Live data from Hacker News

You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

fireborn.mataroa.blog

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#21
post #11

Linux is just a base that people stack other software on top of. Audio crash? Pulse or Pipe wire? Then the dozens of desktop environments, each doing things differently, split between X11 and Wayland. I feel like blind devs should get together and make a distro that, out of the box, has as many accessibility features as possible, because it seems a lost cause to wait for some other distro to pick the right combinatio…

Segregation is not equality

Not what I said either. That's like saying we're segregating the Linux Mint from the Ubuntu users.

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#22
post #11

Linux is just a base that people stack other software on top of. Audio crash? Pulse or Pipe wire? Then the dozens of desktop environments, each doing things differently, split between X11 and Wayland. I feel like blind devs should get together and make a distro that, out of the box, has as many accessibility features as possible, because it seems a lost cause to wait for some other distro to pick the right combinatio…

How about devs that are using speech recognition because their hands or arms don't work or are not even present?

Also, telling someone to use a dedicated distribution because of the disability is telling them they're not worthy enough to use any distribution that suits their needs beyond accessibility issues.

I'm fortunate to have enough hand function to use a mouse to point and click on big UI elements, but for writing, I use Aqua.

I highly recommend that if you want to understand what it's like to live with speech recognition, or even be mildly disabled, you rent Aqua for a couple of months. It's affordable. No need for a dedicated microphone; it works with the built-in microphones on your laptop, provided you have a relatively quiet room.

Once you've started using Aqua to get comfortable with how Aqua works, place a book on your keyboard to block easy access. Every time you touch the book to use the keyboard, send $10 to an accessibility developer. Alternatively, you could send the money to Aqua to encourage them to develop a Linux version of the desktop client.

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#23
post #6

This is just two people misunderstanding and talking past eachother. The blogger wants to outsource living his life to other people, the commenter is getting hung up on pedantry too much to communicate what he actually wants to.

You're confused if that's what you think about the blogger. I know this guy and he's the most DIY person to almost a farcical degree. You try booting into a distro without your monitor attached and then contribute a patch, still without your monitor attached, see how you do.

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Segregation is not equality

Not what I said either. That's like saying we're segregating the Linux Mint from the Ubuntu users.

It's not your intention, but it is functionally what you suggested.

First, we've had these distros, about 5 of them. They're very hard to maintain and are all abandoned now. SOme of these were long-running projects but scale matters in these enterprises.

Second, you can't always use some custom distro. I work for a security company. For various reasons, it makes sense to use a small set of distros that have some major maintenance / royal road element.If I try running Slackware or some distro only maintained by one guy on my work machine, as a practical matter I'm putting my career in jeopardy when I can't do something basic and I ahve no explanation.

The reality is, this shit needs to get fixed. It's not a problem that's going to go away, blind folks aren't going to go away, though that would be really convenient for many, I guess. Let's just clean up this mess. Blind folks are trying to contribute and help, there have been some major breakthroughs lately, mostly because folks have somewhat less crappy attitudes and it's just gotten too ridiculous, but the attitude of "oh just go do this" has run its course, as has the RTFM and figure it out when you can't even get intital purchase on the system. Let's just grow up and clean up this mess, own it and get on board, no on'es asking you to fix this but at least don't be a pain from the sidelines and just say hey, this needs to happen, I support it.

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#25
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Apple’s commitment to pervasive accessibility features has been around for so long and has had so much investment into it it is clear it is in their DNA. It’s probably the nicest thing about the company, and it stands out even more in the last ten or twenty years as the company becomes more and more scummy and despicable. It’s deep down and was established back when it was run by humans with deep empathy.

Yeah, right. Do not confuse accessibility with simplicity. So much accessibility that: You need to use gestures to access critical functions. Half of screen readers cannot be connected to their hardware. You cannot easily get someone to write a driver for exotic input hardware. There's no zoom feature in the OS. Recently many UIs just break with big scale factors. Keyboard support is lacking altogether in some bits o…

I get the Apple suspicion, but there's great Zoom functionality on every Apple device I've used. Also color invert, screen reader, and a whole rack of other a11y features. I agree that it's the nicest thing about the company.

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#26
post #11

Linux is just a base that people stack other software on top of. Audio crash? Pulse or Pipe wire? Then the dozens of desktop environments, each doing things differently, split between X11 and Wayland. I feel like blind devs should get together and make a distro that, out of the box, has as many accessibility features as possible, because it seems a lost cause to wait for some other distro to pick the right combinatio…

Segregation is not equality

>This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#28
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like what demographics The demographics of programming languages choosen/picked up by new generations of foss developers. With GNU/linuxer i meant the stereotypical stubborn people resisting change not a specific distro. I guess there will be non-technical frictions between rust and C in the linux project for as long as the GNU/linuxers exist. And like the OP, it can be seen as a matter of accessibility.

Just because we don't want to use your crap and tolerate your condescension doesn't mean we're stubborn. It may very well be that you're asocial/antisocial and your software is low quality.

And it could be, that C is a language in decline and the linux team should consider it before it becomes the next Cobol.

If that possibility was real, wouldnt you want to care about it?

Imagine Linus Torvals gone and the kernel devs only consisting of highly payed full-time C-Dinosaurs from a few mega corps. And the entry bar for young enthusiasts being not just learning C but the linux kernel version of it. How much worth would the GPL then be?

Re: You Don't Own the Word "Freedom"

#29
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because we don't want to use your crap and tolerate your condescension doesn't mean we're stubborn. It may very well be that you're asocial/antisocial and your software is low quality.

And it could be, that C is a language in decline and the linux team should consider it before it becomes the next Cobol. If that possibility was real, wouldnt you want to care about it? Imagine Linus Torvals gone and the kernel devs only consisting of highly payed full-time C-Dinosaurs from a few mega corps. And the entry bar for young enthusiasts being not just learning C but the linux kernel version of it. How much…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN