Haha, glad to hear that you discovered winget through my post!
It was, in my opinion, long overdue for Microsoft to introduce a package manager for Windows, but now that it is there, you can actually use it for all kinds of useful stuff. E. g. I would, if I was using Windows, create a PowerShell script to install my software all at once for whenever I reinstall my computer. This makes reinstalling a lot faster and I have documentation about the programs I had installed before. ;)
It is not mandatory in the EU if your site only uses cookies that are technically necessary. One only has to display a prompt for cookies that go beyond that, i. e. tracking cookies.
I only go there, usually via an external link, to install new apps or to check for updates for already installed apps.
Google Play is usually way too slow for my liking with applying updates automatically. They tend to sit there for a day or so and are not getting installed for whatever reason, even though they have already been detected.
I haven't ever seen a useful app in my recommendations, it's always apps from big tech companies (i. e. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Spotify, Snapchat, ...), which I have sub-zero interest in.
I suggest subscribing to YouTube via RSS (yes, YouTube still has an RSS feed for channels and playlists). I've been doing this for years and it works great. You can use your RSS reader or an add-on like Livemarks to discover the feed.
If you subscribe via RSS, you can then easily substitute the feed URL for any other platform, if the creator happens to upload their content to platforms other than YouTube.
Even though the videos are hosted on different platforms, you still have a single feed in a single location with all new videos thanks to RSS. You're also able to manage a "watch later" list with your RSS reader.
Winget is able to install applications from multiple sources, including the Microsoft Store. You can see a list of all configured sources by executing winget source list. For regular applications a community repository is preconfigured.
If you would execute my example command, Firefox would get installed from the community repository. You should be able to use the following command to install the Microsoft Store version of Firefox: winget install 9NZVDKPMR9RD
9NZVDKPMR9RD is the package id of the Microsoft Store version of Firefox. You can either get it by executing winget search firefox or you can get it from the URL of the Microsoft Store entry.
The thing I always liked about forums reddit Lemmy is that it is focused on topics rather than individuals.
I actually have a hard time choosing accounts to follow on Mastodon, as I am not really interested in specific brands or people. I only really care about communities with lots of like-minded people. So for me such a feature on Lemmy would go completely unused.
There already are lots of other fediverse frontends that are designed for following individuals. Why does every piece of software have to fill every niche? I much prefer software that's focused on a few things and does them well, rather than software that tries to do everything, but does nothing well.
For me, as a car enthusiast, this has been a turning point in my enthusiasm for cars. It has become very easy for me to accept electric vehicles and strive for less car dependency, since the EU mandated driver assistance systems and a bunch of other technology in new vehicles. For American readers: In the US there is an agreement between the NHTSA and car manufacturers to include such technology in all new cars by 2022-09.
I really dislike technology that is made to correct and monitor my behaviour and I am not keen on spending lots of money on a car that is filled with technology I don't want (accident data recorder, intelligent speed assist, lane keeping assist, etc.). Apart from that, I haven't seen one vehicle where the driver assistance systems aren't annoying or even dangerous (e. g. the lane keeping system steering towards a ditch / wall on narrow roads, etc.). And to make matters worse: You can't permanently turn those systems off, if they don't work as advertised, as in the EU it is mandatory for such systems to re-activate themselves whenever you start the vehicle and the deactivation has to be a multi-step process (as far as I remember).
Nowadays my transport-related interests are therefore mainly complete streets / 15-minute cities / public transport, cycling, affordable electric cars and classic, non-digital vehicles. I no longer wish to own any expensive modern car(s) and I don't care much for internal combustion engines anymore. Instead I value cities more that allow me to live car-free and the only vehicles I still want to own are classic ones.
Obligatory PeerTube link: https://video.blender.org/w/m7eJZjgGSNGV1eqCQW262G ;)
I don't think so. I am not sure, if air cooled engines are even capable of meeting today's emission (noise and pollution) requirements.
Furthermore cars with internal combustion engines are currently in the process of being phased-out in favour of battery-electric cars and many manufacturers allocate less and less resources to engine development. The goal seems to be to make existing engines compatible with upcoming emission standards (e. g. Euro 7), phase-out unprofitable engines before new emission standards, and allocate the rest of development resources to new battery-electric platforms and models.
Using and expanding public transport is much better for the environment (climate, pollution, urbanism, etc.) than making cars even more attractive by making them drive autonomously.
I think they just aren't sure how many instances you need right now (25? 30? all 50?) and that's why they requested clarification for the actual resources needed. They don't want to give you more than you actually need at the moment, so they don't sit around unused for half a year until you actually use them.
I actually returned the Pixel 7 earlier this year, because of its size, weight, awful display (rainbow effects when viewing it at a slight angle) and fingerprint reader.
I also found the camera to be noticeably worse when doing closeup shots (which is what I do the most with my phone's camera). All the pictures I took from the battery replacement of my Pixel 5 are slightly unsharp because of the 7's camera. I later learned that you can use 2x zoom to workaround the problematic lens, but for the price of the phone I consider this to be unacceptable.
I got it at a discount and still found the phone to be too expensive for what it is.
I preordered the Pixel 5 (the only preorder I've ever done) to receive the Bose QC35 headphones as well. It was a great and well-priced package and I use both products to this day. The Pixel 5 is just right in my opinion. It has the right size, weight and hardware and its fingerprint reader is reliable (as long as it is dry). The vibrator is terrible in comparison to the Pixel 7, but everything else is better in my opinion.
I am really not sure what phone will be the replacement for my Pixel 5 ... I either want a phone with GrapheneOS or mobile Linux. It has to be more compact and lighter than the Pixel 7 though.
Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite, as you will reliably be able to update the system, even after half a year of not using it.
Updates are atomic, so either an update is installed successfully or no changes to your system have been done whatsoever, there is no in-between state (i. e. broken system) possible.
Maybe Geary is what you are looking for?
I actually prefer Krita over GIMP, even for photo editing. I can't stand how bad stylus support with GIMP is and I much prefer Krita's UI. I wish Krita would focus on areas beyond drawing more, as Krita is quite close to being a good program for editing photos in my opinion.
I have never used Adobe's or Affinity's products though, as they aren't available for Linux and are therefore not an option for me. I would probably consider them, but those companies apparently decided that I am not worth their business.
Honestly, I have started to block political keywords on Mastodon (can't do this on Lemmy unfortunately), because I am tired of the lack of nuance in online discussions and I am really not that interested in reading the same things over and over again.
People just group each other into two drawers marked "left-wing" and "right-wing" and that's it. Some go even further and block instances with people they don't completely agree with. In my opinion this stigmatisation just further and further divides people and will eventually result in less and less respect for each other (or should I say "hate towards each other"). If people would discuss more (without instantly putting words into the other side's mouth), they might see that they share common ground on some topics, even though they disagree on others.
I am pretty confident that the political believes of most of the general public can't be categorised into just two drawers. Most people probably have political views that are a mixture of different ideologies and they might not even know if those views are considered "left-wing" or "right-wing".
I've followed hashtags in the past, but I found them to be too noisy and they end up cluttering the home timeline. The content is often only vaguely related to the hashtag, as many people unfortunately also add hashtags to posts that aren't actually directly related to the topic and there is no moderation to combat hashtag misuse (unlike moderation on forums / reddit / Lemmy). The more people join the fediverse, the worse following hashtags gets in my experience.
If you are interested in topics unrelated to each other, there is no way to separate hashtags into different timelines, as Mastodon limited timelines to only 4 hashtags per timeline a couple of years ago. Before that happened, I found them a great way to have a clean "Home" timeline and categorise hashtags by topic (I joined Mastodon in 2017 and paused my usage when they limited hashtag timelines). There's also a longstanding feature request to add hashtags to lists ...
I've also tried Calckey's Firefish's antennas (and Fedilab), but the first two issues also apply to those (of course) and I don't like Calckey Firefish (feature creep, settings are stored locally on the device, no decent mobile apps, etc.) ...
I think darktable is one of the better alternatives for Adobe software.
A couple of years ago, I took a Lightroom workshop and did all the tasks with darktable. I was amazed at how similar it actually is and I managed to keep up with the workshop, even though I didn't use darktable nor Lightroom before.
Don't be too sad, it wouldn't work well with reverse-DNS notation anyway. ;)
I've learned to accept it. With mandatory driver assistance systems in Europe and the US, there is no going back to simple cars without proprietary software anyways.
And climate change already hits quite hard where I live. In winter we don't get snow anymore (we used to get several weeks with snow and sub-zero (°C) temperatures up until a decade ago), which makes me depressed every single winter to the point I am considering to move, and every summer we have to endure droughts and heat waves now, even though our summers used to be moist and mild.
It is overdue to make transportation much more sustainable and we unfortunately (as I like internal combustion engines) can't afford to keep extracting and burning fossil fuels.
But there definitely is joy to be found in electric cars and other modes of transportation. I actually started to embrace cycling more in the last couple of months and I learned to enjoy the simple technology of a bicycle. It certainly is a different kind of fun though ...
I use GrapheneOS on my Pixel 5, even though I didn't want to use Custom ROMs anymore.
I run it mainly because of sandboxed Play Services (i. e. Google services running as a user application with much less capabilities, instead of a system application, like with the factory image) and the additional functionality, which includes the ability to revoke network and sensor permissions for any app.
One of the reasons I decided to flash it, instead of remaining on the factory image, was that it behaves like the factory image once it is installed. Meaning the bootloader is closed and I don't have to ever worry about updates (manually flashing the latest firmware files or the latest gapps, etc.). It even has automatic system updates, meaning it installs system updates whenever I am not using the phone. So while I'm asleep my phone is updating itself and the next morning I start the day with the latest GrapheneOS release. Very convenient!
I still download apps primarily from the Play Store (auto updates also work for those apps!) and use F-Droid only for apps that aren't available there (due to F-Droid signing most apps with their own key). But, since the Play Services and the Play Store run as a user app, I am at least able to take all permissions away from them, which should reduce the amount of data that can be collected by them.
There are drawbacks though, one of them is the lack of Pixel features. Those missing features include adaptive charging and sound output improvements, which results in degraded speaker quality on GrapheneOS, especially with newer Pixel phones (verified on a Pixel 7).
In the future I hope to ditch Android altogether on my main phone and switch to a Linux phone (and have a cheap Android phone, or a compatibility layer, for disrespectful companies, like banks or EV charging providers, that force me to install an Android or iOS app), but I haven't seen the right Linux phone hardware for me yet. I plan to replace my Pixel 5 when Android 15 releases (as Android 14 is the last major update for it), so maybe I can switch to a Linux phone by then. :)
It is even worse on the Pixel 7, as its front camera is fixed focus. The Pixel 5 has a great front-facing camera in comparison!
Eh, I don’t at flatpak or snap unless I have no other choice
I thought the same until I discovered that Flatpak gives me the power to restrict apps in their permissions, similar to firejail, but less cumbersome. Since then I actually prefer Flatpak over traditional packages (I even switched to Fedora Silverblue), as I have a global override that, for example, revokes permission to access the root of my home directory or to use the X11 display server.
This allows me to keep a clean home directory, as applications are prevented from writing into my home directory (configuration files then automatically get stored in the Flatpak directory ~/.var instead) or, even worse, into executable files, such as ~/.bashrc. I can also be confident that applications use Wayland, if they support it, and not a less secure display server (X11). Applications that don't support Wayland yet can either be made to run under Wayland (Chromium / Electron) or I have to grant those applications permission to actually use an X11 server (Bottles / WINE, Steam).
On the other hand you can also opt into punching as many holes as possible into the sandbox, for example by granting applications the permission to access a local shell. That might be necessary for development tools, such as VSCodium. The thing I like about Flatpak is that it offers this kind of flexibility and you can decide on a per-application basis which system resources the application can or can not access.
Sure, the permission model isn't perfect (e. g. D-Bus access), but for my use-case it is a huge improvement and it gives me more flexibility with selecting my distribution, as I can get the very same up-to-date applications anywhere via Flatpak.
That's actually an issue with most Debian-/Ubuntu-based distributions, as Debian/Ubuntu still does not package QGnomePlatform. This is preinstalled on Fedora and makes Qt apps, like Kate, look nice on GNOME.
If I remember correctly, Flatpak apps from Flathub are unaffected by this Debian/Ubuntu issue, as Flathub includes QGnomePlatform in their runtimes.
It would be nice, if you could incorporate those missing locations into OpenStreetMap once you come across them. Afterwards everyone else will benefit from your contributions, as they don't have to lookup the location on Google Maps anymore. :)
OsmAnd actually has a map editing plugin. Another great application for improving OpenStreetMap is Street Complete. It is a good way to kill some time while waiting somewhere with incomplete OSM data. ;)
I don't consider HMD Global phones, because they don't allow unlocking the bootloader.
Ethanol is cool as fuck. [...] you can make it with various methods.
One issue with ethanol is it is usually made from biomass. Biomass is getting criticised for eating into food production and nature. Burning it is also not emission-free, which is a problem in countries or regions that mandate "zero emission" for new vehicles by a certain date, as an internal combustion engine can, as far as I know, only ever be "low emission" but never "zero emission".
Other types of synthetic fuels also exist, but, as far as I know, most of them also use biomass as their source or share their main problem with hydrogen: They need huge amounts of electricity for production, which means we would need much more renewable energy (some sources claim 3 to 5 times as much as charging a battery directly) to power the same amount of vehicles. More energy needed for production and transportation also means higher fuel price.
Battery-electric cars are already quite well established and they have large political support, lots of research money and there are a variety of models available for almost any price point. The general public will most likely adopt the most well-established, economical and practical "zero emissions" technology on the market, which at the moment appears to be the battery-electric car.
This leaves synthetic fuels to enthusiasts, which are happy to pay the higher fuel price and don't mind the additional maintenance of an internal combustion engine. But will there be enough enthusiasts in regions that don't demand "zero emission" vehicles to justify large-scale production of synthetic fuels and engines? I highly doubt that, which means if synthetic fuels ever become available in passenger cars, they will, in my opinion, most likely be exclusive to low production models (e. g. Porsche e-fuel production, etc.) and therefore only be available to rich people.
tl;dr: Maybe my assessment is flawed, but for the meantime I would suggest not getting your hopes up too high for ethanol saving the internal combustion engine.
Eh, I don’t at flatpak or snap unless I have no other choice
I thought the same until I discovered that Flatpak gives me the power to restrict apps in their permissions, similar to flatseal, but less cumbersome. Since then I actually prefer Flatpak over traditional packages (I even switched to Fedora Silverblue), as I have a global override that, for example, revokes permission to access the root of my home directory or to use the X11 display server.
This allows me to keep a clean home directory, as applications are prevented from writing into my home directory (configuration files then automatically get stored in the Flatpak directory ~/.var instead) or, even worse, into executable files, such as ~/.bashrc. I can also be confident that applications use Wayland, if they support it, and not a less secure display server (X11). Applications that don't support Wayland yet can either be made to run under Wayland (Chromium / Electron) or I have to grant those applications permission to actually use an X11 server (Bottles / WINE, Steam).
On the other hand you can also opt into punching as many holes as possible into the sandbox, for example by granting applications the permission to access a local shell. That might be necessary for development tools, such as VSCodium. The thing I like about Flatpak is that it offers this kind of flexibility and you can decide on a per-application basis which system resources the application can or can not access.
Sure, the permission model isn't perfect (e. g. D-Bus access), but for my use-case it is a huge improvement and it gave me more flexibility with selecting my distribution, as I can get up-to-date applications anywhere via Flatpak.
No need to open a web browser to install another one on Windows 10 and 11.
All one has to do is open a terminal, type
winget install Mozilla.Firefoxand hit Enter. ;)Pro tip: To update all software on a Windows computer you can type
winget upgrade --alland hit Enter (especially useful for computers from family or friends with LibreOffice or Java versions from the stone age ...).