Piper is also used by Torsten-voice and many other models are available. Its brilliant and like 2,5 steps away from implementation in screen readers and TTS engines. I hope this happens soon as the current engines are unbearable.
Espeak on Android for some reason is better than on KDE
Variable refresh rate (VRR), HDR, OLED (e. g. I’d like the panel to become grey and move items around a bit to lessen burn-in) all involve GNOME for hardware support.
Yeah I forgot about monitor support. Guess that’s pretty important. But is pixel shifting gnome’s responsibility or should that be done through monitor firmware so that it’s OS agnostic¿?
Your’re right, ideally wear reduction should probably be done by the display itself. But considering how little manufacuters often care about OS-agnostic approaches, it might be necessary to have software workarounds?
You are right. I was happy with linux mint, and before that MX Linux. This is all just bike shedding. I spend a lot of time setting things up Hell, I spend too much time just downloading crap because I have not bothered to make a script that would automate installation of the apps I use.
Debian based, arch based, rhel based are all somewhat different and have different package managers (with flatpak, appimage and snap that might be less important nowadays though)
Nobara comes with all the stuff for gaming, not everyone who uses Linux knows exactly what they need to install themselves
NixOS is fantastic and drastically different from all the others
NixOS, silverblue, vanilla are all immutable which makes a massive difference
Also not everyone wants to install their own DE, so if they want something like cinnamon, pantheon, KDE they need a distro that comes with it preinstalled
normal application tray and buttons for close, maximise and minimize
dolphin ! (But any capable filemanager with spacesaving UI, extensions, an editable location bar, drag/drop dialogs, selection mode, preview, pinned favourites, kfind integration,… would do)
are all simply better than the GNOME counterpart. Also things like the clickboxes of decorations actually reaching to the top corner is something so obvious its crazy that GNOME simply ignores that and you need to directly point to the “x”.
Did the windows before not have regular menu with all that? I think its an okay concept, even though I can imagine something like workspaces could make sense too.
As the first paragraph says: “The GNOME Foundation is thrilled to announce the GNOME project is receiving €1M from the Sovereign Tech Fund to modernize the platform, improve tooling and accessibility, and support features that are in the public interest.”
I’m also on KDE at the moment, but I appreciate the money going into FOSS desktop experience. Most importantly as keeping things viable for the future. Also KDE and GNOME both, one presumes, learn from each others successes.
Ever got that feeling that your PC doesn’t do what you want and that it seems malicous and intentional?
Switch to Linux where at least you know that when you hit a brick wall it’s an honest bug!
Just making some fun ;) But seriously the main reason is switched to Linux is that it at least tries to be the best os for the user, unlike windows or mac os, which tries to be tge best os for the company that is selling it, which just happens to include not pissing of it’s user too much, but a little bit is ok from ms and apples point of view.
I’m a software engineer, and I’ve used Linux on my computer for work before when my company allowed Linux installs on their computers (most don’t in my experience). I don’t recommend it for you.
For me, my main productivity tools, even proprietary ones, run natively on Linux. I very very rarely have to do anything involving word processing. When I do open source or in-browser word processors are enough. Windows can also be a constant headache to use in a lot of software development settings. It’s a horrible development environment. I try to avoid working on Windows as much as I can.
When something breaks (and on Linux, something eventually will), I have more than a decade of technical experience in computing I can fall back on to fix the issue myself. My work computer has failed to boot before and all I had to diagnose and fix the issue was a black screen with a terminal prompt. Even my company’s outsourced IT company had very little experience with Linux and I was largely on my own to fix it when things went wrong.
For you I don’t think it would make sense for basically all the opposite reasons. I imagine you’ll be doing heavy word processing and editing a lot of documents that need to be formatted correctly. Browser based and open source word processing are probably not going to cut it. I’m not sure if there are any proprietary file formats you may come across in the legal field, but if there are do you want to have to ask people “could you send that in a different format? I can’t open that on Linux.”
If something goes wrong on your machine you may not have all the experience to resolve it quickly on your own which could impact your business. Windows can break too but there’s a lot more support out there and the barrier is much lower to fix most issues (I can’t remember the last time I had to bust out a terminal to fix something on windows)
For all its faults, windows is pretty well set up for your typical use case.
If there’s a compromise here, you could try having a computer running windows and another running Linux. Having a backup in case something goes wrong isn’t a bad idea anyway. Dual booting is also an option. I made it through college for a CS degree with a dual boot Windows+Ubuntu laptop.
Whatever you end up doing, be sure to have a really good plan in place for backing up everything you need, especially files. Your computer can fail you at any time, Windows or Linux.
My win11 VM sits on my disk, most days it stays off. It starts in 30 seconds and I use remina to remote into it. It sucks that I lose 60gb of disk, but it’s fast and everything just works.
Unless you have very specialized requirements (and quite possibly you do) the solution is usually to unhook yourself from thinking of needing specific programs and to instead focus on needing to perform specific tasks. (Then finding the Linux way to perform that task.)
Barring that, the codeweavers suggestion is a good one. I used it in my early days when I thought I couldn't live without particular pieces of Windows software and although that was several years ago, even then it was pretty good about being able to easily run arbitrary Windows software. IMO it's cheap enough to be worth the investment.
If you truly have bespoke requirements that just can't be satisfied by either of the above, staying on Windows may legitimately be your best option.
More generally - if you decide to take this step, expect to have to learn to use a computer substantially differently than you have in the past. It's not harder; in many ways it's easier. But if you are very experienced and comfortable with Windows, a lot of concepts are going to feel foreign to you. Tackle one task at a time and your experiences will build upon each other. Go into it expecting to have to learn, and you'll do fine. Bizarrely I find the least tech-savvy folks sometimes have the easiest time transitioning.
I really do wish governments invested more in open source. If it’s a generic thing like an operating system that the public could benefit from at large, they would be doing the public a service.
Government ran distros in public schools and government offices wouldn’t be any more invasive than windows working with the government. Better yet there actually be some sort of education on using the os and exponential growth of the Linux desktop as a whole.
I just wish KDE would get some love too. They work their asses off to make a desktop suit as many use cases and workflows as possible while maintaining a mostly polished experience. Their not afraid to implement stuff knowing it’s just a temporary solution till other projects catchup. They are actually willing to work with other projects on implementing standards and are developing standards like HDR on wayland for professional artists and gamers and are the first to jump on major features as soon as its solid.
Gnome is just annoying mess great for smartphone users unwilling to learn anything new and had never touched a pc or Mac in their life. What’s the appeal of using something with half its features gutted for the sake of looks just to have everyone add it back in anyway. It’s an annoying Apple like philosophy of let’s implement counter intuitive interfaces to preserve a look and never change it back because we’re always right. You’d think they’d have improved the window snap feature since 3.0
Ffs I knew this submission would turn into a minority of Plasma users trying to piss on Gnome. Can you not just be happy that an open source project is receiving help and that this will be a big improvement for accessibility features?
I never hear Gnome users crying about Valve heavily supporting KDE, so why are you angry about this?
I never hear Gnome users crying about Valve heavily supporting KDE, so why are you angry about this?
This does not happen because Gnome is the most supported desktop environment out there, they have Red Hat, Google, Canonical, OpenSuse even Microsoft donated to Gnome. Don’t get me wrong some of this company do support kde too, but Gnome get treated in a different way because it’s the default de for most of the distros out there.
Like you said, these companies help KDE too. KDE also has more hardware partners, and more contributors.
Even ignoring all that though, it still doesn’t answer the question: why cry over Gnome getting money to aid in accessibility improvements?
I have never once heard anybody cry about the companies that support KDE, yet some people here go on like Gnome fucked their girlfriend. It’s pathetic.
Nobody’s forcing anybody to use Gnome or any any other DE. Just be happy when nice things happen in the FOSS word.
I’m not complaining about gnome getting support, I’m complaining about kde being overlooked because gnome is the default desktop for Ubuntu. Kde is just a better tool for people wanting to just get things done. Gnome is pretty I’ll give you that but ask anyone, they are very hard to work with and stubbornly refuse compromise when working with others on creating useful tools and standards.
Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it. Their efforts to make other projects wait for them to deside what’s best for gnome like they are the only desktop that matters. The projects like portals usually say their going to implement the standard despite what gnome wants and kde often helps with the brunt of that work.
Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
It’s the job of the Gnome developers to update and improve Gnome.
It’s the job of the extension developers to update their extensions when there’s a new Gnome version.
And it’s the job of your distro’s maintainers to keep the versions of Gnome and the extensions in the repo compatible.
If you install Gnome from your distro’s repo and extensions from Gnome’s website, YOU take on this job.
Just install your extensions from your distro’s repo and you won’t have any issues.
KDE isn’t overlooked. KDE gets funding too. Valve and others have put so much into KDE. KDE has the most hardware partnerships. KDE has more contributors.
Kde is just a better tool for people wanting to just get things done
In your opinion…
I do all my work on Gnome because it’s got an amazing and highly productive workflow, minimal distractions, and it’s extremely stable.
I like Plasma, I like the options it has, I have it on one of my laptops, but it’s not what I’d use for work. The last thing I need is for kwin to crash and take all the programs I had open with it, losing hours of work. Yes, I’m aware this should be fixed in Plasma 6, but as of right now it’s a massive showstopper.
stubbornly refuse compromise when working with others on creating useful tools and standards
Gnome has championed a lot of open standards, and worked with others. You’re just repeating a Reddit meme. They’ve done so much flatpak, portals, open-desktop stuff in collaboration with KDE and others.
Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it.
You’re showing a complete lack of understanding about what extensions are.
Extensions are impossible not to break from time to time. Extensions don’t use some unchanging API to work - they’re modifications on the DE itself. That’s why they’re so powerful.
There’s no way around DE mods sometimes becoming borked when the DE gets a big update.
Why are you acting like Gnome is against portals lmao, they’ve been massively pushing portals and open desktop standards, even going as far as refusing to implement features unless there’s a cross-desktop standard way of handling it (e.g. accent colours, which they are only now putting in place now that they and KDE have hammered out a sensible standard for it. Or a better system tray, which they’ve been trying to spearhead an open, cross-desktop solution for for years now, although little progress has been made by everyone). Of the DEs, Gnome has pushed for things like portals and flatpaks the most lol
We get it. In your mind, Gnome = bad and evil and nasty, KDE = good quirky and kool.
They are being downvoted because it is utter nonsense, spouted as authoritative fact.
Anyone who has ever used gnome seriously, knows that although it can be used for touch it is heavily keyboard oriented.
While not undermining the work of KDE devs who I have great admiration for, GNOME devs also work heavily on standards that benefit all of linux, and arguably do just as much if not more, as they are a very well resourced project.
that would be a sound investment and we can’t have that, the government must focus on actively detrimental infrastructure projects to put money in the pockets of rich people.
All my games work with Steam/Proton (thanks Value!) and I mainly use my desktop as a gaming PC. I do some bussiness stuff but LibreOffice will work. Or I also use Google Docs to do things--can be saved as Microsoft Office file types or PDF.
But you are right, if you need a Windows only program, then Windows is the only option. I had to update the firmware on my Xbox controller that I use with Steam to play my games. I had to wipe one of my laptops and put a copy of Windows on there to get this done. Another time there was a free Baldurs Gate game from Amazon games I could get, BUT you needed the Amazon Game app to get it. And it only ran on Windows. I put Windows on a laptop, download the free game, then moved it to my Linux Gaming PC. After adding it to Steam as a non Steam game, I was exploring dugeons with elves and dwarves.
It's still a Windows world, but IF enough gamers switch to Linux that could change. And Microsoft is only going to get worse with ads.
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