Sploosh the Water

Honestly, if the FOSS community wants better adoption of these technologies, there needs to be an stronger emphasis on presentation and UI/UX.

The general public isn't interested in using something that looks janky, behaves glitchy, or requires fiddling with settings to get looking nice.

Say what you want about that, I'm not defending it. I think people should care more about content and privacy/freedom vs just shiny things, but that isn't the world we live in right now.

The big tech corpos know this, companies like Apple have become worth trillions by taking existing tech and making it shiny, sexy, and seamless.

Maybe that is just antithetical to FOSS principles. I don't know what is the correct approach. All I know is I've heard so many folks who are curious about trying out FOSS software give it up because they encounter confusing, ugly, buggy user experiences.

Some FOSS products have figured this out, Bitwarden, Proton Mail, and Brave Browser have super polished and clean UX and generally are as or more stable than their closed-source counterparts.

Sad truth. I'm super happy with my FOSS experience overall, but I'm also a techie and very open to tinkering with stuff.

OP, I like several of your examples though. Lots of the old school tech is really solid. Just needs a clean fast front end in many cases.

My choice is Vim and its variants. Add some plugins, it's a really great way to write code. I have no interest in GUI IDEs anymore since getting my NeoVim installation set up and tuned.

Capitalism is a system built on greed as a foundation to function. In a capitalist system, you must always continue to grow, expand, engulf, absorb, and acquire. This is why it is such a toxic and destructive system. Capitalism will always incentivize companies to get the most people possible to spend as much as possible on as little as possible, that's literally the core principle of maximizing profitability.

It's why enshittification keeps happening, the system isn't broken, it's working exactly how it's supposed to.

Not feeling optimistic, but trying to stay positive and do good in the world regardless.

Remember to use these hard times to focus on the things that really matter. Enjoy nature, have empathy for others, be kind and supportive, stand up for what's right.

We'll all endure, some how some way. Peace and love to y'all.

Sim City for GameBoy. If you're thinking, "how the heck would you play Sim City on a GameBoy?" Exactly, don't do it. Young me wanted to like it, but just spare yourself...

Part of the Capitalist mythos for sure, "if you're not growing, you're dying." There's a rejection of the idea that you could reach a healthy equilibrium of size and just remain there.

And because of the way the rest of the market works, it forces everybody to act like that or get beat out completely. Vicious feedback loops.

What a complete knob. That's like saying you didn't know Michael Jackson was a pop star, or that the Pyramids were tombs for kings, pathetic.

Capitalism. The incentive for any large, profit-motivated firm will always be to get the most people to pay as much as possible for as little as possible.

GrapheneOS, other custom OSes, ability to hack/mod/repair.

Apple is one of the most scummy and anti-consumer companies in the world, they won't ever get a dollar from me or any endorsement.

Worth it 100% for me, I love mine. I didn't think I would use it much, I honestly bought it initially to just support the project and help FOSS friendly hardware and software.

But once I started playing on it, I fell in love. I play lots of indie games and smaller studio games, like Brotato, Hollow Knight, Battle for Wesnoth, Core Keeper. I also installed RetroArch and play all of my favorite Game Boy games. I play Old School Runescape with my friend, some kart racing games, some fighting games.

I also have Jellyfin installed on there, so I use it docked to my TV as a box for streaming from my Jellyfin server to my TV for movie nights. Discord runs pretty well on it in the background, so it works well for group party games like Pummel Party with my friends. Also games like Table Top simulator to play DnD, and virtual board games.

Idk, it's just a perfect device for me. Super moddable, repair friendly, FOSS friendly, powerful enough to play most games without issue, works with every kind of Bluetooth device I've tested it with, controllers, headphones, etc. And now that it's been out for well over a year, all of the most severe and annoying bugs have been fixed, so the general experience is very smooth and stable.

I made the jump several years ago to full Linux and never looked back. I game a bunch, built my own custom PC's for years. Linux has been great, and gaming on it has become fantastic.

The Steam Deck has helped push it even further, at this point I don't really check if games run on Linux, I assume they do and 95% of the time I'm right.

The few games that flat out don't run because of Anti-Cheat, I either wait until they are eventually supported, (Dead by Daylight, cough) or I just give them up. It isn't worth it to me to sacrifice my freedom, privacy, and consumer rights just to play a certain video game when there are literally 10's of thousands of games out there that I could play that run perfectly fine on Linux.

I screamed laughed at this story lol, wasn't expecting that twist xD

Lol the French gov can lean down and kiss my big, jiggly, juicy, giant, stanky, sweaty, uBlockOrigin browser extension.

Bruh...

I like dogs in general, grew up with a bunch. My spouse's family always had cats though. After a few years of living with cats vs dogs, cats take the win easy for me for general ease of living.

No needing walks, liter box is easy to scoop, they spend most of the day sleeping and will come by to play or get pet for a few minutes, then move on lol.

Two things though:

1. Some of this is culturally American. In other countries, dogs are not given the same free reign of the house as here.

2. I'm probs gunna get a lot of flack for this... A majority of people have horribly trained dogs. In my experience, most folks consider their dog a "good" dog if it has a good mood, that's all. Doesn't matter that it doesn't listen to commands, doesn't matter that it jumps all over people slobbering and barking. Doesn't matter that it is always butting into meals and begging.

Can't tell you how many times I've had a dog jump all over me, licking my face and getting stinking drool all over my clothes only for the owner to say, "oh sorry haha, he/she just loves people!"

If your dog won't stop barking the moment you tell it to, it's a badly trained dog. If your dog jumps up on people when they enter your home, your dog is badly trained. If your dog constantly comes over to the table while people are eating and whines, badly trained.

And it pisses me off that when this behavior happens, the owners either don't care, or get angry at the dog and do something asinine like lock it in another room alone.

I like dogs! I still want one when my spouse and I have property. I don't care if your dog gets to lay on the couches and roam the house freely, that's fine, but it has to act civilized like any other member of the family. Yes it's possible BTW, any professionally trained service dogs will behave like this and more.

Sniff the air vent softly while playing an intense game. The heat creates a wonderful sweet, sort of electronic savory smell.

It's really lovely. I sniff my Steam Deck air vent probably once or twice a week on average. Some weeks much more if it's cold out.

It feels nice to lightly brush the tip of your nose across the ribs of the went while inhaling too :)

Vivo brand monitor arms, the simple pole clamp ones. 40 bucks give or take, I've had them for 6+ years and they should last for another 10+ I would think, awesome value.

Sennheiser Momentum 3 wired headphones. Used and abused, replaced the cord and ear cups after about 3-4 years for 35 bucks total and they work as well now as they did brand new. Sound is great, they are comfy too.

Sony A6000 camera. Works great, awesome pictures.

IFixit multi-bit screwdriver set with the hard case. Had it for around a decade so far. Nothing broken, nothing worn out. Use it all the time on computers, furniture, electronics, etc. Plan on having it for another 10 years easily.

Steam Deck. Best general purpose gaming handheld out there. Moddable, repairable, high quality, super fun, runs everything I want.

So is a coffee mug.

It's a moving target. For me, I would say anything older than about 15-20 years is "retro" and anything older than 30 years is "vintage."

It will be ignored by industry, just like all the rest of the suggestions for the last 30 years from scientists. Profits come first, worry about the environment later (never).

I think it's generational. When I talk to folks about gaming in their early-mid 30's, the majority of them either also game, or at least don't think it's weird. Video games and board games too.

I think once you hit that rough age cutoff for millennials, late 30's-early 40's it seems video gaming and board gaming also largely falls off. At least that's been my experience.

My spouse and I are in our 30's and most of our peers game. Keep it up and never stop having fun!

A little depressing, sounds like so far, research shows it's largely genetic luck.

Still important to live as healthy as you can, but if you wanna live into that super old age, seems like that's up to your genes mostly.

I'm trying to be more optimistic though, they mentioned that in the article :)

The basic assumption every privacy-concerned person should have about email is that it's never secure. Unless you use an offline cryptography program to encrypt your email text and then paste it into the email body before you send it, your emails are insecure.

Email was never designed with that in mind. If you want to communicate securely with somebody, use a medium/method that has been designed from the start for that purpose.

I use ProtonMail because it's not a massive corpo and it's open source, but I don't believe that my emails are significantly more secure than on a service like Exchange or Gmail.

1. Dead Poetic band merch. A little-known post hardcore band from the early 2000's. I've got all of their CDs and some limited press Vinyls, but I would kill for some legit shirts. Years ago I found a sketchy site that claimed to have a handful left, but they were all too small. I wish now I still had bought them anyways, but oh well.

2. A GameBoy game I played as a kid that was some kind of JRPG. It wasn't a well known one like Chrono, Mother, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc. I have searched through lists online and tried finding screenshots and videos of gameplay, been through several hours of vids, but nothing I've found has been it.

3. A stupid video from the earlier days of YouTube called "The Poop." There is a "The Poop 2" but it's not the same. My friend and I found it randomly on some late night YouTube binge and cried laughing. It became an inside joke between us for years and we would link the video to each other or sing the music from it for instant laughter. It either got privated or deleted. I've spent hours and hours combing through the depths of YT and the internet at large trying to find a copy/reupload, same for my friend, but we've never found it.

<Edit> Number 2 is SOLVED!!! Holy crap, I literally just randomly found it. Talking about it here inspired me to try some more Google-fu and I happened across an ebay listing for Quest: Brian's Journey and the cartridge artwork immediately jogged my memory. Looks like I mis-remembered some details, that makes me even happier that I found it!

Going to be totally NOT downloading a ROM to play on my Steam Deck this evening...I would never...

Lol ikr.

Linux welcomes you :)

Valve basically proved this with the Steam Deck. Lots of folks were introduced unknowingly to Linux via that method and realized it's pretty great.

But Valve worked and still work their asses off to get the Steam Deck UI/UX really nice. There were a lot of bumps early on, but things are really good now. Proton works amazingly well, and the look and feel of the Deck is incredible.

I have hope with Framework, System76, and other companies like that which are making computers that work well with, or exclusively are built for Linux. Hopefully they continue to grow the market.

I'm here too, this feels like the beginning of a Lemmy legend :)

Good luck and stay safe!

Wayland is generally great. The only reason I've stuck with X11 is a few random bugs and issues that still aren't solved in Wayland.

I'm planning on switching over to Wayland fully at the end of this year. Seems like every 6 months I try it and there are less issues than before.

Try them both, plenty of folks have no issues at all running Wayland right from the start, so give it a go and see what happens.

I'm not interested in any political system where I can't criticize the ruling party without fearing for my or my family's safety or permanently becoming unable to find employment anywhere except coal/steel plants working 12-14/hours straight 6 days a week for piss wages...

Yeah makes sense. I wish there was a FOSS UX design philosophy that had caught on. For app design, the Unix philosophy has driven development even to this day, although not as popular now as it once was.

We sort of have bits of it, with the GTK framework and KDE styling. But those ecosystems don't extend outwards enough, and still allow far too much leeway to the UX design to ensure nice looks/function.

Maybe the nature of the widely distributed development makes it overall impossible. The goal of FOSS makes that kind of universal look and feel largely impossible. Heck, even Microsoft can't get that to happen in their own OS. There are many applications/utilities that look pretty much the same now as they did on Windows XP or even earlier.

The general attitude of function over form in our community also makes it hard, and I get that. Especially with limited dev resources as you pointed out. Would you rather have better functionality, or a prettier interface? Tough choice sometimes.

That's a fair point, I've been happy to see that issue addressed more seriously in the last few years by many apps, including color schemes for folks with diminished sight or color blindness.

It would be interesting to create an open standard for app accessibility. Maybe that already exists, idk. But devs and organizations could submit their software to be evaluated and if passed, would be able to include a certification that it meets said accessibility standards.

Nobara Linux

So far, same. I've been using social media here like it was originally designed, with real social interaction happening lol.

I agree with you, it feels great to have genuine conversions with folks without the constant feed distractions, obvious karma farming, and non-stop ads every few scrolls.

As for the Simpsons, I haven't watched enough to have an opinion yet haha. What are your top recommendations?

Steamy Deck ;)

In college, I was in a geology class and randomly in the middle of a class session, one of the students decided to stand up and start yelling at the professor about creationism and how the earth is only a few thousand years old, all that crap.

You could tell that he thought this was his big moment of "fighting for his faith" and expected some dramatic showdown with the professor in front of the class because he kept glancing around at the students expectantly as he ranted.

Instead, the professor just quietly said something like, "well, I'm not telling you what to believe, I'm just teaching what I know from my profession." The student said some final snarky line, I can't remember what exactly, then sat down again and after a few seconds of awkward silence, the professor just started again where he left off lol.

It was super cringe.

Independence Day or Armageddon. Both scientifically ridiculous, trope-heavy, super predictable plot, but hella fun to watch lol.

Left wing market anarchist is the closest summary of my general views.

Left wing economically and socially. I believe strongly in workers rights, collective control over production and labor practices. All people have dignity and should be treated with a base level of care and concern, even if they have done horrific things. I am very supportive of LGBT+ folks and any marginalized or underprivileged groups.

Market because I am not against markets or money. I think they are tools that can greatly aid society if used correctly. I am strongly anti-capitalist, which is a economic and social philosophy that uses money and markets in ways that are inherently oppressive and exploitive.

Anarchist because I am anti-state. Monopolization of power and resources, especially in a capitalist society, only ever result in oppression, even if supposedly "of/for the people."

Brotato, even more now since 1.0 haha. Lots of old GBA games via RetroArch. Battle for Wesnoth is great on there too. A bunch honestly.

1. Interestingly, my spouse found out that the lead vocalist now works as a graphic artist and has done work for some huge groups like Twenty One Pilots and Underoath. I found his webpage and have thought about sending him a message, but I haven't ever done it, nervous I guess lol. Your prompt might give me the needed "oomph" to actually go through with it tho lol.

2. It's tough because I barely remember anything specific from it. To make it worse, the game had a saved profile when I got it, (it was second hand.) I only ever played that save file which was already at endgame content, so I don't even remember what the intro/early game was like. Here's all I can remember:

The color pallet was pretty bland. It had lots of random encounters and when they happened, there was a quick sequence where the edges of the screen spiraled inwards in a kind of striped, spiral pattern. There were lots of odd creatures, like these kind of rock worms/snakes if I remember correctly? You had a party of 3-4 people and lots of different spells/abilities. I remember I got lost for a long time wandering through some ice caves and kept having to fight random monsters every 10-20 seconds. I can't really remember the story or lore even. But I'm pretty confident I'd know the music/sounds if I heard them.

Capitalism codifies the acquisition and control of capital by an owning class separate from the workers (employees). The owners always want to see their profits grow, because in a system that is zero sum, where competition is glorified as the primary mechanism for fair pricing and business success, if you aren't growing, then other competitors will eventually extinguish you.

Capitalism mimics evolution in that way, where all organisms compete against each other in a winner-takes-all setting. Talk to any hardcore Capitalist and they will talk about Capitalism being the "natural order", "human nature" etc. I know, I used to be a hardcore free market capitalist.

A system that places profit and private ownership of capital above all else will always result in the kinds of oppressive systems and company practices we see today.

It's like how fundamentalist religious institutions are having abuse scandals over and over for literal centuries. They are built in such a way that makes abuse easy to get away with. Even if it starts out perfectly clean, safe, and incorrupt, eventually the very structure of the organization itself will cause abusers to join or allow already abusive people to commit those acts without significant consequences. It is a negative feedback loop that perpetuates itself until it collapses totally or is extinguished by an outside force.