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ashleythorne

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ashleythorne ,
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I don't get how Canonical is both super invested in snap, doubling down on its use, while simultaneously neglecting it and ignoring obvious issues.

The fact is that while I appreciate many technical aspects of snap, I will never use it again simply because I do not trust Canonical's handling of the store. So much malware has made its way onto the store, remains on the store for extended periods of time, and Canonical has not changed their policies and review process in any meaningful way to stop this from happening.

ashleythorne ,
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Heroic can be hit or miss in my experience. I found that using the offline installers in Bottles would get those broken games working, which is interesting since I think Bottles still defaults to a fork of wine 9.

ashleythorne ,
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I hope they also improve offline installers. Some games have really whack setups where there are so many patches you have to apply. Order matters, some patches seem optional.

ashleythorne , (edited )
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I've been happy with GNU Stow. Super simple and clean. I keep all the files in ~/stow and follow this workflow. You can avoid the git bits if you want and update ~/stow however you want.

cd ~/stow

# pull latest changes from git provider for syncing
git fetch
git status
git pull

# if made any edits and wanted to push them
git add .
git push origin main

# do a dry run of stow just to make sure it won't do anything weird
stow -n -v --no-folding .

# do a real run of stow if nothing is wrong
# note: --no-folding prevents folders from becoming symlinked, only files will be symlinks,
# this prevents unintended files from going into ~/stow
stow -v --no-folding .
ashleythorne , (edited )
@ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

Then you only need the “secret zero” of an ssh key to get everything set up and syncable

I made a script just for this purpose, I run the script on a fresh system and it pulls my stow directory without me needing to manually mess with ssh keys or passwords.

On a flashdrive, I have a folder named "setup". In that folder, I have this script called "run" and a directory called "ssh". In that "ssh" folder (not to be confused with ~/.ssh), I put my private ssh keys and their pubs.

#!/bin/bash

# stop script immediately on error
set -e

# change working directory to directory containing this script
cd "$(dirname "$0")"

# check that ./ssh exists and exit if not
if [ ! -d ./ssh ]; then
    echo "./ssh not detected, exiting..."
    exit 1
fi

# create .ssh directory
[ ! -d $HOME/.ssh ] && mkdir $HOME/.ssh
chmod 700 $HOME/.ssh

# copy keys to ~/.ssh
cp -a ./.ssh/. $HOME/.ssh/

# ensure right permissions for .ssh contents
# note: 2>/dev/null suppresses errors if no .pub files exist, || true to avoid exiting on failure
chmod 600 $HOME/.ssh/*
chmod 644 $HOME/.ssh/*.pub 2>/dev/null || true

# start ssh agent
eval `ssh-agent -s`
trap "ssh-agent -k" EXIT

# add keys
ssh-add "$HOME/.ssh/privatesshkey"

# add known hosts
# note: removing them first then adding again to avoid duplicate entries
ssh-keygen -R codeberg.org 2>/dev/null || true
ssh-keygen -R github.com 2>/dev/null || true
ssh-keyscan -H codeberg.org >> $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts
ssh-keyscan -H github.com >> $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts

# clone repo
cd $HOME
if [ -d "$HOME/stow" ]; then
    TIMESTAMP=$(date +"%Y%m%d_%H%M%S")
    mv "$HOME/stow" "$HOME/stow.old.$TIMESTAMP"
fi
git clone ssh://[email protected]/myusername/stow.git
ashleythorne ,
@ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

I use it pretty often to keep my desktop, laptop, and server configs in sync.

To setup new systems, I created this bash script: https://lemmy.world/post/41584520/21545156

Then I would run the commands in my original post to create the symlinks.

ashleythorne ,
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There was an update to that post, where the author said it was a "misinterpretation" and that it was just a research project.

ashleythorne ,
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Sometimes

flatpak remote-modify --enable flathub

is necessary.

ashleythorne ,
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Is this person at all known? They have next to 0 presence on their Github page. It's unclear whether they have any developer experience, which makes me wonder if this document was just AI generated without any knowledge of what it would take to do what they want to do.

ashleythorne ,
@ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

I agree that being able to work under pseudonyms is good.

Still, that doesn't mean this project worthy of media attention given. It would be if there was at least some implementation work done. In general, projects tend to actually do something before making an announcement, especially one with an ambitious goal like this.

ashleythorne ,
@ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

What might be better than turning it off is a onboarding screen that shows you how it works and you test it while the install completes.

There's a million more important things it could show you instead

ashleythorne ,
@ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

It can conflict with some programs. A lot of modern design programs make use of middle click drags to move around a canvas.

That caused problems for me and it took me days to realize it was middle click paste causing the issue of all these random segments of text appearing all over the canvas.

It was also annoying to disable. I was using Chromium at the time and you simply cannot disable it, even by disabling it in Gnome. I had to use Firefox exclusively when using that design program since at least Firefox has a hidden option to disable it.

ashleythorne ,
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Imagine spending 3+ years on staying mad at GNOME to release the most underwhelming software imaginable.

Shocking, a 3 year old project is not as well established as a 20+ year old desktops. Its feature set is enough to me, but they did release it too early as it is still quite buggy.

COSMIC is very poorly designed, it might be written in the “memory-safe programming language” but it’s clear that they don’t have a design backbone

It looks "fine". I agree that modern Adwaita looks better, but it's not terrible. The default theme is meh, but themes like Catppuccin makes it look nice. There's also missing things like drop shadows and animations, which I believe are toolkit limitations.

They built an entire new desktop from scratch rather than work with GNOME

Gnome and System76 had different goals and UX ideas that were incompatible. Rather than continually patching Gnome and updating their patches to keep working, they decided to build their own thing, that's fine.

I don't quite get why Gnome people see this as a negative. If System76 is a poor downstream, then System76 no longer being a downstream is beneficial for them.

rather than work with GNOME or KDE and in that amount of time

I think that's a good thing in the long run. Gnome and KDE both have a significant amount of technical debt.

One of the things I love about COSMIC is how sanely it's built, following modern programming principles.

  • Rust helps avoid memory issues, helping with security and bugs
  • A lot of things run as their own processes, which would typically all be running under a single process in Gnome/KDE. So even if something does crash, say the power applet or notifications applet, it won't bring down other components like the shell.
  • Clean layout of configuration, data, and state files. KDE is an absolute mess in this department. Gnome is better than KDE, but COSMIC does even better.

So while COSMIC is worse now due to its bugs and lack of features, I think it's built on better foundations. That is, if System76 continues to invest in it. I'm not sure how profitable/unprofitable it is for them. My guess would be unprofitable.

ashleythorne ,
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That's what the alphas, betas, and user studies are for.

Pushing buggy software out as stable is a feature of modern corporate software development that should be avoided. It gives a poor impression of the software.

ashleythorne ,
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Hardware/driver bugs are one thing, but COSMIC has plenty of purely software/logical bugs discoverable on any hardware.

ashleythorne ,
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Works well in my testing. The biggest barrier is their stupid launcher, which may occasionally break on Linux.

ashleythorne ,
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It's not atomic or cloud native either if you want to be strict with definitions.

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    ashleythorne ,
    @ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

    The only thing MacOS and Gnome have in common is a top bar and app grid. Other than that, MacOS is closer to Windows than Gnome.

    • Windows and MacOS have always visible panel showing favorite apps and open apps, Gnome dosen't
    • Windows and MacOS have appindicators on panels, Gnome doesn't

    And to further differentiate Gnome from MacOS,

    • Gnome's UX is closer to Windows. There are many, many reasons why, but some are: don't need to click a window to focus it before you can interact with it, fullscreening behaviors, assumes Windows-style keyboard layout
    • No global menu, Gnome doesn't even use that paradigm.

    Honestly the closest DE to MacOS is Cosmic. The launchers work similarly, the overviews work similarly, it has the option to handle minimized windows similarly to MacOS, uses menubars (but not global).

    ashleythorne ,
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    The old Cosmic was built on top of Gnome using extensions, but the new Cosmic was written from scratch. It largely mimics the look of old Cosmic, but has introduced a few new things.

    There are desktops try do mimic the look of MacOS, but none I've used actually felt like using MacOS. The first time I used MacOS, I was shocked at how many quirky things it does, the way it operates. No Linux desktop prepared me for that.

    Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox ( www.theverge.com )

    Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. In the best of times, these things feed each other: The company makes great products that advance its goals for the web, and the ...

    ashleythorne ,
    @ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

    The CEO does also mention

    Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off

    Let's hope that is true. I'm not counting on it.

    Filesystem suddenly becoming read-only?

    I'm running Bazzite, which is immutable, so the root filesystem is read-only, but I've been having an issue pop occasionally where the rest of my filesystem, including my home folder, becomes non-writable. I can't do much, and constantly get popups about folders being non-writable until I reboot, and then everything goes back to ...

    ashleythorne ,
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    Check dmesg logs and SMART check the drive.

    I had two crucial drives that would go read only, some sort of firmware bug I guess.

    ashleythorne ,
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    Nope, just stopped using it as my main drive. It becomes read-only far less often when only used as additional storage and less strenuous reading/writing.

    I assume it is a firmware bug because both my original and replacement drive had the same issue.

    ashleythorne OP ,
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    Yup, been that way for a while unfortunately. Especially annoying for Linux and MacOS users who can't just launch Bedrock on their computers. Trying to complete challenges on a touchscreen is super annoying.

    ashleythorne OP ,
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    There's an unofficial version of Bedrock for Linux that runs "natively" using the Android x86 version of the game. Unfortunately it currently does not support Mounts of Mayhem. https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.mrarm.mcpelauncher

    Wine didn't work for Bedrock in the past because of how it was packaged on Windows. However, they recently switched the package type to something that Wine might support? Haven't tested or personally or see anyone else do it.

    ashleythorne ,
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    Not what the article is about. This is just saying that Ubuntu is changing up how they handle the Yaru theme so they stay better in sync with Adwaita changes.

    ashleythorne OP ,
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    Yeah, it's really annoying. For a game that many children play, I'm surprised they don't give super clear-cut instructions on how to actually get things.

    ashleythorne OP ,
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    Technically it's opt out. The welcome screen has it toggled on by default. But it is very prominently displayed, not hidden, so I don't mind so much.

    ashleythorne OP ,
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    What all would you do to set up Ubuntu as a NAS?

    I’ve used OpenMediaVault for years and liked it, but I’m just exploring some other options. I’ve got a new system with a Ryzen 370 and 890m iGPU, which Debian is fighting me on getting working. Meanwhile it looks like AMD is treating Ubuntu as a first class citizen for support. Just considering options, maybe Ubuntu ...

    ashleythorne ,
    @ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

    I went for the simplest option

    1. Installed a distro (in this case Debian)
    2. Installed tailscale on the server, logged in
    3. Installed tailscale on my other devices, logged in
    4. Used sshfs to mount the desired directory on the server to my client
    5. SSH in once a week or so to run updates

    Found it very simple. Avoided the tedious setup of samba and samba had weird reliability issues for me when copying large files. Took a bit to learn how ssh works, but very much so worth it.

    ashleythorne OP , (edited )
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    It's so terrible...

    I like the fact it includes the year information, but it does not solve the problem of Bedrock and Java being misaligned.

    I don't see why they didn't just do year.dropNumber.patch version. So, the third drop of 2026 would be called 26.3.x for Bedrock and Java. But that last number will differ for Java and Bedrock to represent fixes made.

    ashleythorne ,
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    I disagree with that. The main problem is that Nouveau was stagnant for years because it just wasn't feasible to use since NVIDIA blocked reclocking support, so it would only ever run at its base clock, resulting in terrible performance. So nobody wanted to use the drivers, all that mattered is that they worked well enough to let users install the proprietary drivers.

    But now that NVIDIA allows reclocking again, there's actual reason to improve the performance and fix bugs in it.

    ashleythorne OP ,
    @ashleythorne@lemmy.world avatar

    Snap is interesting for me it can do more things than flatpak and has some really interesting sandboxing features coming up such as permission prompts for filesystem access.

    But Canonical management is a significant hindrance. The Snap Store simply cannot be trusted after so much malware got in and they still have not improved their processes. So many snaps including Canonical's own, are still using core22 for some reason. And there's the broken snaps Canonical pushed on users.

    I would love to see a snap repo that takes the best parts of Flathub and Fedora Flatpaks. Because as a technology, I think snap beats flatpak (if you're using AppArmor). But it's Canonical's poor management that really drags it down.

    ashleythorne OP ,
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    All of those, apart from loop devices, are not technical limitations, but results from Canonical's poor management and monopolistic desires.

    ashleythorne OP ,
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    Flatpak recently got a method of preinstalling flatpaks.

    A flatpak cannot install a snap on your system. Apt can install a snap because when apt installs and updates packages, it can also run scripts as root. That's insecure and potentially dangerous, so flatpak doesn't have that ability.