, please come
from Jamaica and help rebuild Britain after we lost the war we thought we won.'
On 2025-06-02, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 10:17:12 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
We don't call them 'black' people like you do. We call them English
people
When you're not calling them pakis, wogs, taigs, or other terms of
endearment.
The UK has far bigger problems than that. Its become a nanny state,
where you get arrested for tweets and Facebook posts.
I'm surprised they are still allowed to think.
On 2025-06-02, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 6/2/25 04:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We >>>>>> aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
By which you mean that the former subjects of the Empire were free
to come to the UK if they knew their place and many of their children
are now participating in the governance of the UK and Commonweath.
Or am I wrong about that?
Now you are being colonised by the former subjects. Truly colonised in
an irreversible way. India was able to get rid of you.
The UK didn't replace Indian cities with Brits, but India will replace
you.
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly mistake.
A people who decide to no longer exist or maintain their nation are just
weak and not worthy of respect.
Brexit won probably because of misguided notions of "sovreignty". The Brexiteers convinced the population that they could be free of foriegn influence, but those who votes didn't realise that they were an occupied country anyway.
It has to go. And it will.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 09:13:48 -0700, John Ames wrote:
GIMP is deeply frustrating because it's a lot of very solid technical
functionality married to a cargo-cult version of the Photoshop UI ...
That’s strange, isn’t it, since most of the Adobe-lovers who don’t like
GIMP primarily say it’s because its UI is too different from Photoshop.
So it is similar enough so that non-experts see a similarity, and
different enough that it's too different for photoshop fans.
That is rather normal. When you're _really_ acquainted with a software
you search for reasons for not having to use the alternative, and
chain yourself to features that the alternative doesn't have even if
they're not THAT vital for you.
Greetings
Marc
e.g. We will make your default to be IPV6 enabled even though no one is >actually using it
Or systemd.
Its all very MCP like "Fuck the users, we are the cool people"
That's why stupid people like Apple. They spend the time on a user
interface, insist that its the only way to use it, and document it.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
No one has any hostility towards the nations of Europe. Its the EU, we
tried to leave - not Europe
How well did that work for you? As I am living in an EU country, we
probably get a skewed image on that, so I am asking out of genuine
interest how it feels from inside UK.
Greetings
Marc
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
e.g. We will make your default to be IPV6 enabled even though no one is
actually using it
There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing breaks when IPv6 gets
enabled.
Or systemd.
No init script broke because there was another program invoking it.
Its all very MCP like "Fuck the users, we are the cool people"
That's why stupid people like Apple. They spend the time on a user
interface, insist that its the only way to use it, and document it.
And yet apple is the company who cares the least about leaving
obsolete things behind. They just do it. Windows carried on with the
Win16 API for two decades because _their_ App developers couldn't be
bothered with upgrading. Apple just says "your 32bit apps are going to
stop working with iOS 18" and the app developers shuffle along.
Greetings
Marc
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people are
a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon enough.
Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
On 6/2/25 04:30, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:27:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-30, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Fri, 30 May 2025 22:56:15 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
When I encounter an avid "anti-racist" or "anti-bigot", they've often >>>>>> been willing, if you scratch just a little, to be racist and
exclusionary.
So, presumably, you cannot count yourself as anti-racist or anti-bigot, >>>>> without falling foul of your own rule.
I don't claim to be anti-racist or anti-bigot.
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
What a hell of a lot of Topic Drift has this topic endured!
bliss
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
It has to go. And it will.
That is totally not what I wanted to hear and I feel sad about having
asked. I hope that there are people in the UK with a different
opinion.
Greetings
Marc
On 03/06/2025 10:01, Marc Haber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:I beg to differ. BIND9 broke for me entirely because it was looking to >connect via IPV6 to DNS servers that it couldn't reach,.
e.g. We will make your default to be IPV6 enabled even though no one is
actually using it
There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing breaks when IPv6 gets
enabled.
Well yes, some did.Or systemd.
No init script broke because there was another program invoking it.
in my case IIRC NFS came up before wifi had established contact,
delaying boot for minutes.
Someone moved WIFI into userland and gave it a low startup priority
while NFS had not been given a systemd dependency that included wifi.
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people are
a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon enough.
Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
What are British people a minority of?
It sounds like you're saying British people are a minority of British people...
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 03/06/2025 10:01, Marc Haber wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:I beg to differ. BIND9 broke for me entirely because it was looking to
e.g. We will make your default to be IPV6 enabled even though no one is >>>> actually using it
There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing breaks when IPv6 gets
enabled.
connect via IPV6 to DNS servers that it couldn't reach,.
It should have tried IPv4 then. Since there are gazillion possible misconfigurations that break these features of IPv6, more in-depth
debugging or analysis is not possible at this place. I apologize for
that.
Well yes, some did.Or systemd.
No init script broke because there was another program invoking it.
in my case IIRC NFS came up before wifi had established contact,
delaying boot for minutes.
Someone moved WIFI into userland and gave it a low startup priority
while NFS had not been given a systemd dependency that included wifi.
Misconfiguration of services is not systemd's fault. Things like that
happen.
Greetings
Marc
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
I also like focus-follows-mouse and find myself frequently typing
consciously into a window that is not on the top.
I do the same (Fvwm2 is configured to do 'focus follows mouse'. And I >>>>often am typing into an xterm (urxvt now) somewhere that is not on top. >>>>
However, I did see (no idea of where anymore) one reference that the >>>>idiot savants that have brought us systemd and gnome have decided for >>>>us that the MS Win stupidity of "keyboard focus must always equal >>>>window on top" from MSWin is "the one true way" with their wayland >>>>system.
I use KDE Plasma on a systemd system with wayland and have numerous
options to configure focus and window layering options without having
to go to third-party tweaks for my window manager.
And, as you are using 'focus follows mouse' mode, that would mean that >>whatver 'reference' I saw was/is either:
1) outdated; or
2) incorrect.
I'd go for 2. KDE Plasma has always allowed you to do that
configuration, and I don't see any way how an init system could
interfere with that.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 09:13:48 -0700, John Ames wrote:
GIMP is deeply frustrating because it's a lot of very solid technical
functionality married to a cargo-cult version of the Photoshop UI ...
That’s strange, isn’t it, since most of the Adobe-lovers who don’t like >>GIMP primarily say it’s because its UI is too different from Photoshop.
So it is similar enough so that non-experts see a similarity, and
different enough that it's too different for photoshop fans.
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people are
a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon enough.
Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
What are British people a minority of?
It sounds like you're saying British people are a minority of British people...
On 03/06/2025 10:40, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people are >>> a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon enough.
Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
What are British people a minority of?
It sounds like you're saying British people are a minority of British
people...
Well exactly. I know what he means though. White ethnic Brits who have families going back more than one generation.
But a strange thing is happening. Many people objecting to - in
particular islamic - immigration are in fact only first or second
generation immigrants themselves.
The populations of e.g, Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin in his
campaign of racial genocide, are more British than the British now. So
to speak. As are many of the 'Afro Caribbean' communities who came over
in the 1960s to fill the post war labour shortage.
They came, they fought to be accepted, and they now are.
That is not a problem. These - like say the Polish immigrants - simply
work out how the country works and adapt to it.
The immigrants who are a problem are the ones creating ghettoes and
insisting that the country must adapt to *them*. Not realising that if
it does, it will end up resembling exactly the shitholes from which they
have fled.
It's not unique to Britain though. The whole of Europe is threatened at
one level or another, and EU freedom of movement is a nightmare and is
being rescinded by many counties independently to control their borders
from a tidal wave of economic migrants who bring barbarism and disease
with them.
Its just another problem that the current 'liberal' elite have
completely failed to accept, let alone solve.
And its leading to a right wing backlash across Europe.
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 01:51:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
If someone organises a Nerd Fest (to get back on topic), and say that
certain types of people are not welcome, then they're being
exclusionary, and if I'm being excluded, I'll have issue with it.
Why would you care what they do in their own private affairs? Especially since they can’t stop you using that same software any way you wish, in your own private affairs.
On 2025-06-03, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people are >>> a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon enough.
Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
What are British people a minority of?
It sounds like you're saying British people are a minority of British
people...
A minority in the UK. I don't know if you realise it, but the UK has
had many, many people come in, changing it demographically.
On 03/06/2025 03:03, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-02, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:Not really, India is OK. Indians are very British really.
On 6/2/25 04:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: >>>>>>
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We >>>>>>> aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
By which you mean that the former subjects of the Empire were free
to come to the UK if they knew their place and many of their children
are now participating in the governance of the UK and Commonweath.
Or am I wrong about that?
Now you are being colonised by the former subjects. Truly colonised in
an irreversible way. India was able to get rid of you.
The UK didn't replace Indian cities with Brits, but India will replace
you.
Its the Islamic invasion that is rather more worrying.
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly
mistake.
It isn't free, its just a bit less restricted,.
A people who decide to no longer exist or maintain their nation are just
weak and not worthy of respect.
It isn't the people who decide. It was a cabal of 'elites' lead by the EU.
Brexit won probably because of misguided notions of "sovreignty". The
Brexiteers convinced the population that they could be free of foriegn
influence, but those who votes didn't realise that they were an occupied
country anyway.
Well that is quite close to the truth. The EU was a restrictive tariff erecting parochial organisation that sought to make a new USSR based in Brussels. A United States of Europe. Without democracy. A one party
state. Of unsackable bureaucrats
Speaking 20 different languages with 20 different cultures each with its
own history.
With its industries protected from foreign competition and all set to be
a cosy insular little place just like the USA now seems to want to be.
A 4th Reich modelled on what Hitler failed to do.
Britain however is a global nation and has been for 500 years. It simply didn't fit.
Many people voted for Brexit for the same reason they voted for King
Donald. To get rid of a cosy elite who were fucking things up.
Except that that elite managed to make Brexit a meaningless piece of
paper. by signing 'big bootiful deals' with the EU that left us more or
less precisely where we were.
But the times they are a changing - the man and the mood that led us to Brexit is now a political party that is ahead in the polls.
The people of Britain haven't given up the struggle.
All across the world the dynamic is changing - the politics and
economics of post war prosperity are pretty much dead. And even King
Donald won't bring them back again.
People are turning away from the current elites and looking for fresh
ideas. Russia is bust and collapsing and so allegedly is China. In
Europe people are sick of the socialists and their mealy mouthed
morality, and complete lack of competence.
All we know is that whatever we have, Russia is way worse. Ergo we have
to help put the bastards back in their place.
If you really want to find out what is happening outside your little
cabbage patch, your simplistic ideas that you have been told about
Britain, the EU, Europe, Russia and Brexit have to go.
Its not that simple.
Any more than king Donald is there because at least half America was
fucking stupid enough to believe he could do what he promised. And
wasn't stupid himself.
Everyone realises the old ways don't work any longer. That's the intelligence of democracies, They may not know what to do but they are
fully capable of shaking things up till someone comes along who does.
I understand that, but I also understand that placing faith in a
fallible human just because he or she inst the one that sat on the
throne last time, is no guaranteed solution either.
And believing in tin pot would be dictators who want to stir up hatred
for other nations because they are fresh out of ideas and need someone
else to blame, is a very dangerous religion indeed.
The USA has never been invaded since the Pilgrim Fathers by a hostile genocidal nation. Apart from IIRC Pearl Harbour its never had the shit
bombed out of it by people who basically want to destroy it. It copped
out of Korea, It chickened out of Vietnam, and it abandoned Afghanistan
and Iraq.
It simply doesn't like fighting wars and it isn't very good at it. The hardware is OK but by and large the people in the military don't like fighting. Which is a very difficult art to master.
Fine. No one likes fighting wars except tin pot dictators. But at least
when you need to fight, you ought to learn to be good at it.
You simply do not understand that Europe has been at war since Hom. Sap, moved out of hunter gathering and started to develop herding.
All the USA did was grab a shitload of land steeped with natural
resources by murdering a few Indians who it used to belong to.
So your politics reflects that. That's fine, but please do not use that worldview to judge the rest of the world.
It is a mistake.
Indians are Indians. They may adopt some customs, but that doesn't
change what you are.
Of course, society would be far better if people could get together for
a shared interest, and no one made it about having to share political
views as well. That would just be common sense, right?
Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 09:13:48 -0700, John Ames wrote:
GIMP is deeply frustrating because it's a lot of very solid technical
functionality married to a cargo-cult version of the Photoshop UI ...
That’s strange, isn’t it, since most of the Adobe-lovers who don’t like
GIMP primarily say it’s because its UI is too different from Photoshop.
So it is similar enough so that non-experts see a similarity, and
different enough that it's too different for photoshop fans.
The photoshop fans (the true users) complain that GIMP is not
*identical* to Photoshop's UI -- because all their muscle memory and >memorized keystroke shortcuts are broken by even the slightest
difference.
On 03/06/2025 14:26, Borax Man wrote:
Of course, society would be far better if people could get together for
a shared interest, and no one made it about having to share political
views as well. That would just be common sense, right?
One of my ex employees said 'working with you was hard work, but I
didn't realise what a pleasure it was workjng in a company where there
were NO politics, until I went to work in one where it was all
politics'.
Running a company IMHO is about focussing on getting jobs done for
customers in the most effective way possible. The only criterion is cost benefit analysis.
Is it worth doing?
I wasn't there to make any political points, espouse any religions, or dictate what my staff should or shouldn't wear. Just to mange the
business to make sure people had what they needed to get the job done,
knew what the job was, that needed to get done and in fact did get the
job done.
I only once commented when the guy with the tongue rings and tats came
in with blue hair...' 'You are not visiting customers with that' I said.
It was gone in a few days.
The problems is that today we are bombarded with political and
commercial marketing telling us what we *ought* to be doing.
Most from a moral perspective,. The Left love their moral compasses and social justices and all that crap.
Everything has to be Fair.
My schoolmaster dismissed that within a month of arriving in his class.
He had fought in WWII
"Life is rough, tough and *desperately* unjust, and you had better
learn to get used to it"
Today's whiny little snowflakes have no idea.
And contray: not friendly Linux distros are not reserverd to adults,
because vefy fev od them can mangage Gentoo or Arch.
Are there any Linux distros, other than Ubuntu, that are designed just for children to use?
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people are
a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon enough.
Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
I'm honestly no longer surprised when a thread in this group ends up
drifting towards far-right speech
On 03/06/2025 07:14, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 02:03:06 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:Why do you hate Britain so much?
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly
mistake.
For the Windrush generation it was beyond allowing. 'Please, please
come from Jamaica and help rebuild Britain after we lost the war we
thought we won.'
It all started with the socialists. a guy called Tony Blair. The one who
took the country to war in Iraq based on deliberately falsified
information.
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 08:22:52 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
It all started with the socialists. a guy called Tony Blair. The one who
took the country to war in Iraq based on deliberately falsified
information.
More fool him. The US government invariably falsifies information to sell
a war to the people.
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 09:02:30 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 07:14, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 02:03:06 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:Why do you hate Britain so much?
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly >>>> mistake.
For the Windrush generation it was beyond allowing. 'Please, please
come from Jamaica and help rebuild Britain after we lost the war we
thought we won.'
Why do you hate the US so much?
Which is why some of us here are so against innovation *for the sake of
it*. 'Creeping featurism' in programs that used to work well. 'Way of
the future' upgrades to operating system that render old hardware and software inoperable.
Software written by people who like to code, or do graphic design , not
to make easily understandable ergonomic user interfaces, do extensive debugging, or write documentation.
Lazy, spoilt compSci BRATS.
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people
are a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon
enough. Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
What are British people a minority of?
It sounds like you're saying British people are a minority of British people...
Okay, so "British people" are not those living in the UK? What's the difference here? Northern Ireland?
On 2025-06-03, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 01:51:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
If someone organises a Nerd Fest (to get back on topic), and say
that certain types of people are not welcome, then they're being
exclusionary, and if I'm being excluded, I'll have issue with it.
Why would you care what they do in their own private affairs?
Especially since they can’t stop you using that same software any
way you wish, in your own private affairs.
Because, as I stated before, which you may have missed, these people
take over everything and eventually you have no place.
My beef with programs like GIMP and blender is that huge amounts of
effort go into the cunning 'features' that they have, and almost none
into some sort of vaguely consistent way to access those features, or
explain why you might want to use them or help you use them.
Too often You Tube videos apply to the version you don't have on an OS
you don't have that simply doesn't have the same menus.
That's why stupid people like Apple.
Today's whiny little snowflakes have no idea.
On Tue, 03 Jun 2025 10:40:19 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people
are a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon
enough. Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
What are British people a minority of?
It sounds like you're saying British people are a minority of British
people...
There is ancestry, or genetics if you will, and political states. The US
has been a state since its inception. 'American' conveys no information
about ethnicity, hence all the hyphens.
On 2025-06-03, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 11:30:24 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
Yet you label others as “racist” and “exclusionary” ...
I label people based on how they act and what they do.
When they try to encourage disadvantaged groups to get involved and be
included in the discourse, you see that as some how “excluding”
somebody ... but who?
If you can't actually address what I actually said ...
Someone moved WIFI into userland and gave it a low startup priority
while NFS had not been given a systemd dependency that included wifi.
Software written by people who like to code, or do graphic design , not
to make easily understandable ergonomic user interfaces, do extensive debugging, or write documentation.
Lazy, spoilt compSci BRATS.
On 03/06/2025 18:49, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 09:02:30 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 07:14, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 02:03:06 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:Why do you hate Britain so much?
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a
deadly mistake.
For the Windrush generation it was beyond allowing. 'Please, please
come from Jamaica and help rebuild Britain after we lost the war we
thought we won.'
Why do you hate the US so much?
I don't. I just find it amusing, blissfully ignorant and occasionally dangerous
You *want* Britrain to fail.
I really want the USA to succeed. In spite of its politicians, and its ignorant population
If the Liberals are somehow dominating in that field, then that points
to some innate inferiority among Convervatives themselves, that they are
not capable of doing the same.
Or they re-define "ergonomic" to mean whatever their shit is this week.
I once read a novel where one of the characters described the United
States as "a country that's never missed a war."
And "American" can get a bit ambiguous. To part of the audience, it
might mean "from the American *continent*", to other part it might mean
"from the USA".
On 03/06/2025 07:14, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 02:03:06 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:Why do you hate Britain so much?
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly
mistake.
For the Windrush generation it was beyond allowing. 'Please, please come
from Jamaica and help rebuild Britain after we lost the war we thought we
won.'
On 03/06/2025 03:03, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-02, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:Not really, India is OK. Indians are very British really.
On 6/2/25 04:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: >>>>>>
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. We >>>>>>> aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
By which you mean that the former subjects of the Empire were free >>> to come to the UK if they knew their place and many of their children
are now participating in the governance of the UK and Commonweath.
Or am I wrong about that?
Now you are being colonised by the former subjects. Truly colonised in
an irreversible way. India was able to get rid of you.
The UK didn't replace Indian cities with Brits, but India will replace
you.
Its the Islamic invasion that is rather more worrying.
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly
mistake.
It isn't free, its just a bit less restricted,.
A people who decide to no longer exist or maintain their nation are just
weak and not worthy of respect.
It isn't the people who decide. It was a cabal of 'elites' lead by the EU.
On 03/06/2025 01:11, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 22:51:07 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
WTF is a taig? You seem much more well versed in the language of racial
hatred than I am.
Google broken?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taig
Well thanks for that. In 75 years on this planet I have never heard that used.
On 6/3/25 4:01 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 03:03, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-02, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:Not really, India is OK. Indians are very British really.
Now you are being colonised by the former subjects. Truly colonised
On 6/2/25 04:35, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-05-31, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote: >>>>>> On 31/05/2025 18:27, rbowman wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 11:07:00 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote: >>>>>>>
Britain had an Empire once that dealt with all sorts of people. >>>>>>>> We aren't as insular as Americans.
Then the chickens came home to roost...
By which you mean that the former subjects of the Empire were
free
to come to the UK if they knew their place and many of their children
are now participating in the governance of the UK and Commonweath. Or
am I wrong about that?
in an irreversible way. India was able to get rid of you.
The UK didn't replace Indian cities with Brits, but India will replace
you.
Its the Islamic invasion that is rather more worrying.
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadlyIt isn't free, its just a bit less restricted,.
mistake.
A people who decide to no longer exist or maintain their nation areIt isn't the people who decide. It was a cabal of 'elites' lead by the
just weak and not worthy of respect.
EU.
Just saying ..... THIS sort of stuff is probably BEST sent to the
various 'political' newsgroups.
Yep, "The Elites" are responsible for much - read your Machiavelli -
BEEN that way for a LONG time.
There is "consumer politics" and REALPOLITIK.
On 03/06/2025 02:56, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-02, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:Well I am glad that you at leats have some idea of modern Britain
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 10:17:12 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
We don't call them 'black' people like you do. We call them English
people
When you're not calling them pakis, wogs, taigs, or other terms of
endearment.
The UK has far bigger problems than that. Its become a nanny state,
where you get arrested for tweets and Facebook posts.
But its getting the same in the USA with people getting deported for
just looking forrrin
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-03, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 2025-06-03, Borax Man wrote:
In the end, Britain ended up being colonised anyway. British people are >>>> a minority in some parts, and will be a minority overall soon enough.
Not even Hitler planned for this kind of replacement.
What are British people a minority of?
It sounds like you're saying British people are a minority of British
people...
A minority in the UK. I don't know if you realise it, but the UK has
had many, many people come in, changing it demographically.
Okay, so "British people" are not those living in the UK? What's the difference here? Northern Ireland?
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 21:57:34 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
If the Liberals are somehow dominating in that field, then that points
to some innate inferiority among Convervatives themselves, that they are
not capable of doing the same.
Two words -- Brendan Eich. Liberals are somewhat like Africanized bees;
they swarm and attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee
I suppose there is a moral there about cross-breeding Sub-Saharan Africans with Europeans. Bees, that is.
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 13:26:52 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-03, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 01:51:30 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
If someone organises a Nerd Fest (to get back on topic), and say
that certain types of people are not welcome, then they're being
exclusionary, and if I'm being excluded, I'll have issue with it.
Why would you care what they do in their own private affairs?
Especially since they can’t stop you using that same software any
way you wish, in your own private affairs.
Because, as I stated before, which you may have missed, these people
take over everything and eventually you have no place.
But that’s simply not possible with Free Software. Nobody can forbid
you from using that, or from developing and contributing to that.
If the Liberals are somehow dominating in that field, then that points
to some innate inferiority among Convervatives themselves, that they
are not capable of doing the same.
On 03/06/2025 14:24, Borax Man wrote:
Indians are Indians. They may adopt some customs, but that doesn't
change what you are.
I think actually it does.
In that customs and culture are what define almost exclusively how a
person behaves in a social context.
My local NHS hospitals are probably majority staffed by Indians, with a
few SE Asians and Africans thrown in, and by that I mean first
generation people who were not born here.
They are with one or two exceptions, bloody excellent and very 'British'.
The only think 'Indian' I have noticed is that the 'Indian' female
doctors are extremely compassionate and conscientious. And dexterous.
My last heart operation done under local anaesthetic was done by a
little Indian lady surgeon with deft fingers and an absolute feel for
not causing pain. Every time she was about to do something painful
'another 50 mg of fentanyl please' .
The radiologist was a black guy from Zimbabwe and the backup nurse in
charge of making sure I didn't die was an Australian. Best heart team
ever. I walked out the next day and drove home.
No. By and large Britain exists as much because of colonial immigration
as in spite of it.
There are only one or two cultures that hate Britain but still want to
live here.
Albanians are pure criminal thugs.
There are some ex European communists who ended up here and hate
Britain. Marx was the first of course. Red Ed Milliband, minister for
energy and climate change is another.
And of course their are are chums from the Religion of Peace whose prime directive is to slay unbelievers. Not good really. Only fit in well with
the communists
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 21:57:34 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
If the Liberals are somehow dominating in that field, then that points
to some innate inferiority among Convervatives themselves, that they are
not capable of doing the same.
Two words -- Brendan Eich. Liberals are somewhat like Africanized bees;
they swarm and attack.
Despite loving war the US hasn't exactly won a war in my lifetime except
for little operations like Grenada
On Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:41:34 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
And "American" can get a bit ambiguous. To part of the audience, it
might mean "from the American *continent*", to other part it might mean
"from the USA".
Definitely. Canadians are a bit touchy about it. USAian just never caught
on. Then, as you say, there is the entire continent. If the USA wasn't
the 500 pound gorilla it might be like saying Africa. I assume most people
in the world can find the USA on a map where Guyana, Belize, Honduras, and
so forth would be a stretch.
On Tue, 03 Jun 2025 18:32:53 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Or they re-define "ergonomic" to mean whatever their shit is this week.
My favorite word. I've driven everything from AH Sprites to Kenworth
diesels and the most uncomfortable car I ever drove was an ergonomically designed Audi. They used someone else's ergos. After we split my ex traded
it for a Rabbit and I thought that was a step upward. Audi has come a long ways since the early '70s.
Then there are ergonomic mice. Great, I guess, if you're a right handed
herd creature. I'm too cheap to have ever bought one of those Star Wars ergonomic keyboards so I can't address them.
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 19:20:43 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 18:49, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 09:02:30 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 07:14, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 02:03:06 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:Why do you hate Britain so much?
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a
deadly mistake.
For the Windrush generation it was beyond allowing. 'Please, please
come from Jamaica and help rebuild Britain after we lost the war we
thought we won.'
Why do you hate the US so much?
I don't. I just find it amusing, blissfully ignorant and occasionally
dangerous
You *want* Britrain to fail.
Not necessarily. I do find it amusing as it flails around although it does get a bit dangerous as it props up Zelensky. If rumors can be believed
the situation may have been resolved had Johnson stayed out of it and now Starmer is jumping in with 'full backing'. Zelensky should contemplate
what Britain's full backing did for Poland in '39.
I really want the USA to succeed. In spite of its politicians, and its
ignorant population
It's rather hard to succeed with an ignorant population. You see, your critique of the US politicians and ignorant population triggers me to
strike back at your British chauvinism.
On 6/3/25 3:12 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 01:11, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 22:51:07 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
WTF is a taig? You seem much more well versed in the language of racial >>>> hatred than I am.
Google broken?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taig
Well thanks for that. In 75 years on this planet I have never heard
that used.
Um ... prelim searches identify 'Taig' as a
common Irish male name.
Is this relevant ???
There is "consumer politics" and REALPOLITIK.
Indeed. Do you think Machiavelli was writing a manual?
On 6/3/25 4:02 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 07:14, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 02:03:06 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:Why do you hate Britain so much?
Allowing free movement of former subjects will turn out to be a deadly >>>> mistake.
For the Windrush generation it was beyond allowing. 'Please, please come >>> from Jamaica and help rebuild Britain after we lost the war we
thought we
won.'
Is it "hate" - or "pity" ???
The UK destroyed itself. Madness, idiocy, but
that's how it is.
It'll be pure Clockwork Orange for a long time now.
On 6/3/25 3:22 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 03/06/2025 02:56, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-02, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:Well I am glad that you at leats have some idea of modern Britain
On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 10:17:12 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
We don't call them 'black' people like you do. We call them English
people
When you're not calling them pakis, wogs, taigs, or other terms of
endearment.
The UK has far bigger problems than that. Its become a nanny state,
where you get arrested for tweets and Facebook posts.
But its getting the same in the USA with people getting deported for
just looking forrrin
The PROBLEM in the USA is that far too many people
were NOT deported/denied for "looking foreign".
The result was too many deadly enemies in our
midst.
What, don't think there are deadly enemies ???
The political "left" just LOVED the deadly
enemies" - it's whole GOAL is to obliterate
the USA/'West' from within. Ignore their
BS and propaganda - they are NOT your friends,
do NOT have your best interests in mind.
Yikes ... this is getting like 'political' group
stuff ............
rbowman wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 21:57:34 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
If the Liberals are somehow dominating in that field, then that points
to some innate inferiority among Convervatives themselves, that they are >>> not capable of doing the same.
Two words -- Brendan Eich. Liberals are somewhat like Africanized bees;
they swarm and attack.
Silly comment.
Jan. 6.
Conservatives try to be 'moral' and avoid doing underhanded, sneaky
things like this, which is why they are losers.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2025 09:48:37 -0700, Ian wrote:
On 15.6, which I'm running, you can use the Yast package manager to
search for knode with the "rpm provides" option, and find that it's
in the kde3pim package - which works perfectly well with the current
plasma (yecch!) version of kde.
Ah. I didn’t expect that. “kde3pim”, you say? Talk about dedication, >> to keep stuff from KDE3 still installable and working on current
Plasma ...
<https://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/openSUSE-current/repo/oss/src/>.
After some hunting around, I found the package source area at
There’s a lot there. But searching for “knode” or “kde3pim” turns up
nothing.
Are you sure your package is coming from the standard repo?
It's not in the standard distro. It's in one of the auxillary
repositories http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/15.6/
On 2025-06-01 02:47, Ian wrote:
Ah. I didn’t expect that. “kde3pim”, you say? Talk about dedication, >>> to keep stuff from KDE3 still installable and working on current
Plasma ...
Yes, openSUSE keeps kde3 alive thanks to the community.
On 6/3/25 5:46 AM, Nuno Silva wrote:
I'm honestly no longer surprised when a thread in this group ends up
drifting towards far-right speech
fuck off
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 12:20:00 -0400, Popping Mad wrote:
On 6/3/25 5:46 AM, Nuno Silva wrote:
I'm honestly no longer surprised when a thread in this group ends up
drifting towards far-right speech
fuck off
... or far right languge skills.
On 04/06/2025 11:25, Borax Man wrote:
Conservatives try to be 'moral' and avoid doing underhanded, sneaky
things like this, which is why they are losers.
Umm. I am not sure which 'conservatives' you are talking about, but in
my lexicon a conservative means broadly:
- If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- Morality is for children. Adults think in terms of what it takes to
achieve tangible results.
- Law is not about social justice, its about social stability.
- The least possible government to do the job is ideal
- people know what they want to spend their money on better than
governments.
- So do free markets
The quote below is from Nigel Farage. The arch conservative. It sums it
up completely.
On 2025-06-04, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 04/06/2025 11:25, Borax Man wrote:
Conservatives try to be 'moral' and avoid doing underhanded, sneaky
things like this, which is why they are losers.
Umm. I am not sure which 'conservatives' you are talking about, but in
my lexicon a conservative means broadly:
- If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- Morality is for children. Adults think in terms of what it takes to
achieve tangible results.
- Law is not about social justice, its about social stability.
- The least possible government to do the job is ideal
- people know what they want to spend their money on better than
governments.
- So do free markets
The quote below is from Nigel Farage. The arch conservative. It sums it
up completely.
This should probably move to a Politics area, as this has gone well
beyond anything to do with Linux. But that definition of conservative
is a modern definition, and really is an adaptation of Liberalism.
Actually its the old definition. The modern definition has been
demonised by the Left to mean "anything we are, but want to pretend we
are not" basically. Like fascists
Well yes, I agree. But ignorance is curable with experience. Downright stupidity is not.
So there is hope for most of the USA, eventually.
Conservatives try to be 'moral' and avoid doing underhanded, sneaky
things like this, which is why they are losers.
It'll be pure Clockwork Orange for a long time now.
rbowman wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 21:57:34 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
If the Liberals are somehow dominating in that field, then that points
to some innate inferiority among Convervatives themselves, that they
are not capable of doing the same.
Two words -- Brendan Eich. Liberals are somewhat like Africanized
bees;
they swarm and attack.
Silly comment.
Jan. 6.
On 04/06/2025 06:04, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:41:34 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
And "American" can get a bit ambiguous. To part of the audience, it
might mean "from the American *continent*", to other part it might
mean "from the USA".
Definitely. Canadians are a bit touchy about it. USAian just never
caught on. Then, as you say, there is the entire continent. If the USA
wasn't the 500 pound gorilla it might be like saying Africa. I assume
most people in the world can find the USA on a map where Guyana,
Belize, Honduras, and so forth would be a stretch.
Indeed. My knowledge of anything south of Mexico barring Argentina Peru
and Brazil is decididely sketchy.
The UK was never very involved in S America, probably to its detriment.
Spanish are frightful snobs.
On 04/06/2025 05:48, rbowman wrote:
Despite loving war the US hasn't exactly won a war in my lifetime
except for little operations like Grenada
Have you ever been there?
Its a sleepy little ex British colony that has trouble laying off the
ganja long enough to get out of bed.
The though that it represented a 'threat to the USA' is laughable.
Still you did build a runway that can take direct flights from Europe
and its a fabulous place to spend a couple of weeks idling your time way
in the sun.
On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 11:56:30 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Well yes, I agree. But ignorance is curable with experience. Downright
stupidity is not.
So there is hope for most of the USA, eventually.
I despaired of that long ago. Same lies spoken by a revolving cast of
actors and the people believe it will be different 'this time'.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/15750971-the-most-dangerous- superstition
Rose addresses the root problem. I can't say he sums it up since 'The Most Dangerous Superstition' since he beats the dead horse at length.
It appears Musk had the same delusion although it may only be sour grapes. The big beautiful bill doesn't extend EV credits and doesn't use StarLink
for air traffic control.
On 04/06/2025 07:13, vallor wrote:
There is "consumer politics" and REALPOLITIK.
Indeed. Do you think Machiavelli was writing a manual?
I've met people who think he was. Likewise Orwell's '1984'...
The Left think humans are fallible, and need to be told what's what and what's right and have the State look after them because they cant look
after themselves. The paradox that the state is itself composed of
fallible humans is glossed over because they think they are in fact
superior and to be trusted with enormous power.
"What do you think about Gay Marriage?"
"I don't."
"Don't what?"
"Think about Gay Marriage."
The quote ... is from Nigel Farage. The arch conservative. It sums it
up completely.
On 04/06/2025 19:26, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 4 Jun 2025 11:56:30 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:My take is that even with the best intentions, which is debatable, the problems that were so clearly expressed in the run up to the elections
Well yes, I agree. But ignorance is curable with experience. Downright
stupidity is not.
So there is hope for most of the USA, eventually.
I despaired of that long ago. Same lies spoken by a revolving cast of
actors and the people believe it will be different 'this time'.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/15750971-the-most-dangerous-
superstition
Rose addresses the root problem. I can't say he sums it up since 'The
Most
Dangerous Superstition' since he beats the dead horse at length.
It appears Musk had the same delusion although it may only be sour
grapes.
The big beautiful bill doesn't extend EV credits and doesn't use StarLink
for air traffic control.
are not that easy to fix. Not at all.
Like Climate, the economy is a very complex interconnected brute that
defies modelling, and you tamper at your peril.
By far, MOST people never got much of a sci-tech education.
This includes politicians. They JUST DON'T KNOW ... and then
can't understand why the damned nerds say they can't get
there from here.
The statement I saw wasn't saying that systemd interfered. It was
asserting that Wayland itself at some low level enforced the MS Win
method of:
"giving keyboard focus causes a raise to the top of the window"
and
"only the window on top of the stack is allowed to have keyboard focus"
And thereby stating that when 'wayland' arrived, one would be forced
into the MSWin mindset of "only top most window in stack can have
keyboard focus".
As I said at the outset, I've long ago lost the reference to where I
saw this comment, so I can't refer to the source.
On 04/06/2025 07:13, vallor wrote:
Do you think Machiavelli was writing a manual?I've met people who think he was.
Le 04-06-2025, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> a écrit :
On 04/06/2025 07:13, vallor wrote:
Do you think Machiavelli was writing a manual?I've met people who think he was.
I don't know how many book he wrote, but the two I read were manuals.
They were intended as manuals about war and politic. They were bad
manuals, but manuals anyway.
Because there is no link between switching from X11 to wayland and
having a computer used in a Windows way. For example, the difference
between i3 and sway is the switch from X11 by the former to wayland by
the later. And the switch don't like more like a Windows way to use one computer.
On 06 Jun 2025 18:35:26 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
Le 04-06-2025, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> a écrit :
On 04/06/2025 07:13, vallor wrote:
Do you think Machiavelli was writing a manual?I've met people who think he was.
I don't know how many book he wrote, but the two I read were manuals.
They were intended as manuals about war and politic. They were bad
manuals, but manuals anyway.
Machiavelli was more cynical than Plato but Republic and Laws have some suggestions that might not go over well today. First, we need a
foundational lie, er, mythology. Then we need a hierarchical structure because, Gods know, the dummies need herding.
iirc Laws was written as a manual for Dionysius III (?) but he ignored it.
On 05/06/2025 00:10, c186282 wrote:
By far, MOST people never got much of a sci-tech education.
This includes politicians. They JUST DON'T KNOW ... and then
can't understand why the damned nerds say they can't get
there from here.
I heard tell that when the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne arrived as a
minster in the Tory/Liberal coalition he waltzed into his ministry and
was given the run down on 'renewable' energy by the chief scientific
officer David Mackay, showing how basically impossible his plans were.
He flounced out and was not seen again for a fortnight.
Le 03-06-2025, Rich <rich@example.invalid> a écrit :
The statement I saw wasn't saying that systemd interfered. It was
asserting that Wayland itself at some low level enforced the MS Win
method of:
"giving keyboard focus causes a raise to the top of the window"
and
"only the window on top of the stack is allowed to have keyboard focus"
And thereby stating that when 'wayland' arrived, one would be forced
into the MSWin mindset of "only top most window in stack can have
keyboard focus".
As I said at the outset, I've long ago lost the reference to where I
saw this comment, so I can't refer to the source.
I don't know which reference it is but it's just plain stupid. It's
probably someone like FF/DG/FR/whatever who hates what he doesn't know.
Because there is no link between switching from X11 to wayland and
having a computer used in a Windows way. For example, the difference
between i3 and sway is the switch from X11 by the former to wayland by
the later. And the switch don't like more like a Windows way to use one computer.
UK ... not too long ago there was a big initiative
to replace all gas-powered heating/stoves with
ELECTRIC.
THEN somebody FINALLY managed to explain
that it would require a TOTAL, MAJOR, re-do of
the entire national grid to cope with the load.
Suddenly the initiative, well along, kind of
just disappeared ........ :-)
Nothing WRONG with electric ... but EXISTING
INFRASTRUCTURE has to be UP to the challenge.
Frankly I do NOT want gas heating/appliances
because there are TOO many horrific tales of
leaks and huge EXPLOSIONS. However, in USA,
The Grid IS up to it. UK/EU ... not so much.
The sheer EXPENSE of a national upgrade !!!
Local pols are still dreaming. Why let the peons have cheap local gas
when it can be liquefied and sold overseas?
B.C. has always been proud of its abundant hydro power.
But 40- to 60-storey apartment towers are springing up
like weeds - and I've heard that each one needs its own
substation to power it. Using electric baseboard heaters
and heat pumps in place of gas will make it worse. And
then there's the push to electric cars, with their charging
requirements. Despite our many hydro plants, we're turning
into a net importer of electricity. Throw in a few LNG
plants and bitcoin factories, and it's just a matter of
time before the brownouts start...
On Sun, 08 Jun 2025 17:41:43 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Local pols are still dreaming. Why let the peons have cheap local gas
when it can be liquefied and sold overseas?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Importation_of_liquefied_natural_gas
The whole article is worth reading. Since there are no LNG tankers that
meet the requirements of the Jones Act, you cannot ship LNG from
Brownsville TX to Gloucester MA. Since LNG is fungible that led to the embarrassing import of LNG that could be traced back to Russia.
That's led to the US pressuring Germany into building LNG ports and buying
US LNG. What role the US had in blowing up Nord Stream 2 can be debated.
Because of local opposition and environmental challenges it's almost impossible to build a gas pipeline from an area like West Virginia where natural gas is so plentiful it's given away in some cases to New England.
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