Matt

Isn’t this literally what Waistline is for Android? You create your own local food database (which you can automatically fetch info from Open Food Facts or USDA if desired, but not required) which lets you put in as many nutriments to track as you wish, all with graphs and information with different timelines.

No clue if there’s anything like this for desktop.

Definitely Phantasy Star Online - even today I still play and work on it because it’s just the perfect type of game for myself.

Yes, because I want my friends (who aren’t tech orientated) and interest groups (which aren’t tech orientated) to be on the Fediverse.

They’re always complaining about this, that, and the other about the big platforms but they have so many hang ups regarding Fedi software, so they don’t use them.

A lot of it is perception, but you have to try and make it so people don’t have those perceptions or break them.

Debian doesn’t push the responsibility to the user to finish setting things up though, it is designed to be complete out of the box, especially since Debian 12.

For what it’s worth on my computer with a GTX 1650 and Debian 12, I am unable to use Wayland at all as the drivers simply do not work (yes, this is the nvidia-driver package, not nouveau). On Plasma, everything seems to move at a snail’s pace, and on GNOME the desktop is constantly flickering and showing old portions of the screen. X11 is perfectly fine though.

On my cheap laptop with integrated AMD graphics though? Debian 12 with Wayland works like a charm and has no issues.

So, I’m going with nvidia being the problem here.

Hmm? I’m sorry, I’m not following because all distributions follow the same format here, which is that you flash an ISO to a USB stick (or other removable media).

This is, in fact, how it also works for Windows.

I definitely agree their website needs work, it is very confusing to browse if you need anything other than the net installer! I find everything else by using search engines instead.

Your issue seems less the command line and that things aren’t “working”, or the tools you want aren’t pre-packaged.

Using Arch Linux was not the best idea if you want something that “just works”, as it works on a philosophy where you install the minimum amount required and then add things, such as drivers or packages, as you need them. In other words, it’s a distribution where you know what you need for your system. It is also a command-line centric distribution, so it’s strange that “GUI” is your bug bear when you picked one that deliberately forces command line.

Regarding overclocking and GPU configuration, you just get CoreCtrl, which even has a GUI.

Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely agree that everything should have a user interface as much as possible, but the whole “Linux means you have to use command line all the time!!” is simply just not true anymore, and I feel this issue comes from people recalling memories from 10 years ago or using distributions where command line is necessary, rather than something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint where it mostly isn’t.

Have people installed Debian since Debian 12? The installer is very straight forward, and Debian 12 also comes with all the firmware modules to make things “just work” for people.

I would like to know exactly what Debian does wrong other than a blanket statement of “it’s hard”.

Problem: Who is Mastodon for, and what is the goal of Mastodon?

From my perspective, the issue is that Eugen made something, a certain community and culture ended up forming (not Eugen’s goal, but it is what it is), and now that a different community and culture is starting to take notice, the old community and culture wants to preserve what it always was.

However, I think Eugen wants Mastodon to be for everyone, and Mastodon doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so sometimes you do have to override the opinions of those who are already there. You’re hearing the voices of those already there directly, but you’re not hearing the voices of the people who aren’t there. (and in my opinion, they should be on Mastodon / Fediverse, we’re all aware of why centralised social media is bad)

There’s a lot of opinions and views on Mastodon, and while “the users” are important, if Eugen wants Mastodon to have reach, sometimes he has to do different things. An example write-up of why Eugen could be making the decisions he is currently can be seen in this blog post: https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt

And lastly, my final point: Whatever Mastodon itself becomes, users and administrators are still in control, so does this really matter? With the code being open source, with the ability to federate and defederate freely, ability to turn off features easily with toggles and options, Mastodon is not being compromised. The question comes down to what the default experience should be, and the Fediverse gives people control to still keep the community and culture they want, just somewhere else.

Problem is, like 80% of people are on Mastodon, and many features (quote posts being the most obvious one) require the people you’re posting to to have the same interaction with the post.

Using the quote post one for an example: If Mastodon never implements quote posts, what’s the point? Most people will only see you posting links and it ruins the whole interaction you’re looking for, so using another piece of software isn’t going to help.

In regards to people disagreeing with decisions that Mastodon makes (such as full text search like this), it’s a bit more complicated. Depending on the feature as well, it’s possible for the things you don’t like about a feature to still affect you, even if your instance doesn’t have it implemented. A LOT of people complained about universeodon.com having full text search, and there was nothing they could do about it (other than just blocking universeodon.com).

I’m personally of the opinion that Mastodon should use its success and mindshare to be a little more like what people expect to get people on decentralised services (within reason - we still want good privacy controls and anti-abuse tools), and then other platforms (or instances!) can then take it further when it comes to things like no search, no quotes, etc. for insular and private communities that people want.

Not sure how I feel about this being a standalone app, it already feels like there’s so many vying for attention, with IRC, XMPP and Matrix being federated already. While Signal exists, I’m not sure how I feel about it being a walled garden despite being open source.

I do love the idea of it hopefully being added to Fediverse platforms though - even though it makes sense to use an actual messaging app for messaging, it’s user expectation that you can just message people on any platform you’re on easily, it’s something Mastodon desperately needs.

Edit: Really though, what I want to see is an interoperable protocol being picked (Signal is actually one of them, FWIW, the Foundation just doesn’t federate with its flagship app due to “user experience and innovation” per Moxie), and then people make their platforms on that, just like how ActivityPub has become the standard for interoperable social media.

Well, when it comes to Matrix, they can’t really “compromise” in a way that other platforms may be able to, as their protocol is designed to be as private and secure as possible first, then the features come later.

While “nobody cares about privacy” and features are king, I personally have a lot of respect for the Matrix developers for sticking true to their vision instead of compromising for the sake of adoption. Matrix and Element DO want to be feature-rich, but they will only accept things if they work with their principles.

Furthermore, the Matrix team aren’t the ones “complaining” about adoption, they’re actually quite happy with how much adoption there is - it isn’t insignificant as there’s over 80 million known accounts, which is much bigger than the ActivityPub social media platforms, and many people use Matrix independently which they can’t track.

For what it’s worth if you want to stay inside the Ubuntu ecosystem (so to speak), I would personally recommend installing KDE Neon, which is based on Ubuntu and maintained by the KDE developers. Otherwise, Debian - most Ubuntu specific things work in Debian, although not everything (PPAs and stuff).

So I didn’t read it either (sue me), however people are paid to work on Linux. The examples you give about RedHat and SUSE are completely incorrect - they’re not there to tell people how to use Linux, they literally develop for it and are paid to make it a better product.

The “issue”, of course, is that they focus their paid efforts on Enterprise and server usage, and not as a user-facing product for the most part, although it could be argued that widespread adoption by companies is how you get it into peoples’ hands, since they get used to it at work or education.

Also, you’re using Ubuntu LTS 20.04 which is technically out of date, as 22.04 LTS also exists, and LTS is primarily meant to be for server/company use, rather than trying to keep up with the latest software and features.

I took a look at your bullet point list too, and literally every single one of your bullet points (other than accessibility, unfortunately) is covered by my laptop running Debian 12 with KDE Plasma - seriously, try out a KDE Plasma distro, it most likely fixes all your problems.

I only self-host a MediaWiki website at the moment, along with a PPSSPP adhoc server for said game that the wiki is related to. I want to self-host a lot more stuff, but storage space is expensive, and I don’t really want to leave things running at home all the time either as it will eat into my electricity bill.

Nextcloud and OnlyOffice are what I’m interested in next, and perhaps a Fediverse platform.

They really exist! Open source communities can be… interesting, to say the least.

You don’t - you just open your distros software manager (which is like an app store) and get all your apps that way.

Been like this for several years.

While this is true, if someone goes to a shop and buys a “PC”, it will have Windows 100% of the time.

You have to look to get Linux preinstalled on stuff, or pick the choice yourself. People buying PCs aren’t picking Windows, it’s just what comes with them.

1. Isn’t pre-installed on well known machines by well known brands.
2. Popular applications (whether productivity, creativity, or games) do not work out of the box that people want. It doesn’t matter that alternatives exist, or that you can use things like Wine. If it’s more than just click the icon, it’s too much.
3. If things cannot be done purely through touch / the mouse, it is too hard for most people.

It’s actually just all your Mastodon follows, not people on Pixelfed. Due to the federation, pixelfed and Mastodon accounts can interact how you’d expect.