People just can't see reason, and perhaps that's a good thing.

Nobody feels happy about it when explaining a stark, obvious fact, and hearing lazy, irrelevant nonsense as a reply. Telling people that X is a genocides, and all genocides are bad should make sense. Hearing 'yea-but', and 'whatabout' can make the blood …

I can't stand coding helpers which suggest auto-completions, and this is why.

When the spelling checker came along, it helped writing a great deal. Nobody wants the job of looking up how to spell words. Then one dark day, I wrote a twisted sentence, subverting some standard English phrase in order to emphasise a point …

I regularly see indie artists posting some great images, and encouraging open-source-adjacent use, but messing up the latter completely.

Just to clarify:

• Professional artists probably understand art licences well enough, and likely don't care about 'open source'. This isn't a post for them.
• Other artists don't care …

Arch Linux often does what Ubuntu tries and fails at.

I started with Arch due to a simple problem; every so often I'd read on some cool new program I wanted to check out, then feel disparaged as I read over the instructions.

1sudo apt update
2sudo apt install lib-xyz kitchen-sink python3-kitchen-sink

In the early days …

XMPP can be a nightmare to operate, but I still think it provides better long-term benefits than Signal, because XMPP without any encryption gives all the benefits of distribution, which grant better protection than encryption, overall.

XMPP is a Nightmare

My journey with XMPP so far has been:

• Use OTR encryption.
• Ask …

Every time Adobe does something horrible, hordes of Adobe Photoshop users attempt to migrate - generally to either GIMP or Inkscape.

They arrive and start a standard string of complaints:

• This UI is bad (it should be like Photoshop, but it's not)
• GIMP can't do vector graphics properly.
• Inkscape can't do bitmaps …

I cannot fathom why anyone debates this topic, because the answer sits plainly in front of you.

1. Shops
2. Schools
3. Advertising
4. Games
5. Precedent

Before you use a computer, you must buy it. You buy it from a shop. The shops have no Linux laptops. Linux laptops only come from very recent, and still entirely obscure, computer …

I've seen this question come up a few times, so here's my collection of reasons which makes sense to me:

It's new

Film has been around for a century, so those people have had plenty of time to unionise. Linux has only existed for 20 years, so 'Linux sysadmins' have only had 20 years of experience, and that's an example …

When learning computer languages, order matters a lot, and I think I got lucky by learning them in roughly the best possible order.

Just like a linguistic ladder, it's better to take many small steps than a couple of big steps.

bash

Bash is a great first language because you can start instantly, and do regular things …

I feel that the i3-gaps window manager perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If you haven't read it, I won't repeat it, but perhaps this will make sense anyway.

For a perfectly Romantic desktop environment, we have the classic Mac (and please picture every stereotype you think …