@almalinux i chose "don't know where to start". i have historically contributed to open source projects but got tied up in life and couldn't work on those things for a few years.

i'm back at it now and i'm having great trouble identifying a project to contribute to. ideally it'd be something i use that needs my skillset but that's a tough thing to track down.

@almalinux there doesn't seem to be a place for ux designers in open source... it's mostly solving tickets

@almalinux Learning to make good bug reports is a great way to start, or is even a destination. (For me, it's mostly a destination)

¿What did you do, step by step?
¿What happened?
¿What did you expect to happen?
¿Can you make it happen more than once? (if no, still report it but say that)
¿What versions are you using of everything (OS, software, anything that might be relevant)?

(do check if someone has already filed it)

@almalinux I don't have the faintest idea of computer programming.

@almalinux I could answer all of those. My job involves developing open source software and I have done a few personal side projects, but the other constraints (time in particular) mean that anything outside work is being put aside. One other issue is Google's demands for developer registration and ID - I'll stop developing rather than hand that over. I'd like to work on Pebble software if I could.

@fedora Yes, but only if it’s Silverblue/Atomic Desktop. Unless they want to tinker, but most people want it to just work.

@fedora I don't blanket-recommend. If fedora fits their needs, I recommend it. If it doesn't, I don't.

@fedora it would be if Fedora defaulted to Flathub for Flatpaks. The fact that you need to tell someone how to change their default software source out of the box makes it a non-starter for first time users IMO

@fedora It was, until you surrendered to the AI nonsense.

@fedora Depends on what they need. My main issue for non tech savvy people would be the lack of an LTS version.

@fedora while I use Fedora as my daily driver, I answered no. It's in my top-three depending on who I am making the recommendation to.

The process for installing the best drivers for some hardware choices could be better. It's not well explained. Same goes with the codecs. Mint does an excellent job with a goal-focused wizard that solves it all with two clicks and an internet connection.

@fedora Not as a first distro, but for more or less experienced users, it can be an excellent choice.

@fedora so many updates… I like Fedora but it seems i’m updating every day.

@fedora needs to improve warnings to install third-party codecs, have easy access to the rpm fusion option, have easy access to install third-party compatibility. Put flatHub as standard, make the store bazaar standard by being more complete. I would recommend it for beginners. I would never install Fedora on the first trip, I came from Zorin and learned there.

@fedora already did on F41 and F42 for mom and dads computers with kinoite, everything works great for a while alredy, did not have many support calls

@fedora No because of you export control lisence, as i'm in EU side, giving this kind of advice because of the US orange Nazi is a very bad advice.

So unless you revoke the said license for "normal user", i sadly would not.

Under normal US presidency i would have said yes, but since the nazi are in power...

@fedora

Not to Linux beginners when they are on their own to try it.

There are some major pitfalls, as missing codecs.

Even for me as a sysadmin installing the right ones is tedious (just installing the multimedia group wasn't enough).

I just installed vlc or mpv player as a flatpak to circumvent the default black screen in vlc on H264 content.

Another big issue is the proprietary nvidia driver and how to install it.

I wish Fedora would include a program like on Mint or Ubuntu that informs users of missing additional drivers and asks them, whether they want to install them.

I like that the RPMFusion repo with the driver is there to enable in the software store. But you have to know that it's there and that you have to enable it to install the driver in the first place.

@fedora Fedora is a good distribution for first Linux usage, but I tend to recommend Ubuntu because the majority of linux software are Debian packages, and if the user search help in internet, the majority of guides are designed for Debian/Ubuntu. Moreover, the post-installation is so simple on Ubuntu, because the NVIDIA driver is proposed in installer, as well as multimedia codecs.

@fedora

I would love to move to and support Fedora, but I CANNOT get it to install on Intel Mac hardware.

Otherwise...

I haven't actually upgraded to 43 yet, but it's been my go-to for a long time.

@fedora@fosstodon.org

@fedora I feel like it’s my go-to for myself and other techies but for average folks I still recommend Ubuntu. Not really sure the usability gap is still there though, as it’s been a while since I have used it and also since I’ve used a clean Fedora install.

@fedora F43 not going to recommend to anyone, fix all the bugs, specially the big one that gets stuck in black screen (KDE), this release had introduced so many difficult to solve bugs

@fedora I use/love Fedora Workstation, but I feel like people’s heads explode when I mention you need to spend 5 minutes manually enabling video acceleration, and possibly dealing with Nvidia drivers. (Still maybe? I don’t have Nvidia myself…)

“Why does it not just work or ahip the right drivers out of the box‽” Is a real question I’ve gotten, and my answer starts with a long sigh.

@fedora Techically yes but only in regards to off shoots of silverblue. These being bazzite and bluefin. They provide much better out of the box experiences for new users.

@fedora fuck no, beginners should use a user friendly os without any bullshit and I can only name one distro which fulfills these two requirements: Linux Mint Debian Edition(LMDE)

@fedora I recommend Fedora for its ease of installation, stability, and constant updates. Since I started using Fedora as my main distribution a few years ago, it has been my top recommendation.

@fedora

No, it is not my go to recommendation because for a newbie the updates must be as easy and transparent as possible and, for a newbie, to have to do an upgrade at least every year can be a bit heavy.

@fedora elementary OS is my go to recommendation.

It is the most well designed Linux desktop user experience.

@fedora Kill the stale bot and I'd say yes! =D

@fedora Depends IMHO on the use case. As desktop sure, but e.g. if the user wants to learn something about Linux then distros like Gentoo are much better... Or for old hardware Debian might be better for example. Security wise Qubes is better and so on... 😅

@fedora Unfortunately no. People who just switched mostly care about their old apps so that means an Ubuntu based system. Generally I recommend Linux mint.

@fedora only if Fedora User Repository is exist🙃

@fedora Silverblue for sure

@fedora it depends. If they have a NVidia GPU I still recommend them some flavor of Ubuntu. However, for myself and those who have AMD GPU's I enthusiastically recommend KDE Fedora.

@almalinux I have xfs and ext4. With the ext4 I came through the ranks from ext2 then three then four. Probably, back in the early days for me, it was the default file system.

Xfs gods a good write up in a couple of magazines, so I decided to give it a try.

Since either 2001 or 2011 when I started Linux, no file system problems. Other than a dicky USB thumb drive!

@almalinux Strange poll. Shouldn't ext4 and xfs have their own option? Personally, I prefer ext4. I know Alma 10.1 will allow btrfs installation, which is great! The poll design is still strange though.

@almalinux xfs on my server, btrfs on my laptop

@almalinux Btrfs on my laptop, xfs and some zfs on servers.

@almalinux ZFS for storage, typically XFS/EXT4 on VMs

@almalinux
btrfs.
- system snapshots are instant and automated with Timeshift, allowing an easy go-back in time in case of problem. (Hack your system with peace of mind).
- duplicating a giga-bytes folder is instant... and consumes no place on disk.
- with compression and deduplication, it's giga-bytes of space saved.
- / and /home can share free space while being separated. Not more "Oh no I have no space left on partition A and plenty of space on B".

@nixCraft It's endlessly frustrating to watch Mozilla sabotage themselves like this. Doubly so when Chromium is literally the only alternative.

@nixCraft yup

[edit] proud to say this pic was made with Kolourpaint

Alt...

A person holding two black handguns pointed towards the feet, only the legs and arms are visible, expressing twice the metaphor "shoot oneself in the foot". The lower half of Mozilla logo is visible at the top.

@nixCraft

That’s so sad.
Why Mozilla is doing this ? that’s a non sense.

@nixCraft

Machine translation of a large document repository? That’s going to be a disaster. And I know Mozilla employs enough bilingual (or more) people to know that.

@nixCraft sad loss of knowledgeable volunteers 😢

@nixCraft its very sad

Every day, Mozilla leadership wakes up and thinks: "How can we piss off the tiny number of remaining users who are our biggest fans?" , all while C suites get millions in salary and add AI slop everywhere.

@nixCraft and this is particularly bad for Japanese - MTL from/to that language are still often missing contextual cues and mistranslating things. It's no wonder contributors were pissed...

@nixCraft Mozilla can evidently hit their targets. Now if they could aim for something other than their foot for once...

@nixCraft maybe Mozilla agreed to more than use google by default and they need to use the AI crap google push into them so Google can later on say their AI helped open source in the next key note.

@nixCraft This is incredibly sad and disrespectful. I am baffled by Mozilla's choices. What a shame.

@nixCraft what is the best #Firefox fork?

@nixCraft Are they the people behind Floorp?

@nixCraft

Correct way to use machine translations: state explicitly that documentation is not available in the language of choice, offer translator as a possible helper, ask for help.

Incorrect way to use machine translations: shove it in the middle of a human-centric process, ignoring humans involved in it.

I don’t like dealing with people, but there’s a certain trend here that makes even me look like a party person.

@nixCraft Not surprised at all. Mozilla is just another tech corporation from Silicon Valley. Most of their activities have been for profit so far. As much as they tried to jump on the anti-capitalist bandwagon back in the day, it was nothing more than just a desperate attempt to expand their market share, and also help Google look like less of a giant monopoly for a reason.

@nixCraft why would they do that? Are they stupid?

@nixCraft The replies from "Kiki" seem to me inconsiderate or insensitive. Marsf already listed their concerns and Kiki seems to want to talk about it to get the other person to accept AI. There's not even an apology and a revert in there.

Chatbots often have the same superficial friendliness and no clue about actual content. I hope that's not a sign Kiki outsourced their forum comments to AI.

@nixCraft

AI translation would have made sense as a "This is machine translated, and needs human review", as a boilerplate for new and untranslated documents.

It would have been a way to get a first pass something out, which is better than nothing.

But deleting properly translated works?!? Thats fucking gross. Why bother, since some amateur LLM is going to obliterate your stuff.

Then again @mozilla has super lost their way for a decade now. I dont have much hope that they'll ever come around.

@nixCraft I'm gone to #Brave. I was Mozzila before the begining with Netscape; it's so sad..

@nixCraft

@mozilla

Really poor way to treat people. I do wonder if Mozilla should just give up if that's how things are going to be going forward 😟

@nixCraft I’m not a specialist in the Japanese language, but with my low level I can already see that automatic translators give particularly bad results with this language, especially when it is the target language. (Obviously, what I’m saying is only in addition to all the other more fundamental problems that are being posed.)

@nixCraft

This type of issue is too common in this world today. 😪

@nixCraft Firefox is great. Way better than the rest.

Thank you firefox for a free, non-intrusive, non privacy-killer app.

@nixCraft @thawkade Mozilla CEO needs to get the boot so damn bad. Disastrous tenure.

@nixCraft "Crazy" isn't the word you want to use here, they go reactionary, throwing psychiatrized peopled under the bus doesn't help. 😞

@nixCraft oh look another "firefox bAd" post!

@nixCraft Mozilla becomes one of the prime examples how to ignore their users and enshittify their products. Led by false assumptions and pressure from other players.

Hey I would pay for Firefox, even a subscription if its small enough.

But for that I would want to see my investments respected and used towards improving the Browser for the users. Listen to the Users. Make it secure and privacy friendly, leave all the rest to extensions the users can opt-in.

I won't be surprised if Firefox become chrome-based tbh

@nixCraft What are alternatives those days?

@nixCraft 60+ High Quality Unique Wallpapers 👌
https://payhip.com/b/3K84k

@nixCraft I feel my distrust in Mozilla confirmed. Too much focus on profit, too little focus on values and community.

@nixCraft 😭🤬

@nixCraft very unfortunate…

@nixCraft so there's NO good browser then? What are we supposed to use?

@nixCraft The way Mozilla have changed is so sad to see :/

@nixCraft, while I agree with the general sentiment about Mozilla, I want to point out that the post in the screenshot is talking about SUMO, which is the codename for Mozilla support website (SUpport.Mozilla.Org), not Mozilla as a whole. @jenskutilek

@nixCraft
this makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
A slap in the face to so many volunteers while saying "our AI knows better".
And actively lowering the quality of the documentation...

@nixCraft FFS, #mozilla. It's like you're actively trying to piss off your users.

Yes, machine translation is wonderful, but only for things that would never get translated otherwise.

I'm reminded of a conversation with a Swiss Italian collegue over the British English slang 'stingy'. The Italian equivalent translates literally to 'short arms' (as in can't reach their pockets). This does not compute for an AI model.

@nixCraft #Mozilla has to die for #Firefox to survive.

@nixCraft #Mozilla doesn't seem to understand that people who do not care about privacy and ethics already use another browser. Mozilla users care about these things and force-feeding "AI" to them is pushing them to choose something else.. Like #Vivaldi :)

@nixCraft So we have AI and so we leave other languages behind and we go ahead with our stuff.

Fine, I want to see a real official AI movie/tv show just so I can confirm how bad AI cartoons are.

@nixCraft
This AI crap decisions really make me want to dodge Mozilla stuff... I will give Vivaldi another chance I guess

@nixCraft This is awful. Real. Awful. And as a person who hates lazy AI translations, even more awful.

@nixCraft This is EMBARRISSINGLY incompetent. I'm a long-year translator of #FreeSoftware (English→German) and know from experience about how error-ridding machine translation still can be. It's making improvements, but it's NOT good enough to replace humans. If you use MT, a human MUST sit at the end.

MTs eventually fail when it comes to context, which can often be critical. It's not enough to JUST look at the raw text to translate it.

Thus, MT-generated text must NEVER be auto-approved.

@nixCraft

O Heat death of the Universe

@nixCraft I voted for Year of Linux Desktop, and I don't think that will happen anytime soon, so...

@nixCraft I didn't vote, but I think AGI will come first NOT BECAUSE it's the "AGI" that they have advertized, BUT BECAUSE they'll sell whatever they have when they have to sell AGI.

@nixCraft Half-Life 3

@nixCraft FSD, räumlich stark eingeschränkt bereits real.

@nixCraft @pidgin 3 will happen before all three but will help lead to Year of the Linux Desktop! 🥳

@nixCraft in my home, the year of Linux on the desktop has been every year since around 2008!

@nixCraft

i'm expecting transporters and food replicators before any of the above work...

@nixCraft A nuclear fusion reactor

@nixCraft Space Elevators!

@nixCraft

thank you! You see it too, right?

The desktop-revolution is ON. Hooray! 🥳
What's gained by still using "the european mainstream non-open america-OS"?
What powers "mobile-anything" devices?
What powers all the "free-or-premium" online services?

And modern gamers know if it runs on: #nix #kodi #arkos #foss #else? 💾 💠

I mean:
> I don't understand the question.
> Who is Agi, and is FSD a new radical party?

All the best! 🍀

@nixCraft Cold fusion and a useful quantum computer

@nixCraft The first two require major advancements in technology to ever actually work, while the last one only requires a major advancement in how disgusted everyone is by large platforms.

So I'm voting linux desktop. For years people have said that linux needs to get more user friendly for this to happen, but actually it will be windows/macos getting much much worse.

@nixCraft, what? Floyd–Steinberg dithering happened years ago…

@nixCraft damn are we delusional! 😂

@nixCraft What is FSD?

@nixCraft Whos year of the Linux desktop?

@nixCraft

The return of the Amiga.

@nixCraft one could argue that there has been "full-self-driving" (grade of automation 4) transit systems for decades (e.g. kobe since 1981, lille since 1983, and vancouver since 1985) but it only works on grade separated lines. it turns out controlling the environment is very useful when one wants to make complex systems.

@nixCraft they will all happen exactly at the same time. it'll be magical

@nixCraft my year of Linux on the desktop started two years ago and it’s been going great.

@nixCraft 不合理

@alice

I am a typical tea novice; I boil water and pour it over the tea bag (usually in a single cup).

I now most often make tea at work.

@alice though I do preheat my thermos bottle with boiling water before use - both for tea and coffee.

@alice
As a tea purist, I microwave the water IN the mug, heating both simultaneously.

@alice The thermal mass of the water is always going to be several times that of the mug, so I'm not really worried about losing heat to the mug.

@alice sometimes, but not regularly

@alice no, though on the occasions I drink tea, it’s typically a Japanese/Chinese green tea, rather than the classic English cuppa

@alice I don't. And I primarily make green tea which benefits from a cooler steep temperature anyway.

@alice (please let me know if I start rambling...) Okay so, it really depends on the tea whether or not you want or should. In contrast to what might seem to be the case, certain types of tea actually prefer "cooler" water - instead of near boiling. It can in fact severely alter the taste. Though not always, the more younger and floral the taste the lower the temperature should be. If it's dried tea leaves, it usually is higher (closer to boiling)

That said, the proces of preheating your cup...

@alice never even occurred to me!

@alice only when preparing mom's expensive matcha

@alice
No, but I do sometimes preheat my thermos.

My trick is that the kettle heats the water to 100C, but the tea only needs around 70C. So I pour some of the water into the thermos, heating up while cooling the water slightly. I then use the water for the first cup of tea, and pour the remaining 100C water into the thermos.

That makes the thermos keep the water hot for longer, and the slightly colder water is better for brewing tea.

@alice Yes. But I am British… 🇬🇧

@alice I tend to drink green tea, so it's not really ideal that the temperature be too hot anyway.

But I do my actual steeping with loose leaf in a separate mini kettle made of a thin glass, so it pretty much reaches full temperature right away anyway.

@alice So, I don't steep my tea in the cup. I steep enough for two cups at a time, in a... okay, it's technically also a cup, but not what you were talking about. It's one of those 22 oz. stainless-steel-outside, plastic-interior keeps-heat-in coffee cups. Anyway, I just throw boiling water over tea bags in that, then when it's steeped, I put a couple of ice cubes in my actual tea cup and pour the still-too-hot tea over that, then it's cool enough to drink.

@alice a. There needs to be an option that just says "What?"

b. I now believe I am not a "tea drinker."

@alice
I sometimes rinse my mug with boiling water to get rid of small leaves and whatnot (I don't clean it after every use), but not specificaly to prefeat it.

@catsalad So this is how I confirm I have AuDHD...

@catsalad **deep breath in**

“yeah” I sigh

@catsalad gold dihydrogen dioxide?
(Edit: I forgot my periodic table manners)

@catsalad
Me: "oh look, a squirrel"

@catsalad AuDHD, constantly overlooked: I!!!!

@catsalad I am in this post and I still have to figure out how I feel about that…

@catsalad Many of us understand this.

@catsalad AuDHD: Kittens!

@nina_kali_nina If all else fails, I've recently installed Win 3.11 and Win95 on a 386SX-16 with mTCP's amazing netdrive.

@nina_kali_nina 3.11 on 6.20 > 3.1 on 6.22

@nina_kali_nina I installed this combination a few times. During this phase of my life, frequent impressions somehow burned themselves into my brain, so that even today, when I am reminded of them and close my eyes, I can still see them like an afterimage on my retina. A bit like a catchy tune. So thank you for that. 😁

@nina_kali_nina never installed win3.11. thx for reminding me. 486 would be appropriate, yes? :)