I don’t have a substantial opinion about ReactOS. I’m aware of it, but that’s as far as I’ve ever gone.

However, I wanted to compliment you because that was a great opener to this discussion. 🙂

Also… why are ‘hackers’ always using a shell in some gui program?

An actual CLI would frighten the windows users watching the show.

Just clarifying because I feel we’re talking past each other:

You asked the folks in this discussion:

If the problem is fixable technical shortcomings, why not fix them instead of throwing up our hands and surrendering?

to which I said

Because not everyone is a developer.

to which you said

You don’t have to be a developer to use Lemmy

True. But that’s not what where we’re at in the discussion.

It sounds like mastodon still has technical issues . If Lemmy’s were solvable, mastodon’s are too. Otherwise, how did mastodon get built in the first place?

I’m quite sure they are solvable, but likely not by the folks complaining about the technical issues and choosing to use other services like bluesky. Because not everyone is a developer.

So in other words, I think your musing out loud about why don’t we solve the issues instead of giving up and using something else is being directed to the wrong people.

I think it’s just discoverability of content, and probably some UX. Mastodon isn’t really a great show of what ActivityPub can do.

I’m kind of surprised I don’t see Calckey or similar mentioned more. Personally I think it has solved a lot of Mastodon’s problems, but it seems niche even within the niche that is the fediverse.

https://calckey.world/

As a Linux user since 2007 I feel a little dirty uttering this phrase, but:

Because not everyone is a developer.

I promise that I’m leaving this here in good humor, although it is also true.

I think he’s going entirely the wrong way then.

If he owns all accounts he’s responsible for all accounts, right?

He should have just let it go.

“Accidentally”

I thought they meant “Not if you are still on Plasma 5” but maybe I misinterpreted it.

You replied to OP with that spammy mess in two different posts? And then act all snotty when called out?

(Apparently also not noticing the name of the account you replied to nor its profile pic? - someone who does NOT need conversion)

Here’s a tip from a longtime Linux user: You’re making us look bad. Find a different way.

This is crazy… misguided, hypocritical, extreme, and unsafe. Etc.

Just like back alley abortions. Both easily avoided by respecting the bodily and reproductive autonomy of women.

I’m sure all the folks who were quick to ignore or dismiss their clarification of the packaging issue at the time will be just as quick to make comments like these as they were to skewer them then.

Was a Gnome user until Gnome 3.

Since Plasma 5, I use KDE Plasma.

I’m just going to share my unvarnished opinions here, I clearly understand that Gnome users feel differently, and that’s okay.

• Gnome 3 performance was objectively worse on every bit of hardware I tried than Plasma. (Unfortunately I had functional gripes with Plasma 4 so couldn’t use it.)
• The years of faffing about I had trying to be happy with Gnome 3 and trying to use other alternatives until Plasma 5 was ready pretty much convinced me of this:
  • Gnome devs care more about achieving their vision of how a desktop should be used than they do about accommodating users who might feel differently. This is my perception, and it’s a deeply held opinion. No matter how strongly you feel I’m wrong, you aren’t going to change my mind. You can come at me if you want, but it’s going to bear no fruit.
  • KDE devs have a vision, but place nearly equal importance on ensuring their users can make different choices if they choose. If this isn’t true, they do a damn good job of pretending it is, and that’s good enough for me. 🙂
• I’m unhappy with the degree to which it appears the Gnome team has actively worked against the ability for users to easily customize, and with various feature removals that at this point are so far in my past that I probably don’t remember the specific things that pissed me off, but I remember their explanations for feature removals being salt in an open wound every last time I cared enough to investigate their stated reasons.

Plasma 6 does everything I want the way I want. I have loaded it (and Plasma 5) on very low end and very high end hardware and found it performant and functional on both, consistently.

You’ll note I don’t claim it to be the best. There are folks out there for whom the Gnome vision happens to be how they like to work, or who aren’t bothered by whatever hoops you have to jump through currently to customize a Gnome environment, and I’m sincerely happy for those people. For them, Gnome is the best.

There are lots of other DEs and of course tiling WMs exist, but it takes me no time at all to have a fresh plasma install working the way I want my computer to work and looking the way I want it to look, and thus I literally have zero complaints. So for the past few years I haven’t even looked at any alternatives. If there’s ever a time that I don’t find the desktop product itself, and the KDE development team’s approach to desktop development, to be absolutely perfect fits for me, I’ll look elsewhere - but honestly probably not at Gnome.

Edit: Disregard my original reply, updated today and now it works again lol!

It launches for me (and I am in a plasma-wayland session FWIW), and it loads the thumbnails for all videos with no problem. When I click a video as if to play it, it appears to load up the main page for that video complete with play button, but nothing at all happens when I click the play button. Along the way are various api errors from youtube, but I think some of those came in even when things were working for me.

Basically I can get this far for any video:

Thank you! I actually tried setting the invidious options yesterday before making that post, thinking I might need to use that instead of localapi. But as you have predicted, no dice.

Edit - works fine after updating today lol!

Freetube on desktop Linux hasn’t worked for me for a long time - but that doesn’t seem to be the case for most people. Any tips regarding settings? I’d say it’s been at least 3 or 4 months since I could reliably use it.

Overdrive is the one I usually hear about, but in googling Libby it seems they are related.

https://help.libbyapp.com/en-us/6251.htm

https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4477058367895-About-the-Libby-app

https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017677053-Borrow-eBooks-from-the-public-library-using-your-Kobo-eReader

Well that does sound pretty cool, I might have to take a closer look when I’m ready for another purchase.

I’ve looked into those other brands but not recently enough to provide any meaningful comparison. (though I have this feeling that “remarkable is overpriced” is something I’ve heard a lot, but I could be wrong)

I’ve personally owned the Kobo Glo, Glo HD, and Libra 2.

For most of their devices (I can’t speak for current models one way or the other) you can swap out key bits of the software and enhance functionality via various hacks/mods. A lot of that is documented here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223

You can also open them up and replace a standard SD card to boost storage capacity. (Again, I know this to be true at least through the Libra 2, I do not know about more recent models.)

The thing I got the most use from in the past was being able to swap out the sdcard on my Glo and Glo HD, but some folks really swear by the other various mods. I don’t have any complaint with the default reader software on the Kobo, so haven’t messed with swapping that out.

I have not messed with the SD card on the Libra 2 for two reasons - apparently doing so will mess up the waterproofing, and also because I’ve found 32GB to be sufficient for my purposes.