A great writeup on the experience of blind users navigating GNU/Linux and the many pitfalls that prevent them from being able to use their machine.

Linux “just works”—if you can see.

If you’re blind? You boot into a live image and get nothing. No speech. No braille. No login prompt feedback. Maybe Orca starts, maybe not. Maybe you know the shortcut (Alt+Super+S?) but does that even work in this session type? Is it Wayland? Is it X11? Is the screen reader bound to a key combo that doesn’t exist on your keyboard?

You open the installer?

“Next. Button. Button. Button. Button.” That’s all Orca says.

Ubuntu MATE 12.04 had a working, labeled, navigable installer. Ubuntu MATE 24.04? It’s garbage.

No headings. No structure. No sense of where you are. Just unlabeled buttons and blank space.

This isn’t a bug. This is neglect.

I think a great takeaway from this is that a11y finds itself at the end of the pipeline, as the last thing that needs to be done.

I figure it's probably fine but I want to double check and I can't find anybody else who's asked this question.

Reasons to switch:

1. It's waaaaay cheaper
   • A new laptop costs a lot of money. Repair cafes will often help you for free. Software updates are also free, forever. You can of course show your support for both with donations!
2. No ads, no spying
   • Windows comes with lots of ads and spyware nowadays, slowing down your computer and increasing your energy bill.
3. Good for the planet
   • Production of a computer accounts for 75+% of carbon emissions over its lifecycle. Keeping a functioning device longer is a hugely effective way to reduce emissions.
4. Community support
   • If you have any issues with your computer, the local repair cafe and independent computer shop are there for you. You can find community support in online forums, too.
5. User control
   • You are in control of the software, not companies. Use your computer how you want, for as long as you want.

Hexbear-related reasons to switch:

1. Still can use hexbear
   • Hexbear requires a web browser (firefox) to use.
2. Don't have to pay for it.
   • You'll receive updates and features for your operating system free of any personal charge to you till the end of time. You can donate directly to volunteers and workers to make your computer better (better yet non computer related things)
3. using Windows for Windows's sake or Apple for Apple's sake is liberalism and supports USA/piSSrael
   • TBH they copied from us (KDE, GNOME) anyway. Their innovation is being a monopoly and advertising to you.
4. Makes you smarter (it's like reading theory but with computers)
   • Using Linux makes you big brain because you'll learn you can do a lot of things for free that you'd have to waste your soul on.

After getting a new laptop with win 11 installed, and having to run all the tweaks to make it less obnoxious and disable all the annoyances, I started getting adds pop up in the corner after an update and decided enough was enough. I was forced to pay for that shit and it's serving me ads? Fuck off.

So I just installed Bluefin and it's been absolutely awesome. The things they have set up by default are pretty wonderful. Gnome is up with useful extentions to start with so I didn't have to bother tweaking it to my liking. There is also a KDE based version called Aurora, and the famous gaming spin called Bazzite has both KDE and Gnome versions. There is even a command that lets you easily switch between all the different ublue flavors.

It's an immutible distro, so it has a base you can't easily change, but it relies on flatpaks, appimages, homebrew, podman/docker, and distrobox for all the user apps you want, all set up to work by default. The gnome software center is populated by flatpaks, for example. Almost all of the sensible default apps are flatpaks that you can easily uninstall if you don't want them. And it keeps all of this up-to-date in the background, it checks weekly, and you just restart when convenient to upgrade. The last successful linux distro I installed and stuck with was debian with flatpaks, so I could have a stable base with more up-to-date apps, so it's a paradigm I like.

There is no traditional package manager unless you install one via distrobox, but flatpak and homebrew cover almost everything most people could want, really.

Want to install jellyfin media server or the ARR stack? Just open up podman-desktop and look for a docker images and then follow a set up guide. Want some command line bling? They have a custom command that installs a bunch of useful terminal apps from homebrew. The bluefin team basically listens to the userbase and then adds whatever they ask for by default if they can get it working, which includes a lot of peripheral support. The results are fantastic.

Previously I was messing around with NixOS, and I like how that works, but I quickly ran out of time to set up my own computer and kind of lost steam messing with it. The ublue distros offer similar functionality: you can create your own custom setup and make it wasy to clone, but you don't have to bother with that to get a usable experience. It's usable by default.

It doesn't support dual booting, because they are a small team and don't want to have to do tech support whenver windows screws up the boot manager, so if you want to install it and don't want to wipe your windows install you'll need a install on a seperate drive (an external drive works) and switch between installs when you boot up. It's a little more annoying, but it's a cleaner way to do things.

I've never had a linux install be this trouble free and sensibly set up by default. I'm very impressed and would recommend to anyone thinking of switching.

EDIT - I SOLVED THE PROBLEM LOL

i had a timeshift snapshot that was like 500GB because i had been including /home in my backups. fixed.

So, my system has been complaining that my main OS drive is almost completely full. However, I just deleted like 250GB of games off it to fix the problem. It's a 2TB SSD.

output of df says i only have 52GB free:

Dolphin file manager agrees. However, using Filelight, and my own reckoning, I can only account for 660GB of space used up.

even doing du -sh */ from / only seems to show about 1TB of space used on the disk. Where is my other ~800GB of space?

I've been digging up some of my own old programming projects, polishing them for the public releases I'd always intended. The first is Notable, a pastebin server clone. It's under the AGPLv3. It has a few design principles in mind:

• Must work over Tor unmodified, no javascript, light page loads, fits within the standard window size.
• Must be as easy as possible to run. No outside database needed, it uses sqlite3.
• Control over if notes expire, and custom time limits.
• Notes can be updated or delete with the randomized per-note password given when creating a note.
• Understands Markdown.
• Written to be portable. If Go and CGo compile to your server's OS, Notable will work.

The README has further details.

I don't want to install the "logi" software just so I can rebind what the thumb button does on my mouse... Anyone have any suggestions?

This is going to be a fairly simple post. I just want to share some of the things I've been enjoying on GrapheneOS lately, although they're not necessarily related to GrapheneOS and more of Android in general! Honestly, things have gotten pretty good for my use case recently:

Accrescent keeps getting updates and is getting better with each one! The app repository is still limited, but it's expanded to add a number of apps that I actually use. Best of all, they're the kind of apps that a lot of people would use. GrapheneOS ships their repo in the built-in app "store", which is also very nice! Here's what I've enjoyed using (and most of this I was already using, interestingly enough:

Auxio is a great and good-looking offline music player. It just works really well, supports the basic quality of life features, and fits in really well with the design philosophy of modern android. This is essentially what I listen to all of my music on, I really enjoy using it.

Organic Maps is still my favorite application for mapping! It's great for trails and walking, and is even great for driving to be honest (although it doesn't calculate traffic, which can be a deal-breaker for many, including me at times). However, it works when I need it for driving, and I will use it for when I'm moving around without a car. Another very great application.

IronFox is a newer project that seeks to continue the work of Mull, which unfortunately stopped receiving updates. I know just as much about it as I do any of the mobile firefox applications, but it seems to be the best. Mull was already way ahead of the others in terms of hardening, and IronFox continues that, which is nice. Everything I use seems to "just work" as well, so it seems like a great drop-in replacement for something like Firefox, Iceraven, or Fennec.

Molly is exactly what it says on the tin! It's an improved Signal app, and Accrescent comes with the FOSS version that strips the proprietary bits that I honestly can't see most people, if any people, using (while replacing with alternatives for what people do use). Molly also supports UnifiedPush, which is really nice for GrapheneOS notifications, and once I learned how to get it going, it works so smoothly! Molly also supports regular notifications that run with Google Play Services, and it also supports running in the background to send notifications (although this is a bit more of a battery drainer and is spotty, I would honestly just use UnifiedPush over this). Molly is great!

Accrescent also ships the basics! There's a really good-looking note application that follows modern android design, a flashlight application that allows for adjusting brightness and automatically flashing morse code, ExifEraser for cleaning metadata, and AppVerifier, which is quite useful when it comes to the second half of this :D

Obtanium ships the rest of the goods! AppVerifier from before makes the process of checking package integrity very simple, and Obtanium grabs the packages straight from a multitude of sources, from Github, to Gitlab, to Fdroid and even generic websites with APK links! Here's what I've got from here, although a lot of this hasn't changed since the last time I made a post similar to this idk when:

Breezy Weather continues to be the best weather app I have ever seen, period. Better than the proprietaries, better than the stock, and best of all, they have both the regular version and the fdroid version on their github, so you can use whichever you want!

Fossify is still great for a lot of the basic, although I've replaced a couple of these since last time (ex. notes). Still great for a clean and minimal phone, sms, calculator, calendar, etc. while being functional and FOSS.

PipePipe is the only thing that consistently gets around YouTube's efforts to block third-party clients and services, and it works great. It's a FOSS YouTube client that allows for easy ad-free viewing and easy downloading. It also supports a variety of other services, including PeerTube! If you've heard of Newpipe, it's very similar and started as a fork, though has diverged since, and as such is able to implement workarounds to blocking much faster than newpipe tends to.

ntfy is the greatest discovery of recent times. Remember when I was talking about UnifiedPush notifications before? This is it. It's seamless push notifications for anything from Molly to Element X (the everything client, enjoy my inside joke ) , and it makes it so these apps don't have to run in the background (or can actually support push notifications in the case of Element X. This is honestly a must for any android user, especially if you're using applications that might support UnifiedPush, whether it's in addition to traditional push notifications through Google or exclusively UnifiedPush. It's genuinely great, has saved so much battery life already, and allows me to get notifications from my lovely friends over on the glorious matrix protocol.

But yeah, that's all I've got for now. I hope you liked my app showcase, it only took until my third or fourth post of this kind to finally get the wording right and not sound either condescending or elitist or whatever. It's never been my intention, I just want to share software that I enjoy, and I want you to use it if you find it interesting. Some of this might be more use-case or threat model specific, but a lot of these are just great for any user, and I mean any. So yeah, I hope you all have a wonderful day/night/dusk

I thought it was a pretty good summary. Contents:

• Copyright: The mechanism behind most software licenses
• Simplified decision diagram for choosing a software license
  • License decision diagram
• Correctly applying a license
• Major open-source license categories
  • Copyleft vs. permissive
  • Free vs. non-free licenses
  • Patent usage
• Warnings
  • License proliferation
  • License incompatibilities
  • Conflict-of-interests
  • Contributor license agreement (CLA)
• Recommendations for software, hardware and other projects
  • Software projects
  • Hardware projects
  • Other projects (documentation, music, etc.)
  • FAQ

C'mon let's have some fun with it. I wanna make my computer cool as shit

So, me and my girlfriends share my linux desktop, and we all play videogames through steam. I have a fairly good solution for sharing the steam game files between users which as you may know is a slight pain on linux especially with games requiring proton. So, the current workaround we have to do is for each user to take ownership of the shared directory after they log in. I've been putting off finding a more elegant solution so i just set up a quick alias for everyone to do it for the time being. The command is this:

sudo chown -R user1:steam /share/steam/

The games live in /share/steam, and i created a steam group which we all belong to. However it's my impression there is no "true" shared ownership of linux directories, they seem to want to always be associated with a primary user which doesn't play nice with steam and proton. It seems to be a shortcoming with proton more than anything, i did read an article which explains how to create your own fork of proton which fixes this issue, but i want the freedom of being able to hop around proton versions rather than that limitation.

I would like to move to a more elegant solution where this permissions change happens automatically in the background, on login of a given user. I'm sure that it's possible, but i haven't been able to find a perfect solution by looking around. It seems like making a systemd module might be best? I'm probably gonna give that a go, but i wanted to see if anyone had a better idea or any feedback at all.

Thanks!

I'm trying to run trelby, some screenwriting software. I actually bricked my Ubuntu install when trying to set this up there because wxPython didn't install, I tried creating venvs and that didn't work either, and I ended up trying to delete Python entirely... So I ended up here.

I cloned the repo, set up a shell.nix with the required packages, and am now stuck with the same problem I had before: wxPython doesn't install.

# shell.nix
let
  # We pin to a specific nixpkgs commit for reproducibility.
  # Last updated: 2024-04-29. Check for new commits at https://status.nixos.org/.
  pkgs = import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/cf8cc1201be8bc71b7cbbbdaf349b22f4f99c7ae.tar.gz") {};
in pkgs.mkShell {
  packages = [
    (pkgs.python3.withPackages (python-pkgs: with python-pkgs; [
      # select Python packages here
      setuptools
      wxPython
      lxml
      reportlab
      pytest
    ]))
  ];
}

unpacking 'https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/cf8cc1201be8bc71b7cbbbdaf349b22f4f99c7ae.tar.gz' into the Git cache...
error:
       … while calling the 'derivationStrict' builtin
         at <nix/derivation-internal.nix>:37:12:
           36|
           37|   strict = derivationStrict drvAttrs;
             |            ^
           38|

       … while evaluating derivation 'nix-shell'
         whose name attribute is located at /nix/store/4ab6vrcph07w6ra79bc04fy8bbcmb9r0-source/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:331:7

       … while evaluating attribute 'nativeBuildInputs' of derivation 'nix-shell'
         at /nix/store/4ab6vrcph07w6ra79bc04fy8bbcmb9r0-source/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:375:7:
          374|       depsBuildBuild              = elemAt (elemAt dependencies 0) 0;
          375|       nativeBuildInputs           = elemAt (elemAt dependencies 0) 1;
             |       ^
          376|       depsBuildTarget             = elemAt (elemAt dependencies 0) 2;

       (stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full, detailed trace)

       error: undefined variable 'wxPython'
       at /home/edwinc/Documents/code/trelby/shell.nix:11:7:
           10|       setuptools
           11|       wxPython
             |       ^
           12|       lxml

Cheers!

Edit: solved! Just change the wxPython to wxpython on the shell.nix file, and probably also change the manual fetch from an outdated repo to <nixpkgs> as @[email protected] recommended.

Asking for a friend

Link to previous megathread:

• https://hexbear.net/post/4476606

Microsoft Corp. v. Lindows [dot] com, Inc

• (wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Lindows.com,_Inc.
• (blog): https://dmitr.dev/blog/tech/the-history-of-lindows-from-controversy-to-rebranding/
• (YouTube, channel Action Retro): https://youtu.be/SWmvtdyXlTA

TL;DR

A Linux distribution based in San Diego, California by the name of Lindows (2001) was sued by Micro$oft for infringing on their trademark name. Lindows was a distribution of GNU/Linux designed to run programs meant for Windows as well as programs compiled for Linux. Fun fact, it was founded by the guy who used to run mp3 dot com (Michael Robertson ).

One of the innovations that Lindows made was being sold with computers (you could find these for just under $200 in Walmart), it also boasted the CNR (Click N' Run) application which allowed users to install programs just with a single click.

Of course, since Lindows was threatening the bruised egos of Microsoft, they were sued for trademark infringement. However, in a rare turn of events, a judge ruled that the term "Windows" was used to describe graphical interfaces before the Windows product existed. Windows, now realizing they could be in deep shit if "Windows" itself was determined to be a generic term and not a trademark, quickly backed away from bullying the small company and settled in 2004 for nearly 20 million dollars (now around 33 million today).

Lindows later rebranded as linspire but quickly faded into the background as Microsoft and Apple quickly dominated the market and enveloped it into their sphere of influence. Lindows' mission of running Windows software and catering to these users was later taken up by Valve Inc. who funded the development of Vulkan and DXVK et. al to create Proton, which now boasts to run over 10,000 games made specifically for Windows and powers the Steam Deck, a commercially available Linux device nearly made up of entirely libre software (minus steam).

Megathread

Post nerd in the chat.

A changelog written as if time went backwards, reporting all the features being removed from Emacs

https://m.youtube.com/@VeronicaExplains

I though it might be a useful channel for newbies.

I'm Veronica! I love Linux, old computer hardware, and explaining things.

Some folks call me the Linux Mom, and that works for me. I'm a sysadmin and COBOL lady who's posting fun content about cool things you can do with Linux, as well as some fun retro tech stuff I come across!

Also I think her channel is neat and she deserves more views.

Source for image: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=family-tree

Image Description: A twist on the periodic table of elements with the elements replaced with various Linux distributions. We can see that the most common type of distribution is derived from Debian/Ubuntu.

• Link to previous megathread: https://hexbear.net/post/4475419

How to choose a Linux Distribution

Here's a set of quick criteria for choosing a Linux Distribution (not exhaustive)

1. Check the leadership behind the project

• Are they a reputable organization? Some distributions are led by a small group of hobbyists while others are backed by large multinationals.
• I recommend trying to find a blog or newsletter of some kind before jumping in.

2. Try to get a feel for the support network for the distribution

• Before installing, you should get a feel for where you can possibly get help, read up on distro specific manuals, or get peer support. Some distributions host their own forums, chat networks, etc. If a project has a sizable wiki (like the gentoo or arch wiki): double points!
• Distributions based on other distributions (like Arch Linux) can piggy back off their parent distro, but make sure you understand what changes they've made

3. What release schedule is it on? Are the packages updated?

• For a majority of users who don't require mission-critical software 24/7/365, it's good to understand what release model the distribution uses. There are two main types:
• Rolling Release: Packages are released to users after a round of testing when they become available. If a package has a new version, you'll likely get it the weekend of its release (sometimes called "bleeding edge" because you'll likely get the release version of packages instead of several bugfix releases over).
• Stable Release: A new version of the operating system is released periodically. Once released, all critical packages and most major releases of packages will be frozen to just minor releases and bugfixes/security updates. Divided into "Leading Edge" and "Long Term Release" depending on time (6 months and 2 years respectively).

4. Does the distribution have a unique advantage for your use case?

• 95% of Linux distributions use the same software, they are just collections of software at the end of the day. That is, if you have something not working on your current distribution, then you'll more than likely run into it again. Generally avoid choosing a distribution based on aesthetics or branding.
• Sometimes the folk wisdom of certain distributions are exaggerated or outdated ("This distro is great for beginners, this distro is great for gaming, etc")

Distro-hopping

If you're distro-hopping, likely the distribution you're using isn't doing well enough to provide you with software and options.

Instead try:

• Using specialized tools like Distrobox, Homebrew, Nix, Podman/Docker, Flatpak, Appimage, etc
• Setting up a virtual machine using QEMU and virt-manager (great if you want to scratch an itch without having to format your drive)
• Looking more into the problem you originally have: If you can't install a certain piece of software, try to figure out why.

Megathread

FOSS software help, propaganda/agitprop, whatever you got you can post in here that doesn't deserve its own post.

Abridged

Please stop legitimizing LLMs or AI image generators or GitHub Copilot or any of this garbage. I am begging you to stop using them, stop talking about them, stop making new ones, just stop. If blasting CO2 into the air and ruining all of our freshwater and traumatizing cheap laborers and making every sysadmin you know miserable and ripping off code and books and art at scale

If you personally work on developing LLMs et al, know this: I will never work with you again, and I will remember which side you picked when the bubble bursts.

Put all of those billions and billions of dollars towards the common good before sysadmins collectively start a revolution to do it for you.

AI slop and crypto just seem to be the perfect death whimpers of capitalism. No value can be placed back into society but everything can be extracted out of it.

I figured I might as well make it and ask forgiveness rather than permission.

For Libre software discussion that doesn't warrant a whole post, FOSS software help, propaganda, whatever you got.

https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/1978#issuecomment-2156134

Happy 2025! The Eco-Libre project published our 2024 Annual Report for last year.

Eco-Libre is a volunteer-run project that designs libre technology for sustainable communities.

Eco-Libre's mission is to research, develop, document, teach, build, and distribute open-source technology that sustainably enfranchises communities' human rights.

We aim to provide clear documentation to build low-cost machines, tools, and infrastructure for people all over the world who wish to live in sustainable communities with others.

Executive Summary

• Continuing search for land in Ecuador
• Prototype Progress of Life-Line
• Design changes to Launch-Nest and Treasure-Tower

Read the full report here.

Contribute to Eco-Libre

If you'd like to help Eco-Libre reach our mission to enfranchise sustainable communities' human rights with libre tech, please contact us to get involved :)

Join Us
eco-libre.org/join

Cheers,
The Eco-Libre Team
https://www.eco-libre.org/

Common Debian W

The Debian Publicity Team will no longer post on X/Twitter. We took this decision since we feel X doesn't reflect Debian shared values as stated in our social contract, code of conduct and diversity statement. X evolved into a place where people we care about don't feel safe. You are very much invited to follow us on https://bits.debian.org/ , on https://micronews.debian.org/ , or any media as listed on https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity/otherSN #debian

I'm in a tailscale network with everyone I want to chat with if that changes anything.

Must be/have:

• Easy to roll out, not much harder/more involved than setting up something like discord ideally.
• Clients available on Windows and Android and Linux of course.
• Decentralized/Peer to Peer. I don't want to set up a server computer but I will if I absolutely must. All devices behave as if they're on the same LAN thanks to tailscale if that helps.

Would be nice to have:

• Groups and sub groups like discord.
• Stickers like telegram.
• Voice/Video chat. I would miss desktop streaming a bit but I could always fall back to Discord if I must.

Is there anything at all like that? There are so many options it's kind of overwhelming.