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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Didn’t say anything about auto-updating. Just can’t be bleeding edge and use proprietary drivers, that’s all. Other (AMD) use the open source drivers, so they don’t have that issue. And that’s great. But if you use the NVIDIA propietary drivers, you can’t race ahead of them.

    That doesn’t make the drivers bad; they work perfectly fine; and have far far far better performance than AMD. There’s just the trade-off that you can’t be bleeding edge when using them.

    You take the good you take the bad you take them both and there you have…the facts of life.

    You’re argument that drivers are bad because you can’t fuck around with your system without them breaking is disingenuous. If you buy a brand new Wacom tablet, and it turns out that it’s too new and the Kernel doesn’t support it yet, or no one has written a patch to get it working, you don’t claim that Wacom is a shit company. It’s just a fact of life that you have to wait for either the kernel to update or for someone to get a patch working.

    But when it comes to NVIDIA…holy shit… WORST, period, COMPANY, period, EVER!!! And that’s just hypocritical.










  • Adderbox76@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.mlAsking for donations in Plasma
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    2 months ago

    I’m not really talking about development as simply programming. There are a lot of aspects that go into development, yes…programming is a big aspect.

    But there’s also bug reporting (every user should know how to report bugs because it’s contributes to making the program better).

    Heck, you can even download the documentation and give it a proof-read if you’re good with grammar and spot some errors if you don’t want to commit to helping to write it.

    I know a lot of people who spend a lot of time in the various subs for the software, taking care to answer questions from other users who need help doing this or that. That again, is contributing.

    Then there’s simply what we’re doing right now. Bringing attention to the projects online getting them more visibility.

    Development of a successful FOSS app isn’t just about programming. And even small contributions count. If you can donate some coin, great! If you can’t, or don’t want to, there are a thousand other things that you can do to contribute to that apps community.

    I emphasized the word community because that is exactly what it is. The ethos of Open Source; what makes it different than Propietary software, is that the users are an inherent part of the development process in ways both big and small. In propietary software, there is a distinct line between the developers and the users. Developers have multiple stakeholders of which the user base is certainly one, but also include advertisers, software makers, hardware makers, etc…

    FOSS software, in contrast, is much more a communitee effort with the involvement of the community in the way of bug reports, literature, education and even simply championing the project because they don’t have millions of dollars in advertising budgets.

    Sorry, I get a little passionate, so this is longer than I intended it to be.

    But tl;dr, contributing isn’t just about money or just about programming. There’s a thousand ways big and small, and my issue isn’t with people not “paying” necessarily. But people who use it for free and don’t bother filing bug reports, don’t join the community online to help answer user questions, etc…

    A good FOSS citizen should be an active part of the community. Or donate money to the project if they’d rather not.


  • Adderbox76@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.mlAsking for donations in Plasma
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    2 months ago

    This software is extensively free (as in beer)

    No…it’s not. It’s free to download and to use, but the expectation that people contribute in exchange for using it is how FOSS has always worked.

    That doesn’t necessarily mean monetary. But contributing can be helping with user guides, or making youtube tutorials, or even just extending the reach of the program to friends and family by talking about it.

    There are many ways to contribute, and money is one. But the notion that Open Source software is “free as in beer” has never been correct. Users have an expectation to contribute…period.


  • Adderbox76@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.mlAsking for donations in Plasma
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    2 months ago

    Unfortunately, there has always been the issue that a not-insignificant percentage of users of FOSS software believe the FREE part means “free as in beer” and take umbrage when asked to contribute.

    I’ve long been a proponent (and I know I’m in a minority) that has advocated for a shift in the marketing of FOSS applications from “donation based” to “value based”. Meaning that the expectation is that if you enjoy the software, you pay an amount that you believe is commensurate to your use. This is voluntarily of course…if you can’t pay, than please use it and enjoy it. But those who can pay, should pay…at least a little bit, to offset the costs for those who can’t.

    It’s more or less that the wording of FOSS apps needs to change so that you are expected to contribute if you can.

    Just my opinion. Like I said, I know I’m in the minority. Just not a fan of the percentage of users that has always existed that (falsely) think that asking for money for your project is somehow anathema to the Open Source ideal and whine whenever they’re asked to contribute.



  • Storming the beach for the first time in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault back in 2002.

    Even though the graphics haven’t aged well (of course), the sound design, the vibration of the controller, the beats in the pacing as you are tossed around in the boat and then thrown overboard. It was all so well done. It was also the first time (that I could recall) where you began the game and had a moment to just “look around” while the boat was heading to the shore but before you had the ability to move.

    You look behind you and you see other soldiers, some puking. Someone yells, and you look up as a fighter/bomber screams over you. The controller rumbles as it drops it’s load on the landing craft next to yours, tossing you around. The game took a few moments to let you immerse yourself in the situation before the action started, which I think was an amazing choice.

    Anyway, that’s my answer. And yes, I’m old.




  • Adderbox76@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.mlHow FOSS is your setup?
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    4 months ago

    Hard to pin a number on it, percentage-wise.

    • Desktop and laptop are both running Linux.
    • Chromebook wiped and running Linux.
    • Most software, but definitely not all. Steam, Resolve being the two biggest non-foss items on my desktop, while my ex-Chromebook has a proprietary screenwriting program, as well as OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice because I need much better Excel compatibility for work and LO still isn’t quite there for it.
    • Phone android. But not entirely de-googled. Replaced drive with syncthing, keep with Joplin, photos, phone, and messenger with their Fossify equivalents and disabled the originals. Replaced gboard with heliboard, etc…

    But can’t/won’t completely replace the OS yet because both google pay and android auto are essential to me and getting them working on most replacements is still a royal pain in the butt.

    So let’s call it 80%, maybe a bit more?


  • It’s been a long time since I last installed Linux on a two hard-drive system, so take this advice as “likely not necessary, but will probably fix your issue”

    The installer asks whether or not you want to “replace” the existing OS or install alongside. And if you’re fairly new to linux (like I was at the time) it can be tricky to see at a glance which hard-drive you want to install it to and which you don’t.

    So to be doubly cautious and make sure that didn’t happen, I simply unplugged my secondary harddrive during the install so that the installer would automatically be reading the correct one. Then all I had to do was choose “replace” or “install alongside” without worrying about anything else.

    The drawback to that was, once the install was complete and I re-attached my second drive, I had to configure it to auto-mount and do some work on that, but at least my computer was working.