Stephan Sokolow @ssokolow@qoto.org

@Dustwin The problem is that, while incompetence is better than malice, it's still unnecessary and frustrating to be running into an equivalent of Microsoft's constant attempts to reset the default browser to Edge, multiple times over. Contrast that with Flatpak, where I update without a second thought because I trust the downgrade functionality to be present, reliable, and easy the next time a crash bug slips into a release build of Inkscape.

@Dustwin For example, why did upgrading 22.04 LTS to 24.04 LTS uninstall Audacious Media Player on the machine where I'd forgotten to switch from the APT release to the Flatpak release? Why did it remove `mpv`, install Haruna, and push SMPlayer to the bottom of the file associations priority list? Why did it uninstall XSane and install Skanlite, just for me to reverse that decision after the upgrade was done. etc. etc. etc. I dunno... but it doesn't engender good feelings.

@Dustwin Not "can't trust" in the sense of "they'll attack me". "Can't trust" in the sense that "I have to budget time and effort around the assumption that a major version bump will reset an uncertain number of my user preferences to their defaults when all I wanted was to keep receiving security updates". As a UI/UX guy, I firmly believe that's either bad policy or a failure of QA.

Just updated my mother's PCs from Kubuntu 22.04 LTS to 24.04 LTS and then had to manually remove the unwanted apps they added and install Flatpak replacements for half of the not-yet-Flatpak'd apps they removed as part of the update process, then laboriously go through, re-setting all the file associations. This sort of nonsense is why I run LTS distros and put off major upgrades as long as possible. I just can't trust distro maintainers as much as I'd like. #kubuntu #ubuntu #linux

PSA: If you're using Windows Backup with a network share to backup your Windows 98 SE retro PC, it'll stop at 4GiB and insist you swap disks and won't be appeased by moving the .qic file from the far end. Probably best to partition your drive into volumes of 4GiB or less for simplicity, FAT32 or not. (And leave compression on to ensure there's enough room in the file for the backup metadata.)
#retro #retrocomputing #win95 #windows95 #win98 #windows98 #windows

In case any fellow Canadians wish to express their displeasure with Elongated Muskrat: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-5353

Tip: If your 3000-series nVidia GPU's fan has started to develop a rattling/ticking noise and you either can't afford a replacement fan or can't wait, try going into nvidia-settings, taking manual control of the fan speed, and ramping it up in 5% increments until you find a speed where it goes away and stays away. Then, leave it for a few hours before turning auto-speed back on. (I left it overnight.)

That shook the fan on my RTX 3060 back into idling quietly at 30% speed.

PSA: Because of how Python's enum.Enum implements nominal typing and how Python imports work, it risks seemingly mundane refactorings causing var == FooEnum.Bar comparisons to start to mysteriously fail when PyQt and Qt Designer's "Promote..." feature are involved. If you don't need such strict nominal typing, using enum.IntEnum to relax the equality comparison will avoid that source of footguns.

#python #programming #pyqt #qt

@kmeisthax @foone ...or Glob-top Chip-on-Board if you want to go by what Wikipedia calls them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_on_board

I just noticed Inkscape's new context menus and I'm frustrated. How is it that GNOME devs continuously find new ways to make non-GNOME GTK applications with no viable replacements increasingly alien on non-GNOME desktops?

Put a pin in this for future sharing → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO46CNftRDs

"Actually, it's not asteroid bacteria... we discovered that bacteria managed to evolve to eat the cleaning products we use to sterilize clean rooms" is one of the most intuitive examples I've seen for why people shouldn't leap to assuming fantastic answers like UFOs or cryptids.

Tip: If you're using WinSCP's synchronize command in a script but you don't edit your script very often and your new exclusion pattern seems to be getting ignored, check if you're trying to name a directory without including the trailing slash.
#windows #winscp #scripting

Tip: If a recent Firefox update added smooth scrolling despite the checkbox still being unchecked and you don't like your scrolling being slow/laggy, try going into about:config and toggling the `general.smoothScroll.mouseWheel` pref to also be false.
#firefox

I've also been temporarily un-readonly-ing the Netatalk share and having fun with Deluxe Folder Icon Creator, Iconographer, FinderPop's "Set File Type" menu, and AppleShare's ability to remember window dimensions.

#retro #retrocomputing #macos #icons

I got back to working on the icons for my retro-hobby file share and it now has 68k Mac icons for the Windows and Mac OS 9 views (and Linux, which reuses the Win7 icon).

I still need to make the Intel Mac 68k icons and most of the OSX PPC ones though, so the preview sheet is using old screenshots there. (I don't yet have as good a workflow for those.)

...I also need to write some tooling to check which alternative icon sizes I forgot to make.

#retro #retrocomputing #windows #macos #icons

I got back to working on the icons for my retro-hobby file share and it now has 68k Mac icons for the Windows and Mac OS 9 views (and Linux, which reuses the Win7 icon).

I still need to make the Intel Mac 68k icons and most of the OSX PPC ones though, so the preview sheet is using old screenshots there. (I don't yet have as good a workflow for those.)

...I also need to write some tooling to check which alternative icon sizes I forgot to make.

#retro #retrocomputing #windows #macos #icons

I just have to give a shout-out to https://www.retrospect.com/ for anyone who needs commercial-grade backup software.

I've seen people call them "the gold standard" for classic Mac OS and, in 2024, when I asked about the possibility of licensing an ancient version for lack of something like rsync on my Mac OS 9 retro-hobby PCs, they let me use a download and license key that they keep around for when customers need to recover old backups on "but we can't provide support" terms.

Random thought inspired by "too new but too slow" mini-PCs: I wonder what the odds are of someone making a bare-metal hypervisor/emulator that lets DOS and Win3.11 run "natively" on even Intel's proposed x86S, with emulated SB16 and CGA/EGA/VGA/VESA video.

Maybe, for a rainy-day project, I'll see how far I can minimize boot time if I build a Linux install that boots into full-screen DOSBox or 86box and a BIOS POST Plymouth boot splash to hide the rest on cold boot.
#retro #retrocomputing #dos