• 6 Posts
  • 87 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 21st, 2023

help-circle












  • We started with Linux around the same time, and I remember how awesome Gnome 2 was on Warty Warthog or whatever old release. At the time, the Windows Start menu was a convoluted mess of folders, uninstallers, readme files, etc. Gnome listed my programs more or less in alphabetical order with one icon each in logical categories. It was so simple, I explored every crevice of it and remember thinking “is this it?”. It was and I soon learned that it was not just simpler, but more powerful and user friendly in various ways. I have moved to KDE since then, but it is absolutely the enshitification of Windows that pushed me here.

    Out of curiosity, what do you consider a decent file manager? Dolphin is my favorite currently because I almost always have two panes open, but I’ve been looking for something even better since I also spend a lot of time working with files.



  • I also jumped from Gnome to KDE over the years. I’m not a fan of how Gnome went with the convergence, large-padding, touch trend. I love how KDE has tighter spacing and follows a traditional desktop metaphor while still being customizable. Gnome 2 did okay at this, but when gnome 3 hit, I ran to Mint/Cinnamon for a bit before trying a bunch of KDE distros.

    KDE is so humble. Their k-apps are much more numerous than I realized and the DE is great on Kubuntu, Neon, Arch, MX, etc.

    Having said that, I hold a lot of love for the gnome team too, I just don’t jive with the design philosophy anymore.


  • I started with Ubuntu in the 2005-7 timeframe on very slow old hardware. Shortly after, I bought an eeepc as I was a poor college student at the time and couldn’t afford much else. I dual booted for years until windows 8 irritated me into giving up Windows for non-gaming completely, I’ve been using various forms of Linux as my primary OS since then.

    Tl;Dr tried Linux because my hardware was very modest, stayed because Windows was getting worse in various ways.




  • The browser ad on doesn’t work in apps, and if they have a blocker outside of that, it probably uses a VPN on the loopback interface to strip out the ads. I run a VPN a fair bit, so I would only be adblocking when I’m not on the VPN. Are there any non-root methods that can do full system ad blocking other than the VPN thing?



  • Daily computing is mostly FOSS programs and my laptop is sold with Linux preinstalled (though I bought the higher spec Windows version and installed Linux myself. Cloud is FOSS, self-hosted in the public cloud (until I get fiber). Phone is rooted Android w/ FOSS apps wherever they meet my needs. I’m about 50% through degoogling and de-Microsofting. Ereader is KOReader (FOSS) running on old Kindle brand hardware. Keyboard is Ergodox Ez which I think the firmware is FOSS. Smarthome is still Smartthings which is not FOSS.

    I’m going to give myself a C- 70% FOSS


  • This guy has mad FOSS cred. I bet even his socks are made of free range organic open source wool released under a Creative Commons attribution share-alike licence.

    Seriously though, that sounds like an amazing setup. I always wanted to mess with gadget bridge some more. I have a number of old MiBand devices lying around as well as a Bip. The third party apps for that thing had more features than almost every fitness tracker I’ve had potentially even including my Garmin watch. What tools do you use to analyze/review/visualize the gadget bridge data?