131–140 of 185 posts
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and the "it simply works" feeling
Install a modern distro. It does just work. I've literally done zero config to my laptop, nothing has broken or not worked. Literally everything works. Touchpad, touchscreen, webcam, fingerprint reader, stylus, suspend, audio, etc...
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Better UI/UX.
I'd personally take Gnome Shell over both Windows and OSX. It's minimal, gets out of your way, has better touchpad gestures and keyboard shortcuts for navigating, and looks great. So I think Linux is there. But this is kind of a personal thing. My wife likes Windows with a super cluttered desktop and I absolutely hate the idea of any desktop icons and I like everything hidden. I have a colleague who has OSX with agai…
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It means we should engineer incentives rather than trying to regulate outcomes. Policy choices aren’t binary.
Oh yea, the billionaire and shareholder class can totally be incentivized to be good global citizens. /s
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While I agree with the sentiment, just out of curiosity, would you buy a Tesla if it meets your needs and even if you disapprove of Elon's actions?
Yes. If you determine a Tesla is the best car to fit your needs, there are far better ways to influence Elon's actions than depriving yourself of the best car for you. You could write your Senator / Congressperson to support laws that would curtail Elon's actions. You could speak publicly and propose better things than what Elon is doing or publicize how and why they're harmful, etc. Buying or not buying a Tesla is v…
But it can certainly influence other people's perception of you... I think what we all have to decide though is how much that matters to us, should we decide to buy one anyway.
> Do you also need to individually vet every one of their opinions before you enrich them by buying a Tesla?
I think most people's negative image of a company/project tends to come from the leadership, or the most public leader, and not all the individual employees.
To that end I would consider Linux to be a tool mainly led by a habitually emotionally abusive person (Linus). Or when people mention Kitty I point out to them Kovid's many personal attacks on end-users, etc.
For some reason a lot of people in tech (and probably everywhere) seem to have real issues with staunch dogmatism and god complexes. I know people make mistakes and that's fine, but I'm talking about the ones that show consistent and daily life-long problems with usually no remorse.
You don't know everything, none of us do, and there can actually be other valid perspectives if you allow yourself to be wrong occasionally. Definitely not enough introspection/self-reflection going on IMO.
I'm sure people will downvote this but I don't think people should be forced to (or shamed when they don't want to) separate the art from the artist.
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What do you think Linux users are missing?
foobar2000, Total Commander, Excel
Yeah, I'm really missing Excel and VBA...
Between Google Sheets, Gnumeric (Python "macros" are so much better than VBA), R Studio, I definitely don't miss Excel an iota.
Google Sheets is a better choice for average Joe spreadsheet user, make a spreadsheet, some nice graphics, share it. Gnumeric has better scripting and better maths functions. R Studio is better for data analysis. I have a degree in economics and didn't touch Excel for any of it (Stata, R, Python got me through).
In fact, I could go further and write an entire dissertation about how Excel as a program is cursed and a net negative to society. The amount of times I've seen broken spreadsheets lead to real business problems is way, way higher than it should be. So much of what people do in Excel should just be handled by a Python script or something. Whoever thought it was a good idea to couple data and functions and then to put that in the hands of Jane from accounting did a massive disservice to all of society.
I've been using Linux exclusively for 15 years. Went through my entire university degree using only Linux. The biggest issue people face when switching is the desire for it to be the same as their previous OS. It's not. It never will be. It's different (and IMO better). Like GNOME Shell, so many people hate it. No dock, no way to minimize Windows, etc... Until you actually try to learn it a little. Launching apps is…
I think most FOSS developers completely miss this point, assuming their goal is to get more people to use their software.
Sure GNOME can be usable if you learn a different way, but you can't force everyone to do that. Not even most people. So I think if they really cared about doing what's necessary to get a lot more users, they're going to have to make their product more like what the potential new users expect, whether the developers like it or not.
The genius of capitalism is in its unique ability to harness the energy of sociopaths* to produce valuable products and services**. If there was no freedom to amass fortunes, these people would still exist, and they would do even more damage in whatever theoretical social structure we would have. * And to a lesser degree, the self-interest everybody naturally possesses. ** Minimizing negative externalities is the res…
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Oh yea, the billionaire and shareholder class can totally be incentivized to be good global citizens. /s
Yes, make it so they get more money by being better citizens. That’s the only way it will ever work. I fail to see the sarcasm here.
If you regulate away bad practices, capital will flow elsewhere. The level of equity investment in IT (and the valuations) is largely due to bad practices; fixing that will take away the OP’s favorite toys.
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Install a modern distro. It does just work. I've literally done zero config to my laptop, nothing has broken or not worked. Literally everything works. Touchpad, touchscreen, webcam, fingerprint reader, stylus, suspend, audio, etc...
Depends on the laptop.
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I'd personally take Gnome Shell over both Windows and OSX. It's minimal, gets out of your way, has better touchpad gestures and keyboard shortcuts for navigating, and looks great. So I think Linux is there. But this is kind of a personal thing. My wife likes Windows with a super cluttered desktop and I absolutely hate the idea of any desktop icons and I like everything hidden. I have a colleague who has OSX with agai…
It’s not just the desktop, it is the app ecosystem too. There are a lot of really great UX and productivity hacks in the macOS sphere which dead simple to install and intuitive to use.