131–138 of 138 posts
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Web design wasn't invented after 2012. This goes against a ton of principles (Bootstrap was 2011). It could be a 2012 mobile site without a proper desktop version though.
The penguin's so big that the page title's cropped off the bottom on my (idk, 2020?) phone - I can't imagine it would look better on 2012 phones. Even the burger menu icon aspect ratio seems 'wrong'.
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Is this worst-case scenario for linux users any worse than the average-case of windows users downloading an .exe from a vendor's website and running it? If you do not already have a pubkey for which the code can be signed, then there is no chain of trust to verify in the first place. What signature would you check the code against in such a scenario? One you download from the vendor's same website?
A tiny bit, maybe. Those commands usually run as root, at least Windows warns you if the installer wants root. But I think the main point is that this debunks "whilst files from other sources are never run at all".
And yes: while traditionally people might install just from their distribution, times have changed a bit and people now do install from pip, cargo, npm, etc; but these are _somewhat_ trusted repositories still (rightly or wrongly).
Some people sometimes use curl as well. Due to the nature and low volume, this still doesn't give literal viruses much leeway. This is because it's not a target-rich environment (only a few executables), it's not guaranteed to happen on many computers, and most importantly, people tend to only curl in one direction. When you curl, you're mostly going to end up downloading executables from some central location. Typically these executables don't subsequently get copied to (m)any other computers or back to the server. So a literal virus doesn't get a lot of traction to replicate the way a virus wants to.
If you do manage to curl some malware, what you'd get is probably going to be something that's properly called a Trojan. Trojans are definitely a thing.
Just because you're on Linux doesn't mean you're magically completely invulnerable to all kinds of malware, you still need to act with care.
On the upside many distributions are more or less designed to keep you safe by default, and won't suddenly do something crazy to get you into trouble. On the downside the human operators are not always similarly inclined. ;-)
"And if you are concerned about privacy...consider a real upgrade … to Linux" [Opens Network tab] GET https://www.googletagmanager.com
I really don't get why Google doesn't have the option to serve these requests from the website's domain (maybe even using a random subdomain each time). Considering Google has their own CA or could use Let's Encrypt, it should be more than feasible.
This almost feels like some sort of anti-linux trolling. Suspicious number of pro-Windows comments in the first couple of hours, all focused on the sub-par website, not the OS.
It's by far the most popular desktop OS, and most people are happy with it.
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I also really like Windows 11 and find it to be a nice upgrade from Windows 10. The 1st Linux distro I used was TAMU back in 1992. I have tried countless desktop distros over the last 30 years. I still try the major desktop distros when they have a new release but leave disappointed each time. Poor battery life, poor trackpad gesture support, and awfulness of both flatpaks and snaps are just a few of the issues.
Trackpad support has substantially improved in the past couple years, https://linuxtouchpad.org/ has more info.
There's something to be said for breathing new life into these machines.
so I see Linux advocacy hasn't advanced a measurable amount in 20 years. that makes me a bit sad, but as a former Linux desktop user, I would not inflict that experience on anyone.
Linux, as an entire operating system, and not just as a kernel, really needs a strong steward with a vision if it is ever going to be beaten into something that is a cohesive single thing, and not a loose aggregation of software packages.
Unfortunately, by the time most people learn and know enough to become this person, they are at retirement age, and no longer have the energy or the desire to be that person. The younger people who attempt this are simply swatted away by the more toxic members of the Linux fanbase.
The only person I know of who could have possibly have filled this role when they had energy for it is the person behind the Linux Hater's blog of old. That person understood what was wrong with Linux very well, and was vocal about it.
That's who we need, again, someone like that. Someone to point out all the silliness and absurdity and expose it all as the silliness and absurdity that it really is. Because it is all very much incoherent and broken in so many ways. It all functions, it all works, but is it really competitive with MacOS or Windows? Those two both have their flaws, and plenty of them, but I don't think that Linux can hold a candle to either of them, really, for anyone but the most technical of users.
And maybe everyone has just agreed that only the technical users are the users who are important for this operating system. I don't know what the thought is about that, but I'll tell you, technical users are not the only users you need to care about as a Linux application developer.
a blog entry describing the linux Hater's Blog: https://www.mschaef.com/linux-haters-blog
an archive of the blog entries: https://github.com/atoponce/linuxhaters
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Trackpad support has substantially improved in the past couple years, https://linuxtouchpad.org/ has more info.
I have used trackpad support recently. It is indeed better than it was a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it was so awful that substantially improved doesn't mean good. I still find it to be mostly unusable. When testing recent distros with recent desktop environment running either atop X11 or wayland I have had to repeatedly perform gestures because they aren't recognized and frequently gestures just stop working…
Perhaps I've gotten used to the deficiencies, but saying this with a bias of being a macos user for a decade that worked on custom touchpad gesture UI for a while.