The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[jonahgoldberg]

Why would you even want that shit on Linux in the first place. I'd rather set up a virtual machine with GPU passthrough and just use Windows 10 or refuse to play games with ring 0 anticheats, even if said games are running inside a VM.

i don't want it on my GNU/Linux system, and it would probably not even work in the first place because i run linux-libre.
big tech reptilian overlords just love infecting some random computers (now GNU/Linux machines too since its popularity keeps increasing) with malware, baiting people into installing that crap with "muh games"
...you wouldn't want to be one of those uncool loser kids without muh games like some kind of software vegan, right?
the funny thing is that VMs don't actually prevent malware like that unless you run them without virtualization aka hardware acceleration, if you virtualize shit or even use GPU passthrough you are effectively exposing your hardware to the OS running in the VM, which is why it has near native performance. this may prevent the average obfuscated rm -rf /*, but not some sophisticated enough malware that was specifically crafted for breaking out of VMs.
on top of that come vulnerabilities on your hardware, like specter (spectre but i hate bri'ish people) or meltdown, the only way to "fix" them is using gay proprietary ""mitigations"" that implement more modern (and undiscovered) backdoors while slowing your cpu down by ~20%, and i refuse to use any of that shit. the only other way to protect yourself from this shit is to not use proprietary shitware of which you have no idea (let alone control) what it's doing, what it could do, or what its proprietor is planning to do (and capable of).
keep calling me schizophrenic for using 16 year old thinkpads with self compiled firmware, but unlike you, i can be sure that i won't catch government agency malware any time soon.

 

[Slav Power]

i'm not american

Neither am I.

>oy vey don't even try, you will never succeed goy

What I meant is that when you have to sacrifice usability for privacy, it's a bad trade-off, and it's not worth chasing this wild goose to the point where you're actively worsening your experience just to not use this specific type of software that would work better in your use case. It's why I don't move from Windows to Linux because that would be a detriment to my usability, but at the same time I actively look for FOSS alternatives that are good.

Sometimes the proprietary alternatives just work better, like Total Commander or foobar2000, and sometimes it's the FOSS alternatives that are good, like Thunderbird or KeePassXC. I try to aim for FOSS whenever I can, but I also put usability as the main priority. If all FOSS alternatives don't work, but a proprietary one does, I compromise and choose the proprietary one.

You compiling Gentoo won't help if the code you're compiling has something malicious in it, it's a false sense of security. You either trust all software, or you trust none of it and you verify each and every line of code you compile. Otherwise it's no better security wise than installing precompiled binaries from Debian/Arch repos.

The point is that you won't achieve the 100% of privacy, so it's not worth sacrificing all usability in the name of chasing that goal. but at the same time it's not worth giving up on it completely. Just don't be a Stallmanist schizo that'll read his e-mail through some autistic inconvenient system no sane person would ever use just to gain the slightest advantage. You'll be amputating your usability to prioritize privacy and that's just not a good way to live your life. Find a good balance, don't go into one of the two extremes.

Also please, learn how to format your posts because I had a very hard time reading what you wanted to say. All the 4chan /pol/ lingo makes it even more unreadable. Windows, Nvidia, FOSS, use regular words because not everyone knows that lingo and it's detrimental to understanding what you want to say.

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

ackchyualley ,
microsoft has been disabling updates for anybody who installed slight modifications to their operating system, such as a custom file manager/window manager element, even something as simple as moving status bar elements to the other side

Finally a way to disable windows update without having to go to third parties, thank you microsoft! Still so much more convoluted compared to XP, Vista and 7.

 

[jonahgoldberg]

>you have to sacrifice usability for privacy

sure i have to sacrifice having stuff like photoslop or other crap that eats up 20 GiB of ram for no reason and crashes every 20 minutes, but i'm willing to sacrifice that if it means having freedom. freedom is more important for me than a bit of more usability, and gimp or krita are perfectly fine for drawing crappy images (or even professional work).
my point isn't even privacy, but freedom. you can't have privacy without freedom, and you can't have freedom without privacy either.
some proprietary programs are better as in usability because they are more 'user friendly' and targeted at less computer literate people so you don't have to punch 20 lines of text into a command line to make it do what you want, but often this also means that you don't have as many options to do advanced things. just compare ffmpeg to any proprietary (or even free) gui video editor, it has a thousand times more options than any of those things, but you need to know how to use it if you want to make use of them.
i actually read most of the source code i compile, and the only things i didn't audit are X11, systemd, and all the gunk in the linux kernel i don't use anyway.
you can actually save a lot of time by just overflowing code or using grep to find anything obfuscated or obviously malicious for a lot of those programs, the problems arise when there are very well obfuscated things that just seem like "bugs" or spaghetti code, luckily such things are very rare since free software devs just simplify this and replace it in PRs or don't even accept such code into a project in the first place.
i may not achieve 100% privacy, but i do my best to get very close to it, i monitor my whole network traffic and look at anything that goes in or out without me actively telling it to do so, but for now nothing has done that except for a web browser that loads 3rd party crap from websites.
reading email through emacs isn't inconvenient, it may be autistic but emacs is a very good operating system with a pretty efficient email client, and so is mutt.
use whatever email client you want as long as it's free and not some laggy garbage webshit that steals your data.
my computer can do a million times more things than any winshit machine ever could, because i do most of my work with a terminal. i can't imagine how it would be to live without unix things such as input redirection or everything being a file.
>4chud lingo
i will intentionally not use properly formatted quotes now because i like plain text, and because it seems to make people mad if they lack fancy borders and a background.
NOVIDEO is a term every freetard (or even GNU/Linux user) should know, it's a joke about NVIDIA GPUs just catching fire, having driver issues, and not outputting any video.
FUSS just describes what FOSS really means, it's just fuss about free beer and 'open sores', not freedom.
i will not use terms such as w*ndows in my posts because i don't want to give any direct attention to microshaft's products, and changing the terminology to something more appropriate such as the company named after bill gates' penis is funny.

Finally a way to disable windows update without having to go to third parties, thank you microsoft! Still so much more convoluted compared to XP, Vista and 7.

the first good thing satya nadella has done this year.

 

[Slav Power]

*schizo wall of text*

Yeah sorry, I was willing to read your previous post but now I won't even bother. At least learn how to format your text like everyone else.

Finally a way to disable windows update without having to go to third parties, thank you microsoft! Still so much more convoluted compared to XP, Vista and 7.

I can see why they did it. StartAllBack, much like ExplorerPatcher, uses tricks to unbreak Explorer while Microsoft constantly breaks it, so SAB and EP can cause really bad and unexpected issues, and Microsoft hates it when people complain that something doesn't work because of those patchers so they turn off updates for people that use them so those breakages won't happen to them. A very stupid way to approach this issue.

Raymond Chen wrote about this on his blog, and people rightfully called him out on it. This shit happens becuase Win11 Explorer is a step back compared to Win10's.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20230324-00/?p=107966

No one would be compelled to use SAB or EP if Win11's taskbar had that feature parity, but apparently the guy that worked on Windows NT since the very beginning fails to see that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[BirdUp]

sure i have to sacrifice having stuff like photoslop or other crap that eats up 20 GiB of ram for no reason and crashes every 20 minutes, but i'm willing to sacrifice that if it means having freedom. freedom is more important for me than a bit of more usability, and gimp or krita are perfectly fine for drawing crappy images (or even professional work).
my point isn't even privacy, but freedom. you can't have privacy without freedom, and you can't have freedom without privacy either.
some proprietary programs are better as in usability because they are more 'user friendly' and targeted at less computer literate people so you don't have to punch 20 lines of text into a command line to make it do what you want, but often this also means that you don't have as many options to do advanced things. just compare ffmpeg to any proprietary (or even free) gui video editor, it has a thousand times more options than any of those things, but you need to know how to use it if you want to make use of them.
i actually read most of the source code i compile, and the only things i didn't audit are X11, systemd, and all the gunk in the linux kernel i don't use anyway.
you can actually save a lot of time by just overflowing code or using grep to find anything obfuscated or obviously malicious for a lot of those programs, the problems arise when there are very well obfuscated things that just seem like "bugs" or spaghetti code, luckily such things are very rare since free software devs just simplify this and replace it in PRs or don't even accept such code into a project in the first place.
i may not achieve 100% privacy, but i do my best to get very close to it, i monitor my whole network traffic and look at anything that goes in or out without me actively telling it to do so, but for now nothing has done that except for a web browser that loads 3rd party crap from websites.
reading email through emacs isn't inconvenient, it may be autistic but emacs is a very good operating system with a pretty efficient email client, and so is mutt.
use whatever email client you want as long as it's free and not some laggy garbage webshit that steals your data.
my computer can do a million times more things than any winshit machine ever could, because i do most of my work with a terminal. i can't imagine how it would be to live without unix things such as input redirection or everything being a file.
>4chud lingo
i will intentionally not use properly formatted quotes now because i like plain text, and because it seems to make people mad if they lack fancy borders and a background.
NOVIDEO is a term every freetard (or even GNU/Linux user) should know, it's a joke about NVIDIA GPUs just catching fire, having driver issues, and not outputting any video.
FUSS just describes what FOSS really means, it's just fuss about free beer and 'open sores', not freedom.
i will not use terms such as w*ndows in my posts because i don't want to give any direct attention to microshaft's products, and changing the terminology to something more appropriate such as the company named after bill gates' penis is funny.

you're gay

 

[Susanna]

sure i have to sacrifice having stuff like photoslop or other crap that eats up 20 GiB of ram for no reason and crashes every 20 minutes, but i'm willing to sacrifice that if it means having freedom. freedom is more important for me than a bit of more usability, and gimp or krita are perfectly fine for drawing crappy images (or even professional work).

Just so long as your artwork doesn’t require you to draw complex shapes, such as circles.

 

[Sperg Coalition]

keep calling me schizophrenic for using 16 year old thinkpads with self compiled firmware, but unlike you, i can be sure that i won't catch government agency malware any time soon.

Neither I do on my non-libre Linux kernel which can actually use modern hardware unlike linux-libre which exclusively runs on ThinkPads, good luck having accelerated graphics, video encoding/decoding and so on. If I use a VM I know which resources I need to share and which ones I need to isolate. Learn how to properly isolate your shit (with containers which are easier than expected to use) and you will be fine.
Remember that a VM can be destroyed easily as it has been created: the ideal would be to not have to use any of this and not have to worry but, alas, it is what it is.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Just so long as your artwork doesn’t require you to draw complex shapes, such as circles.

Circles are a lie, invented by IBM and Microsoft, to torture free software users.

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

Just so long as your artwork doesn’t require you to draw complex shapes, such as circles.

You can make circles in gimp no idea abt Krita I don't use it. Hate what misinformation this gay meme started. It's not straightforward, but you can also make triangles and stars using gimp.

This guy should quit if he can't even find a way to make a perfect circle on Gimp, that shit's easy.
View attachment 2847931
The real problem with Gimp, Inkscape and previously Blender are their ass user interfaces. Still I managed to figure out how Gimp and Inkscape work, Blender though, I never did, but thanks the devs for improving the user interface anyways that's appreciated. Also the only reason I use them instead of just pirated paid software like Photoshop on my Win 10 laptop is simply because I'm afraid that someone would slip a virus into their pirated copy and give it to me.

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

Just so long as your artwork doesn’t require you to draw complex shapes, such as circles.

Reposting but who cares

 

[geckogoy]

If someone just made microsoft paint but for linux, that would actually be pretty nice. I tend to find myself using paint in my windows VM if I need to actually quickly crop or redact images. Closest I found was mtpaint but it sucks.

Its kindof nice, but to be honest it really does not justify switching back to windows.

Afaik krita is actually legitimately pretty good from the art end, and people use it on windows too. Both the art dudes I know use it daily.

 

[Yandex Captcha Solver]

If someone just made microsoft paint but for linux, that would actually be pretty nice. I tend to find myself using paint in my windows VM if I need to actually quickly crop or redact images. Closest I found was mtpaint but it sucks.

Its kindof nice, but to be honest it really does not justify switching back to windows.

Afaik krita is actually legitimately pretty good from the art end, and people use it on windows too. Both the art dudes I know use it daily.

I've been using Pinta for basic edits and memes. It works well, not 100% intuitive, but much better than I found GIMP to be.

 

[geckogoy]

I've been using Pinta for basic edits and memes. It works well, not 100% intuitive, but much better than I found GIMP to be.

Yea gimp is unusable trash and always has been

e: i dont like pinta much

 

[DavidS877]

If someone just made microsoft paint but for linux, that would actually be pretty nice. I tend to find myself using paint in my windows VM if I need to actually quickly crop or redact images. Closest I found was mtpaint but it sucks.

Just use Tux Paint. https://tuxpaint.org/
I assume the Shape menu will do circles.

 

[Creative Username]

You can make circles in gimp no idea abt Krita I don't use it. Hate what misinformation this gay meme started. It's not straightforward, but you can also make triangles and stars using gimp.

Krita has an ellipse tool, as well as a square tool and other things that GIMP doesn't have, including a feature called "multibrush" which allows you to draw weird symmetric patterns.

 

[Faggotdog Niggertail]

If someone just made microsoft paint but for linux, that would actually be pretty nice.

KDE did this back in the KDE3 era with KolourPaint, although it hasn't gotten any updates for awhile. It's like a slightly better pre-7 MS Paint.

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

If someone just made microsoft paint but for linux, that would actually be pretty nice. I tend to find myself using paint in my windows VM if I need to actually quickly crop or redact images. Closest I found was mtpaint but it sucks.

Its kindof nice, but to be honest it really does not justify switching back to windows.

I think that title would go to PikoPixel (simple too simple infact to a point I think it's shitty) and TuxPaint (Yeah the fucking meme app that exists, but nobody uses it) hell even I stay away from ms paint, I'm not touching garbage that can't use layers nor alpha channels whenever possible, but that's just me so. TBH gimp being bunled with most Linux distros is a smart move even if it doesn't feel like ms paint, but if you want smth simple try TuxPaint or PikoPixel.

Krita has an ellipse tool, as well as a square tool and other things that GIMP doesn't have, including a feature called "multibrush" which allows you to draw weird symmetric patterns.

Oh yeah I know that kinda stuff that's what I used FireAlpaca for, it has its own "multibrush" tool, tho I don't think it was what it was called.

 

[Susanna]

It’s a shame paint.net is a windows exclusive, I find it bridges the gap between “lightweight basic editor” and “photoshop” rather well.

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

It’s a shame paint.net is a windows exclusive, I find it bridges the gap between “lightweight basic editor” and “photoshop” rather well.

It's the masterrace, forreal I use it even more than gimp and Fire Alpaca. Can't Wine run it?