jake_the_third

Perfect timing.

Yesterday, I urgently needed to run a piece of software on one of my systems. I had two versions of that software on hand: One for linux and one for windows.

The linux version flat-out refused to run. In my desperation, I installed wine and (to my surprise and the surprise of my coworkers) the windows version ran flawlessly.

Granted, the specifics surrounding my situation was far from typical, but I wouldn't be surprised that the majority of wine usage is also atypical in one way or another. Measuring wine's relevance by your own (or my own) use cases will likely only lead to inaccurate conclusions.

> The difference is that this is private companies doing it of their own volition and not by government demand.

Is this really a meaningful difference if the end result is the same?

I think that's his point.

Many years back, I bought an expensive android phone to discover that it did not support my native language. I have the necessary technical skills to add support for it, but because the phone was locked down (something enabled by permissive licenses but not the GPL), I couldn't fix the phone myself and ended up with a very expensive but useless brick.

Corporate interests rarely align completely with your own, and this small difference can be very damaging to your interests. The GPL, while not perfect, alleviates some of the damage caused by this misalignment by ensuring that users remain in a position to address it.

I also have difficulty believing anything bloomberg puts out after what had happened.

With all the independent investigations and the lack evidence found, I'm baffled that they still haven't admitted their mistake and issued a redaction.

Projecting political views onto browser users by default is a big one (new tab). Another is the limiting of user control by not allowing them to install third-party extensions. They also enable telemetry by default, and that not all telemetry can be disabled without going into about:config (i.e the settings in the preference page do not disable telemetry about telemetry itself; the browser can and will still send some telemetry even when telemetry is set as disabled).

I (and many others) use Firefox because we need a trustworthy browser, but issues like these take away from that trustworthiness.

I'd be glad to forget Mozilla's past if they'd show that they have learned from them. The problem is that they haven't. In some cases, they've doubled down on them.

I say this as someone who uses firefox on every device he can.

> I am getting increasingly annoyed by the fact that buying anything is becoming a minefield

Not only that, but they keep repopulating the minefield with new mines after you've spent considerable time clearing them. (Google, I really don't want you to use wifi to "improve" location precision and silently re-enabling the setting after a system update isn't going to change my mind.)

One way or another, this has to stop.

If that's really the reason, then I and (likely) the majority of other Linux users are completely fine with that.

Except no one is going to jail.

Unless the developer has enough foresight to account for, and sufficiently handle, every single instance where that brick wall would stop a legitimate false positive, I stand vehemently against them.

There are enough examples in the past that clearly demonstrate that developers are not benevolent or competent enough to have complete and final control over the software their users run. Sometimes this control even results in the exact opposite of what the developers originally intended, as was the case with firefox addons just a couple of days ago.

Ultimate control over software should always reside in the hands of the user.

> I wouldn't have expected Lenovo to mess with the ThinkPad brand like that. My image of ThinkPad has always been no-nonsense, get-stuff-done, power-user-favored.

I used to think the same until I got a T480. I was drawn to it because it was one of the few laptops that still has a direct hardware Function-key row (I use linux, so software Function Keys are not fun).

The keyboard, while mechanically excellent, is horribly designed if you depend on it to do your job: They "innovated" by moving the Home/End keys up to the Function row, they "innovated" by completely removing the context menu key from the keyboard and placing the PrintScreen key (of all things) in its place, and they also placed the Fn key at the bottom left corner of the keyboard where Ctrl is usually located (you can fortunately swap Ctrl/Fn with each other in the bios, so the last one isn't a issue if you're willing to live with mislabeled keys).

If you're a heavy keyboard user, I strongly suggest properly testing a laptop's keyboard before buying.

I though the issue was with getting your mails accepted. Even gmail has no problem sending email to a server that isn't properly set up as long as it is willing to accept.

Can you mention (or link to) situations where gmail refuses to send mails to another domain?

> De-centralized hosting of the packages (news to come soon!)

Is the index also going to be changeable? Will I be able to completely avoid your servers if I wanted to?

> although AppImage doesn't have a concept of automatic upgrades like Snap

And that's a good thing. If I wanted my system to force software updates on me, I'd use windows.

Users should always have the ability to control updates. Always.