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Software I’m thankful for (2021)

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Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#321

Post by barumrho »

sleepycatgirl wrote: post #262

Let's see.. Software I am thankful for.. there is a fair amount of such. Anki - Software, that helped me build up habit, and made learning language an easier task Emacs - Wonderful text editor, made interacting with system a bliss. Nix/NixOS - Distro, that made updates a painless, and fearless task. I love it. ZFS - Filesystem that I love, for it has many wonderful features, and they all just work. (Also cute compres…

Curious to learn, what are the differentiators of ZFS? File system seems like an invisible layer to me personally which makes me ask this question.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#323

Post by quyleanh »

wan_ala wrote: post #266
dividedbyzero wrote: post #126

The fish shell, makes using the shell feel almost painless. Hammerspoon, I use it to automatically switch audio devices based on context, so every call uses the best microphone currently available, window management via keystrokes, limiting media keys to Spotify, tons of other things. Indispensable. Arduino, I don't think I would be able to tinker with microcontrollers as much if I had to write C and use obscure tool…

I use fish as my main shell and haven't seen anyone else that has. Honestly its really good, the autocomplete feature is my favorite.

Actually you can use fish-like autocomplete feature in zsh with this plugin [1]. It works well for years in my machine.

[1] https://github.com/marlonrichert/zsh-autocomplete

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#324

Post by asciimov »

Dalewyn wrote: post #200
asciimov wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody has their pain points with every operating system. For me and windows it was when it updated a hibernating unplugged laptop overnight causing me to loose several hours of genealogy work. I had been using a new to me application that hadn't been doing any sort of background saving while I put in information. My had some niblings come over so I shut my unplugged laptop thinking id get back at it tomorrow. The…

>For me and windows it was when it updated a hibernating unplugged laptop overnight causing me to loose several hours of genealogy work. I had been using a new to me application that hadn't been doing any sort of background saving while I put in information. My had some niblings come over so I shut my unplugged laptop thinking id get back at it tomorrow. The next day when I opened the laptop I was greeted with the dr…

If it happens to me, an active computer user for 25 years, think of how often this has happened to others. How much work has frustratingly been lost because Windows knows better about when to update.

Worse is technologically speaking this shouldn't even happen. Windows should be able to take a running application, save its state, do its update, reboot, then restore the application, without loosing a single byte of application state. Microsoft's lack of compassion for end users in this regard comes directly from it not effecting their bottom line.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#325

Post by nextos »

barumrho wrote: post #321
sleepycatgirl wrote: post #262

Let's see.. Software I am thankful for.. there is a fair amount of such. Anki - Software, that helped me build up habit, and made learning language an easier task Emacs - Wonderful text editor, made interacting with system a bliss. Nix/NixOS - Distro, that made updates a painless, and fearless task. I love it. ZFS - Filesystem that I love, for it has many wonderful features, and they all just work. (Also cute compres…

Curious to learn, what are the differentiators of ZFS? File system seems like an invisible layer to me personally which makes me ask this question.

Snapshots and device pools are my favorites. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Features

I use snapshots for personal backups, but on BTFS, and it's amazingly simple. 2 LOC: Rsync home to drive and make snapshot.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#326

Post by password4321 »

I'll say Brave, the least-worst mainstream cross-platform web browser.

A few clicks opposing the crypto b.s. and it is golden, with what seems so far to be a sustainable not-search-ads-funded business model, native code ad blocking/privacy enhancements, and minimal new tab page tomfoolery.

It's been a while since a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" fuck up, too. I know, I know, it's a pretty low bar...

I need to throw in a shout-out to the Windows Pro edition Windows Sandbox, a quick Hyper-V VM for a temporary barebones Windows-in-Windows that has proven really useful to troubleshoot issues in open source Windows software.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#327

Post by urbandw311er »

I am a little sad that nobody has said .NET or C# so I’m going with those.

I pretty much cut my teeth on the first versions of them at university more than 20 years ago and the framework is still going strong to this day. Versatile, powerful, constantly evolving, well supported, easy to understand, truly portable, and effectively free. What more could you ask for.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#328

Post by Daegalus »

* ZSH - powerful configurable terminal

* Steam/Proton/Wine/DXVK/VKD3D - to allow me to game on Linux and not need windows ever again.

* Fedora - for giving me a distro that is updated/leading edge, but not rolling and super stable.

* asdf - for letting me manage and get latest versions of my tools with minimal effort adn keep them updated

* Modern messaging - Whatsapp, Discord, Element, Telegram, etc. Lets me keep in touch with family, friends, communities near and far.

* foot - a crazy good wayland terminal.

* VS Code - light editor that does everything i need. No longer have to use heavy IDEs for anything.

* Go/Crystal/Nim - nice compiled languages that give me static binaries an a fun development experience.

* Linux - its been pushing for decades, but its finally at a place where it is starting to feel like a good everyday distro and so many things just work. Part of that is Web tech and Electron, others is Wine, the rest is the hard work of Linux devs that improved DEs, tools, accessibility, compatibility, etc. Most of my family has switched to it and most are not tech savvy much.

* Bitwarden - great, open source password manager that gets better and better.

* Micro - for giving me a nicer updated Nano experience when I don't need Vim or Emacs to edit some config files.

Im gonna get a lot of flack for this next one, but whatever:

* Google stuff - because it just works, and works really well. Android, docs, drive, maps, photos, etc. (i have contingency backup plans if this ever becomes not the case, even wrote a blog post detailing a lot of alternatives.)

And finally:

* Software - for giving me a career that gives a good quality of life to my family and myself. And its fun.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#329

Post by sleepycatgirl »

barumrho wrote: post #321
sleepycatgirl wrote: post #262

Let's see.. Software I am thankful for.. there is a fair amount of such. Anki - Software, that helped me build up habit, and made learning language an easier task Emacs - Wonderful text editor, made interacting with system a bliss. Nix/NixOS - Distro, that made updates a painless, and fearless task. I love it. ZFS - Filesystem that I love, for it has many wonderful features, and they all just work. (Also cute compres…

Curious to learn, what are the differentiators of ZFS? File system seems like an invisible layer to me personally which makes me ask this question.

Well, ZFS way of managing disks is really comfy to me, and, The way datasets and snapshots work, let me have really space efficient game modding.

I wrote a bit more about this on my extremely simple blog

https://sleepycatgirl.github.io/html/zfs.html

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