plain TeX is a joy to use, but you must really understand boxes and glue etc on a deep level. LaTeX makes that easier, but at the cost of extreme complexity internally (compare the output routines for example.)

Their “dominance” is the choice of the distributions. Gnome is opinionated, and I respect that they follow their vision. To me this is free software working as intended, people are free to fork Gnome if they want something that the devs don’t want. And apparently, many distributions think Gnome should be the default. Maybe it shouldn’t, but that’s up to the distros to decide.

Getting paid in money is one motivation for people, but not the only one. Some people do things because they want to, regardless of payment. And some of them want to give what they made as a gift to anyone. The flip side is that no one can force them to do anything, it’s all voluntary.

I’m not good enough to give recommendations, but meanwhile some questions might make it easier. What is your budget? Is open source important to you? What’s the biggest thing you want to print? Are there any special features you’re looking for? Do you want to tinker with it or rather have it “just work”?

The author of JSLint wrote:
"So I added one more line to my license, was that, “the Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” And thought: I’ve done my job!
/…/
Also about once a year, I get a letter from a lawyer, every year a different lawyer, at a company. I don’t want to embarrass the company by saying their name, so I’ll just say their initials, “IBM,” saying that they want to use something that I wrote, 'cause I put this on everything I write now. They want to use something that I wrote and something that they wrote and they’re pretty sure they weren’t gonna use it for evil, but they couldn’t say for sure about their customers. So, could I give them a special license for that?

So, of course!

So I wrote back—this happened literally two weeks ago—I said, “I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.” "

A good story about a bad day doesn’t have to be about complaining. It can be about learning from mistakes, a strange irony, the absurdity of coinciding factors, etc.

It’s fair, but different people have different ideas about what they want, and in the end it’s the authors right to decide what is fair for their code. An unconditional gift is also fair.

People seem to think that those who choose permissive licences don’t know what they’re doing. Software can be a gift to the world with no strings attached. A company “taking” your code is never taking it away from you, you still have all the code you wrote. Some people want this. MIT is not an incomplete GPL, it has its own reasons.

For example, OpenBSD has as a project goal: “We want to make available source code that anyone can use for ANY PURPOSE, with no restrictions. We strive to make our software robust and secure, and encourage companies to use whichever pieces they want to.”

If you don’t want to touch anything, you could boot from a live USB image and try it?

I wonder how much work would be needed to make a “FreeDesktop Linux” complete OS, with the runtime + whatever it needs beyond that. Then when you install a flatpak, it’s just like installing, uh, I didn’t think this through tbh.

PC-DOS on an IBM 5150 (iirc).

Maybe Debian with a wm? I like cwm, but there are many to choose from. You can add pretty much any cool feature on top.

Which features are you looking for beyond what can be done on Debian?

There’s a difference between stability and reliability. Stable means that functionality is the same over a period of time, no major changes to how it works. Reliable means that it doesn’t crash all the time. If something crashes the same way for the same reason, it’s stable but not reliable. If something changes a lot but doesn’t crash, it’s reliable but not stable.
In practice what it comes down to is a choice if you want outdated but known bugs or new surprise bugs.

thread as in threaded posts as opposed to other parts of the fediverse with another layout. it’s not about the instance Threads, but the type of fediverse service allowing a lemmy/kbin type of conversation.

Ubuntu (2007) >> Arch (2009) >> Debian (2014) >> Fedora (2024)
Plus now and then installing OpenBSD for fun for a couple of months at a time.

I have come to appreciate Palatino more and more over the years. Especially at display sizes.

You are more than welcome to remove the need for any passwords at all on the linux systems you admin. Good thing about free software is that you decide how you want it, hack up or put up.

Hm, not that I remember. My memory isn’t the best though.

The difference, and the best part of the fediverse imho, is that if you’re not happy with someone elses rules you can become your own admin and set your own rules. The more we centralize power the further we go against that idea.