The Breeze app style has gotten the visual overhaul you’ve all dreamed of: no more frames within frames!
Yeah, it regularly appears in my nightmares /s. Sorry Carl, but I’m gonna have to patch this out. I hope this will get a config option like the change to the Dolphin details view that made the click area to open a file span the whole row (doesn’t look like it’s configurable as of now). I kept patches to undo that for a while as well…
Spectacle has gained support for rectangular region screen recording!
Oooh, I’ve been waiting for that. Very cool! Now I hopefully don’t have to fiddle around with OBS anymore to record a section of the screen.
I mean in theory someone else might know the answer… I don’t want to bother the developers with every little problem. They are already busy making the software. I try to treat the developers with respect by reaching out to others for something like this. I do not know if there is a problem with the application. If someone else who uses the software would mention if they have this problem, or a different work style, or make a workaround. Possibly running the text through a script could do it? Maybe it is buried in one of the ambiguously named plugins.
I can’t speak for all developers, but personally I’d rather have a bug report that isn’t actually a bug, but rather a user error over nothing at all. Because that means that my expectation of how others might use a feature could be incorrect which is a bug to me - just not a programmatic bug.
Some developers may of course not be as of appreciative of it, but I’d say so long as you have a cursory look at their issue tracker and no one else has reported it, then I’d say its worth it.
OK I went to their tracker. Which jogs my memory even further on why I gave up on it and am unmotivated to open issues in this case.
Here is a similar but not exactly the same issue: Tool to Comentent lines fail and can be more elegant · Issue #3554 · geany/geany. I suspect my issue is probably related to theirs. The developer response is:
Since nobody has asked for this formatting before (@osergioabreu you did search for existing open or closed issues before you raised this didn’t you? 😁) users either don’t care because they only use it to temporarily comment out code and will remove it quickly, or they like it like that.
So if “somebody” made a pull request which made the formatting an option it likely would be accepted so both tastes are accommodated.
Or it was put in a plugin (if it isn’t in one already?)
If my request is unique they are not interested because if it was important someone would already have posed it. If it isn’t unique than it would be a duplicate anyway. Unlike my problem, this issue #3554 is a real bug. The feature simply fails to work even on its own logic because it produces comments in such a way that the application itself does not recognize as comments. So impossible to later uncomment!
They are basically open to PRs rather than suggestions. It isn’t just this particular case; it is the project as a a whole. It is a tool with a primary user base of developers so it is expected that many users will have the ability to do this. So-called “do-ocracy” I’ve heard described elsewhere. Which, fair enough, it is a FLOSS project and they have no responsibility to cater to me. I always am grateful for FLOSS developers and respect the right to runt heir project as they see fit. However I have no capacity to make a PR.
Like me this dev wonders if it is a plugin. Also like me doesn’t have a way of finding out because the plugins are poorly described.
Obviously we do not know each other but I will say that I have opened lots of issues like this in the past and will do so in the future. I don’t need a push to do it. That said, I appreciate the encouragement because for a long time I would never open issues and lots of people feel intimidated to do so. As I got more into FLOSS I came to understand that there is a sort of responsibility from users to give useful and constructive feedback to developers. And I have been blown away at how receptive developers are to my feedback, especially knowing that 90% of them are doing it on their own time. It really changes the way I look at commercial software when I have to use it at work. :) Where the relationship is transactional between my employer and the developers, rather than reciprocal between myself and the developers. My expectations are now so high based on FLOSS that commercial software seems so deficient. All that to say I understand what you are getting at.
However I have also learned to evaluate the project prior to engaging with it to determine if my contribution would be welcome. When I am not the target user of the project, I find I am often wasting everyone’s time. The target user of this project is programmers.
So in this case a forum post is more appropriate because the odds of a solution from the devs are like 1%. Maybe I will make an issue next time I’m logged in to github idk.
A forum is a good place to learn from other users about undocumented features, or maybe there is a plugin someone knows about. That would actually be helpful.
That’s plenty fair enough, and I apologize for not looking into their issues to see what their receptiveness was like - I originally replied while I was at work and my break was unfortunately coming to an end or else I probably would’ve caught that and not mentioned it, whoops!
In retrospect I should’ve known, I forgot that Geany is a GNOME project and… well, they have a bit of a reputation for uh… let’s just say that I myself am always hesitant to submit bug reports myself. It’s a tough one, because I try to play devil’s advocate on why they tend to be like that and had even commented yesterday on a video about GNOME devs always getting a lot of hostility. On one hand, there’s certainly a reason why they tend to have that response, but it’s still a bad sign when it starts to color their whole team since I know there are plenty of devs there who don’t have that sort of response.
Either way, I apologize if it came off pushy - it was definitely intended to be more on the encouragement side of things rather than a firm “you must do it!” so I hope that’s not how it translated to everyone else.
For what it’s worth, I still believe that what you’ve run into is a bug based on my own guidelines of “it doesn’t have to be a programatic bug and can wholly be a UX/expectation bug” - it doesn’t seem that this dev has the same methodology which don’t get me wrong, that’s plenty fair enough - but they could’ve replied a bit more gracefully because otherwise it causes this exact problem, not only for Geany, but the entire open source world.
Hi that is kind of you to reconsider. No offense taken or intended. :) It’s just that 3 people commented to tell me to make an issue as though asking a question about linux software was inappropriate. Whereas 0 people commented with anything about my question. I still wonder if I am doing commenting wrong somehow.
I am pretty sure I opened some kind of issue with these folks in the past and it was closed because I couldn’t submit a PR. I thought it was some sort of policy but I can’t find anything about it; either I am misremembering or whatever I read before is gone.
I really truly do not begrudge any devs for running their FLOSS projects how they feel is best for them. It takes all types to make up the world. I think on the whole it is better for the FLOSS community to be open to feedback even from those who aren’t able to provide a solution, in order that the needs of non-developers can be met. But when it comes to a project which is explicitly aimed at developers, idk what can I say? It’s probably better that people who prefer issues be in the form of PRs be creating tools for other developers rather than normy end users.
Plenty fair enough! I haven’t used Geany in a long time, and never actually ended up trying it as a code editor (rather than just the every once in a while one-off-quick-texr-editor) unfortunately, otherwise I’d have tried to answer your question directly.
I do think that it’s alright to only accept PRs, just so long as it’s made a bit more clear. If I ever ran into a problem with Geany, I’d be completely unable to do anything as I have very little experience with C, let alone GTK and all of the other libraries along with it. I could learn right to effectively flip a few values or even maybe try to correct a basic logic issue - but that’s about it.
That all being said, I hope someone is able to answer your question one way or another! Normally I’d recommend trying to reach out to the project’s chat since they usually have an IRC channel, Matrix channel, or some other place - but in this specific case after seeing the issues you mentioned I’d definitely be hesitant to do that sadly…
To solve number 4, I need to know the desktop environment you went with. Is it Gnome? If so, there’s a tweak (a Gnome extension) that makes the taskbar stay on screen permanently or appear when you hover over it (kinda like MacOS) and then you just right click a program you’re using in there to pin it to the taskbar
in a terminal, type flatpak remotes. If it lists flathub, you’re good.
Try installing a random app like flatpak install flathub de.haeckerfelix.Shortwave
It shoud work. If it doesn’t, post your logs.
I have to type a password in the terminal every time I want to use sudo
This is the intended behavior and should not be changed, it’s a basic security feature. Once you’ve finished setting up you system, you shouldn’t need sudo everyday anyway, except for updating/upgrading the system.
I’m used to a desktop interface with a toolbar/start menu that I can pin frequently-used programs to, but with Debian it seems like I need to click “Activities” to do anything. Is there a way to set up the interface so it’s more like Windows in that regard?
Assuming you’re using Gnome, this is easy to solve using Extensions. First if it’s not installed already on Firefox, install Gnome Shell Integration. It’ll let you manage Gnome Extensions directly from extensions.gnome.org
Then, install dash-to-panel for a “windows-style” experience, or dash-to-dock for a “macos-style” experience.
After that, you can go wild on the extensions you want to use ;)
If I need to do a clean install, I’m thinking of switching to Ubuntu, since I’m more familiar with the interface.
Don’t. Ubuntu will teach you nothing but the Ubuntu way. Debian is as Standard Linux as conceivable. If your only concern is the Ubuntu-style interface, configuring dash to panel to appear on the left side is all you need.
Why did you choose this architecture? Almost all x86 CPU architectures from the last 20 years are 64 bits, you should reinstall using the AMD64 image. This will solve a lot of issues and insure you get the most of your hardware.
I was under the impression that it’s old enough to only work with the 32 bit OS. I’ll double check that and try installing the 64 bit version if I can.
If the 32 bit version is all that will run, am I shit out of luck when it comes to running any modern software?
It’s an intel core 2 duo t9300, which I’m pretty sure is 64 bit. I guess I was confused because it was previously running a 32 bit version of windows 7.
Edit: I’m not sure if it’s amd64 or aarch64 or mips64. I think it’s amd.
Fun fact: AMD started out making licenced products based on of Intel’s x86 architecture, and in the early 2000s the roles were reversed when intel had to licence AMD’s 64 bits extension of this architecture.
aarch64 are for ARM processors like the one in your phone, mips64 are embedded processors most likely found in a car or a router.
Thanks! I did a fresh install of Debian (64 bit) with KDE, and it seems to be working for me, except it’s already frozen up and needed a reboot twice. I might go with a more lightweight DE if that keeps happening.
I’ve just googled Dell XPS M1530 and it seems like it shipped with a Core 2 Duo CPU, which is 64 bit.
For reference, the last mainstream 32 bit desktop processors were launched over 20 years ago. As a rule, if you’re trying to run a 32 bit machine in this day and age it is probably an antique, and running modern software on it would not be all that sensible even if you could.
Arco -B has the widest range of DEs and WMs at install that I’ve seen so far. Almost all of them are modded to have a unified control scheme, but the appearance is usually close to vanilla.
I’m not sure how this is in any way different from android? Android is free software they use to restrict the computing they devices they sell to push more ads and junkware. This is just a different one. Amazon sucks, so I don’t see what move they could make that could be seen as positive. Just don’t buy their garbage devices.
I already tried an Amazon Fire tablet, Amazon. No thanks. I returned it. I don’t need a locked-down console that spies on me. Windows is well on its way to becoming that already.
I tried to get one since it was 30 bucks, so I’m not too surprised this is how they operated. They are locking down jindles real hard too. Probably going to make a lot of ewaste.
If all the apps are in React Native I feel like they are gonna have a bad time. If you’re not careful React Native apps have bad performance, and Fire TVs don’t have a lot of performance to spare.
I agree with NixOS as a good choice for this. The most important bit for me is it cleans up really well when you switch. Every other distro I’ve tried tends to leave a lot of mess behind and a lot of duplicate function apps.
Just be ready to clean out your home, maybe add a new user to test them. I set up KDE then went back to gnome and it broke my cursors somehow… nbd but it’s a bit annoying
Can’t say I’ve seen that yet, but it is a good point. Your home directory might still get a little messy. I think the thought of using the config to me a user per-desktop environment you test is problem a good idea.
My suggestion would be to setup a keyfile to unlock the partition automatically. You can use your EFI partition to store the keyfile, which makes no sense from security perspective; or you can keep it on a usb drive. Machine will ask for password if usb is not present, or boot straight up if it is.
Lots of people gave great advice. Let me sum a bit of that up.
Flatpak
No error means success. You might want to install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak to make it available in gnome-software. I’d advise against using flatpaks if you also have the software available in the debian repositories. Always use the package manager instead, when possible. Those packages are maintained by the debian community and tied into the rest of the system. Flatpaks are not.
sudo
What would you like? That is kinda intended behaviour and an integral part of security. But you can have it remember the password for some time. Or ask for a different password.
FDE
I think a clean install is the quickest way to fix this. You can also get the other things right while at it.
DE
You can choose the desktop environment while installing Linux. You chose the default Gnome Desktop. It’s designed more like Apple or Android tablets. I quite like it. You don’t have that menu blocking space on the monitor. Instead you just bump your mouse to that top left corner or press the windows key and you have a fullscreen menu with your favorites. You can also directly start typing the first letters of the application you want and hit enter and start is, without lifting your fingers from the keyboard and it’s way quicker and more streamlined than clicking on things in a windows start menu. You can have an addidional dock somewhere at the left or the bottom with an additional gnome extension like this or what other people suggested. But if you’d like it like windows, why don’t you try the KDE destop? I think you’d be more comfortable with that if you’re looking for something alike the windows experience.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu regularly does some stupid things. I’ve been using Debian for quite some time. I suppose the differences for you are minor anyways and you could have it look the same if you found out which gnome quick-launch bar to install or if you used the KDE desktop instead.
I’d advise against using flatpaks if you also have the software available in the debian repositories. Always use the package manager instead, when possible.
Please let me disagree on this. Debian + Flatpaks is actually an awesome combo. Rock solid and super stable base, up to date user facing apps.
Debian’s life cycle is awesome for core system stuff, it ensures that once your system runs perfectly, it’ll continue to run perfectly for several years without intervention despite always being up to date.
But for user facing apps, it’s actually really frustrating when you know there is a bug fix or a feature you need that’s been implemented and made available months ago but you’re stuck on a 2-year-old version.
It’s just, we get so many questions regarding Flatpak from newer users:
Why doesn’t App A tie into App B?
Why doesn’t the program tie into my desktop environment?
How can I install Addons?
Why can’t I access files somewhere
And it’s just not easy. The Apps/Programs are sandboxed and can’t tie into each other unless specifically made for this. Addons need to be put inside of that environment or the program needs to be fitted with some kind of Appstore that incorporates this. You can’t just download an addon from github and drag and drop it like the instruction says. New users blame that on Linux. And you need to understand the additional Flatpak permission system.
In my experience these problems have really increased in the last year or so.
Next thing is, you lose what the distro maintainers do for you. They double check that everything works together well and is tied into your desktop. Breaking changes are postponed until the next major releas of the distro. Since you mentioned Debian, they strip tracking behaviour, and most importanly they fix security issues quickly. Once I read about a severe vulnerability in libpng it’s often already fixed or takes them like one to three days.
Everytime I have a look at ‘flatpak list’ I have like 3 different versions of some runtime installed and it takes half a year until the last flatpak app is updated to the release without that vulnerability. And I get that. Programmers of a project mainly code, and maintenance and packaging the stuff isn’t necessarily top priority on their agenda. But you as a user are exposed for months and I usually expect exploits to appear in the wild after some weeks.
That may be less of a concern if you install OBS via flatpak or a game. But this would be bad if it’s a web-browser or a messenger.
That’s why I usually tell people not to use Flatpak. If you know about the consequences and how to handle the sandboxing and get an addon working, go ahead. Maybe subscribe to a mailing list regarding the security vulnerabilities, because that’s now your job.
For Debian users there are a few alternatives. You could just mix and match software from ‘stable’ and ‘testing’. That is not recommended, but everyone does it. Second thing: Just install Debian testing and you get a rolling distro. That’s what I do and it works great. Well, during the ‘freeze’ for the next version you will experience some delays until they figure out some library updates and dependencies. But that’s alright. [Edit: on second thought: Considering the next comment, maybe I shouldn’t recommend that. It works for me but it definitely has some caveats and you need to understand the consequences I didn’t mention here and be able to fix the occasional hiccup.]
All your points are valid, and I agree with most of them except maybe advising people to use Testing ;)
From a security point of view, Testing is dead last in Debian’s vulnerabilities fix order of priorities after SID and Stable, and fixes in general except when the next release is being freezed. I’ve undergone breaking changes and regressions weekly on Testing, dependency issues that took forever to get fixed, and the year or so I’ve spent on Testing was miserable. Testing definitely has its purposes, but daily driving it on a laptop should not be one of them.
I understand the issues you’ve got concerning Flatpaks and how it goes against a distro’s philosophy, but I think, from a “normie”'s POV, it’s still miles better than the classic “download a random exe from a random website and never bother having to uninstall and reinstall it every week to keep it up-to-date” windows paradigm. Flatpaks are mainly a solution for developers and package maintainers (package once, distribute everywhere), but it benefits the end users. You get to use “the same version as everyone else”, always up-to-date whether you’re on Debian or on Arch, compiled against a known version of all dependencies so bug reports are more consistent and avoid weird distro-specific behaviors.
Thanks. You’re right. I’ve edited my comment. I shouldn’t be advertising testing. And I probably misremember how often I fix a minor hiccup that I forget about 2 days later. And I keep an eye on important programs when they get ‘stuck’ or I get aware of vulnerabilities and switch to SID or stable with cherry-picked packages. But that requres you to read all the tech news and that’s not a safe way to do it regardless.
I agree. Flatpak is lightyears ahead of downloading executables or doing the imfamous ‘curl software/install.sh | sudo bash’ It is definitely the right tool if your alternative is to download something from a random website or the software isn’t packaged in your distro. (And also for proprietary software.)
I think the correct approach is to ask yourself if you really always need the latest releases and newest version of your software. And if it’s worth the consequences. Flatpak really makes it so easy and smooth that many people aren’t aware it comes with consequences until later. I know everyone always wants everything. Rock stable and tested, bulletproof security and the newest version of everything right away. I do, too. We seem to both like Debian. It’s provided me with most things I need for quite some years and it really earned my trust. We all know how the maintenance process works there and how that turns out. Problem is, if I now circumvent what defines Debian, I kinda lose parts of what makes it great. That should be done with some caution. But sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes I want unpackaged software. Sometimes I need the newest features of OBS or Kdenlive. Or FreeCAD did some major restructuring and the Debian version just always crashes once I add a chamfer to my 3D-workpiece and Debian keeps that ancient version in the repository. There’s no way around taking matters in your own hand. Also I sometimes keep several versions of browsers around to do some web-development and Flatpak is awesome for things like that.
Maybe I need to provide people with a more nuanced answer the next time someone asks about Flatpak stuff. The main point is probably that you take matters in your own hands at that point and need to be aware of that. It requires you to make case-by-case decisions and have a look at if the specific Flatpak is maintained well. There is no simple answer anymore. With a distro you mainly get what you asked for and you should know if you chose your distro, and with it the way it handles things, for a reason.
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