One thing I hate about the Linux desktop is the sheer lack of interest for supporting new hardware until it’s too late.

Before you jump at me: I know it’s not really anybody’s fault. The contributors didn’t switch to new hardware yet, and someone has to do the work.

But that does not excuse the passive aggressiveness. GNOME’s stance on fractional scaling was, for years, “never happening - fractional pixels don’t exist, so we do integer scaling only”. A few years later, hidpi displays are becoming the standard and all premium laptops ship with them. Very few of them work fine at 200% scaling. One thing the Framework Laptop 13 reviews mention when testing it on Linux is that there is no optimal screen scaling available, just too small or too big - and that you can enable experimental support for fractional scaling, but it’s a buggy mess and it’s an option not exposed to the user for very good reason. Only now that it’s too late and Linux is already buggy and annoying to use on modern laptops because of this we are beginning to see some interest in actually resolving the problem, including GNOME rushing to work on implementing support for it in GTK and Mutter, after years of bikeshedding. Somehow, things that are impossible and never happening suddenly become possible and happening when the writing that had been on the wall became true, and the hardware that a minority of users had been calling attention to for years is now common place and oups! That gives the Linux desktop some very bad exposure and first impressions.

Touch screens were another problem area. Initially the common stance was that nobody really uses these, convertible laptops suck anyway, etc. fast forward to now, more and more premium laptops offer touch screens, and stuff like 360 degrees hinges and convertibles that are actually decent are starting to surface. And, of course, everyone on Linux desktop wakes up and starts admitting that touch screen support is actually in a problematic state when it’s already too late, and (prospective) owners of these devices have to pick between a very buggy experience that feels like Alpha state on Linux, and just using Windows.

It goes on. HDR support? Color correction support? FreeSync support being spotty and completely missing in GNOME Wayland?

I’m a heavy Linux user. I will nuke my dual boot when my next laptop ships so I’m going all-in after all these years. But I also own a 4k FreeSync monitor, a MX Master 3 mouse ane my next laptop (Framework Laptop 16") will require fractional scaling and VRR support to use comfortably. Having tried all these things side by side on my dual boot, I am somewhat jealous of how well Windows seems to handle these things compared to Linux. All this “nice stuff” has either taken a lot of time since my purchase to work nicely, or still doesn’t work nicely at all. Ignoring contribution / manpower issues, this constant critical attitude towards new hardware and the unwillingness to try and properly support it is actively keeping us in the “Eternal 90% there” stage. We will not get out of it, because customer tech will keep evolving, and we will keep accepting new trends only when it’s too late, and we’re 7 years behind Microsoft in implementing support. It’s not a secret that where Windows still obliterates Linux is niche use cases like HDR and colour accurate work, and support for new customer hardware, that usually lags 5-7 years behind on Linux.

Yup hard agree on this. Switched to gnome a little more than a year ago and not planning to switch back because the polish and stability is too good - but this is a major issue.

Have you tried GNOME Wayland? Your System76 laptop should support Fedora Workstation. As long as the hardware in your System76 laptop is capable, it can so pinch to zoom and 2-3 fingers scrolling for workspace switching, revealing the overview, etc. 1:1 gestures like a MacBook, too.

I know the switch from KDE is daunting. I’ve done it too. But GNOME Wayland is simply above everything else right now

Yes this is very likely the best advertising Godot could ask for.

The new ones not so much. I’ve had a terrible Linux experience with the ThinkPad P16s AMD Gen 1 AMD

Dropped fully, not yet. But I am smoothly porting over more and more of my usage to Lemmy.

First things first, throwing people away and online dating are in two different camps entirely. For the throwing people away it’s something that I have seen a lot: the Reddit dating advice is also more and more common and spread on social media, and it’s becoming to be eaten up by people. Ask random friends in your social circle in general, and you’ll find that - at least the younger ones - are susceptible to this trend.

As for online dating: we can meet in the middle and say that I think it would be a net pro on something that is structured differently than Tinder, which represents the embodiment of what I think is bad about it. There is, of course, value in being able to have access to a wider pool than “your friend group and social circle”. This is how I would structure my own dating app:

• Free and open source with no invasive data telemetry, full GDPR compliance, you can request all your data to be wiped clean with a button.
• No freemium model to encourage buying a pro option for it to actually work. Using a simple, unbiased algorithm that does a sort by distance, then a sort by sexual/romantic orientation compatibility (without requiring you to state it on your profile, for privacy reasons)
• Use a model that discourages “serial dating”. Every match you have with the app has a countdown, and the chat automatically terminates after some amount of messages and days. Every match has a “Set as Exclusive” button. Both parties press it when they’re not quite in a relationship, but are seeing each other exclusively. When both people press it, both people know they have agreed on this, and from then on the app goes in total lockdown until you deselect it and go back to non-exclusive dating.
• As for the last thing, I will freely borrow an idea that already exists from the Hinge app (which I consider to be the absolutely least worst option around; I have read a book written by one of the people who worked on it and I have agreed with every word): The app is made to be deleted. When two people enter an official relationship, both select a “Make official” button in their match’s settings view. When that’s done, the app congratulates you, deletes both accounts and then invites you to delete it.

Yes, I am aware this would not work for open relationships or stuff like couples looking for a third unicorn for kinky stuff, but that’s by design, as existing apps already work well for that. Tinder, for example, is more widely used for casual sex that it is about building romantic relationships, and it is perfectly adequate for that.

Yes, you are pointing to combines marriages - but I am not suggesting we go back to the 50’s, I am talking about the past few years. Capitalism has already been an upgrade over feudalism, I agree. My point is that, lately, we have been overdoing it and everything that started off as a positive innovation, like social media and dating apps, is starting to lose its soul and become more Draconian or anti - capitalism.

Greed is what a lot of this is, and yes capitalism is all wrapped up in that but I don’t think if you somehow took it away that every problem goes away.

I have a question for you: why is it that billionaires and big capitalists have been amassing more profits and pushing this more intensive version of capitalism? I know this argumentation all too well, I have once had a long discussion with a friend who argued capitalism or not wouldn’t change anything because greed exists. My counter point is that, while greed exists and has always existed, it’s never been quite that bad in recent times and, for second, greed and capitalism feed and reinforce each other. It’s an endless loop that keeps reinforcing itself.

Also, do consider the fact that while I was highly upvoted here on Lemmy, the same wouldn’t be true at a random table with some friend group out there in the world. These opinions of mine that are popular here are fringe in the real world, so if you get the impression my comment is disconnected from reality and what people think when you touch grass, yes, that is precisely the point why I wrote it. This is my own little grumpy old man yelling at a clown view of a lot of modern things that I talk about in spaces like these online, but mostly shut up about when I’m out there having a drink.

Capitalism is growing, it has successfully seeped through every aspect of our life, creating consensus and effectively becoming more and more the norm in the social fabric. Right now there are many opinions against capitalism that are beginning to become almost taboo.

• It has taken our privacy: it is almost mandatory nowdays to use things like social media and operating systems that track you. You can’t opt out without being a social outcast. As much as I wish I could live with pure Linux on every single device I use (including my phone) and without touching any proprietary software (except games and professional software with no privacy - invading tracking, but that doesn’t work well financially with a FOSS business model) belive me I would. But I would have to give up so much, it becomes almost impossible.
• It’s beginning normal to defend profit and condone terrible things for profit. Everybody knows about how the supply chain relies on several human rights violations to continue, but it’s considered normal.
• It has instilled the idea that everything you do must be useful. I’m seeing the idea that your hobbies must be “productive” in some kind of tangible way in your life spread around more and more, and it is making us appreciate life less, as “doing it for the sake of doing it” is beginning to be shunned as an useless waste of time.
• Relationships are becoming molded by capitalism. Think about the dating apps culture, swiping left and right on people who basically sell themselves as products on a market. It is becoming normal to see different people in parallel and then just committing to the one you like best - as if you were trying a bunch of laptops in an electronics store. Relationships themselves are less committed and more transactional, as we are normalizing stuff that makes me raise both eyebrows at once. People are starting to become scared of commitment and scared of committing to one person. More and more people are not only opting out of monogamy, but shunning those who choose to practice it as some kind of close - minded conservatives. There is more and more pushing and popularity in something like fluid and open relationships - which allows you to be in a relationship but still be on the market, never fully commit to a person, always keep looking for something better to jump onto, and have a normalized free trial with your partner’s consent. While it does work for some people and I don’t put that in doubt, I feel like at large this is being used to commodify relationships, sell ourselves as products on a market, lose our ability to commit to another human and get used to returning people like an Amazon package. It’s literally treating relationships as products. People want to live in the comfort that, if they decide to try a MacBook Pro M2 and later a more powerful M3-based iteration comes out, they can smoothly transition to the newer model - but for relationships - which is, in turn, damaging the very idea of a serious long-term relationship.
• Likewise, we are becoming all too trigger-happy in throwing people away from our lives like yesterday’s trash. Is your relationship or friendship hitting a rough spot? Nuanced opinions are getting more and more rare. “They’re a narcisist and you need to cut them out”, “they’re gaslighting or manipulating you”, “They don’t deserve you, you should leave immediately”. It’s super good that we are finally starting to take mental health seriously, thank goodness this is one of the things where I think the present is much better than the past at, but people we are overdoing it and using it out of context. In a world where people are commodified, they are too considered as disposable as products, and as such, easy to throw away and replace. The tendency to do real and actual work to work on a relationship or friendship with a person you love is starting to go out of fashion.
• We are making people work several jobs at once and completely drain themselves to even be able to afford their rent and basic survival. Everyone is becoming lonelier. Real friendships and relationships are being replaced with parasocial ones - only accessible through proprietary software with Draconian privacy policies that you would be very hesitant to accept if you took the time to actually read them, of course. There is a push to get part of our social need met by watching “stories” and social media updates by friends, mistaking a few reactions and comments here and there for actual interaction, and parasocial romantic relationships are actively being sold on platforms like Onlyfans, where not only creators sell their content (which I think it’s fair - content is content and everybody should be free to distribute it and sell it as they want and take profit for it), but also chat (or, more often and more unethically, hire someone else to chat with) lonely people who pay them to have someone to talk to and a semblance of a connection, one they cannot get in today’s hyper capitalist lives with low energy and low free time
• The rise of the right. Have you noticed that, right around when capitalism has gotten this intense, it has become almost acceptable once again to be openly fascist, without euphemisms? Have you noticed the sudden rise in far-right leaders in elections worldwide? It’s not just you, this is happening, the far right is making a huge comeback.

I absolutely look like a boomer typing this, and I am fully aware of this. I hate absolutely everything about contemporary culture, except for the much higher attention to mental health, broader acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, more attention on the problems of feminism and a few other things that I think are a net positive to out society. I think capitalism is fully to blame for most of the things that are going to shit right now.

Here’s mine:

• AnkiDroid - mobile version of popular desktop flashcards software Anki
• Bitwarden (don’t remember if this needed a repo) - favourite password manager
• Catima - holds loyalty cards
• Fennec F-Droid - Build of Firefox without ads and that supports more extensions
• DiskUsage - see what’s taking up your disk
• GadgetBridge - FOSS app for smart watches, Mi bands etc.
• Lawnchair - Home screen replacement that’s visually identical to the default one but allows me to double tap to lock
• Material Files - file manager
• Loop - Habit tracker
• p!n - Pin reminders to notifications
• muPDF Reader - fast PDF reader that doesn’t crap out when I zoom in and out unlike Google Drive
• Simple Gallery - lightweight gallery app
• NextCloud and NextCloud Notes - Access NextCloud
• Scrambled EXIF - Share pictures without giving away EXIF data
• Tusky - nice Mastodon client
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon - a game way too addictive to be safe to install
• NewPipe - FOSS frontend with AdBlock and downloader for YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and others
• Librera - read EPUBs
• Lemoroid - Nice libretro client to play video games
• Infinity - Reddit client that still works. I believe they did something hacky with the API key to get around the block.
• Migraine Log - Nice app for migraine sufferers to log their attacks
• Scarlet - Beautiful notes app

They have a point. I’m in the market for a new laptop and I have, so far, returned two of them.

First, I tried a Huawei Matebook 16. I was foolish, but I thought it was “easy”. No NVidia, no dGPU at all - just part that looked very standard. It was based on the info I had gathered from a few years of Linux usage: “Basically avoid NVidia and you’re good”. It was anything but. Broken suspend, WiFi was horrible, random deadlocks, extreme slowness at times (as if the RYZEN 7 wasn’t Ryzen 7-ing) to become less smooth than my 5 year old Intel laptop, and broken audio codec (Senary Audio) that didn’t work at all on the live, and worked erratically on the installed system using generic hd-audio drivers.

I had a ~€1500 budget, but I raised it to buy a €1700 ThinkPad P16s AMD. No dGPU to speak of, sold with pre loaded Linux, boasting Canonical and Red Hat hardware certifications.

I had:

• Broken standby on Linux
• GPU bugs and screen flickering on Linux
• Various hangs and crashed
• Malfunctioning wifi and non working 6e mode. I dug, and apparently the soldered Wi-Fi adapter does not have any kind of Linux support at all, but the kernel uses a quirk to load the firmware of an older Qualcomm card that’s kinda similar on it and get it to work in Wi-Fi 6 compatibility mode.

Boggles my mind that the 2 biggest enterprise Linux vendors took this laptop, ran a “thorough hardware certification process” on it and let it pass. Is this a pass? How long have they tried it? Have they even tried suspending?

Of course, that was a return. But when I think about new laptops and Windows 11, basically anything works. You don’t have to pay attention to anything: suspend will work, WiFi will work, audio and speakers as well, if you need fractional scaling you aren’t in for a world of pain, and if you want an NVidia dGPU, it does work.

Furthermore, the Windows 11 compatible CPU list is completely unofficial arbitrary, since you can still sideload Windows 11 on “unsupported” hardware and it will run with a far higher success rate than Linux on a random laptop you buy in store now. Like, it has been confirmed to run well on ancient Intel CPUs with screens below the minimum resolution. It’s basically a skin over 10 and there are no significant kernel modifications.

To be clear: I don’t like Windows, but I hate this post as a consumer of bleeding edge hardware because it hides the problem under the rug - most new hardware is Windows-centric, and Linux supported options are few and far between. Nowdays not even the manufacturer declaring Linux support is enough. This friend of mine got a Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition, and if he uses ANY ISO except the default Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 audio doesn’t work at all! And my other friend with a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition has various GPU artifacts on the screen on anything except the relative Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 image. It’s such a minefield.

I have effectively added €500 to my budget, to now reach an outrageous €2000 for a premium Linux laptop with no significant trade-offs (mostly, I want a good screen and good performance). I am considering taking a shot in the dark and pre ordering the Framework 16, effectively swaying from traditional laptop makers entirely and hoping a fully customized laptop by a company that has been long committed to Linux support will be different.

Interesting. I wonder if it can run on my Raspberry Pi 3b+, or if the single GB of RAM doesn’t cut it, it will be up in my list of things to do together with immich, grocy, paperless-ng and NextCloud when I manage to build my real homelab. I’ve read enough horror stories about smaller instances disappearing so this seems like a good way forward?

Even then, I can’t say this is intuitive. I’m an advanced Linux user with sysadmin skills. I can pull this off in a few hours, but I doubt it’s the same for average Joe…

Fair point, but it seems absurd to me that a supposedly community-based instance gets harsher on privacy than a corporation that’s about to IPO. That seems off to me. Then again: lack of a big legal team. Understandable. Sad, inconvenient, but understandable. I’m not mad, I’m just sad. Mostly because this legal war on piracy is not only on piracy, but on software freedom (DRM, WEI, etc) and privacy (for a lot of media, there is no privacy-respecting way to legally acquire it)

Another thing that seems off is that this announcement has been made on the Discord server. Now, I don’t want to come across as that guy. I admit I use Discord regularly, because that’s what my friends are on and all efforts to migrate them to something more privacy-respective have been futile, mostly due to the lack of fleshed-out and comparable alternatives for now. But… why should a Fediverse instance have an official server on Discord? I feel like it kinda goes against the whole philosophy of this entire thing. Then again I’m new, so I might be in the wrong here. But wouldn’t a Matrix server or something be a better fit for this sort of thing?

Sync. I come from Reddit and that’s what my favorite client defaults to. It’s not optimal, because of the reason you say. I am totally OK with new apps presenting users with an easy “one-click” choice of instance to make onboarding easy, but having one accepted default has this side effect. If I were to maintain a Lemmy app, I’d probably select the “default” instance for a new user by selecting one at random in an array of popular instances, and then offer the user to subscribe to the official community of my app (wherever instance it’s on) to keep up. Maybe I can hit up the dev with some feedback on this on the official community.

And now, just like it ended up with Mastodon, I’ll have to maintain multiple accounts for Lemmy. Such a good user experience, it will totally catch on…

Seriously. Accept this piece of criticism from someone new to the Fediverse. Being harsher on piracy than a fucking corporation and forcing users to migrate accounts left and right / have multiple accounts to be able to easily access content out of your Mastodon instance’s niche and having to get around your instance defederating and blocking content you wanted to see is just abysmal UX. Are we supposed to have our content scattered around how many accounts? And for those who don’t like mobile apps, at this point I can only use Sync (Lemmy) and Tusky (Mastodon) through my phone to browse the Fediverse for lack of a good option to maintain multiple accounts on desktop. Firefox containers are just overkill for this, but I welcome suggestions.

End rant, and sorry if it’s a long-winded disorganized ramble. Is lemmy.ml good to get around this block?

Thunderbird.

Betterbird is a fork by a developer who was booted off the project. I’ve looked at the project and it’s literally built on top of drama. It’s not a good look, and it does not feel like it’s professionally developed.

Evolution is also really really good, but it’s a GNOME app. I currently use GNOME and I am not oblivious at how nice the experience of using native apps of it is, but I also know that they don’t follow you “well” if you migrate to something else. Make no mistake, Evolution will absolutely run on a KDE desktop, but it won’t feel as integrated.

Thunderbird is amazing. It’s in active development and it’s going through a major visual overhaul / update I really like. It’s cross-platform at heart and it looks and works the same on all platforms. It also has the nicest calendar on Linux. Overall, I pick Thunderbird as my client because it’s amazing, has a lot of development, has all the features I need and it’s made to be cross-platform, so it’s not “soft-tied” to any desktop enhancement or GUI toolkit.