hello_hello

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.

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.

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.

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.

Excuse the awful title of the post but sched_ext is a really cool development that greatly improves Linux's scheduling efficiency. Minus all the technical details, it means that very intensive workloads that involve multiple demanding programs can actually coordinate with each other and not suffer performance penalties.

Fun Demonstration video with Terraria running under Proton in Ubuntu!* (where the 50% faster comes from, don't take it at face value you can read the case studies instead).

It's recently been merged with the Linux 6.12 kernel. And some orgs like Bazzite already ship their own schedulers.

Linux stays winning! Free software always wins!

I just caught up to the current chapter of HxH (as of writing that's chpt. 408) and I'm wondering what other hexbears have to think about HxH?

One key argument for moving to Linux is the environmental benefits. Joanna Murzyn, who spoke at the KDE Akademy conference in 2024, warns about the increasing problem of electronic waste (e-waste). In her presentation, titled Only Hackers Will Survive, she highlights the environmental toll of throwing out perfectly usable computers.

E-waste, which includes discarded laptops, desktops and other electronics, releases toxic substances like lead, mercury and cadmium into the environment, according to Murzyn. These substances can contaminate soil and water as well as cause long-term harm to ecosystems and human health. Murzyn urged people to resist the urge to “upgrade” to new hardware and instead explore solutions like Linux that extend the life of existing devices.

For users with older laptops and desktops, especially those incompatible with Windows 11, switching to a Linux distribution is a powerful way to avoid discarding perfectly usable hardware. openSUSE, for example, provides excellent performance on a wide range of hardware, including machines more than a decade old. By choosing Linux, users can continue using their devices for years to come and don’t need to invest in new hardware.

Switch to GNU/Linux! If you're still using Windows in $CURRENT_YEAR, flock to Linux Mint!; Apple Silicon users will want to check out Asahi Linux.

Did people really watch movies/shows on DVDs that forced them to watch ads before even starting? Like you go to the store and pay for a movie disc and when you go home you have to sit through like 10 minutes of ads. Did people really have to watch ads before they could even watch the movie they paid for a copy of?!

𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙣𝙚𝙮 𝘿𝙑𝘿 𝙞𝙨 𝙚𝙣𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙙 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙣𝙚𝙮’𝙨 𝙁𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮. 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖 𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙗𝙤𝙣𝙪𝙨 𝙛𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮. 𝙏𝙤 𝙗𝙮𝙥𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝙁𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮, 𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙈𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙈𝙚𝙣𝙪 𝙗𝙪𝙩𝙩𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙩 𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚. 𝙁𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙣 𝙖 𝙢𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩…

Even on VHS there were ads (you could fast-forward through them though), and Blu-Ray also has ads despite being a "more modern" standard (it's not it's just HD-DVD with a different branding). Also you can't even use the disc without paying for a special disc reader that reads that shit for you (tbf a lot of devices came with a disc reader, but it still persisted despite the fact that USB storage was far cheaper and more efficient). You'd also have to navigate the terribly slow menus just to get to the part you were at.

Also if you buy a DVD/Blu-Ray whatever the fuck they call it nowadays in one part of the world and you travel to another, say you have family that lives in one country and you live in another, you can't play that disc because it's "region-locked."

Ok maybe it's region locked because different countries probably use different displays/standards or whatnot. NO! It's region locked for NO MATERIAL REASON besides "ensuring copyright distribution of the holder". This is even more mind-boggling for "blu-ray" the supposedly new format.

Also most Blu-Rays don't even come with all the goodies that normal DVDs had like behind the scenes/deleted scenes etc, so it's not like Blu-Rays have any other advantage besides being incompatible with your dvd player. "Just buy a PS3" yes I will buy the SONY product to play movies on a disc also created by SONY.

How is it considered physical media when the devices to play it are not being sold anymore? I'm sure there are a lot of Sony walkmans being sold nowadays. I can totally pick up a VHS player right now at the store and enjoy my treasure trove of vhs tapes that haven't already withered to dust.

People older than me (I was born after Al Gore lost the election) are having nostalgia for the "age of physical media" when really it was an age of physical bullshit compared to streaming bullshit. It's always capitalism, capitalism will burn down all art if it means that someone didn't get to skip paying for it. Here's what I say, just pay a couple a dollars a month for a VPN with port-forwarding and just torrent all your media. Your torrented file has done more for media preservation and archival then any DVD bullshit ever did. The only use for physical media is to digitize it and share it.

The bootlegged Cinderella movie sold in the Global South has done more for media preservation than Disney ever has. A seedbox in Russia is more of a art library compared to any video store.

Don't get me started on video games. Where every generation of devices there's a new standard and new way to do things. Nothing says media preservation like buying a disc from a store and then waiting an hour for your device to download updates online.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3770297

I think I've finally found it: The elusive Firefox fork for my day-to-day needs. It needed to have sane defaults like Librewolf but also as user empowering as Vivaldi (as well as not being proprietary which is cringe).

Zen I believe accomplishes both of that. It's a relatively new project but it does have active development with new changes added every release. Here's the rundown:

• Licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, the same as Firefox. So enjoy that warm feeling you get when using open source software that won't pull the rug from under you.
• Follows Firefox release cycles: If a new Firefox version comes out, Zen is not behind.
• Instead of horizontal tabs, Zen only uses vertical tabs for navigation. If this is a deal breaker, then Zen isn't for you :(
• Supports split view, workspaces, browser profiles, side panels, tab unloading (saving memory by deactivating a tab), theming, mods and everything else that base Firefox supports (like firefox sync).
• Cannot play DRM-protected content as of yet on Windows and MacOS (rare Linux W?) due to license fees. This is your netflix, your disney+, your spotify.
• No mobile version (nor does it seem to be planned), though firefox sync is still supported.
• Looks GORGEOUS. I never realized how ugly Firefox looks by default, esp on desktops like GNOME and KDE where it tries to integrate itself into the system theme.
• Performs FABULOUSLY: Optimizations from the firefox level to even providing an optimized binary executable for modern CPUs.
• SANE defaults like HTTPS everywhere, no link prefetching (where the browser loads links that it thinks you're going to go to), uncluttered Firefox home.
• Probably more I'm not listing

Download here: https://zen-browser.app/download

How do I use Zen?

Well firstly, Zen doesn't come with any extensions by default. So I made sure to chuck in my Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, ClearURLs, LibRedirect, etc. It also uses secure DNS by default with Cloudflare so you might want to turn that off (I have a DNS homeserver that does encrypted DNS through other means).

I also really like using the side panel to put my wiki sites and dictionaries in. I've only been using Zen for a week now and it seems to be my forever browser of choice.

I think I've finally found it: The elusive Firefox fork for my day-to-day needs. It needed to have sane defaults like Librewolf but also as user empowering as Vivaldi (as well as not being proprietary which is cringe).

Zen I believe accomplishes both of that. It's a relatively new project but it does have active development with new changes added every release. Here's the rundown:

• Licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, the same as Firefox. So enjoy that warm feeling you get when using open source software that won't pull the rug from under you.
• Follows Firefox release cycles: If a new Firefox version comes out, Zen is not behind.
• Instead of horizontal tabs, Zen only uses vertical tabs for navigation. If this is a deal breaker, then Zen isn't for you :(
• Supports split view, workspaces, browser profiles, side panels, tab unloading (saving memory by deactivating a tab), theming, mods and everything else that base Firefox supports (like firefox sync).
• Cannot play DRM-protected content as of yet on Windows and MacOS (rare Linux W?) due to license fees. This is your netflix, your disney+, your spotify.
• No mobile version (nor does it seem to be planned), though firefox sync is still supported.
• Looks GORGEOUS. I never realized how ugly Firefox looks by default, esp on desktops like GNOME and KDE where it tries to integrate itself into the system theme.
• Performs FABULOUSLY: Optimizations from the firefox level to even providing an optimized binary executable for modern CPUs.
• SANE defaults like HTTPS everywhere, no link prefetching (where the browser loads links that it thinks you're going to go to), uncluttered Firefox home.
• Probably more I'm not listing

Download here: https://zen-browser.app/download

How do I use Zen?

Well firstly, Zen doesn't come with any extensions by default. So I made sure to chuck in my Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, ClearURLs, LibRedirect, etc. It also uses secure DNS by default with Cloudflare so you might want to turn that off (I have a DNS homeserver that does encrypted DNS through other means).

I also really like using the side panel to put my wiki sites and dictionaries in. I've only been using Zen for a week now and it seems to be my forever browser of choice.

TL;DR:

The Windows File Explorer is now dependent on Microsoft Recall being installed on Windows 11 24H2 editions and likely later.

This means that if you wish to use newer versions of the Window file explorer, you have to install recall on your system. Recall is a deeply-rooted, non-negotiable feature on all modern versions of Windows.

Solution

If you wish to strip out recall from your system, you are no longer able to use the built-in graphical file explorer and must use a third-party tool, and if you're not allowed to do that on the machine, then you are forced to have recall running on the system as it doesn't appear on any graphical settings pages.

The other solution is to prepare for transitioning into a free operating system such as GNU/Linux with distributions such as Linux Mint which is designed specifically for that transition. You can also run an older version of Windows and refuse to update.

Errata

Turns out that this issue has been exaggerated and that there are ways to disable co-pilot on Windows machines (or at the very least, command Windows to do so). Also it's debatable whether this program does any harm on non "copilot" computers but you can be the judge of that.