So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
To get away from crappy politics, I thought I'd start a thread for my
own curiosity.
One of the big selling points of Free Software OSs like Linux for me, is choice of Graphical Environment. Being able to custom my environment
the way *I* envisage it should be, as opposed to someone elses vision is probably more important for me than the GPL licence itself.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
Fluxbox.Me too, although I have added a Rox Desktop for a few icons.
- Human-readable files for all of the configuration
- Menu file(s)This is a fine thing, but, having no icons and not necessarily a
- Keyboard mapping files, including window movement, resizing, macrosHere is a really great feature. Other environments allow the
- Toggling window decorationI did never care and thanks for the reminder.
Sometimes I'll set up Xfce to work roughly the same, but always come back
to fluxbox.
To get away from crappy politics, I thought I'd start a thread for my
own curiosity.
One of the big selling points of Free Software OSs like Linux for me, is choice of Graphical Environment. Being able to custom my environment
the way *I* envisage it should be, as opposed to someone elses vision is probably more important for me than the GPL licence itself.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
I myself use FVWM and have so for years now. Previously I was a KDE
person, then before that GNOME, but FVWM is light and highly
customisable. It is more like a framework you can build your own
environment out of, and there is not much it can't do, as long as you
are willing to dive into learning how to configure it.
I've used other Window Managers, but haven't seen one that is as
flexible as FVWM. FVWM to me represents the ideal philosophy. That is,
have no preconcieved ideas of what the user needs or wants to do,
present a sane default (the default set up used to be crap in the past),
and all the information they need.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
KDE. Current, shiny, and configurable.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
A somewhat custom Fvwm2 config. "Somewhat" in that it began (many
years ago) as the default, and it has diverged since then as I've added tweaks along the way.
Started out with Twm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twm), moved to Fvwm
(when it was just Fvwm) at some point when it offered something that
Twm didn't (I forget what the "offering" was now). Then moved to Fvwm2
when it replaced the original.
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
Infinite customizations. One very useful tweak I made a number of
years ago was to change the right mouse click on the title bar to be an
Fvwm2 "RaiseLower" operation. The result is it gives the missing
opposite function to the usual "click to raise" a window in that it is
also "click to push down" a window. So what ever is on top, I can
"push it down in the stack" to then see what is underneath.
Another useful tweak has been to "force correct behavior" on badly
behaved programs. There have been the occasional program (OpenOffice
was one) that thought themselves too self important and did a "Raise"
on themselves anytime the mouse passed over their windows. As I have
Fvwm2 set to focus-follows-mouse without any raise, this miss-behavior
was very bad. So a few Fvwm2 config tweaks later and I took away those programs ability to "self-raise" themselves. At which point they
became properly well behaved.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 10:12:57 -0000 (UTC)
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
Of all things, WindowMaker - mostly because it's a bit more featureful
than bare-bones roll-your-own-desktop options like FVWM while still
being fairly lightweight and customizable, and it's also designed for a layout that naturally "letterboxes" today's absolutely inescapable
widescreen displays (which I loathe) with "reserved" columns on both
sides that make maximized windows conform to something a little closer
to a more natural 4:3 aspect ratio. You can do that with roll-your-own panel-based WM/DEs, but it's nice to have it right out of the box.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
KDE. Current, shiny, and configurable.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
To get away from crappy politics, I thought I'd start a thread for my
own curiosity.
One of the big selling points of Free Software OSs like Linux for me, is choice of Graphical Environment. Being able to custom my environment
the way *I* envisage it should be, as opposed to someone elses vision is probably more important for me than the GPL licence itself.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
On 2025-06-05, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:I like the "RaiseLower" idea. I might implement that, as it could be
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
A somewhat custom Fvwm2 config. "Somewhat" in that it began (many
years ago) as the default, and it has diverged since then as I've added
tweaks along the way.
Started out with Twm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twm), moved to Fvwm
(when it was just Fvwm) at some point when it offered something that
Twm didn't (I forget what the "offering" was now). Then moved to Fvwm2
when it replaced the original.
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
Infinite customizations. One very useful tweak I made a number of
years ago was to change the right mouse click on the title bar to be an
Fvwm2 "RaiseLower" operation. The result is it gives the missing
opposite function to the usual "click to raise" a window in that it is
also "click to push down" a window. So what ever is on top, I can
"push it down in the stack" to then see what is underneath.
Another useful tweak has been to "force correct behavior" on badly
behaved programs. There have been the occasional program (OpenOffice
was one) that thought themselves too self important and did a "Raise"
on themselves anytime the mouse passed over their windows. As I have
Fvwm2 set to focus-follows-mouse without any raise, this miss-behavior
was very bad. So a few Fvwm2 config tweaks later and I took away those
programs ability to "self-raise" themselves. At which point they
became properly well behaved.
more useful than alt-tabbing my way through. Hence why I like this
Window Manager. Good ideas you see elsewhere, you can implement without having to move out.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 10:12:57 -0000 (UTC)
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Of all things, WindowMaker - mostly because it's a bit more featureful
than bare-bones roll-your-own-desktop options like FVWM while still
being fairly lightweight and customizable ...
Everybody wants something different.
Personally, if it can be had, I still use LXDE.
It's just Good Enough without being a ridiculous
drag on things. XFCE is the next best FOR ME.
Others want more like the Winders experience, all
the bells & whistles and 'integration'.
There's no one-size-fits-all desktop. The great
thing about Linux is that you can CHOOSE.
John Ames <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 10:12:57 -0000 (UTC)<snip>
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Of all things, WindowMaker - mostly because it's a bit more featureful
than bare-bones roll-your-own-desktop options like FVWM while still
being fairly lightweight and customizable ...
Ages ago I did a mem test on all window managers Slackware
shipped plus a few others.
Due to what you get with WindowMager, I was surprised to see
WindowMaker was in the top 3 of lightest window managers.
The only ones that was lighter was icewm and ctwm. To me,
the people who did WindowMaker really knows their stuff!
When I get bored, I will need to do that test again, I still
use Slackware on my main laptop.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
This thread has now been running for several days, and no one has
preferred Gnome. Yet several well-known distributions make Gnome their default. Why?
To get away from crappy politics, I thought I'd start a thread for my
own curiosity.
One of the big selling points of Free Software OSs like Linux for me, is choice of Graphical Environment. Being able to custom my environment
the way *I* envisage it should be, as opposed to someone elses vision is probably more important for me than the GPL licence itself.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
2025-06-05, Borax Man <[email protected]> schrieb:
To get away from crappy politics, I thought I'd start a thread for my
own curiosity.
One of the big selling points of Free Software OSs like Linux for me, is
choice of Graphical Environment. Being able to custom my environment
the way *I* envisage it should be, as opposed to someone elses vision is
probably more important for me than the GPL licence itself.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
- {open|flux|black}box
- fvwm
- twm
- pwm3
- wmaker
I prefer the {open|flux|black}boxes, but on some machines the others
were already installed, and they suffice.
In the Windows 7/8-days I had blackbox running on Windows.
On 05.06.2025 10:12 Uhr Borax Man wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
emwm. It is simple, fast and bullshit-free.
On one business laptop I use KDE, acceptable, but annoying. I would
prefer emwm with capabilities like screen switching when detaching a
monitor. One nice feature is also to share the entire screen to browser applications like MS teams (Windows slaves can't do that).
c186282 wrote:
Everybody wants something different.
Personally, if it can be had, I still use LXDE.
It's just Good Enough without being a ridiculous
drag on things. XFCE is the next best FOR ME.
Others want more like the Winders experience, all
the bells & whistles and 'integration'.
There's no one-size-fits-all desktop. The great
thing about Linux is that you can CHOOSE.
This thread has now been running for several days, and no one has
preferred Gnome. Yet several well-known distributions make Gnome their default. Why?
On 6/5/25 9:58 PM, John McCue wrote:
John Ames <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 10:12:57 -0000 (UTC)<snip>
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Of all things, WindowMaker - mostly because it's a bit more featureful
than bare-bones roll-your-own-desktop options like FVWM while still
being fairly lightweight and customizable ...
Ages ago I did a mem test on all window managers Slackware
shipped plus a few others.
Due to what you get with WindowMager, I was surprised to see
WindowMaker was in the top 3 of lightest window managers.
The only ones that was lighter was icewm and ctwm. To me,
the people who did WindowMaker really knows their stuff!
When I get bored, I will need to do that test again, I still
use Slackware on my main laptop.
Nothing wrong with Slack ... but IS a bit more
for the do-it-yourself crowd.
IceWM really isn't terrible. VERY basic, but on some
platforms that's all you want/need. 'TWM' is even
more basic/small ... but kind of TOO much these days.
I've used ICE on some of the older PIs and it was a
good fit.
Me, I like LXDE.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 10:12:57 -0000 (UTC)
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
Of all things, WindowMaker - mostly because it's a bit more featureful
than bare-bones roll-your-own-desktop options like FVWM while still
being fairly lightweight and customizable, and it's also designed for a layout that naturally "letterboxes" today's absolutely inescapable
widescreen displays (which I loathe) with "reserved" columns on both
sides that make maximized windows conform to something a little closer
to a more natural 4:3 aspect ratio. You can do that with roll-your-own panel-based WM/DEs, but it's nice to have it right out of the box.
* Borax Man <[email protected]>
| On 2025-06-05, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
| > Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
| >> So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
| >
| > A somewhat custom Fvwm2 config. "Somewhat" in that it began (many
| > years ago) as the default, and it has diverged since then as I've added
| > tweaks along the way.
Same here, heavily customized fvwm2 with 5 Panels (desktops). Since I
do most work inside emacs, the other desktops are mainly for running heavy-output-programs in terminals, and having the browser on it's own
page.
I've sometimes tried KDE and xfce, but they offer no benefit over what I
have with fvwm2, plus I'd have to take the time to figure out how to
change the keybindings for my favourite keyboard-shortcuts.
| I like the "RaiseLower" idea. I might implement that, as it could be
| more useful than alt-tabbing my way through.
Key F2 A M RaiseLower
Alt-F2 raises/lowers the focus window. With 'SloppyFocus' I can scan
through the windows on one page quickly.
Key y A MC Iconify
C-M-y iconifies/deiconifies a window when I want to get it out of the
way.
And of course Ctrl put in the Shift-Lock position, but this is done via xmodmap.
R'
c186282 wrote:
Everybody wants something different.
Personally, if it can be had, I still use LXDE.
It's just Good Enough without being a ridiculous
drag on things. XFCE is the next best FOR ME.
Others want more like the Winders experience, all
the bells & whistles and 'integration'.
There's no one-size-fits-all desktop. The great
thing about Linux is that you can CHOOSE.
This thread has now been running for several days, and no one has
preferred Gnome. Yet several well-known distributions make Gnome their default. Why?
c186282 wrote:I think there may be a correlation between people who hang out here and
Everybody wants something different.
Personally, if it can be had, I still use LXDE.
It's just Good Enough without being a ridiculous
drag on things. XFCE is the next best FOR ME.
Others want more like the Winders experience, all
the bells & whistles and 'integration'.
There's no one-size-fits-all desktop. The great
thing about Linux is that you can CHOOSE.
This thread has now been running for several days, and no one has
preferred Gnome. Yet several well-known distributions make Gnome their default. Why?
But I suppose widescreen displays make up most
of what can be usually purchased these days?
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
KDE. Current, shiny, and configurable.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
On 05/06/2025 18:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
But I suppose widescreen displays make up mostThe market for LCD panels is overwhelmingly TVs at the top end and smart phones or fondleslabs at the bottom
of what can be usually purchased these days?
Tooling up for something suitable for workstations would be extremely expensive.
WE live off the droppings from the TV markets table...
And that tends to be the HD aspect ratio screen
I forget that I already had "RaiseLower" set up on my FVWM 2 config.
Just forget its there.
Thats what happens when you work in Windows all day...
c186282 wrote:
Everybody wants something different.
Personally, if it can be had, I still use LXDE.
It's just Good Enough without being a ridiculous
drag on things. XFCE is the next best FOR ME.
Others want more like the Winders experience, all
the bells & whistles and 'integration'.
There's no one-size-fits-all desktop. The great
thing about Linux is that you can CHOOSE.
This thread has now been running for several days, and no one has
preferred Gnome. Yet several well-known distributions make Gnome their default. Why?
To get away from crappy politics, I thought I'd start a thread for my
own curiosity.
One of the big selling points of Free Software OSs like Linux for me, is choice of Graphical Environment. Being able to custom my environment
the way *I* envisage it should be, as opposed to someone elses vision is probably more important for me than the GPL licence itself.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
I use Linux Mint with Cinnamon-Flavour. After also trying/using >KDE-environments I opted for GNOME and I prefer Mint a lot over Ubuntu
which was my mainstay for years. I dislike the orange theme and some
other things with Ubuntu.
Likely because the same distros that default to Gnome are also the ones
that pander to "newly ex winblows users".
Jörg Lorenz <[email protected]> wrote:
I use Linux Mint with Cinnamon-Flavour. After also trying/using >KDE-environments I opted for GNOME and I prefer Mint a lot over Ubuntu >which was my mainstay for years. I dislike the orange theme and some
other things with Ubuntu.
Is it really impossible to change the GNOME theme in Ubuntu? And, does
the normal Ubuntu really only offer GNOME?
Greetings
Marc
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
Likely because the same distros that default to Gnome are also the ones
that pander to "newly ex winblows users".
But GNOME is totally different from Windows.
I perceive GNOME looking more like MacOS while KDE appeals more to Windows-socialized people.
Jörg Lorenz <[email protected]> wrote:
I use Linux Mint with Cinnamon-Flavour. After also trying/using >>KDE-environments I opted for GNOME and I prefer Mint a lot over Ubuntu >>which was my mainstay for years. I dislike the orange theme and some
other things with Ubuntu.
Is it really impossible to change the GNOME theme in Ubuntu? And, does
the normal Ubuntu really only offer GNOME?
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
I myself use FVWM and have so for years now.
On Fri, 06 Jun 2025 18:48:15 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Jörg Lorenz <[email protected]> wrote:
I use Linux Mint with Cinnamon-Flavour. After also trying/using >>KDE-environments I opted for GNOME and I prefer Mint a lot over Ubuntu >>which was my mainstay for years. I dislike the orange theme and some >>other things with Ubuntu.
Is it really impossible to change the GNOME theme in Ubuntu? And, does
the normal Ubuntu really only offer GNOME?
Technically, yes. There are 'flavors' of Ubuntu like Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xbuntu, Ubuntu Unity, and so forth. Unlike Fedora spins, they are
different communities. For example
https://lubuntu.me/
At one time I had installed Ubuntu and didn't really like the GNOME experience so I installed the KDE desktop. It worked, sort of, but was fragile with some odd behavior as GNOME and KDE overlapped. I wouldn't recommend it. If you want a KDE experience install Kubuntu.
Years ago I fell in love with KDE 3.5 and fell out of love with KDE 4.0.
KDE 3.4 lives on in Trinity. I've been on it for over 15 years,
probably. It seems well supported with an active ng presence on Gmane,
as well as open email lists for both users and developers.
If there's one thing I have absolutely no patience for, it's card-Amen to that.
carrying Design Divas who think I exist to be their audience.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
I've used other Window Managers, but haven't seen one that is as
flexible as FVWM.
I think the distros want to push their vision moreso than doing what the highly technical Linux users want.
At one time I had installed Ubuntu and didn't really like the GNOME experience so I installed the KDE desktop. It worked, sort of, but was fragile with some odd behavior as GNOME and KDE overlapped. I wouldn't recommend it. If you want a KDE experience install Kubuntu.
On 2025-06-05, Marco Moock <[email protected]> wrote:
On 05.06.2025 10:12 Uhr Borax Man wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer
that isn't found, or rarely found in others?
emwm. It is simple, fast and bullshit-free.
On one business laptop I use KDE, acceptable, but annoying. I would
prefer emwm with capabilities like screen switching when detaching a monitor. One nice feature is also to share the entire screen to
browser applications like MS teams (Windows slaves can't do that).
Thats an enhanced version of MWM right?
What actual deficiencies that MWM has that this version addresses?
Ian <[email protected]> wrote:
Likely because the same distros that default to Gnome are also the ones
This thread has now been running for several days, and no one has
preferred Gnome. Yet several well-known distributions make Gnome their
default. Why?
that pander to "newly ex winblows users".
And very few of that user base will even be aware of Usenet, much less
know how to post to the same.
So we likely then get a selection bias in that the very fact we are
here posting means we are the "more technical" users (even the ones
posting here claiming they are not that technical).
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
On Fri, 6 Jun 2025 11:39:41 -0000 (UTC)
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
I was a GNOME user back in the GNOME 1 days, but lost interest a bit
with GNOME 2 and totally with GNOME 3.
I was pretty comfortable with GNOME 2 back when I first made the jump
from XP; GNOME 3 was an absolute slap in the face, and after a couple
days of trying to make it less awful I ragequit and never looked back.
If there's one thing I have absolutely no patience for, it's card-
carrying Design Divas who think I exist to be their audience.
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 05/06/2025 18:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
But I suppose widescreen displays make up most
of what can be usually purchased these days?
The market for LCD panels is overwhelmingly TVs at the top end and smart
phones or fondleslabs at the bottom
Tooling up for something suitable for workstations would be extremely
expensive.
WE live off the droppings from the TV markets table...
And that tends to be the HD aspect ratio screen
Indeed, and this fact is *also* why the computer LCD world very quickly
went from 4:3 aspect screens to 16:9 (or if lucky, 16:10) aspect
screens.
The economies of scale from using LCD panels that are "TV aspect ratio"
is just too cheap to ignore.
Borax Man <[email protected]> writes:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
i3
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
I'm after radical (within boundaries of sanity) simplicity.
I myself use FVWM and have so for years now.
I can sympathize. I used FVWM long (20-ish years?) time ago, with theme called Crystal. It was rage at that time.
I was juggling WindowMaker, Fluxbox and KDE. It was fun.
But eventually I settled with i3.
Le 06-06-2025, Borax Man <[email protected]> a écrit :
I think the distros want to push their vision moreso than doing what the
highly technical Linux users want.
I don't believe that. Maybe for Mint it's the case, but the Mint look
and feel for every Window Manager they provide is a good reason people
choose it, so it works both ways.
For the other distros I saw, I don't believe that. People want something
that works out of the box, so the distros provide what people want. But
they don't stop you to change the default. There is only one default
which is hard to change is the init system. But except for that, they
push nothing. And some distro don't even make choices outside of the
init system.
On 2025-06-06, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 05/06/2025 18:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
But I suppose widescreen displays make up most
of what can be usually purchased these days?
The market for LCD panels is overwhelmingly TVs at the top end and smart >>> phones or fondleslabs at the bottom
Tooling up for something suitable for workstations would be extremely
expensive.
WE live off the droppings from the TV markets table...
And that tends to be the HD aspect ratio screen
Indeed, and this fact is *also* why the computer LCD world very quickly
went from 4:3 aspect screens to 16:9 (or if lucky, 16:10) aspect
screens.
The economies of scale from using LCD panels that are "TV aspect ratio"
is just too cheap to ignore.
No problem. I have two monitors on my machine; the older one is 4:3 and
the newer one is 16:9. Both are filled up with xterm windows plus an instance of VirtualBox running Windows XP. Move and resize until everything tiles nicely...
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 10:12:57 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
Trinity (TDE) https://www.trinitydesktop.org/index.php
Years ago I fell in love with KDE 3.5 and fell out of love with KDE 4.0.
KDE 3.4 lives on in Trinity. I've been on it for over 15 years,
probably. It seems well supported with an active ng presence on Gmane,
as well as open email lists for both users and developers.
I have a revulsion to eye candy.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
I forget that I already had "RaiseLower" set up on my FVWM 2 config.
Just forget its there.
Thats what happens when you work in Windows all day...
You don't know how many times I've missed the ability to "push" a
window down below others while using the $work winblows computer.
Only being able to "raise" (which is the only half of the pair winblows provides) is a true PIA much of the time.
On 2025-06-06, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
I forget that I already had "RaiseLower" set up on my FVWM 2
config. Just forget its there.
Thats what happens when you work in Windows all day...
You don't know how many times I've missed the ability to "push" a
window down below others while using the $work winblows computer.
Only being able to "raise" (which is the only half of the pair
winblows provides) is a true PIA much of the time.
I'll have a look see if Windows can be cajoled into doing this. With Windows, I can minimise it, then maximise later, but pushing seems
more direct. I don't like having to "Alt-Tab" smaller windows away
from the front of larger windows I want to expose.
I don't do a lot of GUI programming, but GNOME was the only Linux
graphical system I found that supported C programming. All others
demand C++, and I'm not about to re-write all my stuff in a language I
don't like. If I was going to switch languages, I'd probably go to
Python. But I probably won't live that long.
Yes. That was my experience also back in the day.
I seem to be the only one running MATE which is dull but not ugly and
feature rich
On Fri, 06 Jun 2025 21:02:12 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
I don't do a lot of GUI programming, but GNOME was the only Linux
graphical system I found that supported C programming. All others
demand C++, and I'm not about to re-write all my stuff in a language I
don't like. If I was going to switch languages, I'd probably go to
Python. But I probably won't live that long.
I was never too crazy about the gtk_stupidly_long_snake_case_function() style. Yeah, I know, descriptive function names but I probably know I'm
using Gtk and not WxWidgets. At least with Motif/X XtAddCallback() and XmListDeleteAllItems() X, Xt, and Xm gave you an idea of in which of the 6 books to look for the documentation.
I never used Qt with c++. Trolltech's incomprehensible licensing made it a
no go for commercial code. I do use PySide6 in Python which follows the C+
+ usage fairly closely. PySide6 is the official Python package and
replaced PyQt, again for license reasons, Riverbank Computing in this
case.
When my Trinitron CRT died, I went out of my way to get a 16:10 ratio
monitor instead of 16:9.
I dislike widescreen immensely. Even widescreen TV's are overrated.
I feel with tiling window managers that I'm missing something. They
seem to be all the rage, especially in some YouTube circles, but I tried
one briefly and found it wasn't for me.
However, I use emacs a lot at
work, and its essentially like a tiling window manager, with frames and splitting the screen.
On 2025-06-06, Stéphane CARPENTIER <[email protected]> wrote:
Le 06-06-2025, Borax Man <[email protected]> a écrit :
I think the distros want to push their vision moreso than doing what the >>> highly technical Linux users want.
I don't believe that. Maybe for Mint it's the case, but the Mint look
and feel for every Window Manager they provide is a good reason people
choose it, so it works both ways.
For the other distros I saw, I don't believe that. People want something
that works out of the box, so the distros provide what people want. But
they don't stop you to change the default. There is only one default
which is hard to change is the init system. But except for that, they
push nothing. And some distro don't even make choices outside of the
init system.
How do you explain GNOME 3 then? I do think, to some degrees, people creating distros do have a vision of how things should work. They
choose defaults for a reason.
On 2025-06-06, Jan van den Broek <[email protected]> wrote:
- {open|flux|black}box
- fvwm
- twm
- pwm3
- wmaker
I prefer the {open|flux|black}boxes, but on some machines the others
were already installed, and they suffice.
In the Windows 7/8-days I had blackbox running on Windows.
Do you just randomly swap between them for a sea-change?
Le 07-06-2025, Borax Man <[email protected]> a écrit :
On 2025-06-06, Stéphane CARPENTIER <[email protected]> wrote:
Le 06-06-2025, Borax Man <[email protected]> a écrit :
I think the distros want to push their vision moreso than doing what the >>>> highly technical Linux users want.
I don't believe that. Maybe for Mint it's the case, but the Mint look
and feel for every Window Manager they provide is a good reason people
choose it, so it works both ways.
For the other distros I saw, I don't believe that. People want something >>> that works out of the box, so the distros provide what people want. But
they don't stop you to change the default. There is only one default
which is hard to change is the init system. But except for that, they
push nothing. And some distro don't even make choices outside of the
init system.
How do you explain GNOME 3 then? I do think, to some degrees, people
creating distros do have a vision of how things should work. They
choose defaults for a reason.
Of course they choose default for a reason. They are the one who develop
it, the one who test it and the one who answer questions about it. So
they have to chose the way that suit them the best. That doesn't mean
they want to impose their vision.
Le 07-06-2025, Borax Man <[email protected]> a écrit :
I feel with tiling window managers that I'm missing something. They
seem to be all the rage, especially in some YouTube circles, but I tried
one briefly and found it wasn't for me.
Around me, nobody use a Tilling Window Manager. So they can be all the
rage inside some circles, but not that well spread. And some other
Window Managers start to include some niceties which were only available
in Tilling Window Manager before. That tells a lot about some good
things about them.
However, I use emacs a lot at
work, and its essentially like a tiling window manager, with frames and
splitting the screen.
Maybe the Tilling Window Managers were inspired by Emacs. Or Vim which, unlike Emacs which is a full OS, is only a text editor. And some people wanted to have the same way of managing their applications than they
used to manage their config files.
On 2025-06-06, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 05/06/2025 18:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
But I suppose widescreen displays make up most
of what can be usually purchased these days?
The market for LCD panels is overwhelmingly TVs at the top end and smart >>> phones or fondleslabs at the bottom
Tooling up for something suitable for workstations would be extremely
expensive.
WE live off the droppings from the TV markets table...
And that tends to be the HD aspect ratio screen
Indeed, and this fact is *also* why the computer LCD world very quickly
went from 4:3 aspect screens to 16:9 (or if lucky, 16:10) aspect
screens.
The economies of scale from using LCD panels that are "TV aspect ratio"
is just too cheap to ignore.
No problem. I have two monitors on my machine; the older one is 4:3 and
the newer one is 16:9. Both are filled up with xterm windows plus an instance of VirtualBox running Windows XP. Move and resize until everything tiles nicely...
On 2025-06-06, Charlie Gibbs <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-06-06, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 05/06/2025 18:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
But I suppose widescreen displays make up most
of what can be usually purchased these days?
The market for LCD panels is overwhelmingly TVs at the top end and smart >>>> phones or fondleslabs at the bottom
Tooling up for something suitable for workstations would be extremely
expensive.
WE live off the droppings from the TV markets table...
And that tends to be the HD aspect ratio screen
Indeed, and this fact is *also* why the computer LCD world very quickly
went from 4:3 aspect screens to 16:9 (or if lucky, 16:10) aspect
screens.
The economies of scale from using LCD panels that are "TV aspect ratio"
is just too cheap to ignore.
No problem. I have two monitors on my machine; the older one is 4:3 and
the newer one is 16:9. Both are filled up with xterm windows plus an
instance of VirtualBox running Windows XP. Move and resize until everything >> tiles nicely...
When my Trinitron CRT died, I went out of my way to get a 16:10 ratio
monitor instead of 16:9.
I dislike widescreen immensely. Even widescreen TV's are overrated.
On 2025-06-06, Chris Narkiewicz <[email protected]> wrote:
Borax Man <[email protected]> writes:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
i3
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
I'm after radical (within boundaries of sanity) simplicity.
I myself use FVWM and have so for years now.
I can sympathize. I used FVWM long (20-ish years?) time ago, with theme
called Crystal. It was rage at that time.
I was juggling WindowMaker, Fluxbox and KDE. It was fun.
But eventually I settled with i3.
I feel with tiling window managers that I'm missing something. They
seem to be all the rage, especially in some YouTube circles, but I tried
one briefly and found it wasn't for me. However, I use emacs a lot at
work, and its essentially like a tiling window manager, with frames and splitting the screen.
Was there an 'ah ha!' moment, where you just 'got it?'
With the result that the mouth breathers now have to
sometimes contend with black bars on top, or on the sides
Maybe the Tilling Window Managers were inspired by Emacs. Or Vim which, unlike Emacs which is a full OS, is only a text editor. And some people wanted to have the same way of managing their applications than they
used to manage their config files.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-06-06, Charlie Gibbs <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-06-06, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 05/06/2025 18:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
But I suppose widescreen displays make up most
of what can be usually purchased these days?
The market for LCD panels is overwhelmingly TVs at the top end and smart >>>>> phones or fondleslabs at the bottom
Tooling up for something suitable for workstations would be extremely >>>>> expensive.
WE live off the droppings from the TV markets table...
And that tends to be the HD aspect ratio screen
Indeed, and this fact is *also* why the computer LCD world very quickly >>>> went from 4:3 aspect screens to 16:9 (or if lucky, 16:10) aspect
screens.
The economies of scale from using LCD panels that are "TV aspect ratio" >>>> is just too cheap to ignore.
No problem. I have two monitors on my machine; the older one is 4:3 and >>> the newer one is 16:9. Both are filled up with xterm windows plus an
instance of VirtualBox running Windows XP. Move and resize until everything
tiles nicely...
When my Trinitron CRT died, I went out of my way to get a 16:10 ratio
monitor instead of 16:9.
I dislike widescreen immensely. Even widescreen TV's are overrated.
"Widescreen" has always been "chasing the movies" because the mouth
breathers can't understand why their latest remake of X has those black
bars on the top and bottom of the picture.
4:3 was the original (way back) movie aspect ratio. When TV was
created, it copied 4:3 because that's what the movies were set to. The result was the movies then felt they had to "1 up" to maintain their
reason for being and they became 16:9 aspect. That was, until TV's
went 16:9 and the movies had then gone "ultra wide" to maintain their 1 upsmanship. With the result that the mouth breathers now have to
sometimes contend with black bars on top, or on the sides, of whatever
they are streaming at the moment, depending upon what year it was
filmed.
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
IT was, for *some* movies, better. Those movies which showed wide
vistas and expanses, but for other movies, like Naked Gun or Sliding
Doors, its pointless.
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the
sides. I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just
blank white space.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so
this results in just a mismatch.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
In some ways it was. It was the gimmic to get you to part with money
to sit in a theater instead of watching the movie at home on your TV.
IT was, for *some* movies, better. Those movies which showed wide
vistas and expanses, but for other movies, like Naked Gun or Sliding
Doors, its pointless.
The idea was likely to create a more immersive experience so the
audience would feel like they were "in the action" vs. "just watching
through a hole in the wall".
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Depends upon how you use the widescreen space.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:[...]
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the
sides. I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just
blank white space.
I just went to news.com.au, and only half of my one wide-screen monitor
is occupied by the Firefox window showing news.com.au. The rest of the
wide screen shows two other Firefox windows that are presently 'behind'
the one displaying news.com.au.
Now, in the news.com.au window, the HTML/CSS of news.com.au is itself
only using about 3/4 of the width of the window it has available, with
about a 1/4 width margin of whitespace on the right of the story slugs.
So yes, news.com.au is not trying to fill out the space they are given.
So whomever their "designer" was is at fault here.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so
this results in just a mismatch.
And HTML is designed to adapt to whatever viewing portal it has
available. That is if it were not for "designers" who have a "vision"
of how things should look "just so", and assume that everyone shares
their "vision" and then proceed to force HTML to bend to their
"vision".
Rich <[email protected]d> writes:
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
In some ways it was. It was the gimmic to get you to part with money
to sit in a theater instead of watching the movie at home on your TV.
IT was, for *some* movies, better. Those movies which showed wide
vistas and expanses, but for other movies, like Naked Gun or Sliding
Doors, its pointless.
The idea was likely to create a more immersive experience so the
audience would feel like they were "in the action" vs. "just watching
through a hole in the wall".
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Depends upon how you use the widescreen space.
Quite. It works pretty well for me. Some specific use cases:
* Side-by-side code diffs
* Two or more source files side by side
* Terminal one on side, source on the other
* In portrait orientation, PDF specs
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the sides.
I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just blank white
space.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so
this results in just a mismatch.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:Well exactly. Given a widescreen you can stack stuff side by side.
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
I find it interesting how many old men here praise themselves for not
needing the advances that we have made since 1984.
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the sides.
I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just blank white
space.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so
this results in just a mismatch.
On the other hand, THAT sounds like the only thing you ever use is a
web browser.
I like it to have three shells side by side without covering each
other. I like it to easily fit a shell at the side of the browser
displying the docs without covering.
Greetings
Marc
However, I use emacs a lot at work, and its essentially like a
tiling window manager, with frames and splitting the screen.
... does the normal Ubuntu really only offer GNOME?
Wish they'd separate out just a "core X" package that'd save you the
trouble the way the BSDs do.
I initially didn't like KDE 4, but kind of swallowed it and learned
to like it, and then later, found it was quite right for me. I
didn't switch to KDE 4 until some time after its release, so some of
the bugs had been ironed out.
And I'd say that Gonme is the Window Manager which looks the most like a smartphone. The younger users having be raised with smartphone before
having used computer, maybe they are more comfortable with Gnome for
that reason.
Cinnamon is dead pretty, but in terms of a desktop I want a wife, not a
whore
When working on my Windows-machine I'm using vcxsrv ...
I don't do a lot of GUI programming, but GNOME was the only Linux
graphical system I found that supported C programming. All others
demand C++, and I'm not about to re-write all my stuff in a language I
don't like.
If I was going to switch languages, I'd probably go to
Python.
For $WORK, I was using Centos 6.x in 2019, which was late for Centos 6,
and I had a really hard time getting a window manager to work, even
icewm compiled from source had issues and I didn't have all day to deal
with them. I settled on twm for that machine.
I perceive GNOME looking more like MacOS while KDE appeals more to Windows-socialized people.
... and it's also designed for a layout that naturally "letterboxes"
today's absolutely inescapable widescreen displays (which I loathe)
...
On Sat, 7 Jun 2025 02:20:33 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I initially didn't like KDE 4, but kind of swallowed it and learned
to like it, and then later, found it was quite right for me. I
didn't switch to KDE 4 until some time after its release, so some of
the bugs had been ironed out.
Linus Torvalds famously abandoned KDE when version 4 came out. I think he >(along with a lot of others) didn’t notice the caveat attached to the 4.0 >release that it was just meant as a developer preview.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 08:21:26 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... and it's also designed for a layout that naturally "letterboxes"
today's absolutely inescapable widescreen displays (which I loathe)
...
16:9 is an annoying ratio to use on a computer screen. 8:5 (or 16:10, for
the maths-challenged) is a more natural fit, and is (not) coincidentally >almost exactly the “golden ratio”.
On Fri, 06 Jun 2025 18:48:15 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
... does the normal Ubuntu really only offer GNOME?
I don’t think it does. The different flavours are really just different >choices of default installations.
I remember installing “normal” Ubuntu on my Asus Eee 701 (yes, it was a >long time ago), and discovering I should have chosen Kubuntu. Adding the
KDE Plasma option was as easy as “apt-get install kubuntu-desktop”.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Fri, 06 Jun 2025 18:48:15 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
... does the normal Ubuntu really only offer GNOME?
I don’t think it does. The different flavours are really just different
choices of default installations.
And still Jörg says that he stopped using Ubuntu because he "didn't
liek the orange". I wonder why he didn't just change the theme or the
entire Desktop if he was fine with Ubuntu otherwise?
I wonder if anybody is going to come out with a Wayland server for
Windows as well ...
In any case, this is all a big improvement on Tcl/Tk, which is what I
used for my first Linux GUI project. I soon reworked it to use
Python+GTK, and never used Tcl/Tk for anything else after that.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 08:21:26 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... and it's also designed for a layout that naturally "letterboxes"
today's absolutely inescapable widescreen displays (which I loathe)
...
16:9 is an annoying ratio to use on a computer screen. 8:5 (or 16:10, for >>the maths-challenged) is a more natural fit, and is (not) coincidentally >>almost exactly the “golden ratio”.
I barely notice that difference. You usually cannot choose your
display dimensions in that level of detail if you care for other
values in your machine.
Greetings
Marc
The difference is a bit noticeable when gaming.
Alas Deb seems to have hired a lot of Canonical
rejects
For computers, [widescreen] leads to wasted space.
That may be the designer understanding that beyond a point, using *horizontal* space is a bad idea, unless they have something that
actually goes well with that.
I remember installing “normal” Ubuntu on my Asus Eee 701 (yes, it was a long time ago), and discovering I should have chosen Kubuntu. Adding the
KDE Plasma option was as easy as “apt-get install kubuntu-desktop”.
On Sun, 08 Jun 2025 09:53:28 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
That may be the designer understanding that beyond a point, using
*horizontal* space is a bad idea, unless they have something that
actually goes well with that.
I was thinking, there may be an issue with Microsoft Office users getting annoyed with widescreen monitors. This is because the (in)famous Office “Ribbon” was designed in the days before such monitors became popular. So by taking up space along the short dimension, it reduces the available
area for showing your document content, particularly if your pages are portrait-oriented, as most written documents are.
LibreOffice doesn’t suffer from this problem: it has a “Sidebar” which --
you guessed it -- sits along the side, taking up space along the dimension which already has lots of it to spare.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 16:11:45 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Cinnamon is dead pretty, but in terms of a desktop I want a wife, not a
whore
You’re not married to your PC, you know.
Unless this is a case of TMI ...
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 20:44:45 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:
For $WORK, I was using Centos 6.x in 2019, which was late for Centos 6,
and I had a really hard time getting a window manager to work, even
icewm compiled from source had issues and I didn't have all day to deal
with them. I settled on twm for that machine.
They made you use an RHEL-equivalent on the desktop?? I would relegate
that sort of thing strictly as a server, and a headless one at that.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 08:21:26 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... and it's also designed for a layout that naturally "letterboxes"
today's absolutely inescapable widescreen displays (which I loathe)
...
16:9 is an annoying ratio to use on a computer screen. 8:5 (or 16:10, for
the maths-challenged) is a more natural fit, and is (not) coincidentally almost exactly the “golden ratio”.
The $BASE where I worked for awhile allowed Linux (with some basic
support),
so I installed Debian on my laptop workstations. But after awhile they demanded Red Hat; but CentOS was acceptable, so that's what I used.
It was fine. (Fluxbox as the window manager, of course.)
They made you use an RHEL-equivalent on the desktop?? I would relegate
that sort of thing strictly as a server, and a headless one at that.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-06-06, Charlie Gibbs <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-06-06, Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 05/06/2025 18:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
But I suppose widescreen displays make up most
of what can be usually purchased these days?
The market for LCD panels is overwhelmingly TVs at the top end and smart >>>>> phones or fondleslabs at the bottom
Tooling up for something suitable for workstations would be extremely >>>>> expensive.
WE live off the droppings from the TV markets table...
And that tends to be the HD aspect ratio screen
Indeed, and this fact is *also* why the computer LCD world very quickly >>>> went from 4:3 aspect screens to 16:9 (or if lucky, 16:10) aspect
screens.
The economies of scale from using LCD panels that are "TV aspect ratio" >>>> is just too cheap to ignore.
No problem. I have two monitors on my machine; the older one is 4:3 and >>> the newer one is 16:9. Both are filled up with xterm windows plus an
instance of VirtualBox running Windows XP. Move and resize until everything
tiles nicely...
When my Trinitron CRT died, I went out of my way to get a 16:10 ratio
monitor instead of 16:9.
I dislike widescreen immensely. Even widescreen TV's are overrated.
"Widescreen" has always been "chasing the movies" because the mouth
breathers can't understand why their latest remake of X has those black
bars on the top and bottom of the picture.
4:3 was the original (way back) movie aspect ratio. When TV was
created, it copied 4:3 because that's what the movies were set to. The result was the movies then felt they had to "1 up" to maintain their
reason for being and they became 16:9 aspect. That was, until TV's
went 16:9 and the movies had then gone "ultra wide" to maintain their 1 upsmanship. With the result that the mouth breathers now have to
sometimes contend with black bars on top, or on the sides, of whatever
they are streaming at the moment, depending upon what year it was
filmed.
GNOME Team was actually completely forthcoming about this, at the time:
they, like MS, had bought entirely into the tech-press narrative of the Glorious Tablet Future, where desktops and laptops would vanish in a
Cloud of pixie dust and the mouse would be obsolete as everyone used touchscreens for everything and shut up "gorilla arm" totally isn't a
thing so there (remember that? Remember how they were also adamant that
voice control and dictation would obsolete the keyboard for about 15
minutes, before some non-idiot pointed out that whole offices full of
people yakking at their computer all day would result in an epidemic of workplace shootings?)
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
The difference is a bit noticeable when gaming.
Now THAT is something that I praise myself for not needing.
Grüße Marc
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote at 13:00 this Saturday (GMT):
"Widescreen" has always been "chasing the movies" because the mouth
breathers can't understand why their latest remake of X has those
black bars on the top and bottom of the picture.
4:3 was the original (way back) movie aspect ratio. When TV was
created, it copied 4:3 because that's what the movies were set to.
The result was the movies then felt they had to "1 up" to maintain
their reason for being and they became 16:9 aspect. That was, until
TV's went 16:9 and the movies had then gone "ultra wide" to maintain
their 1 upsmanship. With the result that the mouth breathers now
have to sometimes contend with black bars on top, or on the sides,
of whatever they are streaming at the moment, depending upon what
year it was filmed.
Don't forget "fit to screen", the most pointless feature that every
media player seems to have for some reason. Are the black bars
seriously so annoying that you would rather completely cut off part
of the video??
candycanearter07 <[email protected]> wrote:
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote at 13:00 this Saturday (GMT):
"Widescreen" has always been "chasing the movies" because the mouth
breathers can't understand why their latest remake of X has those
black bars on the top and bottom of the picture.
4:3 was the original (way back) movie aspect ratio. When TV was
created, it copied 4:3 because that's what the movies were set to.
The result was the movies then felt they had to "1 up" to maintain
their reason for being and they became 16:9 aspect. That was, until
TV's went 16:9 and the movies had then gone "ultra wide" to maintain
their 1 upsmanship. With the result that the mouth breathers now
have to sometimes contend with black bars on top, or on the sides,
of whatever they are streaming at the moment, depending upon what
year it was filmed.
Don't forget "fit to screen", the most pointless feature that every
media player seems to have for some reason. Are the black bars
seriously so annoying that you would rather completely cut off part
of the video??
Yes, for some, they are. For those who fail to understand why the bars
are present (and don't bother to learn) they just see it as "the movie
isn't filling my screen...". When they hit the "fit to screen" (some
call it 'zoom' which is a more meaningful name) option, then "the movie
fills the screen". And somehow they never ever notice that the edges
of the movie are no longer visible. Granted, most directors position
the "action" in the middle and the far edges usually don't contain
directly meaningful material to the overall story, so they also are not missing anything which would alert them to the fact that the edges have disappeared.
Worse are the ones that hit the other button that simply "squishes" the
whole movie to fit the output device. So you have either vertical or horizontal distortion, or both (depending upon how the movie vs.
display aspect ratios fit together). And yet, there they are, watching
"too wide" or "too narrow" (or too short/too tall) people/things,
blissfully unaware that the image has been distorted.
In comp.os.linux.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
They made you use an RHEL-equivalent on the desktop?? I would relegate
that sort of thing strictly as a server, and a headless one at that.
My preference is to use whatever distro $WORK uses in prod. At current
$WORK, there's at least three to pick from and I have Ubuntu.
LibreOffice doesn’t suffer from this problem: it has a “Sidebar”
which -- you guessed it -- sits along the side, taking up space
along the dimension which already has lots of it to spare.
MS Office got rid of the sidebar they had?
Way back when when TVs were 4:3 and when Panovision (wide screen) movies would be broadcast on TV, the movies would be "edited" to fit -- this
was done "manually" (eg by a human on a scene by scene basis). Same for
early VHS tapes.
Later "letterbox" was used for VHS and some cable movie channels, and
the "black bars" came into being...
I have an old VHS tape of Red Sonia that was "hand edited" to fit 4:3,
except at the very end (Arnold and Brigit kissing scene that morphs into
the credits), which has Arnold and Brigit and their horses suddenly too
tall.
... because they never stopped to consider that *nix users, unlike
Windows users, aren't stuck with whatever nonsense gets handed down
from on high by the Design Divas, ...
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
Linus Torvalds famously abandoned KDE when version 4 came out. I
think he (along with a lot of others) didn’t notice the caveat
attached to th e 4.0 release that it was just meant as a developer
preview.
They should not have called in a 4.0 release then, and they should
not have pulled the plug on the 3.x series. I bet that all major distributions packaged and shipped 4.0 instead of continuing to have
3.x.
And still Jörg says that he stopped using Ubuntu because he "didn't liek
the orange". I wonder why he didn't just change the theme or the entire Desktop if he was fine with Ubuntu otherwise?
So it is just like Debian, just louder in its Marketing of the different Desktops?
On Mon, 09 Jun 2025 09:47:29 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
LibreOffice doesn’t suffer from this problem: it has a “Sidebar”
which -- you guessed it -- sits along the side, taking up space
along the dimension which already has lots of it to spare.
MS Office got rid of the sidebar they had?
They never had a Sidebar. They had lots of menus, and ways to customize
them to try to simplify things. And lots of users confused by customized menus, forgetting they had customized them and wondering where certain features had gone.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 01:09:05 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
Wish they'd separate out just a "core X" package that'd save you the
trouble the way the BSDs do.
They do. Just trace down the “apt-cache depends” graph and you’ll
find out what the core component packages are.
I mean, yes, you *can* do that; it'd be nice not to *have* to.
c186282 <[email protected]> wrote:
Alas Deb seems to have hired a lot of Canonical rejects
You don't seem to know how the Debian project operates.
Or Vim which, unlike Emacs which is a full OS, is only a text editor.
Moving from AIX was an interesting exercise too. AIX was extremely lenient about NULL accesses. While it was never good technique defining variable
in header files got a pass for years. Then whatever gcc shipped with
Debian Bullseye got snotty about multiple definitions.
Define PRIMARY in your main module, but not in the others.
Then, in the .h file that all your modules include:
#ifndef PRIMARY
#define GLOBAL extern
#endif
GLOBAL int foo;
Works a treat, even on the latest gcc.
On 2025-06-09, rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
Moving from AIX was an interesting exercise too. AIX was extremely
lenient about NULL accesses. While it was never good technique defining
variable in header files got a pass for years. Then whatever gcc
shipped with Debian Bullseye got snotty about multiple definitions.
Define PRIMARY in your main module, but not in the others.
Then, in the .h file that all your modules include:
#ifndef PRIMARY #define GLOBAL extern #endif
GLOBAL int foo;
Works a treat, even on the latest gcc.
In other words, the difference in installation defaults is there precisely
to cater to those whom I mentioned above, who don’t realize that you have >configuration options.
On Mon, 09 Jun 2025 08:02:02 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
Linus Torvalds famously abandoned KDE when version 4 came out. I
think he (along with a lot of others) didn’t notice the caveat
attached to th e 4.0 release that it was just meant as a developer
preview.
They should not have called in a 4.0 release then, and they should
not have pulled the plug on the 3.x series. I bet that all major
distributions packaged and shipped 4.0 instead of continuing to have
3.x.
I don’t recall anybody “pulling the plug” on 3.x -- not right away.
5 migration happened.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
I don’t recall anybody “pulling the plug” on 3.x -- not right away.
I do recall 3.x being gone almost immediately.
So you have either vertical or
horizontal distortion, or both (depending upon how the movie vs.
display aspect ratios fit together).
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 09:38:35 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... because they never stopped to consider that *nix users, unlike
Windows users, aren't stuck with whatever nonsense gets handed down
from on high by the Design Divas, ...
Oh, I’m sure they considered that all right. Everybody with any experience of Free Software can recall famous instances of project forks -- both ones which ended well, and ones which didn’t. They’ve always known that those who disagreed with some of their decisions could fork their code.
It’s certain users (of whom we see too many examples right here on Usenet) who don’t seem to appreciate this point. And who get continually surprised when it is pointed out.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
In other words, the difference in installation defaults is there precisely >>to cater to those whom I mentioned above, who don’t realize that you have >>configuration options.
And this is sending the wrong message.
I also blame the media, who set a totally wrong emphasis on the ease
of installation, chastizing distributions for asking questions during installation, not being aware that this is giving CHOICE to the user¹,
and only test the "default desktop", even calling it "X's desktop".
Greetings
Marc
¹ the user may be overwhelmed by the amount of questions an installer
asks, but alas, this is rocket science, isn't it?
Now some distros have spins, so it appears
that if you want a different DE, then you need to download an entirely different installation image. The choice has just been moved from
within the installer to one that is made before installation, which in
my view, is even more confusing.
Many things are easier, but one thing I found was that the option to
install different software was less obvious. My first Linux
installation gave me a choice to install GNOME and KDE and other Window >Managers. The choice was there upfront. I chose GNOME as it was
selected, and KDE wasn't and I didn't see the point in installing a
second, initially.
It isn't much easier today. Now some distros have spins, so it appears
that if you want a different DE, then you need to download an entirely >different installation image. The choice has just been moved from
within the installer to one that is made before installation, which in
my view, is even more confusing.
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Many things are easier, but one thing I found was that the option to >>install different software was less obvious. My first Linux
installation gave me a choice to install GNOME and KDE and other Window >>Managers. The choice was there upfront. I chose GNOME as it was
selected, and KDE wasn't and I didn't see the point in installing a
second, initially.
It isn't much easier today. Now some distros have spins, so it appears >>that if you want a different DE, then you need to download an entirely >>different installation image. The choice has just been moved from
within the installer to one that is made before installation, which in
my view, is even more confusing.
I have been using Debian for > 20 years and you just install a new DE
if you want to. The login manager offers you at every login which kind
of session you want. I don't think it was ever any different.
The "spins" came with Ubuntu, and even on a normal Ubuntu I'd expect
KDE Plasma to show up in the login menu after an "apt install
kde-standard". I still think that a "spin" of a Distribution either originates with a sick marketing idea of with incompetence.
On 2025-06-10, Marc Haber wrote:Why?
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Many things are easier, but one thing I found was that the option to
install different software was less obvious. My first Linux
installation gave me a choice to install GNOME and KDE and other Window
Managers. The choice was there upfront. I chose GNOME as it was
selected, and KDE wasn't and I didn't see the point in installing a
second, initially.
It isn't much easier today. Now some distros have spins, so it appears
that if you want a different DE, then you need to download an entirely
different installation image. The choice has just been moved from
within the installer to one that is made before installation, which in
my view, is even more confusing.
I have been using Debian for > 20 years and you just install a new DE
if you want to. The login manager offers you at every login which kind
of session you want. I don't think it was ever any different.
The "spins" came with Ubuntu, and even on a normal Ubuntu I'd expect
KDE Plasma to show up in the login menu after an "apt install
kde-standard". I still think that a "spin" of a Distribution either
originates with a sick marketing idea of with incompetence.
The idea of different distributions for different DEs does sound
strange.
not too large (but how bug can it get nowadays?).
But this really should be just an option, even if offline you're limited
by what the install medium carries, it shouldn't be difficult to switch options.
On 2025-06-10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 10/06/2025 11:57, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-06-10, Marc Haber wrote:Why?
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Many things are easier, but one thing I found was that the option to >>>>> install different software was less obvious. My first Linux
installation gave me a choice to install GNOME and KDE and other Window >>>>> Managers. The choice was there upfront. I chose GNOME as it was
selected, and KDE wasn't and I didn't see the point in installing a
second, initially.
It isn't much easier today. Now some distros have spins, so it appears >>>>> that if you want a different DE, then you need to download an entirely >>>>> different installation image. The choice has just been moved from
within the installer to one that is made before installation, which in >>>>> my view, is even more confusing.
I have been using Debian for > 20 years and you just install a new DE
if you want to. The login manager offers you at every login which kind >>>> of session you want. I don't think it was ever any different.
The "spins" came with Ubuntu, and even on a normal Ubuntu I'd expect
KDE Plasma to show up in the login menu after an "apt install
kde-standard". I still think that a "spin" of a Distribution either
originates with a sick marketing idea of with incompetence.
The idea of different distributions for different DEs does sound
strange.
You don't normally e,g. change your cars colour after you have bought
ut...
What?
Some day I'll understand the fascination with car analogies... here I'm
also baffled because I don't even see how does that even relate.
If we were talking about computer cases, it'd be a more suitable
analogy. We're talking software. And an operating system.
But allow me to try to work along with the analogy: don't cars usually
offer different colors? So you could ask for a different one when
buying. How's that any different from choosing which DE to use, if any, during installation?
Saying you need a different distro for this is like saying you can't buy Ferrari if you don't want it in red (...although it *does* seem they
won't allow at least one color choice, pink!?).
--------------------------^^^Different install media, OTOH, could make sense, to ensure it's
not too large (but how bug can it get nowadays?).
sabugabiga ((s)ed command)
IIRC a typical 'with desktop and normal apps' is around 6GB these days.
Headless serve <1Gb.
Ok, that's not small. It might still go well with just two discs, given
there is DVD. But it might also be too much for some settings.
And that's with several DE and WM options?
But this really should be just an option, even if offline you're limited >>> by what the install medium carries, it shouldn't be difficult to switch
options.
It almost never is - for tekheads.
This argument reminds me of a society I briefly joined and then left.
They wanted to become mainstream, but they didnt want to change.
Ubuntu/Mint have bent linux towards a very easy install for ex-Windows
users.
But YOU don't have to install them.
On 10/06/2025 11:57, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-06-10, Marc Haber wrote:Why?
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Many things are easier, but one thing I found was that the option to
install different software was less obvious. My first Linux
installation gave me a choice to install GNOME and KDE and other Window >>>> Managers. The choice was there upfront. I chose GNOME as it was
selected, and KDE wasn't and I didn't see the point in installing a
second, initially.
It isn't much easier today. Now some distros have spins, so it appears >>>> that if you want a different DE, then you need to download an entirely >>>> different installation image. The choice has just been moved from
within the installer to one that is made before installation, which in >>>> my view, is even more confusing.
I have been using Debian for > 20 years and you just install a new DE
if you want to. The login manager offers you at every login which kind
of session you want. I don't think it was ever any different.
The "spins" came with Ubuntu, and even on a normal Ubuntu I'd expect
KDE Plasma to show up in the login menu after an "apt install
kde-standard". I still think that a "spin" of a Distribution either
originates with a sick marketing idea of with incompetence.
The idea of different distributions for different DEs does sound
strange.
You don't normally e,g. change your cars colour after you have bought
ut...
Different install media, OTOH, could make sense, to ensure it's
not too large (but how bug can it get nowadays?). --------------------------^^^
IIRC a typical 'with desktop and normal apps' is around 6GB these days. Headless serve <1Gb.
But this really should be just an option, even if offline you're limited
by what the install medium carries, it shouldn't be difficult to switch
options.
It almost never is - for tekheads.
This argument reminds me of a society I briefly joined and then left.
They wanted to become mainstream, but they didnt want to change.
Ubuntu/Mint have bent linux towards a very easy install for ex-Windows
users.
But YOU don't have to install them.
On 10/06/2025 11:17, Borax Man wrote:
Now some distros have spins, so it appears
that if you want a different DE, then you need to download an entirely
different installation image. The choice has just been moved from
within the installer to one that is made before installation, which in
my view, is even more confusing.
Or in fact a lot simpler.
Choose your distro, choose your DE, download, install, no questions at all...bar the minimum of name, password., timezone, language...
That is what I have noticed - the default route is very simple, but
deviating from it is less so.
So aiming the distros at users rather than tekheads.
On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 10:12:57 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why?
Also, what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that
isn't found, or rarely found in others?
Trinity (TDE) https://www.trinitydesktop.org/index.php
Years ago I fell in love with KDE 3.5 and fell out of love with KDE
4.0.
KDE 3.4 lives on in Trinity. I've been on it for over 15 years,
I have a revulsion to eye candy.
On 09/06/2025 20:53, Rich wrote:
So you have either vertical or
horizontal distortion, or both (depending upon how the movie vs.
display aspect ratios fit together).
Ahem.
Did you stop to think before you wrote that?
On 2025-06-09, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 09:38:35 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... because they never stopped to consider that *nix users, unlike
Windows users, aren't stuck with whatever nonsense gets handed down
from on high by the Design Divas, ...
Oh, I’m sure they considered that all right. Everybody with any experience >> of Free Software can recall famous instances of project forks -- both ones >> which ended well, and ones which didn’t. They’ve always known that those >> who disagreed with some of their decisions could fork their code.
It’s certain users (of whom we see too many examples right here on Usenet) >> who don’t seem to appreciate this point. And who get continually surprised >> when it is pointed out.
I don't remember reading anything to that effect, but you might be right.
There is now a fork of X.org called Xlibre, which I'm hoping will remain viable for some time to come.
Nevertheless, the fact a project can be forked doesn't really negate the disruption when your DE or software suddenly changes on you. The
attitudes of the developers still matter, and it is worthwhile to build
your digital castles on lands maintained by those who share your
philosophy.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
In other words, the difference in installation defaults is there precisely >>to cater to those whom I mentioned above, who don’t realize that you have >>configuration options.
And this is sending the wrong message.
I also blame the media, who set a totally wrong emphasis on the ease
of installation, chastizing distributions for asking questions during installation, not being aware that this is giving CHOICE to the user¹,
and only test the "default desktop", even calling it "X's desktop".
Greetings
Marc
¹ the user may be overwhelmed by the amount of questions an installer
asks, but alas, this is rocket science, isn't it?
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed
with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the
left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year
there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The
third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered
brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide
lever embedded in the door, etc.
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed >with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the
left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year
there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The >third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered >brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide
lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
Greetings
Marc
Marc Haber <[email protected]> wrote:
¹ the user may be overwhelmed by the amount of questions an installer
asks, but alas, this is rocket science, isn't it?
That is easy enough to avoid. Start with a question of:
Do you want to configure many details of your setup, or would you
prefer to accept all defaults?
[Custom Configuration]
[Accept All Defaults]
Which gives the additional "choice" of being able to choose "I just
want it installed with no fuss" for those that want that vs. "I do want
to adjust most knobs" for the others who do want to tweak the knobs to
their liking.
Of course, it is harder on the packagers to then support the "custom
config" path, because they now have to actually build out all those configuration questions and UI's to obtain the answers.
The "spins" came with Ubuntu, and even on a normal Ubuntu I'd expect KDE Plasma to show up in the login menu after an "apt install kde-standard".
I still think that a "spin" of a Distribution either originates with a
sick marketing idea of with incompetence.
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 02:09:55 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-06-09, rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
Moving from AIX was an interesting exercise too. AIX was extremely
lenient about NULL accesses. While it was never good technique defining
variable in header files got a pass for years. Then whatever gcc
shipped with Debian Bullseye got snotty about multiple definitions.
Define PRIMARY in your main module, but not in the others.
Then, in the .h file that all your modules include:
#ifndef PRIMARY #define GLOBAL extern #endif
GLOBAL int foo;
Works a treat, even on the latest gcc.
I can't remember the flag offhand but it was easier to set it in the Makefiles. When you're dealing with over 25 years of technical debt with convoluted includes you tend to take the easiest way out.
A problem with having very little turnover in the programming staff is no newbie to assign to the scut work.
Having the option during install, means the installer can show or
explain the different, possibly with images, and let the user make an informed choice.
I suppose if you know up front what DE you want to use.
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed >>with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the
left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year
there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The >>third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered >>brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide
lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
Greetings
Marc
I've read that even if you disable all the extraneous crud, like wobbly windows and spinning cubes and crap, it doesn't significantly free up resources.
That's why I try to automate the scut work as much as possible. :-)
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
Nevertheless, the fact a project can be forked doesn't really negate the disruption when your DE or software suddenly changes on you.
You don't normally e,g. change your cars colour after you have bought
ut...
Some day I'll understand the fascination with car analogies...
I hate analogies. They are almost always done badly. People draw an analogy, then nitpick every detail. Almost always derails things.
On 2025-06-10, Marc Haber wrote:
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed >>>with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the >>>left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year >>>there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The >>>third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered >>>brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide >>>lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
Greetings Marc
I had no idea automatic transmission had taken over vehicles worldwide.
So is that now prevalent in new cars even in places where automatic transmissions were an unusual sight?
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:43:21 +1000, Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood wrote:
I've read that even if you disable all the extraneous crud, like wobbly
windows and spinning cubes and crap, it doesn't significantly free up
resources.
Actually, KDE Plasma is among the lightest-weight DEs around -- lighter
than GNOME.
Remember, it’s built on Qt, which is a toolkit with a wide variety of application areas, including on resource-constrained embedded platforms.
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 16:55:37 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
My 2010-vintage Toyota Auris has that.
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 16:55:37 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
My 2010-vintage Toyota Auris has that.
(I think some sports cars and some heavy trucks, still have manual transmissions.)
I had no idea automatic transmission had taken over vehicles
worldwide. So is that now prevalent in new cars even in places where automatic transmissions were an unusual sight?
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 22:27:07 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-06-10, Marc Haber wrote:
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed >>>>with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the >>>>left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year >>>>there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter >>>>is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The >>>>third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered >>>>brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide >>>>lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
Greetings Marc
I had no idea automatic transmission had taken over vehicles worldwide.
So is that now prevalent in new cars even in places where automatic
transmissions were an unusual sight?
It's been coming for a long time. My father did not like ATs and even in
the '60s it was difficult to find a manual transmission outside of sport cars. After he died my mother went shopping for a new car. This was a
woman who had taught her father to drive back in the '20s and I had to convince her she could drive an automatic. She caught on fast and also appreciated power steering and power brakes.
Manual sales still account for 30% of all cars in Europe.
Other than US TV shows, I think some new buses may be the only places
where I've seen automatic transmission lately.
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 10:25:18 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Nevertheless, the fact a project can be forked doesn't really negate the
disruption when your DE or software suddenly changes on you.
No reason why a fork has to change things very much at all.
Look at what happened with the XFree86-vs-Xorg fork: that switch happened very quickly, and with very little user complaint.
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:motoring stupidity is not exclusive to Europeans
Manual sales still account for 30% of all cars in Europe.
European drivers are mostly stupid. That includes me.
Greetings
Marc
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2025-06-09, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 09:38:35 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... because they never stopped to consider that *nix users, unlike
Windows users, aren't stuck with whatever nonsense gets handed down
from on high by the Design Divas, ...
Oh, I’m sure they considered that all right. Everybody with any experience
of Free Software can recall famous instances of project forks -- both ones >>> which ended well, and ones which didn’t. They’ve always known that those
who disagreed with some of their decisions could fork their code.
It’s certain users (of whom we see too many examples right here on Usenet)
who don’t seem to appreciate this point. And who get continually surprised
when it is pointed out.
I don't remember reading anything to that effect, but you might be right.
There is now a fork of X.org called Xlibre, which I'm hoping will remain
viable for some time to come.
Nevertheless, the fact a project can be forked doesn't really negate the
disruption when your DE or software suddenly changes on you. The
attitudes of the developers still matter, and it is worthwhile to build
your digital castles on lands maintained by those who share your
philosophy.
Indeed, the "ability to fork" does not negate the negative outcomes of
the original project "moving the controls around" and "given them new pictures and names" with every 0.x release at the whim of the
"artists".
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed
with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the
left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year
there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The
third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered
brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide
lever embedded in the door, etc.
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:59:42 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I hate analogies. They are almost always done badly. People draw an
analogy, then nitpick every detail. Almost always derails things.
Analogies are useful for clarifying points, not for trying to back up arguments. The foundation for the argument must come from somewhere else.
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 23:42:25 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:43:21 +1000, Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood wrote:
I've read that even if you disable all the extraneous crud, like wobbly
windows and spinning cubes and crap, it doesn't significantly free up
resources.
Actually, KDE Plasma is among the lightest-weight DEs around -- lighter
than GNOME.
Remember, it’s built on Qt, which is a toolkit with a wide variety of
application areas, including on resource-constrained embedded platforms.
I don't recall my Fedora KDE spin having wobbly windows and spinning cubes out of the box. I suppose that crap is there if you go looking for it. Ah, there it is, a checkbox for wobbly windows way down in a configuration
menu. I don't see the spinning cube thing.
None of this fuzzy
flat design with muted pastels in a sea of low constrast grey
featureless tiles for me.
On 10/06/2025 16:43, Robert Heller wrote:
Golly. Another example of USian utter ignorance
(I think some sports cars and some heavy trucks, still have manual
transmissions.)
Manual sales still account for 30% of all cars in Europe.
On 11/06/2025 13:12, Borax Man wrote:
None of this fuzzy
flat design with muted pastels in a sea of low constrast grey
featureless tiles for me.
Amen to that.
I am sick of 'modern' web site fill-in boxes in the lightest of gray on
a white background placed in arbitrary locations - probably off screen
at any level of zoom that allows you to read the text.
On 11.6.2025 11.12, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 10/06/2025 16:43, Robert Heller wrote:There are manual gearboxes of many kinds. For an US version, google for 'Kenworth gear shift pattern'.
(I think some sports cars and some heavy trucks, still have manualGolly. Another example of USian utter ignorance
transmissions.)
Manual sales still account for 30% of all cars in Europe.
This is why you should consider the attitudes of the developers and
their philosophy. If you decide to go with software maintained and
developed by those who have a "move fast and break things" kind of
attitude, you will have to accept, that things will move fast... and
break. If the developers are opinionated, and have a "vision", then you
are going to have to accept that they will impose their vision, and your experience will be as they think it should be.
Weird. I've seen new enough cars (at least from the very end of the last century, or maybe even early 21st) with manual transmission. If that
required a special order, I've not heard of it (that of course does not
imply it didn't happen, though).
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 09:24:04 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
Weird. I've seen new enough cars (at least from the very end of the last
century, or maybe even early 21st) with manual transmission. If that
required a special order, I've not heard of it (that of course does not
imply it didn't happen, though).
Like all businesses US car dealers stock what sells. I had a '80 Camaro
with a manual but when I traded it for a '82 Firebird it had an AT. The reason was the '82s were three door hatchbacks. They are another dog in
the US market. I bought the 2018 Yaris because it was the last of the (US)
3 door hatches. Even that year the 5 doors were rebranded Mazda 2s. I'm jealous because there is a GR Yaris that is a little screamer and it isn't available in the US. Toyota figured since the standard 3-doors never sold
in the US they wouldn't even bother.
On 2025-06-10, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 10:25:18 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Nevertheless, the fact a project can be forked doesn't really negatethe disruption when your DE or software suddenly changes on you.
No reason why a fork has to change things very much at all.
Look at what happened with the XFree86-vs-Xorg fork: that switch
happened very quickly, and with very little user complaint.
I do recall that change, and it was rather seamless. Almost forgot
XFree86 existed.
My point is better illustrated by GNOME 3.
I used to have the wobbly windows and spinning cube. One update stuffed
it up, can't remember why ...
I had a Yaris two-door + hatchback. Manual tranny (heh heh). It was
peppy and zipped around on/off ramps.
It had handle-rollup windows, which was a bit irksome in the South
Carolina summer heat.
My nephew called it a "clown car".
The next Yaris's were purportedly a bit less durable, cheaply made.
One funny thing about that car and the manual Fiesta I bought... the
trolls trolled heavily about those cars. As if I cared about their
nonsense.
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:12:35 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I used to have the wobbly windows and spinning cube. One update
stuffed it up, can't remember why ...
Wobbly windows always worked in KDE 4.0+, though the desktop cube
(actually prism) went away in 5.x. But it’s back!
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:12:35 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I used to have the wobbly windows and spinning cube. One update stuffed
it up, can't remember why ...
Wobbly windows always worked in KDE 4.0+, though the desktop cube
(actually prism) went away in 5.x. But it’s back!
On 2025-06-11, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 11/06/2025 13:12, Borax Man wrote:
None of this fuzzy
flat design with muted pastels in a sea of low constrast grey
featureless tiles for me.
Amen to that.
I am sick of 'modern' web site fill-in boxes in the lightest of gray on
a white background placed in arbitrary locations - probably off screen
at any level of zoom that allows you to read the text.
https://contrastrebellion.com
On 2025-06-12, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:12:35 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I used to have the wobbly windows and spinning cube. One update stuffed >>> it up, can't remember why ...
Wobbly windows always worked in KDE 4.0+, though the desktop cube
(actually prism) went away in 5.x. But it’s back!
Wobbly windows and Spinning cubes are out and muted colours, tiling and
flat design and manga backgrounds are in.
On 12/06/2025 12:03, Borax Man wrote:
On 2025-06-12, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:12:35 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I used to have the wobbly windows and spinning cube. One update stuffed >>>> it up, can't remember why ...
Wobbly windows always worked in KDE 4.0+, though the desktop cube
(actually prism) went away in 5.x. But it’s back!
Wobbly windows and Spinning cubes are out and muted colours, tiling and
flat design and manga backgrounds are in.
Less espresso than flat white...
Whoever let ArtStudents™ near web design should be shot.
As long with the ones that let CompSci™ near operating systems...
Software engineering is not an exercise in 'self expression'.
It's not Science, its not Art, its DISCIPLINE.
Boring test and test again unto there ARE NO BUGS.
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:04:44 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
This is why you should consider the attitudes of the developers and
their philosophy. If you decide to go with software maintained and
developed by those who have a "move fast and break things" kind of
attitude, you will have to accept, that things will move fast... and
break. If the developers are opinionated, and have a "vision", then you
are going to have to accept that they will impose their vision, and your
experience will be as they think it should be.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/10/love-it-or-hate-it-apples-new-liquid- glass-design-is-getting-mixed-reviews/
This is the latest example of a vision that isn't universally loved. Being Apple, the users can suck it up.
But now, I'm wiser, and all that "aesthetics" is just wankery. My
current desktop looks straight from the 90s, the only thing that gives
away that its not from 1999 is the higher resolution. Everything will
look dated eventually, so may as well stay with something already dated,
than constantly change the next thing that will end up dated anyway.
On 2025-06-10, Marc Haber wrote:
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed >>>with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the >>>left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year >>>there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The >>>third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered >>>brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide >>>lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
Greetings
Marc
I had no idea automatic transmission had taken over vehicles
worldwide. So is that now prevalent in new cars even in places where automatic transmissions were an unusual sight?
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed >>with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the
left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year
there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The >>third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered >>brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide
lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
On 10/06/2025 16:43, Robert Heller wrote:
Golly. Another example of USian utter ignorance
(I think some sports cars and some heavy trucks, still have manual
transmissions.)
Manual sales still account for 30% of all cars in Europe.
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 22:27:07 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
I had no idea automatic transmission had taken over vehicles worldwide.
So is that now prevalent in new cars even in places where automatic
transmissions were an unusual sight?
Of course ATs are different animals now than the 2 speed PowerSlides
from the '50s.
On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 21:34:18 -0000 (UTC), Robert Heller wrote:
Way back when when TVs were 4:3 and when Panovision (wide screen) movies
would be broadcast on TV, the movies would be "edited" to fit -- this
was done "manually" (eg by a human on a scene by scene basis). Same for
early VHS tapes.
This was called “pan and scan”.
Later "letterbox" was used for VHS and some cable movie channels, and
the "black bars" came into being...
This was the lesser of the two evils: at least you saw the whole picture, undistorted, the way its makers intended. But the lower TV resolution did lose a bunch of detail. And of course people complained about the “unsightly” black bars ...
I have an old VHS tape of Red Sonia that was "hand edited" to fit 4:3,
except at the very end (Arnold and Brigit kissing scene that morphs into
the credits), which has Arnold and Brigit and their horses suddenly too
tall.
I have seen that done, being the only way to get in the entirety of the closing credits.
Marc Haber <[email protected]> wrote:
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed >>>with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the >>>left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year >>>there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The >>>third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered >>>brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide >>>lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
If you like, consider "gearshift" as "a lever that selects a drive
mode" such that it covers the 2% manual transmission folks, and the
"PRND2L" handle for an automatic. Although some, newer automatics, do
have the "PRND2L" as "buttons on the dash" -- so in those cases there
isn't a gearshift lever at all...
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 10/06/2025 16:43, Robert Heller wrote:
Golly. Another example of USian utter ignorance
(I think some sports cars and some heavy trucks, still have manual
transmissions.)
Manual sales still account for 30% of all cars in Europe.
US sales of manual transmissions have been tiny for years, and a lot of makers, even if they offer manual for the European/Bittish markets in
the same model, simply don't offer the "manual option" for their US
version of the same models.
Automatics have all but outsold manuals in the US into oblivion. And
say what you like about the change, it did occur due to "sales volumes" rather than a govt. fiat for one over the other.
Marc Haber <[email protected]> wrote:
Rich <[email protected]d> wrote:
The real world equivalent would be if one's car's UI completely changed
with each new model year. One year there is a steering wheel, on the
left, with the gearshift in the center console. The very next year
there's a pilot joystick instead of a steering wheel, and the shifter
is now a motorcycle style twist handle at the top of the joystick. The
third year you get "feet operated steering pedals" and "hand powered
brakes" via a center console lever, with the gearshift being a slide
lever embedded in the door, etc.
Gearshift? Only cars from the last millennium have that.
If you like, consider "gearshift" as "a lever that selects a drive
mode" such that it covers the 2% manual transmission folks, and the
"PRND2L" handle for an automatic. Although some, newer automatics, do
have the "PRND2L" as "buttons on the dash" -- so in those cases there
isn't a gearshift lever at all...
rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 22:27:07 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
I had no idea automatic transmission had taken over vehicles worldwide.
I'm not so sure about "takeover worldwide". In the US market manual transmissions are but a tiny tiny sliver of the sales pie. Such that
most models outside of sports cars (and even most of the sports cars
offer automatics as an option) and trucks are automatic only.
So is that now prevalent in new cars even in places where automatic
transmissions were an unusual sight?
In the US, yes.
Of course ATs are different animals now than the 2 speed PowerSlides
from the '50s.
Indeed, with the exception of professional race car drivers, most
modern automatics will by far "outshift" an average joe's ability to manipulate the gears in a manual.
On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 11:31:00 -0000 (UTC)
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
I don't mind interfaces designed with those who have an eye for art,
for aesthetics, as long as its combined form with function. The
issue is people sacrifice function for form
This is key. I'll take usability over aesthetics any day, but the
nicest computing experiences are the ones that manage to juggle both.
Classic MacOS *almost* nailed this, if only it hadn't been so quick to dismiss the keyboard and the command line (and were designed from the
start for preemptive multitasking and memory protection...)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote at 22:34 this Monday (GMT):
This was the lesser of the two evils: at least you saw the whole picture,
undistorted, the way its makers intended. But the lower TV resolution did
lose a bunch of detail. And of course people complained about the
“unsightly” black bars ...
I truly don't get WHY it's even an issue for people. Is the screen not
being 100% filled that big of an issue?
If you like, consider "gearshift" as "a lever that selects a drive mode"
such that it covers the 2% manual transmission folks, and the "PRND2L"
handle for an automatic. Although some, newer automatics, do have the "PRND2L" as "buttons on the dash" -- so in those cases there isn't a gearshift lever at all...
On 2025-06-12, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:12:35 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
I used to have the wobbly windows and spinning cube. One update
stuffed it up, can't remember why ...
Wobbly windows always worked in KDE 4.0+, though the desktop cube
(actually prism) went away in 5.x. But it’s back!
Wobbly windows and Spinning cubes are out and muted colours, tiling and
flat design and manga backgrounds are in.
Classic MacOS *almost* nailed this, if only it hadn't been so quick
to dismiss the keyboard and the command line (and were designed from
the start for preemptive multitasking and memory protection...)
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 13:18:16 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some day I'll understand the fascination with car analogies...
The classic from the 1980s/1990s or so was “I wish a computer was as easy to use as driving a car”.
Thankfully nobody says it any more ...
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote at 00:14 this Wednesday
(GMT):
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 13:18:16 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some day I'll understand the fascination with car analogies...
The classic from the 1980s/1990s or so was “I wish a computer was as
easy to use as driving a car”.
Thankfully nobody says it any more ...
Driving a car isn't that easy.
On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 21:49:40 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
Classic MacOS *almost* nailed this, if only it hadn't been so quick
to dismiss the keyboard and the command line (and were designed from
the start for preemptive multitasking and memory protection...)
It took extra-cost hardware to do that stuff back then. That’s why
the Unix boxes cost so much more.
MMUs cost extra at the time, yes, but that changed pretty quickly - by
the time the 68030 rolled out in 1987 it was built in to the CPU (and
the Mac line adopted the '030 just a year later, with the Mac IIx.)
Unfortunately, as Andy Hertzfeld has written, there were a couple parts
of MacOS where they failed to "design ahead" for this; the transition
to 32-bit addressing was more complicated than it should've been as a
result, and I'm not sure if they ever did get memory protection going.
The memory model, while forward-thinking in some respects, also imposed
weird limitations on application heap size that never did get cleared
up 'til the OSX transition finally obsoleted the whole thing.
As for pre-emptive multitasking, all you need for *that* is a timer interrupt, which the Mac had from the very start.
The Classic MacOS GUI was purpose-built for the technology of its
day, but it grew increasingly complex to cope as the technology
evolved. Same is true of every GUI. They don’t scale, or evolve
gracefully. That’s why they keep needing to be redesigned.
And that’s why a platform where the GUI layer is fully modular and
replaceable, indeed optional (*cough* Linux, BSD *cough*), is the
best- placed to cope with ongoing technological evolution in
computing.
I can't fully agree with this. The GUI layer in an OS certainly ought
to be modular enough that the rest of the system doesn't depend on it,
or it becomes difficult to use in server environments (and tends to
limit scripting/automation.) Classic MacOS certainly fell short on that front.
But the *nix approach of treating it as a secondary (tertiary?) priority tends to lead to exactly what we saw in the *nix world, historically: a handful of disparate efforts that mostly tend to make it to "eh, good
enough" and never quite achieve *niceness.*
...but the downside to that is there's fundamentally no such thing as a *consistent* GUI experience in *nix-land ...
It's better to have the ability to choose than to not have it; but it's *nicer* to have and not *need* it.
The *nix approach to the GUI, sadly, achieves the first aim but never
does fulfill the second.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote at 00:14 this Wednesday
(GMT):
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 13:18:16 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some day I'll understand the fascination with car analogies...
The classic from the 1980s/1990s or so was “I wish a computer was as
easy to use as driving a car”.
Thankfully nobody says it any more ...
Driving a car isn't that easy.
On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 01:00:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote at 00:14 this Wednesday
(GMT):
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 13:18:16 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some day I'll understand the fascination with car analogies...
The classic from the 1980s/1990s or so was “I wish a computer was as
easy to use as driving a car”.
Thankfully nobody says it any more ...
Driving a car isn't that easy.
Even an AI can do it. Sort of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feTxamTHQAA
At around 9:30 there's a shot of a bunch of nerds looking like their
puppies died.
rbowman <[email protected]> wrote at 03:27 this Friday (GMT):
On Fri, 13 Jun 2025 01:00:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote at 00:14 this Wednesday
(GMT):
On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 13:18:16 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some day I'll understand the fascination with car analogies...
The classic from the 1980s/1990s or so was “I wish a computer was as >>>> easy to use as driving a car”.
Thankfully nobody says it any more ...
Driving a car isn't that easy.
Even an AI can do it. Sort of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feTxamTHQAA
At around 9:30 there's a shot of a bunch of nerds looking like their
puppies died.
AI cars are a bit interesting, but I still wouldn't trust one for a long time.
On 2025-06-11, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 11/06/2025 13:12, Borax Man wrote:
None of this fuzzy
flat design with muted pastels in a sea of low constrast grey
featureless tiles for me.
Amen to that.
I am sick of 'modern' web site fill-in boxes in the lightest of gray on
a white background placed in arbitrary locations - probably off screen
at any level of zoom that allows you to read the text.
https://contrastrebellion.com
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
I find it interesting how many old men here praise themselves for not
needing the advances that we have made since 1984.
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the sides.
I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just blank white >>space.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so
this results in just a mismatch.
On the other hand, THAT sounds like the only thing you ever use is a
web browser.
I like it to have three shells side by side without covering each
other. I like it to easily fit a shell at the side of the browser
displying the docs without covering.
On 2025-06-08, Marc Haber wrote:
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
I find it interesting how many old men here praise themselves for not
needing the advances that we have made since 1984.
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the sides. >>>I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just blank white >>>space.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so >>>this results in just a mismatch.
On the other hand, THAT sounds like the only thing you ever use is a
web browser.
I like it to have three shells side by side without covering each
other. I like it to easily fit a shell at the side of the browser
displying the docs without covering.
This - seeing it as an increase of horizontal space - only works if you
buy a display larger enough so that the height is identical to that of
the non-widescreen display. Otherwise, we're dealing with loss of
vertical space.
Nuno Silva <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-06-08, Marc Haber wrote:
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
I find it interesting how many old men here praise themselves for not
needing the advances that we have made since 1984.
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the sides. >>>>I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just blank white >>>>space.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so >>>>this results in just a mismatch.
On the other hand, THAT sounds like the only thing you ever use is a
web browser.
I like it to have three shells side by side without covering each
other. I like it to easily fit a shell at the side of the browser
displying the docs without covering.
This - seeing it as an increase of horizontal space - only works if you
buy a display larger enough so that the height is identical to that of
the non-widescreen display. Otherwise, we're dealing with loss of
vertical space.
Since the normal 4:3 ratio is 1280x1024 and Full HD is 1920x1080,
there is an increase in vertical space.
On 2025-06-08, Marc Haber wrote:
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
Widescreen always felt a gimmick to me.
I find it interesting how many old men here praise themselves for not
needing the advances that we have made since 1984.
For computers, it leads to wasted space.
Open up many webpages and notice how much blank space is on the sides. >>>I've just gone to news.com.au, and HALF the screen is just blank white >>>space.
Mobiles are portrait, heavily so, desktops widescreen, heavily so, so >>>this results in just a mismatch.
On the other hand, THAT sounds like the only thing you ever use is a
web browser.
I like it to have three shells side by side without covering each
other. I like it to easily fit a shell at the side of the browser
displying the docs without covering.
This - seeing it as an increase of horizontal space - only works if you
buy a display larger enough so that the height is identical to that of
the non-widescreen display. Otherwise, we're dealing with loss of
vertical space.
On 11/06/2025 13:12, Borax Man wrote:
None of this fuzzy flat design with muted pastels in a sea of low
constrast grey featureless tiles for me.
Amen to that.
I am sick of 'modern' web site fill-in boxes in the lightest of gray
on a white background placed in arbitrary locations - probably off
screen at any level of zoom that allows you to read the text.
On 2025-06-11, Charlie Gibbs <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-06-11, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 11/06/2025 13:12, Borax Man wrote:
None of this fuzzy
flat design with muted pastels in a sea of low constrast grey
featureless tiles for me.
Amen to that.
I am sick of 'modern' web site fill-in boxes in the lightest of gray on >>> a white background placed in arbitrary locations - probably off screen
at any level of zoom that allows you to read the text.
https://contrastrebellion.com
Just following the fad.
These low constrast designs are just baffling,
I mean, of course, physical size... if the displays have a similar
width, there is a loss in vertical space. Even if, having the same
width, the resolution is necessarily higher and allows more detail, it
still doesn't allow using height to display as much as in the 4:3
display, unless your eyesight allows for it.
Discipline is indeed what is lacking. I'm an advocate of leaving things
that are working alone. Not reinventing the wheel over and over.
Software developers say that if we didn't reinvent the wheel, we'd be
driving chariots with wooden wheels. The thing is, we don't reinvent
the wheel every 5 years!
Since the normal 4:3 ratio is 1280x1024 ...
I mean, of course, physical size... if the displays have a similar
width, there is a loss in vertical space. Even if, having the same
width, the resolution is necessarily higher and allows more detail, it
still doesn't allow using height to display as much as in the 4:3
display, unless your eyesight allows for it.
I have an old LCD monitor of that resolution. I think back in the 1990s, >19” CRT monitors at 1280×1024 were the popular good-high-end-but-not- >outrageously-priced choice for Unix workstations.
I think the 15-17-19 sizes were introduced with the flatter tubes of
the later 1990ies, my Panasonic 20 Inch tube was rounder than those.
On a tube, you could choose the resolution yourself.
There's no really *good* solution for adapting widescreen displays to productivity work.
*nix is more flexible than Windows, at least (MS's
display scaling has never, ever worked properly,)
On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 19:57:03 -0000 (UTC) Rich <[email protected]d>
wrote:
What those 'developers' overlooked is that we didn't 'reinvent the
wheel'.
A modern wheel is, functionally, largely the same as that chariot wheel
a thousand years ago.
(Shhh, you're not supposed to *say* it...!)
... the more you "scale up" high-resolution displays to account for
pixel density, the more physical eye-travel becomes an issue, which
is another annoying property of widescreen displays.
On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 09:52:35 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... the more you "scale up" high-resolution displays to account for
pixel density, the more physical eye-travel becomes an issue, which
is another annoying property of widescreen displays.
Gosh, you make it sound like our eyes weren’t designed to look at an
entire field of view. Do your eyes really have to physically travel from
one side of the screen to the other? I normally leave mine inside my head, and use the rotation muscles that they come with to orient them in a range
of directions.
On 6/16/25 16:24, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 09:52:35 -0700, John Ames wrote:
... the more you "scale up" high-resolution displays to account
for pixel density, the more physical eye-travel becomes an issue,
which is another annoying property of widescreen displays.
Gosh, you make it sound like our eyes weren’t designed to look at
an entire field of view. Do your eyes really have to physically
travel from one side of the screen to the other? I normally leave
mine inside my head, and use the rotation muscles that they come
with to orient them in a range of directions.
Those muscles like all others can tire. Mine tire with normal use
and I have only a 17 inch display.
I would go to a larger display and tile windows displays on it then
shifting but I got swindled out of my savings recently and am
economizing for the next year or so.
The fact that they're semi-constantly active does not mean that some
patterns don't tire them out more than usual. If you doubt this, I will cordially invite you to spend five or ten minutes shifting your gaze
from the far left to the far right and back - no moving your head,
that'd be cheating.
On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 22:09:55 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
Why not moving your head? Those are muscles that can get tired, too.
Because the point was about eye-travel.
On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:04:28 -0700, John Ames wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 22:09:55 -0000 (UTC) Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<[email protected]d> wrote:
Why not moving your head? Those are muscles that can get tired, too.
Because the point was about eye-travel.
The point was about looking a large monitor. Why would anyone not turn
their head if they had to?
And holding your head still for too long will tire your neck muscles,
too.
(Try it.)
More than once, I have come across ancient LCD monitors that had[snip]
particular trouble showing the colour red: any red text turned into an illegible fuzzy blob. Not sure why red seemed particularly prone to
this ...
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 11/06/2025 13:12, Borax Man wrote:
None of this fuzzy flat design with muted pastels in a sea of low
constrast grey featureless tiles for me.
Amen to that.
I am sick of 'modern' web site fill-in boxes in the lightest of gray
on a white background placed in arbitrary locations - probably off
screen at any level of zoom that allows you to read the text.
You can blame Jony Ive for that. He pushed the flat, colorless, light
grey on bright white design for the iphones, and of course most
'designers' are also Apple Fanboi's at the same time, so they "must
copy apple" in the look they create everywhere else.
Some have gone so far that the "boxes" have no color or borders at all,
and the only way to discover there is in fact a form field on screen at
that spot is to click the area with the mouse and see if the keyboard insertion cursor appears in the whitespace.
On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:04:28 -0700, John Ames wrote:
On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 22:09:55 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
Why not moving your head? Those are muscles that can get tired, too.
Because the point was about eye-travel.
The point was about looking a large monitor. Why would anyone not turn
their head if they had to?
And holding your head still for too long will tire your neck muscles, too. (Try it.)
Meanwhile, the Unix world for the most part* never even got that far;
early X desktops were little more than window managers for arranging terminals, and the handful of Xlib/Motif alternatives to Mac/Windows
GUI components were ugly and clunky by comparison. (Well, xfe is a more useful file manager than pre-95 Explorer, but that's not saying much.)
And when the vendors decided to standardize, the result was CDE, which
was sort of the metaphorical equivalent of a Trabant, without the charm.
* (IRIX is pretty nearly the sole exception, as its bread & butter was
in the upper end of digital art & multimedia applications ...
NeXTSTEP was also a fairly valiant attempt, but God help me do I hate
Miller columns; and the segregation of GUI-land entities from under-
lying *nix ones that drives me up the wall with OSX began at NeXT.
And then the whole damn personal-computer industry got sidetracked into
an ugly and counterproductive obsession with skeumorphism in the late
'90s ...
So, well...no, there is no specific example I can point to and go
"there, *that!*" - if there was, I'd be using it. The closest real-life approximation I can cite is Mac System 7/7.5 - the most pleasant and consistent GUI environment I've ever encountered - but even that has
its issues, as previously noted. Other systems exhibit good ideas of
their own (I like BeOS's treatment of tabs as an integral part of the
desktop experience, though the implementation could be less clunky,) but "niceness" is mostly something glimpsed in frustrating little twinkles
that catch the attention and stir the heart amid a present day that is,
by and large, a great oceanic garbage heap of churning not-particularly- niceness.
But I *don't* believe that it's some unachievable Platonic ideal; every problem I have with extant systems seems very much like a solvable one,
if only they weren't too married to legacy considerations to adopt a solution. If I had infinite time and/or no hobbies that were more
important to me, I suppose I could try to create such a thing myself -
but I am, tragically, a mortal with way too much on my plate as it is.
What do you think about Genera (the Symbolics Lisp Machine OS)? I
think it had a very good GUI that combined CLI and GUI in a
symbiotic way.
The larger point, however, was that compared to classic MacOS or even
Win3.x, CDE was clunky and awkward and made no obvious case for itself.
On Sat, 21 Jun 2025 07:12:21 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
But SGI were precisely an example of the sort of “flashy &
computationally expensive to render” thing you were criticizing, were
they not? They did a full animated 3D desktop, with 3D-rendered icons
flying around all over the place, just because they could.
As a novelty, yes (3D hardware was their big thing, what can you say.)
But I don't think anybody seriously meant that to be more than a proof- of-concept - the normal IRIX desktop environment had nothing to do with
it, being a nicely-implemented but entirely conventional WIMP GUI based around a modified mwm: http://toastytech.com/guis/irix.html
What I'm referring to is the way that NeXTSTEP/OSX is just sort of this entirely different thing plopped on top of an underlying *nix system.
Sure, BSD-land is *there* and files are more or less files (assuming
that the formats are standard,) but there's little commonality between
them: GUI-land applications are written in a different language with a different set of APIs and mostly don't interact with BSD-land stuff at
all beyond the under-the-hood stuff that implements the XYZ Kit/Cocoa
API layer. It's neither fish nor fowl.
And history has proven that *nix approach to be the right way to do
things.
I wouldn't agree that it has, at least wrt. integration of a GUI layer
into operating-system design.
Certainly it *works,* but it could be done much better.
So, what Desktop Environment/Window Manager do you use, and why? Also,
what do you think your choice of environment has to offer that isn't
found, or rarely found in others?
On Fri, 6 Jun 2025 11:39:41 -0000 (UTC)
Borax Man <[email protected]> wrote:
I was a GNOME user back in the GNOME 1 days, but lost interest a bit
with GNOME 2 and totally with GNOME 3.
I was pretty comfortable with GNOME 2 back when I first made the jump
from XP; GNOME 3 was an absolute slap in the face, and after a couple
days of trying to make it less awful I ragequit and never looked back.
If there's one thing I have absolutely no patience for, it's card-
carrying Design Divas who think I exist to be their audience.
John Ames <[email protected]> wrote:
If there's one thing I have absolutely no patience for, it's card-
carrying Design Divas who think I exist to be their audience.
+100
On Sat, 28 Jun 2025 14:44:10 GMT, JCJ wrote:
John Ames <[email protected]> wrote:
If there's one thing I have absolutely no patience for, it's card-
carrying Design Divas who think I exist to be their audience.
+100
People make such a big deal about leaving GNOME, don’t they? As though it’s so hard to do. Like leaving an abusive partner, or something.
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as it
doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
I'm not talking about implementation details on the kernel level; I'm
talking about the way that nothing in GUI-land interacts meaningfully
with the traditional *nix toolset, and vice versa. It's a two-headed dog
sort of thing, only one dog is written in Objective-C and Swift.
On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 14:10:23 -0700, John Ames wrote:
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as
it doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
Previously you seemed to have an objection to such things existing
in the first place. So that’s progress, at least.
On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 14:10:23 -0700, John Ames wrote:
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as it
doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
Previously you seemed to have an objection to such things existing in
the first place. So that’s progress, at least.
Most of us don't object to these things existing.
We just object to being forced to use them.
On Wed, 02 Jul 2025 01:13:07 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 14:10:23 -0700, John Ames wrote:
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as it
doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
Previously you seemed to have an objection to such things existing in
the first place. So that’s progress, at least.
Most of us don't object to these things existing.
We just object to being forced to use them.
Thankfully, Free Software/Open Source is all about choice.
On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 14:10:23 -0700, John Ames wrote:
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as
it doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
Previously you seemed to have an objection to such things existing
in the first place. So that’s progress, at least.
Most of us don't object to these things existing.
We just object to being forced to use them.
On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Wed, 02 Jul 2025 01:13:07 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jul 2025 14:10:23 -0700, John Ames wrote:
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as it
doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
Previously you seemed to have an objection to such things existing in
the first place. So that’s progress, at least.
Most of us don't object to these things existing.
We just object to being forced to use them.
Thankfully, Free Software/Open Source is all about choice.
(... unless/until it involves a grammatical symbol in Freedesktop
stuff?)
Do you realize how close this can be to Microsoft claiming they don't
have a monopoly because there are other systems? In practice, that
there's that choice in some corner doesn't change in any way the forces
of peer-pressure and vendor-locking arising from Microsoft and friends, especially if in practice you're still forced to do things their way.
That's what it sounds like when you try to dismiss criticism of forcing something in FLOSS software with "but there's choice".
Two examples of software which give the user true freedom, are Emacs and FVWM. FVWM from my experience does not impose any vision on the user,
but rather, allows the user to configure it as they see fit, and
provides the documentation to do so. The user is empowered.
Regarding Emacs, Protesilaos Stavrou says it best in this video. This
is a good description of Emacs, but also about software freedom, taking
a different view than the usual "freedom to copy and modify" argument
used by most Free Software advcates.
https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2022-03-22-libreplanet-emacs-living-freedom/
Anyone who truly does respect freedom, and I don't think Lawrence comes across as such, knows that having a choice is not enough, as that always exists, but that there are options, viable paths where people can
exercise their freedom of choice on a somewhat equal footing.
The licence alone doesn't convey freedom, it is the autonomy and agency
the software gives the user. Does the software allow the user to
configure it, to piece it together with other software?
Does it push the developers vision, or does it give the user the
freedom to create their vision?
On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Thankfully, Free Software/Open Source is all about choice.
Do you realize how close this can be to Microsoft claiming they don't
have a monopoly because there are other systems?
On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 11:56:11 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
Anyone who truly does respect freedom, and I don't think Lawrence comes
across as such, knows that having a choice is not enough, as that always
exists, but that there are options, viable paths where people can
exercise their freedom of choice on a somewhat equal footing.
In other words, it’s only “freedom” if you can run to someone who will hold your hand and tell you what choice to make?
The licence alone doesn't convey freedom, it is the autonomy and agency
the software gives the user. Does the software allow the user to
configure it, to piece it together with other software?
The *nix philosophy is “mechanism, not policy”. It lets you make your own choices, it doesn’t dictate choices to you. Free software does indeed follow this philosophy. But then you get people complaining that
exercising that choice is too hard, because it takes intellectual effort
to understand the choices available to you.
Does it push the developers vision, or does it give the user the
freedom to create their vision?
“Create their vision” is what the PR folk working for proprietary companies like to say, isn’t it: you can “create your vision” with Adobe
products, but you have to use them the Adobe way. Why would you want to do anything different? We know best, just give us your money and stop trying
to think for yourself.
you stop even pretending to engage with the argument
As I said in another thread, there was a coincidence that Free Software
was interlinked with the Unix philosophy because of people who has
shared interest in both. The GNU project is the core example, as is the Linux kernel.
On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 00:04:12 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as it
doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
Previously you seemed to have an objection to such things existing in
the first place. So that’s progress, at least.
What I said, specifically, was that I don't like needless glitz in UI
design and it's a source of consternation to me when such things can't
be turned off.
On Thu, 3 Jul 2025 13:04:50 -0700, John Ames wrote:
On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 00:04:12 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
I don't care *what* people offer as a novelty geegaw as long as it
doesn't get in the way of the regular workflow.
Previously you seemed to have an objection to such things existing in
the first place. So that’s progress, at least.
What I said, specifically, was that I don't like needless glitz in UI
design and it's a source of consternation to me when such things can't
be turned off.
But it can always be turned off. On *nix systems, the GUI is a separate, modular, replaceable layer, not inextricably bound into the OS kernel.
On 06 Jun 2025 19:37:52 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
And I'd say that Gonme is the Window Manager which looks the most like a
smartphone. The younger users having be raised with smartphone before
having used computer, maybe they are more comfortable with Gnome for
that reason.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Since Microsoft explicitly tried to come up with a
common UI across desktop and mobile devices with Windows 8, only to suffer massive pushback from annoyed users. So it seems GNOME has succeeded where Microsoft has failed?
The installation of Linux today is quite different to when I first
installed it.
Many things are easier, but one thing I found was that the option to
install different software was less obvious. My first Linux
installation gave me a choice to install GNOME and KDE and other Window Managers. The choice was there upfront. I chose GNOME as it was
selected, and KDE wasn't and I didn't see the point in installing a
second, initially.
It isn't much easier today.
Now some distros have spins, so it appears that if you want a
different DE, then you need to download an entirely different
installation image.
The choice has just been moved from within the installer to one that
is made before installation,
The "spins" came with Ubuntu, and even on a normal Ubuntu I'd expect
KDE Plasma to show up in the login menu after an "apt install
kde-standard".
As long with the ones that let CompSci™ near operating systems...
Software engineering is not an exercise in 'self expression'.
It's not Science, its not Art, its DISCIPLINE.
Boring test and test again unto there ARE NO BUGS.
(... unless/until it involves a grammatical symbol in Freedesktop
stuff?)
Do you realize how close this can be to Microsoft claiming they don't
have a monopoly because there are other systems? In practice, that
there's that choice in some corner doesn't change in any way the forces
of peer-pressure and vendor-locking arising from Microsoft and friends, especially if in practice you're still forced to do things their way.
That's what it sounds like when you try to dismiss criticism of forcing something in FLOSS software with "but there's choice".
I don't know when you installed it for the first time, so I can't speak
about it. But When I installed it for the first time in 1995, there was
only slackware available for me and it was way more difficult than
today.
Even a distro like archlinux, which is claim to be difficult to install,
is very easy compared with the issues I had at the time. I had no
Internet help, only lot of HOWTO and README files.
On 2025-07-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
But it can always be turned off. On *nix systems, the GUI is a
separate, modular, replaceable layer, not inextricably bound into the
OS kernel.
In practice, what people tend to want when they complain about that is
the ability to turn it off without having to abandon what they're using.
In theory, I could boot this computer straight into some implementation
of Pong. Does that mean I can't complain about some issue I might find
e.g. in Linux or in the bootloader?
Le 12-06-2025, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> a écrit :
As long with the ones that let CompSci™ near operating systems...
Yes, you put AI and it does the job better by itself.
Software engineering is not an exercise in 'self expression'.
It's beautiful. It's plain wrong, but you could compete with CtrlAltDel
with poetry.
It's not Science, its not Art, its DISCIPLINE.
Bis: nonsense but beautiful.
Boring test and test again unto there ARE NO BUGS.
Yes, so you never use anything because their remains always some bug and
you wait till there's no more need than bug to release it. Good idea.
And so the warNot in the name of freedom, in the name of it being a huge amount of
against systemd started in the name of freedom.
On Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:21:01 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-07-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
But it can always be turned off. On *nix systems, the GUI is a
separate, modular, replaceable layer, not inextricably bound into the
OS kernel.
In practice, what people tend to want when they complain about that is
the ability to turn it off without having to abandon what they're using.
You mean, run the same apps under a different GUI? That works on Linux
just fine.
In theory, I could boot this computer straight into some implementation
of Pong. Does that mean I can't complain about some issue I might find
e.g. in Linux or in the bootloader?
If you are happier with Pong, by all means stick with that. Leave Linux
(and its bootloaders) to those who are able to get more use out of it.
Raymond and Parens were both involved in the founding of OSI. There are similarities to the FSF, without Stallman's limitations on free.
On Wed, 02 Jul 2025 09:25:57 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-07-02, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
Thankfully, Free Software/Open Source is all about choice.
Do you realize how close this can be to Microsoft claiming they don't
have a monopoly because there are other systems?
Really?? Have you really sunk down to the point where you are accusing
Open Source of having some kind of monopoly on computing? Do you even
listen to yourself saying that? Big Bad Open Source is now forcing you to
do things you don’t want to do?
Why not run back to Mama Microsoft and she will kiss it and make it all better for you. You seem to be happier there, with someone to tell you
what to do.
I'm not accusing FLOSS of some monopoly, I'm accusing *you* of
describing as "choice" something which isn't really choice in practice,
or that doesn't really address the issue.
Let me explain it again:
- Somebody complains because FLOSS DE or GUI toolkit xyz does not allow
turning off feature abc.
- You say that there is choice because that person can use another
DE, another GUI toolkit or nothing at all.
- The person still cannot choose to do what they want in that DE or GUI
toolkit.
And compare it to:
- Microsoft is accused in court of having a monopoly, and of taking
advantage of it to push other products of theirs.
- Microsoft claims they do not have a monopoly because Linux-based
systems exist.
- Users are still faced with a forced "choice" of Microsoft because of
mandated file formats, because of procedures in public services,
because of lack of website compatibility, because of shady OEM deals,
etc, etc.
Those situations are quite similar and that is what I'm alluding to.
Le 05-07-2025, Nuno Silva <[email protected]d> a écrit :
I'm not accusing FLOSS of some monopoly, I'm accusing *you* of
describing as "choice" something which isn't really choice in practice,
or that doesn't really address the issue.
Let me explain it again:
- Somebody complains because FLOSS DE or GUI toolkit xyz does not allow
turning off feature abc.
- You say that there is choice because that person can use another
DE, another GUI toolkit or nothing at all.
- The person still cannot choose to do what they want in that DE or GUI
toolkit.
And compare it to:
- Microsoft is accused in court of having a monopoly, and of taking
advantage of it to push other products of theirs.
- Microsoft claims they do not have a monopoly because Linux-based
systems exist.
- Users are still faced with a forced "choice" of Microsoft because of
mandated file formats, because of procedures in public services,
because of lack of website compatibility, because of shady OEM deals,
etc, etc.
Those situations are quite similar and that is what I'm alluding to.
No, the situation is absolutely not similar. The WM/DE provided by
default by a distro is only a default. It's very easy to switch from
DE/WM to another DE/WM and back to the first one.
For Windows, it's not just a default. On a modern computer, it can be
almost impossible to remove Windows and put Linux on it. It's locked by Microsoft, so on one owns computer claiming that Linux exist as an alternative is just a lie.
Le 05-07-2025, Nuno Silva <[email protected]d> a écrit :[...]
I'm not accusing FLOSS of some monopoly, I'm accusing *you* of
describing as "choice" something which isn't really choice in practice,
or that doesn't really address the issue.
Let me explain it again:
- Somebody complains because FLOSS DE or GUI toolkit xyz does not allow
turning off feature abc.
- You say that there is choice because that person can use another
DE, another GUI toolkit or nothing at all.
- The person still cannot choose to do what they want in that DE or GUI
toolkit.
No, the situation is absolutely not similar. The WM/DE provided by
default by a distro is only a default. It's very easy to switch from
DE/WM to another DE/WM and back to the first one.
On 05/07/2025 11:17, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
For Windows, it's not just a default. On a modern computer, it can be
almost impossible to remove Windows and put Linux on it. It's locked
by Microsoft, so on one owns computer claiming that Linux exist as an
alternative is just a lie.
I have successfully erased it from all my machines.
AS long as you can get to BIOS settings to restore sanity fir a linux
install it's a piece of cake.
On 05/07/2025 16:07, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to ‘lock’ >> Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to create a
device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t normally
it.
Its all about BIOS options IME
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to ‘lock’ Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to create a
device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t normally
it.
On 04 Jul 2025 21:12:17 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
I don't know when you installed it for the first time, so I can't speak
about it. But When I installed it for the first time in 1995, there was
only slackware available for me and it was way more difficult than
today.
Even a distro like archlinux, which is claim to be difficult to install,
is very easy compared with the issues I had at the time. I had no
Internet help, only lot of HOWTO and README files.
iirc, the first step with Slackware was downloading and burning a slew of diskettes, 40 odd iirc if you wanted a development environment with gcc
and the buildtools.
For Windows, it's not just a default. On a modern computer, it can be
almost impossible to remove Windows and put Linux on it. It's locked by Microsoft, so on one owns computer claiming that Linux exist as an alternative is just a lie.
On 2025-07-03, rbowman wrote:
Raymond and Parens were both involved in the founding of OSI. There are
similarities to the FSF, without Stallman's limitations on free.
Look, wording matters, and "limitations" is really subjective here and
the key part of the debate, what you describe as "limitations" are, to
others "protections".
And IIRC wasn't there also some red scare involved, in which some saw
"open source" as needed because companies might be scared by something
that for some reason "looks [or sounds] communist"?
(Then there's the Microsoft level of describing these protections as "cancer", when what they're criticizing is actually *Copyright*, not the GPL.)
On 05/07/2025 11:17, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
I have successfully erased it from all my machines.
For Windows, it's not just a default. On a modern computer, it can be
almost impossible to remove Windows and put Linux on it. It's locked by
Microsoft, so on one owns computer claiming that Linux exist as an
alternative is just a lie.
AS long as you can get to BIOS settings to restore sanity fir a linux
install it's a piece of cake.
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> writes:
On 05/07/2025 16:07, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to ‘lock’ >>> Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to create a
device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t normally
it.
Its all about BIOS options IME
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
I’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
On 05 Jul 2025 10:17:24 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
For Windows, it's not just a default. On a modern computer, it can be
almost impossible to remove Windows and put Linux on it. It's locked by
Microsoft, so on one owns computer claiming that Linux exist as an
alternative is just a lie.
With the exception of the Raspberry pi 5 all my Linux boxes started life
with Windows. I had no problem installing Linux. I haven't done a dual
boot in a long time and prefer to go scorched earth on windows.
On 7/5/25 08:25, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> writes:
Its all about BIOS options IMEI’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
Those distributions which have signed kernels are still
obstructive since many GNU/Linux programs are not signed and so
upgrades essential to secure operations cannot be done.
In aircraft design, if there is a bug, the fleet may well be grounded
till its foxed.
You can only do what you can do. But if software were simply revised to
clear out bugs it would be a lot more stable than adding superflous
features.
Bobbie Sellers <[email protected]> writes:
On 7/5/25 08:25, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> writes:
Its all about BIOS options IMEI’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
Those distributions which have signed kernels are still
obstructive since many GNU/Linux programs are not signed and so
upgrades essential to secure operations cannot be done.
What specifically do you think doesn’t work? I have yet to observe any problems with upgrades.
On 2025-07-05, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
In aircraft design, if there is a bug, the fleet may well be grounded
till its foxed.
You can only do what you can do. But if software were simply revised to
clear out bugs it would be a lot more stable than adding superflous
features.
Yes, but then it wouldn't be shiny, let alone fashionable.
In aircraft design, the goal is to not kill anybody.
In consumer software, the goal is to sell as many copies
as possible, as often as possible. If there are bugs,
you sell them a bug fix. If the bug fix introduces more
bugs, you sell them another bug fix. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If you must use Windows maintain a separate computer. When
so-called Dual-Boot is used and Windows gets a Kernel update which will arrive without any notification it will mess up the UEFI boot patition
and
erase your Linux choice.
The proper way to install Linux on a Windows computer whether ofnot
you
want to keep Windows running is to use the Windows Partitioning Tool in
the section on doing operations on the disk and either remove the
Windows completely or reduce it to as small a partition as you think you
will need for it to accommodate your needs. Then use GPartEd either on
your install media or as a separate live booting program to create the partitions you will need or which you want to have on your Linux installation.
On Sat, 5 Jul 2025 13:44:16 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The proper way to install Linux on a Windows computer whether ofnot
you
want to keep Windows running is to use the Windows Partitioning Tool in
the section on doing operations on the disk and either remove the
Windows completely or reduce it to as small a partition as you think you
will need for it to accommodate your needs. Then use GPartEd either on
your install media or as a separate live booting program to create the
partitions you will need or which you want to have on your Linux
installation.
During the Linux installation I just select the 'you own the drive. Do whatever you want'.
Sometimes that works out well but often it does not. Somedistributions
take over the drive as a single partition which many find
disadvantageous in
the long run. For example will your backup tools be able to handle
the whole disk? I can back up my "/" root partition on a smaller
partition but am finding problems with my "/home" back up of
self-created data to other drives.
Some distributions take over the drive as a single partition which
many find disadvantageous in the long run.
But if software were simply revised to clear out bugs it would be a
lot more stable than adding superflous features.
Not in the name of freedom, in the name of it being a huge amount of bloatware that achieved almost nothing of value and caused everyone else
to have to rewrite their packages to conform to it.
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> writes:
On 05/07/2025 16:07, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to ‘lock’ >>> Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to create a
device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t normally
it.
Its all about BIOS options IME
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
I’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
On Sat, 5 Jul 2025 09:45:37 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Not in the name of freedom, in the name of it being a huge amount of
bloatware that achieved almost nothing of value and caused everyone else
to have to rewrite their packages to conform to it.
Nobody forces anybody to use systemd. Like anything in Open Source, it’s a matter of choice.
systemd Myth number 19: systemd forces you to do something.
<https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html>
prefer to go scorched earth on windows.Amen
Le 05-07-2025, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> a écrit :
On 05/07/2025 11:17, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
I have successfully erased it from all my machines.
For Windows, it's not just a default. On a modern computer, it can be
almost impossible to remove Windows and put Linux on it. It's locked by
Microsoft, so on one owns computer claiming that Linux exist as an
alternative is just a lie.
Good for you. Some people are not so lucky.
AS long as you can get to BIOS settings to restore sanity fir a linux
install it's a piece of cake.
No. On some computers, it can be easy, on others (mostly on laptops) it
can be very difficult. Sometime to be able to access the UEFI you have
to start Windows and access it from Windows. In the end, every computer
I saw has been able to run Linux (not always in dual boot with Windows
and Windows had to be removed). But it can be far from the piece of cake
you claim and no beginner could be able to do it.
On 05/07/2025 16:25, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> writes:Ah. That may well be. My last total install that needed that was some
On 05/07/2025 16:07, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to ‘lock’ >>>> Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to create a
device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t normally >>>> it.
Its all about BIOS options IME
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
I’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
time ago...
On Sat, 5 Jul 2025 09:45:37 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Not in the name of freedom, in the name of it being a huge amount of
bloatware that achieved almost nothing of value and caused everyone else
to have to rewrite their packages to conform to it.
Nobody forces anybody to use systemd. Like anything in Open Source, it’s a matter of choice.
systemd Myth number 19: systemd forces you to do something.
<https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html>
Le 06-07-2025, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> a écrit :
On 05/07/2025 16:25, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> writes:Ah. That may well be. My last total install that needed that was some
On 05/07/2025 16:07, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to ‘lock’
Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to create a >>>>> device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t normally >>>>> it.
Its all about BIOS options IME
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
I’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
time ago...
Yes, that's why I said "on modern computers". By that I mean mostly
laptop and computers sold as is. I don't mean computers assemble by the
end user. When someone comes with a very old computer, to old to run
Windows on it anymore, it's a piece of cake to install Linux on it. But
with recent computers, it can be really tricky. Mostly depending on the brands. With a thinkpad, it's easy, with most of what's sold in big
sellers stores, not so much.
Le 06-07-2025, The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> a écrit :
On 05/07/2025 16:25, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> writes:Ah. That may well be. My last total install that needed that was some
On 05/07/2025 16:07, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to ‘lock’
Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to create a >>>>> device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t normally >>>>> it.
Its all about BIOS options IME
That is taking a freshly delivered WinBox, I needed to modify BIOS to
some different settings to get Linux to boot.
Enable UEFI and disable secure boot.
I’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
time ago...
Yes, that's why I said "on modern computers". By that I mean mostly
laptop and computers sold as is. I don't mean computers assemble by the
end user. When someone comes with a very old computer, to old to run
Windows on it anymore, it's a piece of cake to install Linux on it. But
with recent computers, it can be really tricky. Mostly depending on the brands. With a thinkpad, it's easy, with most of what's sold in big
sellers stores, not so much.
On 2025-07-06, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Sat, 5 Jul 2025 09:45:37 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Not in the name of freedom, in the name of it being a huge amount of
bloatware that achieved almost nothing of value and caused everyone
else to have to rewrite their packages to conform to it.
Nobody forces anybody to use systemd. Like anything in Open Source,
it’s a matter of choice.
systemd Myth number 19: systemd forces you to do something.
These two paragraphs are about different things, even. The first is
about systemd being *forced*, the other is about systemd *forcing*.
I’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
The key part of my criticism is that "switch [...] to *another*" is not
the kind of choice the user is looking for.
On 7/5/25 13:59, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
What specifically do you think doesn’t work?
I am happy for your experience. I hope it continues.
Richard Kettlewell wrote:
I’ve generally not needed to disable secure boot - most Linux
distributions have had signed kernels for a long time now.
It’s not clear what the point of Secure Boot is any more. Microsoft
was supposed to be able to revoke signing keys for compromised
software, but it turns out this causes too many problems, so it is
often not done. If holes cannot be patched, then why bother with all
the rigmarole?
There was a thread on the topic 'round here some months ago - but itBoth my laptop and my desktop are ex corporate HP PCs.
wasn't MS, but rather HP that has taken to locking down at least their consumer PCs such that it's extremely difficult (if not literally
impossible) to install a non-OEM OS on it. (They've taken similar
measures on the hardware end, too - proprietary PSUs that you can't
replace with a standard part, as we learned the hard way with our receptionist's PC a couple years back.) Even on Windows, they're the
worst of the worst with loading in crapware that they pull every
available trick to reinstall when you remove it.
Lawrence: "Free Software is all about choice!"
Also Lawrence: "Love it or leave it!"
Richard Kettlewell <[email protected]d> wrote:
I was wondering what mechanism Stephane thinks Microsoft use to
‘lock’ Windows onto a computer. While it’s certainly possible to
create a device that resists unauthorized upgrades, modern PCs aren’t
normally it.
There was a thread on the topic 'round here some months ago - but it
wasn't MS, but rather HP that has taken to locking down at least their consumer PCs such that it's extremely difficult (if not literally
impossible) to install a non-OEM OS on it.
On Mon, 7 Jul 2025 18:26:37 +0100 The Natural Philosopher <[email protected]d> wrote:
Both my laptop and my desktop are ex corporate HP PCs.
Both run Mint no problem
Yeah - I don't know when it started or whether "business-line" products
are affected, just what I've seen in the field with small businesses
that invariably buy the cheapest-of-the-cheap off the shelf at Wal-Mart
(and are, invariably, shocked when it's under-specced and an absolute
dog; must be a problem with our software!)
... but in general revocation lists are awkward things to manage at
best.
On 2025-07-05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:21:01 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-07-04, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
But it can always be turned off. On *nix systems, the GUI is a
separate, modular, replaceable layer, not inextricably bound into the
OS kernel.
In practice, what people tend to want when they complain about that is
the ability to turn it off without having to abandon what they're
using.
You mean, run the same apps under a different GUI? That works on Linux
just fine.
No, under the same GUI but with the annoying bits turned off.
In theory, I could boot this computer straight into some
implementation of Pong. Does that mean I can't complain about some
issue I might find e.g. in Linux or in the bootloader?
If you are happier with Pong, by all means stick with that. Leave Linux
(and its bootloaders) to those who are able to get more use out of it.
That was one interesting way to completely miss the point :-P
On Fri, 4 Jul 2025 23:29:19 -0000 (UTC) Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<[email protected]d> wrote:
If you are happier with Pong, by all means stick with that. Leave Linux
(and its bootloaders) to those who are able to get more use out of it.
Lawrence: "Free Software is all about choice!"
Also Lawrence: "Love it or leave it!"
- Somebody complains because FLOSS DE or GUI toolkit xyz does not allow
turning off feature abc.
- You say that there is choice because that person can use another
DE, another GUI toolkit or nothing at all.
- The person still cannot choose to do what they want in that DE or GUI
toolkit.
- Users are still faced with a forced "choice" of Microsoft because of
mandated file formats, because of procedures in public services,
because of lack of website compatibility, because of shady OEM deals,
etc, etc.
Those situations are quite similar and that is what I'm alluding to.
Why not run back to Mama Microsoft and she will kiss it and make it all
better for you. You seem to be happier there, with someone to tell you
what to do.
...
As I said in another thread, there was a coincidence that Free Software
was interlinked with the Unix philosophy because of people who has
shared interest in both. The GNU project is the core example, as is the Linux kernel.
And IIRC wasn't there also some red scare involved, in which some saw
"open source" as needed because companies might be scared by something
that for some reason "looks [or sounds] communist"?
- Users are still faced with a forced "choice" of Microsoft because of
mandated file formats, because of procedures in public services,
because of lack of website compatibility, because of shady OEM deals,
etc, etc.
On Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:32:20 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
And IIRC wasn't there also some red scare involved, in which some saw
"open source" as needed because companies might be scared by something
that for some reason "looks [or sounds] communist"?
Does this explain your attempts to portray Free Software as somehow restrictive?
On 2025-07-10, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:32:20 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
And IIRC wasn't there also some red scare involved, in which some saw
"open source" as needed because companies might be scared by something
that for some reason "looks [or sounds] communist"?
Does this explain your attempts to portray Free Software as somehow
restrictive?
No, that is arising out of a misinterpretation on your side. You keep dismissing characterizations of projects as not offering choice just
because the system is FLOSS and does tend to have more than one program
of the same type.
On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:50:59 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-07-10, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:32:20 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
And IIRC wasn't there also some red scare involved, in which some saw
"open source" as needed because companies might be scared by something >>>> that for some reason "looks [or sounds] communist"?
Does this explain your attempts to portray Free Software as somehow
restrictive?
No, that is arising out of a misinterpretation on your side. You keep
dismissing characterizations of projects as not offering choice just
because the system is FLOSS and does tend to have more than one program
of the same type.
So having a choice of different applications (and different ways of using them) is interpreted by you as “not offering choice”, and you try to claim
that *I* am the one guilty of “misinterpretation”?
On 2025-07-10, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:50:59 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2025-07-10, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:32:20 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
And IIRC wasn't there also some red scare involved, in which some saw >>>>> "open source" as needed because companies might be scared by something >>>>> that for some reason "looks [or sounds] communist"?
Does this explain your attempts to portray Free Software as somehow
restrictive?
No, that is arising out of a misinterpretation on your side. You keep
dismissing characterizations of projects as not offering choice just
because the system is FLOSS and does tend to have more than one program
of the same type.
So having a choice of different applications (and different ways of using
them) is interpreted by you as “not offering choice”, and you try to claim
that *I* am the one guilty of “misinterpretation”?
It is irrelevant if the issue is the applications themselves not
offering choice, or a specific choice.
On 7/6/25 03:36, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
Yes, that's why I said "on modern computers". By that I mean mostly
laptop and computers sold as is. I don't mean computers assemble by the
end user. When someone comes with a very old computer, to old to run
Windows on it anymore, it's a piece of cake to install Linux on it. But
with recent computers, it can be really tricky. Mostly depending on the
brands. With a thinkpad, it's easy, with most of what's sold in big
sellers stores, not so much.
Well is 2019 a new computer?
I go mine refurbished from Walmart
I don't know Walmart. I heard about it, of course, but it's not enough
for me to have an idea about its political vision. I don't know if they
try to help Linux on computers or not.
On 11 Jul 2025 19:03:31 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
I don't know Walmart. I heard about it, of course, but it's not enough
for me to have an idea about its political vision. I don't know if they
try to help Linux on computers or not.
Its political vision is making money. Known in some circles as ChinaMart
it does its part in keeping the American consumers relatively happy by offering inexpensive goods of uncertain quality. It's my local store of
last resort if I can't find an item before I order it from Amazon. It
tends to drive out local businesses and contributed to the demise of some chains like Sears, KMart, and ShopKo.
For layI second that.
people, I mean. For companies, HP provide a completely different sort of computers which is more friendly with Linux.
Le 06-07-2025, Bobbie Sellers <[email protected]> a écrit :
On 7/6/25 03:36, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
Yes, that's why I said "on modern computers". By that I mean mostly
laptop and computers sold as is. I don't mean computers assemble by the
end user. When someone comes with a very old computer, to old to run
Windows on it anymore, it's a piece of cake to install Linux on it. But
with recent computers, it can be really tricky. Mostly depending on the
brands. With a thinkpad, it's easy, with most of what's sold in big
sellers stores, not so much.
Well is 2019 a new computer?
From what I see, it's a little bit before computers stated to provide a
more and more difficult way to remove Windows.
I go mine refurbished from Walmart
I don't know Walmart. I heard about it, of course, but it's not enough
for me to have an idea about its political vision. I don't know if they
try to help Linux on computers or not.
From what I see, I'd say Dell is not the worst. HP is far worse. For lay people, I mean. For companies, HP provide a completely different sort of computers which is more friendly with Linux.
On 11 Jul 2025 19:03:31 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
I don't know Walmart. I heard about it, of course, but it's not enough
for me to have an idea about its political vision. I don't know if they
try to help Linux on computers or not.
Its political vision is making money. Known in some circles as ChinaMart
it does its part in keeping the American consumers relatively happy by offering inexpensive goods of uncertain quality. It's my local store of
last resort if I can't find an item before I order it from Amazon. It
tends to drive out local businesses and contributed to the demise of some chains like Sears, KMart, and ShopKo.
It is known for expecting the government to pick up the slack to keep its underpaid 'associates' alive with supplemental monies and medical care.
My nephew could give a more detailed rant. He will sit in the car ratherI have no car. I travel by Public Transit or a friend's car once a week or so.
than going into a Walmart when family members go there.
Yes that is true. I do not like that but I like Amazon's behavior
less.>
On Sat, 12 Jul 2025 14:30:02 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Yes that is true. I do not like that but I like Amazon's behavior
less.>
Amazon is sort of the business I love to hate... Over the past 30 years
we've gotten more big box stores. Prior to that if you wanted anything out
of the ordinary you drove to Spokane. Even with them the selection is
limited in a small (100,000+) market. RatShack wasn't much but not there
is no source for electronics. I prefer New Balance shoes in non-garish
colors and I've sometimes failed to find any in my size. Hello Amazon!
Back around 2000 when Amazon was mostly books and CDs I had very mixed success, particularly with the CDs. They often advertised items the didn't have and couldn't get so weeks would pass before they canceled the order.
At that time I mostly used B&N. Amazon has come a long way particularly considering the many online schemes that failed after dotcom.
Walmart is another success but I rarely go there because of the quality of
a lot of their stuff. I used to wear Herman Survivors boots. The company
went through several hands and Walmart finally bought the trademark.
They're now cheap Chinese crap. Other name brands have special Walmart
SKUs that are made to a price.
I have never been in a real-life Walmart store doing all myordering
via
their web site. I needed supplement and delivery was ideal during Covid restrictions These sare megastores very spacious and involve getting a fairly long walk which is impractical in my current condition.
A few tears ago and even later I have patronized Amazon for computer
hardware and all region DVD players when my ambitions around watching
anime seemed important.
On Sat, 12 Jul 2025 14:30:02 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Yes that is true. I do not like that but I like Amazon's behavior
less.>
Amazon is sort of the business I love to hate... Over the past 30 years
we've gotten more big box stores. Prior to that if you wanted anything out
of the ordinary you drove to Spokane. Even with them the selection is
limited in a small (100,000+) market. RatShack wasn't much but not there
is no source for electronics. I prefer New Balance shoes in non-garish
colors and I've sometimes failed to find any in my size. Hello Amazon!
The best example is when I bought a Toyota Yaris in 2007. It was a new
model and didn't have a radio. I went to the leading sound people in town. They didn't have a dash kit and had to order it. Days passed and when the shipment came in from their supplier, no dash kit. They tried another supplier. Most days passed and again no kit. They said they could possibly modify one.
I got the Metra number from the Yaris forum, ordered the kit, a radio, and the harness adapter from Amazon and it was on my deck in two days. I installed it in an hour.
Even more ridiculous during covid cat food was in short supply in the
local stores. I ordered a case of 40 cans of Purina from Amazon with again the same fast delivery. I put it on a subscription so the cats are happy
to see an Amazon truck roll up.
Back around 2000 when Amazon was mostly books and CDs I had very mixed success, particularly with the CDs. They often advertised items the didn't have and couldn't get so weeks would pass before they canceled the order.
At that time I mostly used B&N. Amazon has come a long way particularly considering the many online schemes that failed after dotcom.
Walmart is another success but I rarely go there because of the quality of
a lot of their stuff. I used to wear Herman Survivors boots. The company
went through several hands and Walmart finally bought the trademark.
They're now cheap Chinese crap. Other name brands have special Walmart
SKUs that are made to a price.
On Sat, 12 Jul 2025 23:29:42 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
A few tears ago and even later I have patronized Amazon for computer
hardware and all region DVD players when my ambitions around watching
anime seemed important.
Interesting that you couldn’t get things like region-free disc players in
a regular retail store.
In normal countries, we have consumer-protection laws that see things like region-locking as a manufacturing defect that needs to be fixed under warranty, not an acceptable feature in a product that is supposed to be
fit for purpose.
My last trip was for a pack of pocket t-shirts. For whatever reason Target doesn't carry them. I checked on the web site and it said they were in
aisle D9. I've done that for Home Depot and it usually works out well. The Walmart megastore isn't pick on alphabetical or numerical ordering so I
was back to wandering around until I found them.
In normal countries, we have consumer-protection laws that see things like region-locking as a manufacturing defect that needs to be fixed under warranty, not an acceptable feature in a product that is supposed to be
fit for purpose.
It's a long time since I bought a DVD reader. But at that time, the
regular seller needed to do something on the DVD reader to unlock the limitation. He just asked me if I wanted him to do it and it was done.
But, by default, I would have a limited DVD reader. Maybe I could have
done it by myself: I don't know. But it wasn't by done default.
On 2025-07-13, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
In normal countries, we have consumer-protection laws that see things like >> region-locking as a manufacturing defect that needs to be fixed under
warranty, not an acceptable feature in a product that is supposed to be
fit for purpose.
The lobbyists obviously aren't doing their job.
Amazon has simply realised this and done a better job than almost anyone else, although most companies now have a 'ship it direct' service that
is cheaper than amazon.
I'll occasionally go into a Wal-Mart, but I do it quickly and wash my
hands afterwards.
That might be deliberate. I've noticed the local Safeway often arranges
(and periodically re-arranges) things in ways that make no sense at all
-
unless the goal is to make you wander the entire store, more likely to
grab items on impulse that you never would have bought otherwise.
On Sun, 13 Jul 2025 12:15:29 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Amazon has simply realised this and done a better job than almost anyone
else, although most companies now have a 'ship it direct' service that
is cheaper than amazon.
I have Amazon Prime so shipping is 'free'. Since they've built a local distribution center a surprising number of items are next day. The first
time I saw 'arriving tomorrow' I was skeptical.
The page often has a 'may be cheaper from other sellers' but unless the
other seller has free shipping the total cost is often more.
I've never used the ship it direct but I have used the ship it to the
store and pick it up option several times. Ironically years ago I looked
for a computer book in the brick and mortar Barnes & Noble store. They
didn't have it in stock but could order it for me. I went to their website and bought it 10% cheaper than the in store price with free shipping.
Great business model.
I've never used the ship it direct but I have used the ship it to the
store and pick it up option several times.
On Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:45:04 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
That might be deliberate. I've noticed the local Safeway often arranges
(and periodically re-arranges) things in ways that make no sense at all
-
unless the goal is to make you wander the entire store, more likely to
grab items on impulse that you never would have bought otherwise.
We no longer have Safeways.
On 2025-07-13, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
In normal countries, we have consumer-protection laws that see things
like region-locking as a manufacturing defect that needs to be fixed
under warranty, not an acceptable feature in a product that is supposed
to be fit for purpose.
The lobbyists obviously aren't doing their job.
On Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:45:04 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-07-13, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
In normal countries, we have consumer-protection laws that see things
like region-locking as a manufacturing defect that needs to be fixed
under warranty, not an acceptable feature in a product that is
supposed to be fit for purpose.
The lobbyists obviously aren't doing their job.
Checks and balances apply?
Another one! Amazing, I had some idea there was one of either Target or
KMart in the US, but never realised they had both, and Safeway as well!
On 14 Jul 2025 08:34:47 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
Another one! Amazing, I had some idea there was one of either Target or
KMart in the US, but never realised they had both, and Safeway as well!
Target survived but KMart didn't, at least in the continental US.
Rumor has it there are three stores in the Virgin Islands that didn't get
the memo. As KMart was going down the tubes they bought Sears. I forget
which died locally first. Sears was an anchor store for the mall. The mall has a > charmed life and has survived, probably because it's the only one
for about 150 miles. My feeling was Sears was a notch above KMart for
quality but both made mistakes. Where I grew up Montgomery Wards was
stronger than Sears but they're long gone too.
On Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:14:20 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Sun, 13 Jul 2025 16:45:04 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2025-07-13, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
In normal countries, we have consumer-protection laws that see things
like region-locking as a manufacturing defect that needs to be fixed
under warranty, not an acceptable feature in a product that is
supposed to be fit for purpose.
The lobbyists obviously aren't doing their job.
Checks and balances apply?
Yeah, the checks written to the politicians' reelection funds and the balances thereof. It's getting amusing.
On 2025-07-13, rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
My last trip was for a pack of pocket t-shirts. For whatever
reason Target doesn't carry them. I checked on the web site and
it said they were in aisle D9. I've done that for Home Depot
and it usually works out well. The Walmart megastore isn't pick
on alphabetical or numerical ordering so I was back to
wandering around until I found them.
That might be deliberate. I've noticed the local Safeway often
arranges (and periodically re-arranges) things in ways that make
no sense at all - unless the goal is to make you wander the
entire store, more likely to grab items on impulse that you
never would have bought otherwise.
Charlie Gibbs wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:
On 2025-07-13, rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
My last trip was for a pack of pocket t-shirts. For whatever
reason Target doesn't carry them. I checked on the web site and
it said they were in aisle D9. I've done that for Home Depot
and it usually works out well. The Walmart megastore isn't pick
on alphabetical or numerical ordering so I was back to
wandering around until I found them.
That might be deliberate. I've noticed the local Safeway often
arranges (and periodically re-arranges) things in ways that make
no sense at all - unless the goal is to make you wander the
entire store, more likely to grab items on impulse that you
never would have bought otherwise.
Oddly prophetic:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants>
On 2025-07-14, rbowman <[email protected]> wrote:
On 14 Jul 2025 08:34:47 +1000, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:Sears (once known as Simpsons-Sears) was a major player in Canada
Another one! Amazing, I had some idea there was one of either Target or
KMart in the US, but never realised they had both, and Safeway as well! [snip]
(remember the Sears catalogs?) when I was a child. They folded
a few years ago. Lots of people out of work, lots of executives
taking multi-million-dollar bonuses for running it into the ground.
The local Safeways still exist, but they've actually been bought out by Sobey's. (We just got back from a vacation in Nova Scotia, where
Sobey's stores are everywhere).
In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of
governments and now hold political power. States exist merely to
ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising
has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession.
Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking
that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on
the market.
Sears (once known as Simpsons-Sears) was a major player in Canada
(remember the Sears catalogs?) when I was a child. They folded a few
years ago. Lots of people out of work, lots of executives taking multi-million-dollar bonuses for running it into the ground.
On Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:13:29 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
In a vastly overpopulated world, businesses have taken the place of
governments and now hold political power. States exist merely to
ensure the survival of huge trans-national corporations. Advertising
has become hugely aggressive and by far the best-paid profession.
Through advertising, the public is constantly deluded into thinking
that the quality of life is improved by all the products placed on
the market.
In sorting out some old book yesterday I started reading 'Buddhism: The Religion of analysis'. Written in 1966 the author talks about the
difficulty of dealing with the cultural differences of the consumer driven West chasing after 'success' and the more laid back East. I'm not sure
that is the case 60 years later.
Read Alan Watts's books if you can find them or afford the pricesat
thehere
foundation setup apparently to minimize exposure to his ideas.
I was lucky because i got to listen to his lectures on the radio
in
San Francisco back in the 1960s and maybe into the 1970s. I got to buy
his books in paperback at a reasonable price.
On 2025-07-06, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Sat, 5 Jul 2025 09:45:37 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Not in the name of freedom, in the name of it being a huge amount of
bloatware that achieved almost nothing of value and caused everyone else >>> to have to rewrite their packages to conform to it.
Nobody forces anybody to use systemd. Like anything in Open Source, it’s a >> matter of choice.
systemd Myth number 19: systemd forces you to do something.
These two paragraphs are about different things, even. The first is
about systemd being *forced*, the other is about systemd *forcing*.
Please try not to make these shifts, so that this sort of topic can be discussed more objectively.
<https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html>
On 2025-07-05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:21:01 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
In theory, I could boot this computer straight into some
implementation of Pong. Does that mean I can't complain about some
issue I might find e.g. in Linux or in the bootloader?
If you are happier with Pong, by all means stick with that. Leave
Linux (and its bootloaders) to those who are able to get more use
out of it.
That was one interesting way to completely miss the point :-P
On Fri, 4 Jul 2025 23:29:19 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
If you are happier with Pong, by all means stick with that. Leave
Linux (and its bootloaders) to those who are able to get more use out
of it.
Lawrence: "Free Software is all about choice!"
Also Lawrence: "Love it or leave it!"
Nuno Silva <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-07-05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:21:01 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
In theory, I could boot this computer straight into some
implementation of Pong. Does that mean I can't complain about some
issue I might find e.g. in Linux or in the bootloader?
If you are happier with Pong, by all means stick with that. Leave
Linux (and its bootloaders) to those who are able to get more use
out of it.
That was one interesting way to completely miss the point :-P
You've been trolled by Lawrence. A killfile entry will help prevent
that in the future.
On 2025-07-30, Rich wrote:
Nuno Silva <[email protected]d> wrote:
On 2025-07-05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jul 2025 08:21:01 +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:
In theory, I could boot this computer straight into some
implementation of Pong. Does that mean I can't complain about some
issue I might find e.g. in Linux or in the bootloader?
If you are happier with Pong, by all means stick with that. Leave
Linux (and its bootloaders) to those who are able to get more use
out of it.
That was one interesting way to completely miss the point :-P
You've been trolled by Lawrence. A killfile entry will help prevent
that in the future.
I've been trying hard to avoid that... and it's not like my "killfile"
(score file?) is empty for this group.
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 715 |
| Nodes: | 16 (3 / 13) |
| Uptime: | 28:43:53 |
| Calls: | 12,107 |
| Calls today: | 7 |
| Files: | 15,006 |
| Messages: | 6,518,234 |
