Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Borax Man Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Fedora proposing to remove X11 Gnome Date: Sat, 3 May 2025 00:11:39 -0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 93 Message-ID: References: <1irOP.851750$d51.585824@fx46.iad> <364QP.125792$oJg.4439@fx17.iad> <0OSQP.28898$AoB5.17918@fx09.iad> Injection-Date: Sat, 03 May 2025 02:11:39 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="d37d373b0283afd2f17008681c5c0bff"; logging-data="2348398"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18+Yb4ObELBIx2OPviBKQQWPDrFiYU580w=" User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (Linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:F6LZyHk/3RRN9XdG3XsbrG/8Oi4= sha1:GDUeL7r1wdy8qQmT1i8/MDeSmb0= On 2025-05-02, CrudeSausage wrote: > On 2025-05-02 11:20, Borax Man wrote: > >< snipped for brevity > > >>> I think that Linux would have been adopted faster in the late 90s has >>> the Linux zealots at the time not been lying through their teeth and >>> claiming that Linux was stable and worked perfectly across the board. >>> Most people didn't know a thing about repositories and installing >>> software through, didn't understand what open-source was and what its >>> benefits could be and definitely weren't open to persevering with the >>> operating system when their hardware didn't work the way that it should. >>> >> >> >> I don't think that would have made much of a difference. With lack of >> support for hardware, and games, and MS Office, I think they were the >> dealbreakers. I do think they were a bit, not dishonest, but >> misleading. It was said that Linux helped you learn more about the >> computer, but in really you learn about Linux, not the computer (at >> least not the hardware, that is abstracted away from you). >> >> The whole "Free Software" thing was also a big misdirect. You don't get >> much freedom from being able to modify and redistribute the modified >> source code. I started using Linux before I knew about this, but this >> evangelism was mostly meaningless to people who didn't have the skills >> to actually make significant change to the kernel, or any of the >> programs. I felt this "benefit" was just Linux evangelists reaching for >> something, and being unaware, by design, of reality. >> >> Linux (and Unix like systems) actually offer freedom because you have >> choices of workflows, of tools, and you are able to compose things >> together. The freedom comes because you can craft your own experience, >> NOT because of the GPL. Too much was made of the GPL being freedom. > > I enjoy the freedom of knowing that the operating system I am running > today will run just as well on this machine in five years. People don't > realize how refreshing that it until they start realizing how much money > they've been spending on technology, trying to keep up over a decade or > so. Things become obsolete, but there is no reason for them to be > replaced within three years the way that they used to in the 90s. Linux > allows us to prevent that from happening. > The desktop I'm typing this message on, I build in 2009. I have not had a need to upgrade, except for a scant few games I would not mind playing. Just a few games, thats it. Because I don't game, there is no other issue, at all, with having this "old" PC. It runs fine in every other way. This was why when my wife wanted a new Apple, I talked her into a Linux box. WE don't want to be in the situation where software goes obsolete, and the new OS cannot be installed anymore. >>> I had a lot of luck with the SUSE Linux versions back in the late 90s >>> and early 2000s. Tumbleweed was also the first Linux to work perfectly >>> on my old MSI for suspend (admittedly, Linux worked perfectly on my old >>> AMD-centric Dell laptop in the late 2000s). Windows has always been fine >>> for me, but I would also reinstall that thing once every three months or >>> so. Even in that short time though, it managed to screw up from an >>> update or corrupted system files. >>> >>> >> >> I could not stand at all, formatting and reinstalling. I customise my >> system, and losing all those settings, those small changes you make, >> like that file I added to stop the windows key screwing up the full >> screen DOS prompt. You've got to do them all again, and remember what >> you did. That was one of my top 3 pet peeves that moved me away from >> Windows. Perhaps top one. I very, very rarely reinstall. One I install >> an OS, I expect it to remain until the computer dies. I've only >> reinstalled Linux maybe three times in the last 10 -15 years. Once to >> jump from Fedora 11 to 18 or something, the other two to switch two >> computers to Debian. > > Funny enough, the one feature I find most useful in Linux is the cursor > automatically becoming gigantic if you lose track of it. When I want to > highlight a word or a text to kids who see a duplicate of my screen, > simply jiggling my mouse around makes the cursor huge. It seems so > trivial, but it's a fantastic feature of KDE for teaching. I can manage > losing some customization myself, but only because I got used to it from > the constant formatting of the 1990s. With age, it is admittedly > becoming more of a chore which is partly why I set up Timeshift to > ensure that I can keep my desktop running. > The last time I had to reinstall a system because it broke was over 20 years ago. And when that happened, I probably could have fixed it, but I didn't take backups (bad idea!). My daughter has a laptop for school with Windows 11. Today its going to become a dual boot machine. I'm a little undecided on the distro, either Linux Mint, Linux Mint Debian edition or plain Debian.