I'm not interested in any political system where I can't criticize the ruling party without fearing for my or my family's safety or permanently becoming unable to find employment anywhere except coal/steel plants working 12-14/hours straight 6 days a week for piss wages...
Skooshjones
joined 2 years ago
Valve basically proved this with the Steam Deck. Lots of folks were introduced unknowingly to Linux via that method and realized it's pretty great.
But Valve worked and still work their asses off to get the Steam Deck UI/UX really nice. There were a lot of bumps early on, but things are really good now. Proton works amazingly well, and the look and feel of the Deck is incredible.
I have hope with Framework, System76, and other companies like that which are making computers that work well with, or exclusively are built for Linux. Hopefully they continue to grow the market.
That's why I don't suggest Keepass to people vs Bitwarden, even though it's quote good, I know they're gunna be put off instantly by Keepass's ugly look.
Honestly though, all the mainstream password managers have pretty nasty looking interfaces IMO, so maybe it actually wouldn't matter lol.
Fair point, but I'll push back a little on your second point. RSS for instance. I really want to like it, but I just cannot get it to work smoothly.
I've tried like 8+ FOSS RSS clients, mobile, desktop, web-based. Not one of them has worked seamlessly. I get all kinds of weird problems. The RSS link doesn't work, thumbnails don't load, feed headlines are garbled, articles are badly out of order, sync doesn't work, etc.
I know that if I can't get them to work right, there's no way a random person on the street is gunna be willing to tinker and mess around with them.
You bring up a really good point about MS Office UI. Very cluttered and clunky, but so many people are used to it that it doesn't matter to them. I actually think that Only Office and Libre Office are easily good enough to replace Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for 90% of users out there.
That's a great idea! I think I'll start the same :)
Lol!!!! Just saw this response haha xD
A few have helped me a immensely in life:
-
"Learn to pick your battles." I've found that the vast majority of battles aren't worth picking. Your time and energy are valuable, don't waste them on things that aren't worth it. Ask yourself, "Am I willing to die on a hill for this?" Most of the time, you should just walk away.
-
Learn how to do deep, honest self reflection, the kind that makes you fully vulnerable to yourself. If you feel yourself snapping to a conclusion rapidly or defending a position aggressively, stop and really question why. What are the reasons you think that/feel that?
Use those moments to expose yourself to opposing views with an open mind. Even if you still end up on the same side, you'll have at least understood where the other person is coming from. I've trained myself to be suspicious any time I hold a view where I struggle to think of plausible arguments supporting an opposing view. That usually indicates that I've been in an echo chamber and I need to start challenging my own position more.
- "The heart without the mind is ineffective. The mind without the heart is insincere." Passion and practicality need to work together to find effective solutions to make the world better. It does little good to have a bleeding heart with no plan of action to accomplish anything. It also does little good to have a plan of action without people involved who truly believe in it and care about the outcome.
Those folks will be the only ones left when funding runs thin and support dwindles, the bleeding hearts will show up when the weather's bad, show up early and stay late. Both are essential to create lasting, effective, positive change in the world.
- Above all else, be compassionate. All people deserve basic human dignity. Love people as best as you can. This has sadly been the hardest lesson for me to learn. I grew up in a family with lots of law enforcement connections and sadly, I was taught to fear, hate, and ridicule far more often than I was taught to love.
I know that's not everybody's experience, but that was my experience. I was taught that if somebody was in a bad situation in life, it was almost always their fault, and they were to be condemned for that and I was to treat them as outcasts.
I'm ashamed to admit that I carried that mentality with me through all of my childhood and into my adult life. I was disgusted by homeless folks, drug addicts, people suffering in shelters and in government housing. I'm ashamed to admit that I viewed them as parasites, draining valuable resources from society all because they were "too lazy/dysfunctional to be productive."
I was told this and taught this as truth. Thankfully I started to slowly deconstruct and question all of that that in my 20's. Something started to happen to me internally, and when I would see a person begging or hear a story about impoverished folks struggling, I started to feel care, and compassion, and concern for them. I started to understand the systemic reasons for their situation, I stopped thinking the way to deal with these problems was to throw them in jail or fine them for panhandling.
I'm happy to say that my spouse and I are involved in community efforts now days to help folks in need. We're are working with different organizations that address these issues in our home city and it's been such a fulfilling journey so far.
Sorry for the novel, I felt like I needed to get some of that off my chest. This world is really broken and the underprivileged are suffering a lot. Don't be like a younger me and add to that, be compassionate and caring to others. Love and try to understand. Help and serve, you might be the only hint of positivity another person sees for days, weeks, even years, so make it count.
Find orgs/groups around you that help folks in need and address systemic issues in your communities. Stand up for those who are the most vulnerable, give a voice to those that don't have one.
Peace, love, and good vibes to everybody here and beyond. I hope y'alls day/night goes well. Stay safe and be well. <3
That's a fair point, I've been happy to see that issue addressed more seriously in the last few years by many apps, including color schemes for folks with diminished sight or color blindness.
It would be interesting to create an open standard for app accessibility. Maybe that already exists, idk. But devs and organizations could submit their software to be evaluated and if passed, would be able to include a certification that it meets said accessibility standards.
Yeah makes sense. I wish there was a FOSS UX design philosophy that had caught on. For app design, the Unix philosophy has driven development even to this day, although not as popular now as it once was.
We sort of have bits of it, with the GTK framework and KDE styling. But those ecosystems don't extend outwards enough, and still allow far too much leeway to the UX design to ensure nice looks/function.
Maybe the nature of the widely distributed development makes it overall impossible. The goal of FOSS makes that kind of universal look and feel largely impossible. Heck, even Microsoft can't get that to happen in their own OS. There are many applications/utilities that look pretty much the same now as they did on Windows XP or even earlier.
The general attitude of function over form in our community also makes it hard, and I get that. Especially with limited dev resources as you pointed out. Would you rather have better functionality, or a prettier interface? Tough choice sometimes.
Part of the Capitalist mythos for sure, "if you're not growing, you're dying." There's a rejection of the idea that you could reach a healthy equilibrium of size and just remain there.
And because of the way the rest of the market works, it forces everybody to act like that or get beat out completely. Vicious feedback loops.