• 3 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • My first distro was Suse Linux 8.1. I had to buy the box as downloading was not an option with my dial-up connection back then. However, the first distro that I fell in love with was Fedora Core. The original one. I bought the book which had the DVD with the full installation. I was hooked. That was more than 20 years ago.












  • Either Linux or GNU/Linux is OK to me. It’s the practice that makes the difference. While I mostly use Debian, which defines itself as GNU/Linux and I appreciate every aspect of it, I recognise that Arch Linux (which drops the GNU) has a much healthier approach to free software than Red Hat (recently at least), which defines itself as GNU/Linux but adds clauses to RHEL which are against the spirit of free software. I prefer using GNU/Linux because, as a statement, respects things that are important to me. Of course, I am totally cool with other people using any term they feel more comfortable with.


  • The truth is that it mostly worked other than some issues with full screen but firefox has better ways around it. I really wanted to make the statement since I saw the notification that encouraged me to switch to another browser. Firefox is fully compliant and so should be their service. And should be DRM-free but that will be another discussion in the future.



  • I agree but admit that I share some responsibility as DRM is optional and I choose to enable it for some sites. Quite often, when a site is less essential to me (or its DRM features) I decline them. The more we decline them, the more probable that there will be free alternatives of some services.



  • That was really nice but I think the lady was lucky that she met you. Can you imagine if she had met Linux Torvalds himself? He would have told her off for not knowing that the 2.6 kernel was many years old, the whole Linux world had moved on with strides beyond this old piece of software and reached 6.5 and there was no reason wasting everyone’s time with this kind of question. Plus: “we never, ever break the user experience and hence the mouse should work without questions!”


  • This appears to be true on the surface but is not accurate. I am a structural engineer and when people need to do something with their buildings, the engineers (structural, mechanical, fire, etc.) and the architects need the plans or at least a survey. If a side has the plans and the authority on the plans, that side has huge leverage over the building. Fortunately, this is never the case with buildings. Plans are considered public information. It would be so much better if the same applied to software.




  • They can all serve the same purpose. The advantages of 7zip are the following:

    1. It is totally free (as both in free beer and free speach)
    2. The 7z compression format is superior to rar because it can compress either more or faster (not both though)
    3. The rar format is proprietary. You are free to decompress but not to compress. In a business setting, you could theoretically get in trouble if you don’t have a license. In some countries, e.g. USA, even outside a business setting. But if you have been using winrar forever, I can’t see you changing your ways anytime soon! :)