There’s nothing truly like a Framework, because they’re a whole unique category of one. But if you just want something that is user serviceable there are other options.

I’m a big fan of my Star Labs laptop. It came with complete disassembly and reassembly instructions, and pretty much every part is available to buy individually as a replacement. It’s not magically “plug and go” like a Framework, but if you’re comfortable with a screwdriver you should have no trouble.

They’re a Linux specialist small independent producer, too. And being based in the UK, imports to Switzerland should be more straightforward than imports from the States.

The corollary of that line of thought though is that by preventing tech companies from dabbling in microprocessors you reduce competition in the microprocessor space- a sector which has proven very prone to the formation of monopolies/duopolies. If anything, we want to encourage more new competitors in that space, not fewer.

Also, it’d be essentially arbitrary. Is it OK for Apple to design its own microprocessors, but not Amazon- and if so, why? Is Google allowed if it uses them in phones like Apple, but not if it uses them in data centres like Amazon?

What with Trump recently declaring (in his usual completely coherent and not at all deranged manner) that Google Are Bad, the Supreme Court might not necessarily be feeling so keen to help out on this one.

The UK isn’t quite that far, but it’s absolutely the dominant text messaging and calling app in the UK. Nobody uses the built in Android or Apple tools anymore, and I’m as likely to receive a WhatsApp voice call as an actual phone call these days.

I have Signal on my phone, but I’ve literally never had a cause to use it; I’ve simply got no contacts on there.

See, now I’m fine with that. I pay for Netflix and I want what I pay for to stay ad-free. Having an ad-supported tier with no fee in addition to that means that there are options for other people without enshittifying my experience.

That’s a world of difference to what Amazon have done where they’ve shoved ads into the service that I thought I was paying for, and then offered to charge me even more to get my original ad-free service back.

A small set-top box (essentially a Steam Deck with the screen, controls and batteries removed, and with components that don’t have the space restrictions that come with a mobile device) would still be an interesting proposition. Particularly if they partnered with the main video streaming services to port their apps across, and implemented Chromecast/AirPlay support.

I can see a market for it, as a “Chromecast and Apple TV competitor that also plays all your games”.

It’s a command that pulls a whole bunch of useful system information and sticks it on one page.

Really, the biggest use of it is for showing other people your system- especially showing off. It’s a staple of “look at my system” brag posts.

But to be generous, there are (small) legit use cases for it. If you manage a lot of machines, and you plausibly don’t know the basic system information for whatever you happen to be working on in this instant, it’s a program that will give you most of what you could want to know in a single command. Yes, 100% of the information could be retrieved just as easily using other standard commands, but having it in a single short command, outputting to a single overview page, formatted to be easily readable at a glance, is no bad thing.

I looked at Dino and another one mentioned here and they look dated. Windows 95 feel with better anti-aliasing, rounder corners, but same colors? Gtk 2 or something?

Looks like a standard GTK4 app to me. Whether or not that is to someone’s tastes is obviously subjective, but it uses the same design language as every other GTK app under the sun.

GTK apps always look out of place on Windows though. Looks far more sensible in its native environment (i.e. *nix running GNOME).

If a machine is going to have multiple users (all my computers have multiple profiles for family members) all those users have to be called something, and I’ve not got the energy or the creativity to come up with fun and funky usernames for every system when my actual name is more than good enough.

Having data means nothing if you can’t monetize it.

As you say, AI can already access it all completely for free with nothing more complicated than a web crawler. Long term, charging AI firms for access is not a viable strategy unless the law changes.

And they’ve been trying for years to monetize visitors through advertising and other schemes, and so far come up consistently short.

Simple question: what would your employer say if you asked them?

My contract has a standard “no using company computers for personal business” clause. However I feel entirely confident that my employer doesn’t mind me using it to do personal errands using the web browser (on my own time). And I know they have no problem with me using Zoom or Teams to join meetings for non-work things in the evening. How do I know this? Because I asked them…

I’ve never asked them “can I install a new hard drive in my laptop, install an OS I downloaded off the internet, and boot into that OS to do things which I’d rather you not be able to track like you could on the main OS”. But I’m completely confident I’d know what the answer would be if I did ask.

If you think installing a new SSD etc. is acceptable, ask them. If you’re not asking them because you’re worried they’d say “no”, then don’t do it.

Try asking them instead if you can use your laptop to look up directions to the dentist on Google Maps. See if you get the same answer.

Literally the first paragraph:

The Budgie desktop team announced today the release and general availability of Budgie 10.9 as the latest version of this modern desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions.

If you need more than “modern desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions” to figure out what the project is, then you’re probably not the target audience for 9to5Linux.

The Firefox snap is published directly by Mozilla too; it’s not a third party snap.

If you want to announce your disapproval or approval of a certain post, there’s this great mechanism built right in to do so. There are a couple of little arrow buttons; just click the down arrow on anything that you don’t enjoy.

Personally I find it dead easy just to not click on any posts that don’t pique my interest, and it’s not like this community has so much content that “high quality” posts are getting buried under the sheer volume.

If you want to start a new community which is just Linux news aggregation, you go right ahead though.

Valve’s Proton is open source but is it also free to use and distribute in commercial software?

Yes.

Valve’s Proton code is licensed under the BSD licence, which is a “do anything you like with this code” licence.

Wine code is under the LGPL. You can ship this in commercial software as long as you “make the source code available” (which, assuming the distributor isn’t modifying the Wine code further, can be achieved by just linking people back to the main Wine project code repository).

DXVK is licensed under zlib, which is functionally the same as the BSD licence.

What do you need vim for when Emacs has everything (including vim)?

(jk, I don’t care about Emacs or vim; I’m a nano peasant)

What are you doing, step-board?

Star Labs disable IME by default.

Almost two decades ago, as a teenager, I decided to give Linux a try as a bit of fun and as a learning activity. I put Ubuntu 6.06 on an old Windows 95 desktop which was languishing in a cupboard having been long replaced. The install disc was, I’m fairly sure, a freebie that came with a magazine. I was amazed at how easy it was to install and how smoothly it ran, and had lots of fun playing around with it and learning the ropes.

Have had a Linux machine or two on the go ever since. At some point in the last decade I made the switch from using Windows as my main OS to using Linux as my main, and these days I only use Windows on my corporate-provisioned work laptops.

I’m still an Ubuntu user. I’ve distro hopped occasionally, and Debian has a place in my heart, but I always came back to Ubuntu. There’s a lot of meming about Ubuntu being terrible, but the reality is that it remains an incredibly polished, high-quality, “just works” OS which largely keeps out of my way.

Over the last two decades I moved into software engineering as a career, although I’ve since moved out of the industry onto non-techy things. Linux continues to scratch my techy itch in my spare time.

To be fair, there are (or were) lots of distros downstream of RHEL marketing themselves as drop-in replacements, not just Oracle. And this move isn’t likely to stop Oracle (and the rest), only make the transition experience less smooth for clients (ultimately all the downstream distros can just rebase off of CentOS Stream instead; they lose “bug for bug” compatibility, but will still largely be drop-in replacements).

I also find it hard to muster any sympathy for IBM of all people, even when their opponent is Oracle (who are the lowest of the low).