This is one of the reasons I use Flatpak whenever I can. I’ve revoked all Flatpak apps the permission to access the root of my home directory via a global override, so anything they wanted to do in there (e. g. create folders, place malicious code in my ~/.bashrc, etc.), actually happens in ~/.var/app/<appid>/.
The school I helped administrating did the same quite recently. I am so glad that we don’t have to spend time with such WSUS workarounds from Microsoft.
We now manage feature updates by specifying the target Windows build via GPO.
That’s enough for our needs and works great to ensure that all computers use the same feature update and the latest of all other updates.
Luckily that’s the only place I have to deal with Microsoft / Windows at the moment.
I actually prefer Krita over GIMP, even for photo editing. I can’t stand how bad stylus support with GIMP is and I much prefer Krita’s UI. I wish Krita would focus on areas beyond drawing more, as Krita is quite close to being a good program for editing photos in my opinion.
I have never used Adobe’s or Affinity’s products though, as they aren’t available for Linux and are therefore not an option for me. I would probably consider them, but those companies apparently decided that I am not worth their business.
I think darktable is one of the better alternatives for Adobe software.
A couple of years ago, I took a Lightroom workshop and did all the tasks with darktable. I was amazed at how similar it actually is and I managed to keep up with the workshop, even though I didn’t use darktable nor Lightroom before.
I suggest subscribing to YouTube via RSS (yes, YouTube still has an RSS feed for channels and playlists). I’ve been doing this for years and it works great. You can use your RSS reader or an add-on like Livemarks to discover the feed.
If you subscribe via RSS, you can then easily substitute the feed URL for any other platform, if the creator happens to upload their content to platforms other than YouTube.
Even though the videos are hosted on different platforms, you still have a single feed in a single location with all new videos thanks to RSS. You’re also able to manage a “watch later” list with your RSS reader.
Interesting! I have actually never used Snapchat, so I haven’t come across this.
That’s true. Luckily I removed Google Search Fixer from my browser this week, as I finally gave up on Google search (hopefully this time it’s permanent).
In my opinion its results have been getting so bad (including boolean searches) in the last months that I feel that other search engines don’t provide a significantly worse experience anymore. I was unable to find content on Google that I know I found there before and where I know that it’s still on the internet, as I was able to find it with other search engines. I actually found that for example Bing gave me much more results when filtering by date range, e. g. searching for web content dated before 2005.
Google’s web DRM project was the final straw for me to finally be serious about trying other search engines again (all my previous attempts eventually failed due to my boolean search requirement) and use as little Google services as possible. I have also tried to lower my usage of YouTube over the last couple of months by primarily subscribing to channels I know from YouTube on PeerTube and by using the Piped frontend more. Since I subscribed to YouTube channels via RSS already, it wasn’t difficult to switch the RSS feed over to PeerTube instead. ;)
Most websites? Haven’t come across one yet (I am using Firefox on all devices and don’t have any other browser installed) … Do you have any examples?
Winget is able to install applications from multiple sources, including the Microsoft Store. You can see a list of all configured sources by executing winget source list. For regular applications a community repository is preconfigured.
If you would execute my example command, Firefox would get installed from the community repository. You should be able to use the following command to install the Microsoft Store version of Firefox: winget install 9NZVDKPMR9RD
9NZVDKPMR9RD is the package id of the Microsoft Store version of Firefox. You can either get it by executing winget search firefox or you can get it from the URL of the Microsoft Store entry.
Haha, glad to hear that you discovered winget through my post!
It was, in my opinion, long overdue for Microsoft to introduce a package manager for Windows, but now that it is there, you can actually use it for all kinds of useful stuff. E. g. I would, if I was using Windows, create a PowerShell script to install my software all at once for whenever I reinstall my computer. This makes reinstalling a lot faster and I have documentation about the programs I had installed before. ;)
It is not mandatory in the EU if your site only uses cookies that are technically necessary. One only has to display a prompt for cookies that go beyond that, i. e. tracking cookies.
No need to open a web browser to install another one on Windows 10 and 11.
All one has to do is open a terminal, type winget install Mozilla.Firefox and hit Enter. ;)
Pro tip: To update all software on a Windows computer you can type winget upgrade --all and hit Enter (especially useful for computers from family or friends with LibreOffice or Java versions from the stone age …).
Obligatory PeerTube link: https://video.blender.org/w/m7eJZjgGSNGV1eqCQW262G ;)
Honestly, I have started to block political keywords on Mastodon (can’t do this on Lemmy unfortunately), because I am tired of the lack of nuance in online discussions and I am really not that interested in reading the same things over and over again.
People just group each other into two drawers marked “left-wing” and “right-wing” and that’s it. Some go even further and block instances with people they don’t completely agree with. In my opinion this stigmatisation just further and further divides people and will eventually result in less and less respect for each other (or should I say “hate towards each other”). If people would discuss more (without instantly putting words into the other side’s mouth), they might see that they share common ground on some topics, even though they disagree on others.
I am pretty confident that the political believes of most of the general public can’t be categorised into just two drawers. Most people probably have political views that are a mixture of different ideologies and they might not even know if those views are considered “left-wing” or “right-wing”.
Maybe Geary is what you are looking for?
For me, as a car enthusiast, this has been a turning point in my enthusiasm for cars. It has become very easy for me to accept electric vehicles and strive for less car dependency, since the EU mandated driver assistance systems and a bunch of other technology in new vehicles. For American readers: In the US there is an agreement between the NHTSA and car manufacturers to include such technology in all new cars by 2022-09.
I really dislike technology that is made to correct and monitor my behaviour and I am not keen on spending lots of money on a car that is filled with technology I don’t want (accident data recorder, intelligent speed assist, lane keeping assist, etc.). Apart from that, I haven’t seen one vehicle where the driver assistance systems aren’t annoying or even dangerous (e. g. the lane keeping system steering towards a ditch / wall on narrow roads, etc.). And to make matters worse: You can’t permanently turn those systems off, if they don’t work as advertised, as in the EU it is mandatory for such systems to re-activate themselves whenever you start the vehicle and the deactivation has to be a multi-step process (as far as I remember).
Nowadays my transport-related interests are therefore mainly complete streets / 15-minute cities / public transport, cycling, affordable electric cars and classic, non-digital vehicles. I no longer wish to own any expensive modern car(s) and I don’t care much for internal combustion engines anymore. Instead I value cities more that allow me to live car-free and the only vehicles I still want to own are classic ones.
Using and expanding public transport is much better for the environment (climate, pollution, urbanism, etc.) than making cars even more attractive by making them drive autonomously.
Fedora Silverblue or Kinoite, as you will reliably be able to update the system, even after half a year of not using it.
Updates are atomic, so either an update is installed successfully or no changes to your system have been done whatsoever, there is no in-between state (i. e. broken system) possible.
Eh, I don’t at flatpak or snap unless I have no other choice
I thought the same until I discovered that Flatpak gives me the power to restrict apps in their permissions, similar to firejail, but less cumbersome. Since then I actually prefer Flatpak over traditional packages (I even switched to Fedora Silverblue), as I have a global override that, for example, revokes permission to access the root of my home directory or to use the X11 display server.
This allows me to keep a clean home directory, as applications are prevented from writing into my home directory (configuration files then automatically get stored in the Flatpak directory ~/.var instead) or, even worse, into executable files, such as ~/.bashrc. I can also be confident that applications use Wayland, if they support it, and not a less secure display server (X11). Applications that don’t support Wayland yet can either be made to run under Wayland (Chromium / Electron) or I have to grant those applications permission to actually use an X11 server (Bottles / WINE, Steam).
On the other hand you can also opt into punching as many holes as possible into the sandbox, for example by granting applications the permission to access a local shell. That might be necessary for development tools, such as VSCodium. The thing I like about Flatpak is that it offers this kind of flexibility and you can decide on a per-application basis which system resources the application can or can not access.
Sure, the permission model isn’t perfect (e. g. D-Bus access), but for my use-case it is a huge improvement and it gives me more flexibility with selecting my distribution, as I can get the very same up-to-date applications anywhere via Flatpak.
I think they just aren’t sure how many instances you need right now (25? 30? all 50?) and that’s why they requested clarification for the actual resources needed. They don’t want to give you more than you actually need at the moment, so they don’t sit around unused for half a year until you actually use them.