So turn that off. It’s always optional for users, this is about developers complying with the system-wide option.
I do turn on themed icons and it’s so annoying to have one random one in the middle that refuses to listen that I now bundle my apps into folders based on whether they comply with icon theming or not.
Yeah, it’s way more customizable than it seems to be, both visually and functionally. Definitely dig into it, it’s worth it even just in the amount of time it’ll save you menuing on each restart.
There are even ways to switch to Windows from within Linux and bypass having to mess with the menu (the other way around is a different story). Like a lot of Linux things, what’s surfaced, what’s approachable and what’s possible are very different things.
I don’t know what the Mint default is off the top of my head, but you may be interested to know you can set up GRUB to default to your last booted OS as opposed to a fixed one every time.
It can be useful for updating through reboots or when you spend several days at a time on the same OS but you go back and forth every so often.
If you already have it set up that way, carry on. If not, you can find out how with a quick online search. It’s one of those things that really feel like they should be a menu toggle but Linux still defaults to adding some line of text in some config file because GUIs are for cowards.
Well, I’m still waiting for Twitter to “need a replacement”. It seems to be doing just about fine on its new normal. Ditto for any of the other Meta places, which have only consistently grown over time. Yes, Facebook, too.
To be clear, I don’t particularly mean too little, too late for me. I’m not on Twitter or Facebook or any of those platforms, Bluesky and Fedi aside. And again, I was not on board with the Masto quote tweet thing. I did stop using it frequently, but not for that reason.
I mean too little, too late to make an impact of any kind. Masto has been stuck where it is for a while, and so has Bluesky. I don’t think either are going back to growing anytime soon, but if either does it probably won’t be because Masto added quotes. I’m fairly comfy talking to the same dozen people out here like I’m in a 90s IRC channel, but ultimately it’d be nice if the gross places didn’t keep driving the global conversation forever. And on that front… yeah, too little, too late.
That was a shockingly long turnaround for these, considering. I’ve come and gone from Mastodon like three times since this was an argument and at least twice since they said they would do this.
Oh, well. I originally thought this was a bad call, and I did hate the old Twitter snippy bullshit this enabled, but Bluesky sorta proved to me this was a cultural issue more than a feature set issue. And while we’re at it, while I don’t particularly like the implementation of Bluesky’s custom subject feeds I’m fairly convinced that some alternative to chronological-only feeds would be beneficial. This seems like too little, too late, honestly.
I’d argue I’m doing the opposite.
I was turning this stuff off when my Google and Samsung phones kept suggesting that they could do searches based on the content of my phone screen or my camera feed. It’s only “normalization” in that it’s… you know, actually normal and widespread. I don’t think people are too alarmed now, I think they weren’t alarmed enough when the first wave of “smart assistants” started doing this like a decade ago.
Yeah. You’re basically buying a laptop crammed into a small box. May as well get a laptop if you need the small footprint and portability or a desktop if you need the price-to-performance.
Also, the Steam Deck thing people keep repeating is terrible advice. Even these can power their components somewhat robustly. A docked Steam Deck is still a 10W APU for no good reason. It depends on use case, in that you also get a handheld out of the deal, but if you’re looking for a primary device even a laptop would be a better choice.
Right, so when you said “forced it on everyone” you meant “the feature existing at all even if it’s optional or disabled”.
See, I don’t have a problem with the latter, that’s legitimate. But you implied the former, and the former is false.
Now, I don’t like the feature and I absolutely turned it off the moment it (finally) got patched into my supported PCs. But it’s worth noting that similar features are present on Android phones (from all the way back on Google Assistant to the upcoming Magic Cue), Apple phones (via Visual Intelligence and Siri) and other PC and phone manufacturers. I recommend turning them all off, but with the caveats you original omitted this isn’t a Windows-specific thing, it’s a pretty widespread fad.
Of course the reason people are latching on to the MS version is their initial implementation was hot garbage and entirely unaware of its own context, so now it’s a meme, particularly in tech-savvy, Linux-friendly circles. The biggest lesson we’ve all learned is that Microsoft is bad at PR and marketing, which I feel we already knew.
I mean, I’d rather not. I definitely take a number of steps to limit that. Same as I take steps to prevent that from Google on my phone or from both of them and others on my Linux devices.
What I don’t do is make up stuff to be paranoid about in case the very real privacy concerns you already have to pay attention to aren’t scary enough to make me feel superior online.
I’m so exhausted of social media nonsense latching onto meme crap to push preconceived narratives and flipping over to ignoring reality altogether the moment any facts at all don’t fit their dumb little package of memes.
You know what, I hope it’s not actually off and anybody with the trivial means to check what their Windows PC is sending to the mothership notices so we can get the EU to GDPR the crap out of them and build some nice hospital somewhere with the fine money.
In the meantime, go do conspiracy theories over on Twitter. There’s plenty of real stuff to be mad about at Microsoft without having to make shit up.
Yeeeeah, you’ll excuse me if I’m not on board with “representative democracy is bad, actually”. Screw that crap, that’s how you get Trumps winning elections.
Get chat control shut down by all means, but I have no patience for the tin foil hat paranoia being weaponized to legitimize authoritarians and fascists.
I don’t understand this question. Does that impact what I said one way or the other?
Actually, I’ve been looking for where in the text that exemption is defined. If you have a link I’d love to see it. I’ve skimmed the proposal but couldn’t find it at a glance. I’ve only seen it mentioned in social media posts.
I swear to Torvalds, if the amount of old ladies using Linux because their Fedi relatives installed it on their laptops is accurate we are in the middle of an major demographic crisis.
Yes, that’s toggleable on settings and set to off by default. Do remember to turn off Click-to-Do, though, if nothing else it’s annoying to trigger it by accident. I also remapped the copilot button back to being right mouse click.
I mean, they’re pretty useless features and I wish they had spent more time working on better stuff, but… you know, I turned it off.
They did what now? I have no Copilot features turned on in my PCs, and I actually have a certified Copilot+ laptop.
Microsoft has given users fair warning, and said that users can get a year of updates for free but eventually the company will have to face facts and extended support beyond October.
We can’t recall a time where Microsoft has done such a thing but these are extenuating circumstances given that most users just aren’t budging.
WTF is this guy talking about? Far as I can tell this is the Win7 playbook all over again. Looking it up, this was the timeline:
Jan. 13, 2015: Microsoft ended Mainstream Support for Windows 7.
Sept. 6, 2018: Microsoft announced the ESUs for Windows 7. The ESU program is a paid service that provides critical security updates for legacy products for up to three years after Extended Support ends.
August 2019: Microsoft announced a year of free ESUs, but only for select users, including customers with an Enterprise Agreement or Enterprise Agreement Subscription with active Windows 10 Enterprise E5, Microsoft 365 E5, or Microsoft 365 E5 Security subscriptions. This was limited to only Government E5 stock keeping units.
Jan. 14, 2020: Microsoft ended Extended Support for Windows 7.
Jan. 10, 2023: The ESUs reached their end of life on the first Patch Tuesday of 2023.
That’s almost a decade of post-end of support updates. If anything, MS confirmed ESU before trying to shut down home user patches this time, so it looks less like terrified backpedalling. And as the linked article itself admits, the data they’re reporting on shows a significant number of users still on Win7. The article waves it away as just “too many”, but the original report says 8.5%.
Because, as it turns out, the kind of people using Kapersky antivirus software and the number of people who would not upgrade from a 16 year old OS that has lost support half a dozen times over the past half a decade show significant overlap. In the Steam survey right now Win 7 is only 0.07%, for reference.
While we’re at it Win 11 is 60% vs 35% for Win 10. For all the headlines when Steam shows Linux growth you don’t often hear over here that Win 11 went up by 0.5% and Windows overall went up by 0.36%, although it’s worth noting that Windows has been pretty stable between 94 and 96% since the survey started.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep reality checking it: the Win 10 end of support process has been wildly overhyped, particularly among Linux-friendly circles. It is not meaningfully different to moves out of other “good” versions of Windows and it’s not a catastrophic crisis point for MS, for better and worse. They’ll keep support up for the people who need it for as long as they’re willing to pay and most legacy home users won’t even know their old Win10 is unsupported because it’ll just keep happily chugging along with all the same malware it already has until something breaks and they have to buy a new laptop with a preinstalled Win11 or 12 or whatever.
The most the Win10 death hype is doing to hurt MS is create a flurry of social media posts that can convince tech savvy, Linux-curious users who were previously held back by lack of gaming support to give user friendly distros a try.
I can genuinely believe that the people putting this forward are clueless enough about the tech to not understand why this doesn’t make sense.
Still shouldn’t happen.
The vast majority of people to be read as “a tiny fraction of players”. It’s just probably the players more likely to be part of the online community around the game or to play it consistently this long after release. I wouldn’t be surprised if only a very, very small percentage of the twenty thousand people playing the game right now ever had installed any mods at all.
While I don’t have hard data on this, I can tell you I’ve played the game since the Flash days and certainly never modded it for this reason or even considered it. Wiki page open onthe side just in case? Sure. Mods? Nope.
Intuitive perception on this stuff gets weird.
Well, you do need to hire someone, get them set up with access to the text database and then you need to implement the updated lines in-game and test and then bug fix anything that breaks anything, presumably. And then make the patch, submit it and have it go live, although for China presumably that’d be Steam-specific and have no actual first party approval process?
Having a single color rendition of your logo is good practice anyway (you can’t always print stuff in full color and it has all sorts of UX and branding uses). I can’t imagine of all the compliance requirements for apps going into the svg for your icon and making it black and white is the dealbreaker.
Plus in practice the Android apps that refuse to comply are Amazon, my banking apps and believe it or not my phone manufacturer’s first party apps (and I believe Facebook, but I don’t have that installed, so I’m not sure).
I say eff that. Work within the OS requirements for customization. I don’t care if it’s Linux, Android, Windows or whatever else. Let me set up my device the way I want it.