Linux gamer, retired aviator, profanity enthusiast

  • 3 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • AFAIK the syntax seems to be the same.

    def sayHam():
        print("Ham")
    
    sayHam()
    

    works when typed into the Python console, no class needed. I program as a hobby, I’m no expert on the language, but does Python even differentiate between functions and class methods internally? Other than just scope? There’s a possibility I’ll learn something today.




  • My experience with LibreOffice is it works fine if you’re doing straightforward things by yourself. MLA formatted essay? “Twelve point double-spaced Times New Roman or you get a zero” and they never noticed my papers were Liberation Sans? Sure that works. “Pick a partner and make a 20 slide PowerPoint presentation” is a nightmare because sharing files back and forth between Powerpoint and Impress doesn’t work very well.

    The more usable solution to that is Google Docs. I had a group project with four other guys, and we were all sat around a table typing in the same document at the same time on three different operating systems. Played perfectly well with Windows, Mac and Linux. Us Linux nerds who hate “the cloud” because “someone else’s computer” and Google because “Don’t Be Evil” kind of lurch at that one, but it functions.




  • I’ve often compared Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon, and it usually boils down to KDE is often too complicated and busy, Gnome is often too simple and braindead, Cinnamon sits somewhere in the middle.

    Gnome’s settings menu is missing a lot of things you’d think should be there. They don’t want you changing things, so you end up installing separate packages like gnome-tweaks to actually render the OS usable. They’ve got this weird attitude that they’re going to out-Apple Apple with a millionth of Apple’s budget, and where Apple offers “Just Works”, Gnome offers “Barely Does Anything.”

    KDE has the opposite problem, they’ve got a setting for literally everything, if you can find it in their overgrown single settings menu. A basic applet will have several tabs crammed full of options and UI elements, making it probably the best tool for whatever mundane task it was meant for but you have to stop and figure out how it works, and it’s all rendered in janky misaligned QT so it looks like an amateur reskinned Windows 98.

    Cinnamon inherits a lot from Gnome, but puts back in the shit Gnome gouged out. I tend to find things where I think to look for them, it tends to provide the functionality I need out of the box without excessive clutter. But, it’s a bit behind the times with stuff like Wayland, so it’s not the best choice for very modern hardware.



  • That is EXACTLY the path I took. I started playing with a Raspberry Pi as part of my ham radio hobby, a Pi 1B in those days. Then my old laptop died, I bought a new one from Dell, which came with Win 8.1, and it kept dying. While going around and around with Dell’s tech support, I pretty much had to use that Pi for my normal work. I got a pretty good crash course in Linux, to the point it was more familiar to me than Win8.1. So I tried Ubuntu, it was okay, I tried Mint, and that was my home for the next ten years.