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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • the world runs off GitHub whether we like it or not

    It doesn’t and we don’t like it anyway.

    PS: to clarify, yes GitHub is wildly popular but, and the kernel is a particularly interesting example, it does not host ALL projects, only a lot of popular ones. A lot of very popular ones are also NOT there but rather on their own git, mailing list, GitLab instance, Gitea, etc. It’s a shortcut, I understand that, but by ascertaining it as “truth” it’s hiding a reality that is quite different and showing that reliable alternatives do exist.




  • utopiah@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    13 days ago

    main difference between raster graphics and vector graphics was the quality

    It’s not. The primitives, the most basic constitutive building blocks, are different, for raster it’s the pixel (a mix of colors, e.g. red/green/blue) whereas for vector it’s the … vector (a relative position elements, e.g. line, circle, rectangle or text start with).

    This is a fundamental distinction on how you interact with the content. For raster you basically paint over pixels, changing the values of pixels, whereas for vector you change values of elements and add/remove elements. Both can be lossless though (vector always is) as for raster can have no compression or lossless compression. That being said raster does have a grid size (i.e. how many pixels are stored, e.g. 800x600) whereas vector does not, letting you zoom infinitely and see no aliasing on straight lines.

    Anyway yes it’s fascinating. In fact you can even modify SVG straight from the browser, no image editor or text editor needed, thanks to your browser inspector (easy to change the color of a rectangle for example) or even the console itself then via JavaScript and contentDocument you can change a lot more programmatically (e.g. change the color of all rectangles).

    It’s a lot of fun to tinker with!




  • never could get away from Windows entirely. Especially for gaming, and a few critical apps.

    Been gaming exclusively on Linux now for few years, including in VR. Just few hours ago before my work day I was playing Elden Ring with controller. 0 tinkering, System key, “EL”[ENTER] then play. So… unless you need kernel level anti-cheat, Linux is pretty good for gaming nowadays.

    Same of the few “critical” apps, I don’t know what these are but rare are the ones without equivalent and/or that don’t work with Wine, sometimes even better that on Windows.

    Anyway : Debian. Plain and simple, not BS with a mix bag of installers (but you can still use AppImage or am or even nix whenever you want to). It just works and keep on working.






  • First and foremost, welcome to Linux!

    Few pointers to hopefully help the process :

    • “Not knowing where to find anything.” indeed, it’s disorienting but it will come. You can find actual “maps” but honestly, just as you would do in other operating system, use the search function. If it’s not obvious this way, search online. The first few times it will be weird then each time it does become easier until it actually makes sense!
    • “The lingering feeling of instability.” have a /home directory (not “folder”, that’s funnily enough a Windows term as they tried to be different, going from the unanimously used / to their own C:\ things) so that you can actually go “nuts” with your installation, actually messing things up but without the fear of losing your precious data! Each new install is an occasion to learn. That being said, Linux is very VERY stable. I’ve been running the same installation for years, on desktop and servers alike. If something goes wrong it can usually be fixed and it’s, again, an occasion to learn. That being said, having a dedicated /home directory on its own partition or even disk gives you the opportunity for a low effort low risk blank slate.
    • “The capslock works differently” … well this one is quick, you’re looking for the SHIFT key if you only want to type few characters in uppercase ;)
    • “Every once in a while, my desktop icons get rearranged.” yet another occasion to learn. What’s the bug from? Is there an issue open? Is it being worked on? By whom? How? Why? You might even be able to fix it!
    • “It seems impossible to get Firefox to not restore sessions after shutting down the computer with it still open.” it’s in the Firefox preference : Settings -> Startup -> untick “Open previous windows and tabs”, literally the first option.
    • “The above all add to a bit of a general ‘stuck together with adhesive tape and love’ feeling.” nice, and that’s just the surface, it’s now YOUR system so you can do whatever you want, even if everybody else disagree.
    • “Not knowing how to install programs.” well that loops back to all the learning opportunities above and the last remark, it’s YOUR system so you can use whatever you prefer, both in terms of apps, settings or even how to install (or not! Check e.g. Nix) apps. There are even “weirder” things like https://github.com/ivan-hc/AM but the point is, you decide, again, always!


  • Honestly I’d

    • take any distribution that someone at or close to the library is comfortable with, e.g popular Ubuntu or Debian,
    • setup a user profile that fits the need of the average library user, e.g Firefox with as a start page the library website
    • make sure the library card system do work
    • copy /home/thatuser directory somewhere, e.g /root/thatuserunmodified and insure permissions make it unmodifiable
    • add a cron task so that every evening 1h after the library close any thatuser session is terminated, /home/thatuser gets deleted, copy the /root/thatuserunmodified to /home/thatuser and fixer permission
    • assuming it’s fast enough (I bet it’s take 1min at most as /home/thatuser would be mostly empty) I’d do the process after each logout so that each new visitor gets a fresh session, no downloads from previous users, history, bookmarks, etc. Only what the library consider useful.

    That’s it. This way one can still let the OS do it’s updates but the user experience is consistent.