Search the Community

Summary Nearly 20 years after the debut of LiMux, the project where the city of Munich, as well as Lower Saxony, migrated the majority of their computer systems from Microsoft Windows to a custom Linux distribution before being cancelled in 2017, someone else is now ready to take on the challenge. This time, it's the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Citing the goals of independence, sustainability, and security, the state is planning on migrating its 30,000 computers to Linux and other open source software. Quotes My thoughts I hope them the best. Chipping away at Microsoft's business monopoly is always a good thing. Sources https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/ministerien-behoerden/I/Presse/PI/2024/CdS/240403_cds_it-arbeitsplatz.html https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/germanys_northernmost_state_ditches_windows/

Free and Open-source Alternatives to Common Programs Revision History 1.0 - Thread created 1.1 - Thread revamped with new info and added links. 1.2 - Added Index (placeholder) Introduction With the advent of SteamOS, a good portion of gamers will likely switch to using it for their gaming needs. It won't really be long before more games start supporting Linux natively; newer games will definitely be supporting it as early as 2014, older games are constantly being ported over. Gaming on Linux is gaining momentum, but what about other productivity tools? Windows is still the king of OS's due to the wide range of applications natively supported, from Office to Graphics tools to 3D modelling, CAD/CAM and many other areas. Most of these applications are proprietary and closed-source and won't run on Linux natively. The purpose of this topic is to highlight some of the many free and/or open-source alternatives to many proprietary Windows programs. Free doesn't necessarily mean open-source, and that difference will be highlighted where applicable. Open-source software isn't restricted to Linux only - many of them can be cross-platform. Many of them can also be cross-compiled from Linux source to run on Windows. Proprietary alternatives are only included for programs that are both low-cost and worth paying for. One caveat to be aware of: The programs listed are merely alternative options to proprietary tools. In some specific cases, they won't act as replacements for the paid programs, due to paid programs having a vastly superior feature set. However, for the average user, the free alternatives are more than adequate. I personally tend to look at what people have done using the free alternative and compare them to the paid option, comparing their capabilities and not their specific feature sets. Of course, this may change in the future, due to the open-source nature of most of these programs: the necessary functionality can be added in my anyone. So, let's begin! Index 1.0 - Microsoft Office 2.0 - Adobe Photoshop 3.0 - Adobe Illustrator 4.0 - Adobe Premiere/After Effects 5.0 - 3D Graphics (Modelling, Animation) 6.0 - Digital Painting 7.0 - Development Tools 8.0 - Desktop Recording/Streaming 9.0 - Media Player 10.0 - Gaming 11.0 - CAD/CAM/CAE 12.0 - Torrent Clients 13.0 - Instant Messaging/Chat Clients 14.0 - Email Clients 15.0 - Linux Terminal-based 16.0 - Antivirus 17.0 - PDF Tools 18.0 - Virtualization 19.0 - Miscellaneous Microsoft Office Perhaps the most widely used and adopted set of tools for productivity. There are, however, more than a fair share of free and open-source options that are on par with Office, with one key exception: the free alternatives aren't capable of saving to .docx or any of the newer Office formats, but they are capable of reading them. That's not a major problem though: it's recommended to use the older .doc format due to being easier to work with. PDF is also a far superior format for sharing documents. Open-source 1) OpenOffice.org - This is usually the first option to come to mind, and it's been around for a while. Contains all of the replacement tools for Office. However, as some of you already know, it's somewhat lacking in features. Cross-platform. 2) LibreOffice - a fork of OpenOffice, with a wider range of features, and is more updated. I personally use this instead of OpenOffice and it's amazing. Cross-platform. 3) KOffice/Calligra Suite - Built into KDE. It may be possible to install it as a standalone application with the necessary dependencies. Contains a wide range of tools for everything Office related. Some older versions of KOffice is available on Windows. 4) TexLive - Alternative for MS Word. Specifically useful for Scientific documents (LaTeX). 5) WPS - Formerly known as Kingsoft Office, WPS is a newly updated version. Runs on iOS, Android, Windows and Linux, and capable of working with .docx and .xlsx files (compatibility and formatting issues aside). Exports to PDF as well, much like LibreOffice. Freeware/Online 1) Google Drive - Can't say much more. Full range of Office tools online, seamlessly synced between devices. Google has also been promoting QuickOffice, which is a set of tools available on Mobile devices with Drive integration. 2) OneDrive - Microsoft's own set of online Office tools, similar to Google Drive. Adobe Photoshop High up on the list of productivity tools used by graphics designers and digital painters. Open-source 1) GIMP - widely seen as the best Photoshop alternative on Linux. It is also cross-platform. 2) GIMPshop - Similar to GIMP, both open-source and cross-platform. 3) Krita - part of Calligra Suite. It's primarily a digital painting program, which Photoshop is capable of. Linux only, with an experimental version available for Windows. 4) Scribus - Specialized tool for creating publications. Cross-platform. Freeware 1) Paint.NET - An advanced version of MS Paint, but contains many of the basic features found in Photoshop. Available on Windows only, as it depends on .NET Framework. Adobe Illustrator Perhaps the best Vector-based graphics tools. Photoshop has some vector capabilities, but Illustrator is far superior. Open-source 1) Inkscape - great replacement for Illustrator. Cross-platform as well. 2) LibreOffice Draw - part of the LibreOffice package. Cross-platform. 3) Karbon - integrated into KDE in the Calligra Suite, making it Linux only. However, there are ways of installing KDE packages on Windows. Should be able to install it without KDE with just the dependencies. 4) Xara Xtreme - Looks to be an excellent Vector-graphic editor. Available on Linux and Windows. Adobe Premiere/After Effects These two are generally combined as each performs a specific group of tasks. Premiere focuses on editing, while After Effects focuses on compositing and visual effects. Most open-source options combine these features into a single application - which is great. Open-source 1) Cinelerra - perhaps the best option available. There are two versions, a community maintained one as well as an official one. The community version is called cinelerra-cv and is available on most Linux distributions. Not cross-platform afaik. 2) Kdenlive - Similar feature set to cinelerra, but more along the lines of Premiere. Kdenlive is available on Windows through a VM image. 3) OpenShot - Another option instead of Cinelerra. Primarily on Linux, but can be cross-compiled on Windows with the right set of tools (Cygwin, etc). 4) Avidemux - Cross-platform and open-source. Very simple video editing, and encodes in multiple formats. 5) LiVES - Available on Linux and OS X. Similar feature set to Cinelerra. 6) Blender - primarily a 3D modelling program (will go into more detail below), but includes a non-linear video editor. Runs on python, which is cross-platform. Freeware 1) Lightworks - there's a free and premium version available. The free version is free forever. So far, Lightworks is Windows only. The Linux version is in beta. There are many other free video editors out there. A Google search will reveal at least 10 other options. Autodesk Maya/3ds Max, Cinema 4D 3D modellers have perhaps used these applications. In fact, Cinema 4D's R15 was just released (as of October 2nd, 2013). Open-source Blender. I'm not even going to bother mentioning other options for now, as I have yet to find an option that beats it. There are plenty of projects out there done using Blender (Sintel is a perfect example of a short movie made entirely in Blender). It does everything you could possibly expect from it, along the lines of Cinema 4D and all of the other paid applications. Best of all, it's free and fully open-source. Corel Painter Perhaps the best digital painting tool out there. Has the widest range of brushes, painting media, etc. Open-source 1) Krita - mentioned it already. One of the best free digital painting applications available. Has excellent support for Wacom tablets. 2) MyPaint - similar to Krita. Cross-platform. 3) Alchemy - more of a niche program. Great for random sketching, doesn't have an undo function. 4) Gimp Paint Studio - Set of tools integrated into Gimp to provide digital painting tools, brushes, etc. Development Tools (IDEs) Microsoft's Visual Studio is probably one of the most common proprietary options, with development environments for C, C++, C#, among many others. On the OS X side, there's Xcode for developing in Objective-C. This section will list some of the alternatives to using the paid programs. Open-source 1) Eclipse - In my humblest opinion, one of the best IDEs available. Free, completely open-source and extensible through plugins. I've personally set my installation of Eclipse to work with Python, C, C++, Java, Android, and PHP/MySQL, and that's barely scratching the surface of the amount of development environments that can be integrated into Eclipse through plugins. 2) Code::Blocks - Another open-source IDE primarily for C++, but has a plugin system to easily extend functionality. Cross-platform. 3) Netbeans - free and open-source, comes default with the Java Development Kit, as an optional addon. It does support development environments for multiple languages. Freeware 1) Programmer's Notepad - Supports syntax highlighting for multiple languages. Windows only. 2) Visual Studio Express - The free version of Visual Studio. It's perfect for people who want to get started developing on Windows. Naturally, Windows only. Proprietary 1) Sublime Text - Technically paid, but a free, unlimited trial is available. It is cross-platform, and widely regarded as one of the best Text-based development environments. 2) IntelliJ - Specifically for Java and Android development. Cloud This is a pretty unique category, as there are literally dozens of cloud-based IDEs for various languages. I'll try my best to highlight some of the best ones based on languages supported. Feel free to link me to any Cloud IDEs you know of and I will add it to the list. 1) Cloud9 - Code anywhere. Free and subscription available. Doesn't appear to have language restrictions. 2) Codenvy - Free and premium subscriptions available. There are free premium packages if you plan on developing open-source projects (the way I interpret it). FRAPS/Dxtory, Xsplit By far the best video recording and streaming tools available. However, there are more than a fair share of free and open-source options. Open-source 1) Open Broadcaster Software - capable of streaming to Justin.tv, Twitch.tv and other streaming sites. Optionally, it'll also record to the HDD using a range of compression settings. While it is open-source, a Linux version currently doesn't exist. There is plenty of interest in a Linux version. 2) GLC - The Linux FRAPS. GLC is a bit tricky to install, but is excellent on Linux. Needs to be built from source. 3) Yukon - Similar to GLC. Needs to be built from source. 4) SimpleScreenRecorder - Name is self-explanatory. Supports desktop and game recording, as well as streaming to Twitch.TV and other streaming services. 5) Twitch Streamer - A minimal shell script designed to stream directly to Twitch. Captures from the X server directly. Freeware 1) FFsplit - a free streaming software available primarily on Windows. 2) MSI Afterburner - one of the best free options for recording gameplay. Media Players Everyone needs a media player, whether it's combined or just for music. Open-source 1) VLC - easily the best media player available. Also capable of recording the desktop and there's also the possibility of a video editor being added later on. Supports Bluray with some workarounds. 2) MPlayer/SMPlayer - along the lines of VLC. Cross-platform. 3) aTunes - iTunes equivalent on Windows and Linux. 4) Amarok - feature-rich media player. 5) XBMC - great open-source media player, capable of all types of media. Particularly good for an HTPC setup. 6) Audacious - open-source and available on many Linux distributions. Also cross-platform. 7) Clementine - cross-platform and open-source music player. 8) Plex - media streaming option along the lines of XBMC, but designed to run as a server. Ideal for a centralized media server and streaming to multiple devices (Mobile, PC, HTPC, etc). 9) Windows Media Player classic - plays a wide range of formats, specifically rmvb (RealPlayer). Simple and easy to use interface. A great alternative to VLC media player, but is Windows only despite being open-source. 10) Banshee - Open-source and cross-platform media player. Great replacement for iTunes (supports iPod syncing). 11) Apollo - A music player for Android. One of many options on Android. 12) MPV - Fork of mplayer2 and MPlayer, lightweight and easy to use. Freeware 1) Foobar2000 - IMO, one of the best and most configurable music players. 2) Winamp - This is only included because it's one of the more popular options. I personally would not recommend it, as it is more bloated compared to other options. 3) KMPlayer - Free media player on Windows. 4) iTunes - self-explanatory. Windows and OS X only, with alternatives above for Linux. 5) MusicBee - Free Music player available on Windows. 6) PotPlayer - Free music player for Windows operating systems. Gaming This section is perhaps no longer needed due to SteamOS. However, for games that don't run natively on Linux (and ignoring Steam's in-house streaming option), here are the best ways to get games running on Linux: Open-source 1)WINE - The easiest way, supports a wide range of Windows applications and Games. Check the AppDB for specific issues with some applications. Generally, anything rated Gold and above in their database will run well. 2) PlayOnLinux - essentially WINE, but with a simple GUI to make managing Games easier. Also supports various Windows applications. A full list of supported software is on their website. Proprietary I know the topic says Free/Open-source, but I feel like this deserves an exception: 1) Crossover - basically a paid version of WINE with better support. CAD/CAM/CAE Stands for Computer Aided Design/Manufacturing/Engineering. Prime examples of proprietary software are: SolidWorks, Unigraphics NX, Catia, ANSYS, Pro Engineer, AutoCAD, among many more. The following is a list of free and open-source alternatives. Open-source 1) FreeCAD - the perfect AutoCAD and Solidworks replacement. 2) OpenFOAM - The best open-source alternative to ANSYS tools (primarily used for numerical simulation in Structural and Mechanical Engineering). 3) Scilab - excellent replacement for MATLAB (which is cross-platform, while still proprietary). Scilab is the free and open-source equivalent based on Python. 4) Octave - very similar to Scilab and MATLAB. 5) Scipy - a python extension specifically for scientific and simulation-based calculations. 6) CAElinux - Should really belong in a section of its own, as it's an entire distribution built around CAE. Torrent clients The most common ones are BitTorrent and uTorrent, among others. Most of these clients are free, but aren't open-source. Some of them are more bloated than others. The following is a list of free and open-source clients. 1) Deluge - Great torrent client. I used it briefly; supports extra features through plugins. Cross-platform. 2) Transmission - Same as Deluge, free and open-source. Runs on many Linux distributions. 3) rtorrent - Generally installed through the repositories of whichever distribution. Terminal based, very simple yet powerful. Optionally, rutorrent can be installed to give it a web-based interface. These two are a very popular choice for a dedicated server running as a Torrent box (frequently referred to as a seedbox). 4) qBittorent - Cross-platform and open-source. 5) Tixati - Heard about this one more recently. Runs on Windows and Linux. Instant Messaging/Chat programs Not really a category that needs to be included, as most are free. However, not all are open-source. The only proprietary paid program I know of is mIRC, which is a commonly used IRC program. Some alternatives to mIRC: 1) Hexchat - an improvement over xChat. Cross platform (Windows, Linux) and open-source. Lots of features. xChat Aqua is an option for OS X. 2) Irssi/Weechat - minimalist IRC program. Not suited for everyone, but has a clean interface, and fun to tinker around with. Weechat is similar to Irssi. 3) Pidgin - mutli-protocol chat program. Supports IRC as well as many other common ones: Windows Live, Facebook, Jabber, Google Talk, AIM and many more. 4) Jitsi - similar to Pidgin, has some nice security features. Email Clients This section contains tools that run from within the Linux terminal, and don't exist as a standalone application. Nevertheless, they are quite powerful when used correctly. 1) Mozilla Thunderbird - probably one of the most well-known email clients. Cross-platform. 2) Claws Mail - An open-source email client for Linux. Cross-platform. 3) Mutt - Terminal-based email client. 4) Squirrel Mail - Personally used it to set up an Email server on a dedicated server (Kimsufi 2G), works wonderfully. Simple web interface for checking email. Linux Terminal-based Tools This section contains tools that run from within the Linux terminal, and don't exist as a standalone application. Nevertheless, they are quite powerful when used correctly. 1) Vi/Vim - excellent text editor for Linux. Comes pre-packaged with many Linux installers. 2) Nano - also comes pre-packed with Linux installers. 3) Emacs 4) cmus - Terminal-based music player. 5) Mutt - Terminal-based email client. Antivirus Generally not a problem for Linux due to its security features; however, there are some open-source and free options available for Windows, OS X and Linux. I haven't used the open-source ones below, so I cannot comment on its effectiveness. Nevertheless, I'll list them for people to try out. Open-source 1) ClamAV - Available as source code for various Linux distributions. Freeware 1) Avast - free and pro versions available. One of the most recommended free options. 2) AVG - same as Avast. Personally find it to be a bit bloated. 3) Microsoft Security Essentials - comes built into Windows 8, available for Windows 7 as well as other Windows OS's. 4) Malwarebytes - Anti-malware software. PDF Tools The following section contains software used to view and manipulate PDF files (annotations, editing PDFs, combining, etc). 1) PDFCreator - print to PDF, among other features. 2) Bullzip PDF - A printer driver which can be installed to print any document type as a PDF. Particularly useful for obscure file formats that can't be converted directly to PDF. 3) SumatraPDF - A free PDF and ebook (.epub, .mobi) reader. 4) Evince - A replacement PDF viewer that supports other file formats. 5) Xournal - free and open-source software specifically replacing OneNote or other Journal applications. Supports tablet PCs, and is able to annotate PDFs. 6) Stylus Labs - So far, of the Journal applications I've tried, this works the best in terms of writing performance. Xournal had an input lag that I noticed on Windows, not sure how it runs on Linux. Saves as .html files, with optional PDF export. Quite the quirky website design too. 7) PDFLite - PDF Viewer and printer (converts multiple formats to PDF). Source code is freely available for compiling on Linux. Virtualization This section contains software used for virtualization, whether it be development environments (virtual servers), or virtual machines. It's a fairly broad category. Some of the software under development tools were moved to this section to be a bit more accurate. The list includes free and open-source options. 1) Oracle's Virtualbox - the go-to option for free virtual machines. Supports a wide range of guest and host operating systems. 2) VMWare Workstation Player - available in Free and Pro versions (for commercial use). 3) Xen - Open-source virtualization, supports many guest operating systems and also supports various cloud platforms (OpenStack, etc). 4) KVM - another popular open-source virtualization program for Linux. 5) XAMPP - Web development environment. 6) Vagrant - creates a Virtual Server and sets it up as a development environment. Easily create and re-create (in any desired configuration) development environments to suit your needs. 7) WPN-XM - Web development environment built around Nginx (alternative web server to Apache), PHP, and Mariadb (faster alternative to MySQL). Miscellaneous This section contains mostly things that don't fall into the above categories, generally free. Some of them are cross-platform. Some of the summaries below may not be very accurate, so correct me if I'm mistaken. I've only used a couple of them in the past. 1) 7-zip - Everyone should have this, everyone should love it. Much better features compared to winzip and works with many different compression formats. 2) KeePass2 - encrypts and stores all of your passwords. 3) Xming - view/run X (Unix/Linux) based programs on Windows. 4) Cygwin/MinGW - Linux environment on Windows, can be used to compile programs from source on Windows. More involved, so usually ideal only for the tech savvy. Nice to have though, for people who want to tinker. 5) PuTTY - Simple SSH Client. Good for managing servers via command line. 6) Filezilla FTP - One of the best free FTP clients. Believe it also has SSH built in, but never used it. 7) Ghostscript/Ghostview - viewer/interpreter for Postscript, a programming language for creating vector graphics. 8) TrueCrypt - one of the best free disk encryption. Has automatic and real-time encryption of data. ---------------------- I haven't personally used many of the above applications, but it's a starting point for people interested in making the jump to Linux or SteamOS. Some of these options are a bit more involved to get running, but don't be afraid to get your hands dirty! It's an immense learning experience, and well worth learning.

Summary Tachiyomi, a free, open source app for reading Manga, Manwha, Manhua, and comics, has ended development. The app was created 10 years ago, and has hundreds of thousands of users. Due to legal action being taken against them by a Korean company, the project has ceased development. Quotes My thoughts Background: Tachiyomi is split into several parts: The reader app, which contains your entries, chapters, and automatically tracks them, and extensions. Extensions get images for the reader to display for sources online, through API or Scraping. Not that Tachiyomi was not affiliated with any sources. The story, as I experienced it: At the start of 2024, Kakao asked Tachiyomi to destroy it's repository and all forks. Originally, Kakao alleged that the app was being used to illegally read "Solo Leveling." Kakao provided a list of the offending sources, and the offending sources were promptly removed from the app. However, since it is open source, many users were able to continue using the sources. Kakao asked for further action to be taken, and Tachiyomi removed all Internet sources, forcing users to self host a server (similar to plex). When that was not enough, Tachiyomi deleted all sources, and git history of the repository. The primary app added a feature for users to add third-party extension repositories. At this point, a Twitter account with the Tachiyomi logo called "Tachiyomi Community" was continuing to "assist people" with tutorials on how to use new features. While the account is not affiliated with the project, Kakao collected these and threatened the project once again. At this point, the project released a final version, and was archived. My thoughts on this: Kakao is within their right to go after providers of pirated content. However, Tachiyomi is akin to a browser, are they going to go after Google Chrome next? Was this maliciously used and known to them, and they chose to go after the project rather than the websites? Sources https://tachiyomi.org/news/2024-01-13-goodbye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachiyomi?wprov=sfla1 https://github.com/tachiyomiorg

I rotated my 27" 4K monitor at work and wanted to setup a Picture-by-Picture setup. While I got it going with my Kubuntu desktop perfectly fine, my Macbook doesn't list 1920x2160 (a non-standard resolution). Any idea how I can make it available?

I personally use Linux Mint, but I like other Distros like Pop OS and Manjaro.

What is the best open source Reddit alternative? I use Lemmy and that is good but I want to know about people's favourite reddit alternative which is open source

What is the best open source garage band alternative? I have tried LMMS but I want something more user friendly to use and I want it to be compatiable with midi devices because I have a synth I want to use

Managing dotfiles has always been quite annoying to me. But thankfully, I never really had a reason to do it too often. If I had to, all I did was tar my whole .config and copy the file to and external drive. That works fine, but it’s not the best way to backup the constant changes I usually do to customize the way my programs look or act, and as a customization freak, that happens quite often. I had seen many different ways to backup dotfiles: git bare repos, yadm, symlinking scripts, and of course, GNU Stow. All of these methods have their up and downs, but in the end, stow convinced me, and I decided to give it a try. According to their home page: If you don’t really understand it yet, don’t worry, I don’t either! But in this post, I will do my best to show you the steps to backup your current config files, I hope whoever reads this finds it useful. Creating a dotfiles repository The first step to backup your dotfiles, is to create an empty repository in some hosting service, such as GitHub, Codeberg or SourceHut. This is optional if you only want to see how stow works, but necessary to have an external backup outside your computer. Once you are done, clone the empty repo to your home directory, or in any place you want. (This tutorial will be using the home directory). To clone a repo, just do: git clone https://site.com/link/to/repo In my case, I use Tildegit, a Gitea instance, so my command looks like this. git clone https://tildegit.org/chrono/dotfiles.git You can clone my dotfiles if you want to use them, here they are if you are interested. Using stow to backup your configuration Before actually backing something up, we need to install stow, depending on your distribution, you can install it with your package manager of choice. In my case, EndeavourOS is based on Arch, so I do: $ sudo pacman -S stow Lets start by backing up the configuration of a single program. While we can backup our whole .config folder, that’s not a good idea, since some programs store important information that should stay private, and I think its better to only backup what we have actually configured. For this example, I will backup my picom configurations. The first step is to create a new directory to use as a base (if you cloned your empty repo, you’ll be using that). You also have to create a folder structure, depending on where you want the configuration to be stored, this depends on the location the program will read its configuration from. We’ll refer to this folder as dotfiles. If you want to add a README file or other stuff that you is not a config files, you can create another directory inside of dotfiles, in my case, I have made a stow_home folder, which will be where we’ll run the stow command. Lets explain how stow works. Picom expects its config file in ~/.config/picom/picom.conf, so, inside of the new home_stow directory, we recreate that folder structure, but using the program name (picom) instead of the tilde (~), which usually refers to the home folder. Lets put all of this together in the terminal. $ mkdir dotfiles && cd dotfiles # mkdir only if you didn't clone it $ touch README.md other_file.txt # optional $ mkdir -p ~/dotfiles/stow_home/picom/.config/picom/ $ mv ~/.config/picom/ ~/dotfiles/stow_home/picom/.config/ Once you do that, your picom folder is no longer in the .config directory, but inside of dotfiles/home_stow, following the same folder structure, as if home_stow was the /home directory, followed by the user picom and the path to the picom configuration files. Now we repeat this process with all of the files and directories we want to back up. Once done, the behavior of the programs you use, such as vim, should revert to their default configurations, since the user config files are no longer there. So, now its time to fix that! Inside of stow_home, run the following command: $ stow -vt ~ * This will symlink everything inside of stow_home, targetting ~ as the starting point. The -v flag will let you know of everything being done, so you should see an output like this, depending on the programs you backed up: $ stow -vt ~ * LINK: .config/awesome => ../dotfiles/stow_home/awesome/.config/awesome LINK: .config/bat => ../dotfiles/stow_home/bat/.config/bat LINK: .config/dunst => ../dotfiles/stow_home/dunst/.config/dunst LINK: .config/nvim => ../dotfiles/stow_home/nvim/.config/nvim LINK: .config/picom => ../dotfiles/stow_home/picom/.config/picom LINK: .config/rofi => ../dotfiles/stow_home/rofi/.config/rofi LINK: .config/spectrwm => ../dotfiles/stow_home/spectrwm/.config/spectrwm File versioning with git If you are reading this guide, you probably know the necessary git commands to backup everything to the service you chose at the beginning of this tutorial. Generally, every time you do changes you only need to follow these three commands, inside of your dotfiles folder. $ git add * $ git commit -m "Added config files" $ git push Remember that the last command will not work if you don’t have an external repository. The manual of GNU Stow contains a lot more than what I mentioned here, like unlinking and other flags that can be used and might be useful for your use case. Finishing up Anyways, that’s all folks, you can check out my dotfiles if you want to see how stow looks once setup, I am quite happy with it, if I do say so myself. If you feel like a step is not clear enough, please let me know in the comments. Bonus script! So, if you read until the end of this tutorial. I actually did a pretty decent bash script to automate everything here. All you need to do is configure it to your liking, add it to your $PATH and give it execution permissions with chmod +x dotstow, running it like this: dotstow file_or_folder The script is as follows, it uses basic tools like cut and of course, stow. #!/usr/bin/bash # Dotstow - Backup your chosen dotfiles in one go using stow. # Run it outside of the folder/file you want to back up # $ dotstow file-or-program STOW_DIR=$HOME/dotfiles/stow_home DIR=$(pwd | cut -d '/' -f4-) NEW_DIR=$STOW_DIR/$1/$DIR mkdir -pv $NEW_DIR mv -v $1 $NEW_DIR cd $STOW_DIR stow -vt ~ $1 The program does not check if a folder already exists or anything like that. So feel free to leave any suggestions. Extra notes [IMPORTANT] You can just use dotfiles as is without a folder inside it, but if you want to be able to quickly deploy everything using *, you must make a folder where README and other files you don’t want to symlink won’t interfere . Other files, like .bashrc, are not in the .config folder, keep in mind that the path to use depends on where the program needs it to be. In this case, it would have to be placed in ~/dotfiles/stow_home/bash/.bashrc. You can also move specific files of a configuration folder. For example, tut, a mastodon client, saves the account data (passwords, etc) inside of another file in its configuration folder. if thats the case. You should move only the files you want, instead of the whole directory. stow should manage the rest. If you are unsure about the paths you created, you can run the -n flag to simulate the output and see exactly where each symlink would be placed. That way you dont end up symlinking in the wrong place and doing weird stuff to your filesystem. Sources: https://chrono.tilde.cafe/posts/backup-your-dotfiles-using-stow.html (Yes I wrote this whole thing myself, kinda) https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-05-26-using-gnu-stow-to-manage-your-dotfiles.html

Pls render this one for me as my PC ain't up to the mark. Use Blender 2.90 if possible Thank You finally.blend

Seriously! I don't know why I hadn't tried it earlier, but it's simply too good not to talk about it somewhere. I just wanna do some quick bullets on my impressions so far: Installation was easy, but the installer overall wasn't too pleasant. Anaconda, the installer they use, just feels cumbersome in comparison to ones you find on say Ubuntu, Manjaro or Solus. Additionally, I understand their commitment to the world of FOSS, but being able to install additional drivers during the initial install would help make it feel fresh, but my next point points out how this wasn't such a bad thing: Getting my Nvidia drivers was made incredibly easy by adding the nonfree repo to my Software Center and just installing it from a graphical interface, how pleasant! Secure boot compatibility is very nice, and tears down the barrier to entry for some folks. Fedora uses pure, unadulterated GNOME, which is actually my first time. I picked it because I was familiar with Ubuntu's take, but vanilla GNOME feels fast, modern and now makes me hate the sidebar from Ubuntu, taking up way too much space. Installing games was a breeze. Absolutely no issues installing Steam games, Overwatch, League of Legends, and trying out recently supported such as Vermintide 2 left a fantastic impression. EAC support is here, folks! It's here! Wayland is great. As a person who has only a rudimentary understanding of many of the systems underlying any given distribution, you can feel the difference with Wayland. No weird jutter or lag when dragging windows, high refresh rate works a breeze. Using Flatpaks out of the box is fantastic, and adding Flathub to the Software Center added a gigantic category of software at my fingertips. These aren't distribution specific, but discovering applications like Déjà Dup, Boxes and Bottles easily from the Software Center make it easy to feel at home with beautifully designed tools at my disposal. Also, can I just say? Having a files app called "Files", a text editor called "Text Editor" and so on is just great. I'm calling you out, KDE, there is no reason for my file manager to be called "Dolphin", or my image viewer "Gwenview", or my text editor "Kate". If it's weird and obnoxious for me, I can't imagine folks fresh out of the penguin waters trying to figure out why their apps are named so cryptically. I appreciate the no-bullshit simplicity in this regard. (I like KDE don't hurt me) Also, Fedora is cutting edge, not bleeding edge. I can get great new features at a quicker, more stable pace, and it doesn't require a reinstall. And all of that while running into no major, system destroying bugs. This was my fourth hop, from Kubuntu, to Ubuntu, to Solus, to Fedora. Don't get my started on Solus, as neat as it's concept is, it was a nightmare to get running, and I couldn't even encrypt my drive if I wanted to reach my desktop. I dunno, I see that typically most posts in here are inquiring about distributions, troubleshooting and whatnot, but I just felt the need to belt out how much I've been enjoying my time using Fedora. I have quite literally never had an experience with a distribution where it all clicked, and I was left actually using my desktop, not figuring out why Solus has me landing in a TTY because apparently drivers don't exist at all. Half of it is GNOME and it's beautiful animations and workflow, and the other half is this incredibly updated but somehow stable distribution. My only loss is VR, but given VRChats latest royal f*ck-up, I think I'm okay for now, all things considered. Have you all ever had this utter joy before with your distribution of choice? Tell me about it! If you haven't, and you're wanting something to try? Give Fedora 36 a shot, it just might impress you, too. They've got a nifty boot media creator if you don't want to mess with ISOs.

Summary Docker wants to remove the "Free Team organizations" subscription, which will force (f)oss projects to a. not be able to use Docker or b. pay for a subscription. Docker released a Statement, which seems to be a carefully worded non-apology, which leaves the foss-projects in the air about their docker-future. Quotes from the email from Docker: Qoute from dockers statement: Furthermore, Docker stated the following regarding (f)oss projects: Many (f)oss projects fear that they might not be applicable for the "Docker-Sponsored Open Source program" even with the new guidelines for the "DSOS", which would force them to a. not use docker anymore or b. pay for a subscription. Lastly, one of the criterias for the DSOS states the following: This might be a problem for some projects. My thoughts If I understand this evolving situation correctly, this might be a blow for many (f)oss projects which use docker. Even if this is a non-issue in the end (because all foss-projects will be accepted into the DSOS, which remains to be seen), the uncertainty is there. Sources Twitter-Post from Alex Ellis, founder of openfaas, publishing the email from Docker: Statement from Docker: https://www.docker.com/blog/we-apologize-we-did-a-terrible-job-announcing-the-end-of-docker-free-teams/ Docker-Sponsored Open Source program: https://www.docker.com/community/open-source/application/ Please be gentle with ( and correct) me if I got something wrong here. I tried to summerize it as best I could.

Having tried OpenVPN on both Linux and Windows for a bit, I am rather disappointed of its apparent lack of a killswitch or auto-connect feature. Often, when using OpenVPN, I just get disconnected from the VPN server without warning so my browsing traffic is suddenly unencrypted and it becomes a guessing game of which server to connect to instead. However, I am planning to switch to an Arch-based Linux distro that doesn't support the app for my VPN (which is only installed from a .deb file). So I wonder if anybody has ever found a way to get around the problems I mentioned - maybe program a custom killswitch or auto-connect script or something. Anyone? Thanks.

Mastodon is an open source decentralized alternative to Twitter. :https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50343054?ocid=socialflow_twitter We all know that twitter is a cess pool of hate and trolls but due to a suspension of popular lawyer Sanjay Hegde twice the peopl had enough and started flocking to the alternative site which allows federation and openness. According to the BBC So, why were people angry with Twitter? Response of Twitter India: It is a good move as such because we don't want a single entity controlling the views / narrative to the masses. Mastodon has its own set of rules for each instance and is enforced by real humans. It is a better alternative one which is needed right now for users in India. A few mastodon instances for reference are linked below. https://fosstodon.org/ https://mstdn.io/ https://mastodon.social/ https://mstdn.social/

Back in 2010 when Sun got acquired by Oracle, members of the OpenOffice.org community were concerned about Oracle's behaviour towards open source software, that concerned led to a fork that brought the Open Document Foundation and LibreOffice. Fast forward to today and seems like that may have been the best course of action, the project's vice-president, Dennis E. Hamilton, states: "it's retirement... is a serious possibility" due to a lack of developers as reported by Arstechnica. This is such a serious problem that the team behind OOo recommended it's users to either use Microsoft Office or LibreOffice back in July due to a security fix that was taking to long to be deployed. I saw this coming miles away ever since i started focusing on open source stuff back when i was in high school, sa to see it happen tough. Where did you guys stood in 2010, do you think there's a brighter future ahead of OOo or is it finally the end of it's 14 year run? source: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/openoffice-after-years-of-neglect-could-shut-down/?utm_source=omgubuntu

source: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2015/05/ubuntu-15-10-name-announced the title of the post tells all the story: Canonical, during the Ubuntu Online Summit, has finally settled on the name for the name for it's next build set to release in October and the name is Wily Werewolf. The meaning behind the name as the article says stands for: At the same time Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, talks about the success of Ubuntu in the cloud platform and the Internet of Things, on why he believes that MS didn't copy Ubuntu Convergence and about a soon to be released smartphone that will finally bring the Convergence feature demoed 3 years ago to our pockets (please be the Meizu MX4 or newer). All in all seems like it will be another good year for Ubuntu, something I'll be enjoying the fullest.