I will never understand why users don’t like client side decorations. I get why developers might dislike it. But the title bar is Gnome is functional.

I love KDE but every window having a big, windows 95 ass, useless bar doing nothing but wasting screen space feels so old and clunky. No one needs that much handle on a window.

I actually have some accidentally poisoned data out there. Many years ago I had a job that entailed doing red carpets. There were a lot of photos of me at small to mid-sized events with two of my business partners.

Then for two years in a row my partners went to the MTV VMAs with someone else. The VMAs are MUCH bigger in terms of media footprint. That guy got tagged as me in the photos. So now a Google image search for me will at least be mixed, and often the other guy comes up first.

So the idea is sound.

I didn’t realize it was back in active development. It seemed to be abandonware for years.

That’s awesome. I’ll have to test drive it. Thanks.

Writing screenplays. Movie scripts. At it’s most basic, you can write it in any text editor, and you can format it in markup.

But, because the formatting is very specific and there are a lot of ways a screenplay gets analyzed and parsed they’re mostly done in a dedicated software. The biggest and most industry standard is called Final Draft.

That’s a great suggestion. I’ll check it out. Thanks.

I would love a good WYIWYG desktop screenwriting software.

Writing fountain markup just doesn’t work for me. it’s hard to explain, and sounds precious, but if my brain is in markup mode it’s not in creative mode and vice versa.

Some of the ok ones from the past have been abandoned.

I bought a pro license of fade in which is supposed to be available for Linux but it won’t install and support didn’t solve it. So I have to work exclusively from my Windows machine… Which I don’t love doing.

Linux is still a difficult environment for creative work.

Doesn’t everyone?

The Venn diagram of privacy focused and paranoid has a good bit of overlap.

But anything private enough for the most paranoid dev is private enough for me.

There will always be some percentage of users that Linux just isn’t for, and some users that fall in love.

In my opinion the motivations that convince them to try Linux are irrelevant. What’s important is that the general trend is more users sticking with it.

IMO I couldn’t care less if people dual boot, we’re still have a use case for Windows. I have a Windows machine myself.

Well that’s kind of what I’m getting at. How many times does that happen before everybody just goes back to using GPL, MIT, etc…

I’m all for ethical licensing, and defensive licensing, but we’ll likely end up with an unmanageable soup of various licenses that everyone is nervous about misinterpreting. We lose efficacy and everyone will just default back to the same handful of licenses we’re currently using.

I think unless it was a small number of crystal clear alternative licenses with broadly agreeable terms, we’d get chaos, followed by complacency.

My experience is that runtipi turned docker into an app store. The technical barriers to entry have never been lower. There are so many helpful voices out there that I’ve never really had to ask anyone a unique question because someone else has typically asked whatever I need to know and been answered.

I do think there are very reasonable arguments to be made that when you are opening a server containing your personal data, to outside access, you probably should be cautioned about your technical limitations. Even if it’s not pleasant to hear.

I honestly don’t think it’s a great idea for most people (myself included) to casually dabble in server administration. There’s a pretty big margin for error. Unfortunately it’s the only private solution for the time being. I don’t trust anyone else.

All 3rd party data collection of identifiable information on users, IPs, domains, and devices (anything that can tie back to a consumer) requires line item affirmative consent from the user with a disclosure of what is being collected and all known current and future uses. That should put an end to websites with 4,000 trackers.

Sale of identifiable consumer data (including device information, etc…) to a 3rd party requires the affirmative consent of the consumer.

Targeted advertisements must include a link to information about why this advertisement targeted the user, and the source of the data that informed that decision.

Government agencies, political parties, PACs, and religious organizations are barred from collecting consumer data from 3rd parties. They are barred from commissioning others to collect 3rd party consumer data on their behalf for opposition research purposes. The single exception being narrowly targeted data for criminal investigations with a warrant.

A user’s microphone may not be engaged without affirmative user consent or a warrant. A ban on transmitting data for the purposes of mapping a residence or the movement of parties within a residence without user consent or a warrant.

Absolute consumer freedom to install whatever software and firmware they so choose on any consumer grade computer hardware they have paid for and are in physical possession of. So you may be prohibited from dumping malware on a server you rented, but you can hack your car, video game console, exercise bike, PC, etc… to your heart’s content.

A codified “right to be forgotten” upon request for all concluded commercial transactions, disused online profiles, and online media not pertaining to public figures, ongoing litigation, criminal matters, or matters of otherwise significant public concern after X length of time.

A government registry to be formed for the purpose of identifying which companies are storing personally identifiable information about you (not actually containing any of that info itself). Simply requiring companies to register who’s data they’re storing and what type of data, and providing a means of demanding that information be removed.

I installed gcompris for my 5 year old. FOSS childrens educational software and games from KDE.

I also bought her a cheap, pink, 65% keyboard and mouse set that make it “her computer”.

There’s also a few free resources to teach typing once your kid can read and write enough to understand what they’re typing. I’ve heard good things about Typing.com and typingclub.com but we’re not ready to start typing yet so I haven’t used them.

Also, if my kids ask a question that’s a little tricky to explain I’ll show them how I use a computer (or phone) to look for answers. One of the few practical applications I’ve ever found for AI is “can you explain [abstract concept] in a way that a 5 year old can understand”. This isn’t explicitly teaching computer skills, but showing them a practical use case and how to dig into their curiosity.

If we shame the windows refugees they may never convert. Then how can we be condescending elitists about their desktop environments or opinions on systemd?

That’s not an attack on ffmpeg. It’s 1,000% not fud. I’m not disputing its libre bonifides. H265 is not libre. It’s also not part of the ffmpeg code. But they can be distributed together because it’s non-commercial.

My apologies if I worded something in a way that wasn’t clear about that.

Separate from that issue.

There are distros that do not want to incorporate any non-libre elements into their OS for ideological reasons. They won’t have h265.

Then there are distros that have commercial elements, or for which their parent company has some kind of commercial interest in the distribution. If they don’t want to pay for licensing they may have legal limitations on their ability to incorporate h265.

But any completely non-commercial software that wants to bundle h265 in has cart blanche to do so.

I hope that clears things up.

H.265 is royalty free for non-commercial use. It’s ownership is kind of complicated with a bunch of patents and it is commercial licensing is controlled by a few groups.

If I understand correctly (and I’m no lawyer) FFMPEG is completely non-commercial so they don’t have an issue. Although I think anyone using FFMPEG for commercial applications (streamers, professional productions, etc…) should be paying a license.

I guess some distros felt that was legally murky for them and others aren’t comfortable with non-libre software.

I really wish Fedora would figure out a legal workaround and bundle in the codecs, but for now I just have to remember to set it up before I add any media.

H.265 is a pretty major one. E-AC-3 for audio. Ideally, for a desktop user, you want to be able to play anything. So you need know if your distro includes those codecs. Then how to install them if it doesn’t. Then you need to delete your thumbnail cache to fix the thumbnails.

It’s not hard. You just have to know that that’s a task you need to do. Coming from windows, a user is likely to just assume linux doesn’t support video properly and it’s thumbnails are broken.

Little quality of life stuff.

• How to install video codecs
• How to get thumbnails working in the file manager.
• Adding cloud storage to the file manager.
• How to make libre office save files with MS office filetypes by default (depending on work / school requirements)
• Maybe samba shares if they have another computer in the house.

For truly casual users (grandma or a student taking notes) there isn’t a lot to learn. Here’s your browser, here’s your office apps, this is like “notepad”. This is the software center for updates or any other applications, press the “windows key” to get your menu.

Came here to say drive letters. That’s a weird one for converts. A guide for noobies should explain that drive is mounted somewhere in the file structure. Cover how to find it, and how to mount it where you want.