Ja ich bin auch nicht neidisch auf die Briten. Weiß nicht so recht ob ich was gegen die EU hab. Wer weiß wo wir ohne die wären. Wahrscheinlich hätten Schäuble und Zensursula schon vor 15 Jahren hier die Totalüberwachung eingeführt, wenn man sich nicht mit anderen Ländern einigen müsste.

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/stewartroom/2023/09/21/will-uk-online-safety-bill-break-encryption-for-mass-surveillance/
• https://www.gov.uk/government/news/home-secretary-urges-meta-to-protect-children-from-sexual-abuse
• https://www.justsecurity.org/87615/changes-to-uk-surveillance-regime-may-violate-international-law/

Weiß nicht wie weit die damit grad so sind… Aber generell war das UK uns schon länger ein ganzes Stück voraus mit der Überwachung der Bürger. Auch sowas wie Anzahl der Kameras die überall aufnehmen, Porno und Internetfilter… you name it…

Idk, a plant? a nintendo emulator? enlighten me…

I see Github as a mere tool. As I could use a proprietary operating system like Windows on my development computer, I can use Github to distribute the code. It doesn’t have that severe consequence to the open source project itself and works well. And it’s relatively transparent. Users can view issues etc without submitting to Microsoft. And it’s been the standard for quite some time.

I’m far more concerned with FLOSS projects using platforms like Discord, which forces their users to surrender their privacy and that actively contribute to the enshittification of the internet. I wouldn’t want to be part of that.

Hehe. On weekdays I go to a building that is owned by a company. I sit down on a chair at a desk, stare into a device and sometimes push some of the 105 buttons on it. Sometimes I also fill out forms on paper. After 8h plus break I leave and go home. In return the company advises my bank to increase a number each month.

We have really advanced technology, so few people have to work in agriculture or as handymen and theoretically it’s enough to feed us all. The rest of us keeps busy by shuffling paper around. And in recent times we were able to do away with some of the paper and replace it with those machines. There are some slightly different variants, but they pretty much all look the same.

I’ve made a post a few days ago. I’d argue we should make a proper distinction. Adult content and NSFW isn’t the same thing. Currently everything from sex education to gore and death is the same category. I think it’s really not. NSFW tags help so you can scroll through things in an open-plan office or while commuting. Porn is porn and gore is gore. I think we shouldn’t oversimplify this but keep the nuances and have different categories. Also I’d like to not mix stuff like sex education which might be fine, and minors ask those questions all the time on Reddit with other things like fetish.

You’re right. It’s an oversimplification I made there. I recently tried MacOS in a VM and I talked a bit to people. You usually get a really smooth desktop experience. Apps are sandboxed, there is a fine permission system, they keep their stuff together and don’t spread them across the filesystem. I think(?) the software brings their libraries along? Usually a used Macbook Pro is still fine and runs fast after 6 years. I think MacOS really shines on the desktop.

On Linux it’s a bit more diverse. I mean we have the XDG specification file locations. But there’s also lots of ‘grown’ stuff. We’re still working on the sandboxing. And you get a different experience depending on the distro you’re trying. And I’d prefer Linux on a server every time. It really excels for that use case and on the server we have Linux > everything else. And as a matter of fact I personally also prefer Linux on the desktop. And my Debian is also still running perfectly 6 years after I initially installed it. Had some minor issues with NVidia during the times, but that’s to be expected and it wasn’t that hard to fix. I wouldn’t have had issues had I not mixed in testing and unstable, but there are lots of guides and tutorials around for the common woes. Which makes my argument a full circle.

Hehe, you got your answer. You’re lokking at the places where 0.05% of the users are discussing their problems and some others share their crazy customizations that aren’t possible with anything else. And it seems like 95% of users having issues to you.

I’d argue Linux is way more stable than Windows. If that’s your perspective. (Unless you do silly stuff.) But less stable than for example MacOS. It depends on which Linux Distro we’re talking about. I’d say it’s MacOS > Linux > Windows. With the biggest step down from Linux to Windows.

I think the more important file is the fontforge one. As this is the thing people can edit and build upon. (the “source”)

The otf, ttf and woff are just a bonus for people who don’t want to install fontforge and and go through the process of exporting it themselves.

Ultimately it’s your decision what you release. It’s a similar concept whether you share a cake, or a recipe for a cake. The free software / open-source movement is concerned with sharing the recipes. That’s why they share source code and files in the format they’ve edited it in. (And often include instructions on how to build it, since that is usually a bit more complicated with software.) It enables people to also load it in their editors and customize it, adapt it to their use-cases and fix issues.

You can also just publish the end-result, which are the otf and ttf files in your case. But people can’t really modify or customize those. It’d be called a freeware font, then. It’d help people who just want to use it, but doesn’t provide much more.

I’d invite you to upload both the sfd and the resulting otf and ttf. Usually that’s how people do it. Distributing digital files comes at practically no cost. On the internet you can share a recipe and the actual cake alongside at no extra cost.

I think the most important step is to get it out there. So:

1. Choose a license. These resources might help:

• https://fontsarena.com/licenses-explained/
• https://choosealicense.com/
• https://opensource.org/licenses

I’d stick with the licenses made for fonts or in use by other font projects, as there are some specifics to fonts licensing.

2. Choose a name

3. Sign up and create a repo. Upload your project.

That is the “get it out there” step. If you want to be open, generally speaking you want to include a LICENSE file, your creation in the format you’re editing it and other people can load and edit it, too. And the exported file in case of something like this, so people can directly use it without learning how to convert a font into a format that is usable. It’s also good practice to include a README.md with explanations and a summary of what this is.

I think that’s a sound approach for open source. And it’s generally alright to learn as you go. Even if you don’t get everything perfect at once, the most important thing is that it’s available. People might pick up on it. And they will file bug reports and issues if they like it some other way. So you’ll be directed into the right direction anyways. And once you have something to show off, you can start talking about it or make people aware of its existence.

(And maybe skip all the boilerplate and complicated extra stuff at first. You don’t need an AUTHORS file, no code of conduct, no documentation if there isn’t anything complicated to explain… Just stick to the important stuff and don’t make it unnecessarily complicated and distracting for your users.)

Yes, as long as you don’t link in their libraries or incorporate other parts of their code, you should be able to license your extensions and stuff that ties into some APIs as you like.

Companies usually like permissively licensed projects like MIT, Apache or BSD. But if you want them not just to take your work, a copyleft license like one of the GPL licenses is a good choice.

And maybe clean the insides of your laptop, that’s probably the first thing that could solve the issue. See if all cables are still locked in their connectors. Maybe take out the SSD, clean the contacts and you can use compressed air to clean the socket. But be careful, you want to do it right or you might cause damage. No dampness or water, it has to be either isopropyl alcohol or dry. And don’t use a rag that introduces static electricity. And no workshop air compressor. Maybe something like a paintbrush is better suited. And don’t just shove the vacuum in. I’ve done that and it might dislocate small components or key-caps and suck them in and it’s a major annoyance to get them out of the vacuum cleaner bag 😆 Just be a bit careful. But I already had something like loose connectors/components cause random errors. Especially in equipment that is moved around or gets dropped occasionally. After 5 years, you might also find some dust inside. At least it used to be that way, It seems to be less of a problem with modern laptops. And more and more stuff gets soldered anyways.

And don’t do too much if you’re not comfortable with that. IMHO the SSD should be a safe thing to touch for most people. But it’s really easy to break or bend some tiny contacts from other components or ribbon cables. And there are consumer devices that aren’t really meant to be serviced. I wouldn’t disassemble such a model without prior experience. If it’s still working you might also leave it as is. Do backups. Storage devices often fail even without prior warning.

Yeah, I think we should extend on the sandboxing features like AppArmor, SELinux and Flatpak for desktop use. Look at MacOS and Android and what they’re doing for desktop users. That is currently not the Linux experience. Ultimately I’d like my system to have an easy and fine grained system to limit permissions. Force third-party apps to ask permission before accessing my documents or microphone. have sane defaults. make it easy to revoke for example internet access with a couple of clicks. make it so I can open an app multiple times. and have different profiles for work, private stuff and testing. This should be the default and active in 100% of the desktop applications. And apps should all use a dedicated individual place to store their data and config files.

Librewolf and more […] used as Flatpak, […] its way more stable.

That’s just not true. I’ve been using Linux for quite a while now. And I can’t remember my browser crashing in years, seriously. Firefox slowed down a bit when I had 3000 tabs open, but that’s it. How stable is your Flatpak browser? Does it crash minus 5 times each year? How would that even work? And what about the theming and addons like password managers I talked about in the other comment? Use the distro’s packaged version. It is way more stable. And as a bonus all the edge-cases will now work, too.

I mean it’s not even my own problem. I just have Spotify, Microsoft Teams and Zoom installed that way, and a few pieces of software that I’m testing. I use a rolling distro so I have the most recent versions of every software I need anyways. And I have the skills to configure stuff. So I myself don’t have an use-case for a spyware-riddled Chrome browser from Flathub or something. I have a nice LibreWolf from the unstable channel of my distro. Steam and all the other stuff is there, too. And it works almost flawlessly. Why would I trade that in for a 4GB version of the same software that has downsides?

It’s the newer users I’m concerned with. Their sub-par experience of Linux.

This is what I mean:

• https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/7352 (Maybe Keepass works as of now(?) I don’t think so but I haven’t tried. At least some addons do. But other’s don’t. It requires the permissions to be configured by the prople preparing both flatpaks that want to talk to each other.)
• https://itsfoss.com/flatpak-app-apply-theme/ / https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/desktop-integration.html
• All the issues people had with Steam, the graphics drivers, attaching gamepads/controllers or headsets, getting Discord and extras working. (Some of that seems to have been resolved in the meantime. They put quite some work into it.)
• Some distros don’t update Flatpak packages as part of their standard update mechanism. You need to learn to regularly run “flatpak update” or learn how to activate that.
• I have some packages still rely on old runtimes that are missing security patches. I suppose it’s the same for a lot of other people. And there isn’t a mechanism to warn you. You also need to learn how to figure that out.
• I don’t remember which of the video conferencing solutions this was, but I remember fighting with the webcam permissions and advice on the internet was to disable sandboxing entirely. I set the permissions a bit better but then also screen sharing wouldn’t work.

As I said, it’s okay for someone like me - and probably you - to use, and I don’t complain. I’m glad I have Flatpak available as a tool. But look at the issues I’ve linked above and the steep learning curve for the beginner. They need to learn what GTK is, what QT is, what desktop they use, learn what Flatseal is, use the CLI. They have no clue why it is even required to do that much work to get their Keepass set up. And that it’s not Linux’ fault but their decision from 2 weeks ago to install the browser that way. And their experience is just worse than it needs to be. And this isn’t unsubstianced, I’m speaking from experience. I’ve answered these questions over and over again. It’s already annoying to get the NVidia stuff set up reliably, find new software and adapt your workflow. And the switch from X11 to Wayland broke things like screen sharing/recording, anyways. And we’re now piling 20 other things on top, to learn and do manually if you happen to be one of the users who don’t use the default standard setup.

And nothing of that is “bad” or can’t be fixed… We’re making progress with all of that. And we’ll get there. All I can say with my experience helping people with their Linux woes and the current state of Flatpak: The “use Flatpak for everything” mentality is causing issues for some newer users. And experience shows: They rarely understand the consequences but heard the hype about Flatpak. And few of them can explain why they used Flatpak over the proper packages in their distro.

So my opinion in short:

• Flatpak is nice : yes
• try a Flatpak first, then the distro package if it doesn’t work: hard no
• you can get recent software on older distros with flatpak: yes
• you can recommend Flatpak: Yes, if you also explain the consequences of the sandboxing and pulling things from potentially unreliable third-party sources. You’re doing people a disservice if you don’t.
• some of this will change in the future: yes
• we should have more sandboxing: yes

Hehe, No. It’s the sandboxing.

But with this approach you take over the answering questions to newbies… Why doesn’t the webcam show up in the videoconferencing? Why doesn’t my GTK / QT themes apply to some software and it’s a 2 page tutorial with lots of command line commands to fix that? Why can’t I install Firefox add-ons and on Windows and MacOS everything just works? Why is Linux so complicated and regularly stuff doesn’t work?

I had this argument multiple times now. There is an easy solution: Do it the other way around until you know what you’re doing and about the consequences. Distributions are there for a reason. They put everything into one package and do testing to make sure everything works together. They provide you with security patches if you choose the right distro. LibreOffice and a Browser even come preinstalled most of the times. If you do away with all of that, it’s now your job to tie the software into your desktop, your job to handle the sandboxing if there is addons that need to pierce the sandbox. Your job to make sure the Flatpak publishers do quick updates and keep the runtimes up-to-date if a security vulnerability arise within an used library…

I’m not directly opposed to using Flatpak. I’m just saying there are some consequences that aren’t that obvious. There are valid use-cases and I also use Flatpak. But in my experience hyping some of the available technologies without simultaneously explaining the consequences is regularly doing a disservice to new users.

I’d be happy if people just cut down on advertising Chrome/Firefox and LibreOffice via Flatpak to new users. They should use the packaged version. That’s why we have distributions, to make the whole system a smooth experience and everything tie together.

Flatpak is slowly getting there and I think at least some distros have it preconfigured so the default GTK themes are in place.

Ultimately, I’d like sandboxing to be available natively in Linux, at least for desktop applications. And we can talk about a packaging format that is available to the user, allows pulling software directly from the upstream project, includes libraries and runtimes.

We’re also regularly debating Flatpak here. That password managers don’t tie into the browser and the desktop themes don’t apply. It’s also not the best solution and regularly confuses newer users.

Hehe. Yeah I meant per default, everything is copyrighted. So it’d fall back to being restricted and thus “not allowing anything”… If the wording doesn’t hold up… I’m not really in the position to judge this. Could be very well the case that once somebody touches it, it’s not “this” product anymore and it’s no longer covered. Or taking just parts of it is also not “this product”. Or a copy. I can imagine that something like that is the reason why other licenses go on and on talking about modified versions and copies etc… But I’m really not a lawyer and you’re right with being creative with things. I did not intend to be too negative 🤗

I think it’s the other way around, however… You need to word it so your users can enforce it against you even if you yourself become malicious. Otherwise you’re not really allowing them anything. And for that you’d need to word it so it doesn’t depend on your interpretation, but on theirs. And it’d need to hold up in court for them. So the language needs to be specific and with well-defined words. Every bit of vagueness it the user’s problem and limits/restricts them.

I thought the main problem was that it’s debatable whether you can enforce it. So it harms users and distributions because they can’t really rely on it.

But the liability would definitely be another issue. I think the law is different here in Europe, so the liability might already be included for my hobby tinkering per default and I don’t need to worry.

And something else is: I’d include trademark… force people to choose a different name for their project if they take my code so there is no confusion and people can’t upload versions with advertisements on some software store.