Shoulda used the lesbian colours.
Nope. Still accessible on the front of the door. Dunno what to tell ya.
And I didn't even mention which sports I actually like, only that basketball is the only 'ball sport' I have patience for askldjaksldjalskjd
Yeah I mean
Hobbyist collectors of typewriters (I know because my father is one) and cars (one of my friends is one) all have to learn how to maintain and service their own stuff because businesses that did that for them have all but disappeared. It's considered part and parcel of the hobby.
It'd be nuts to expect it to be any different for computer collectors. Compile your own kernels, diagnose your own problems, fix your own shit. That's what you do for a hobby. :P
If you're running something that old, then it is by choice anyway, hardware gets more expensive after a certain age, and you definitely won't be getting a (functional) 90s computer for cheap.
Because I make the best Brazilian Bean Stew ever.
Odd.
All the ones I've seen have the interface on the outside. Like on the door. Usually at the top.
Uhh Linux is a kernel and on its own doesn’t even support graphics much less customising them.
I think we all realise that when someone says "Linux" in casual conversation on the internet, they mean existing well-known distros that include far more than just the naked Kernel, because no one who uses Linux is using just the Kernel, even headless servers aren't "just the kernel".
ANYWAY, I mostly am bitching about Gnome, but other DEs and WMs caught that bug as well to varying degrees. As have a dozen unconnected libre programs. Just for one example try finding a Matrix client that DOESN'T look like a shittier version of Discord (... And doesn't run on the Terminal)
There was even a collective of libre application developers that got together specifically to chastise people for using themes and to beg DEs to disable all theming by default because "muh app's branding and identity!"
Everything QT follows the theme - so much so I didn’t even realise how ugly some apps look on windows
Unless you're using Flatpaks. Then you have to spend an afternoon metaphorically beating your computer with a metaphorical hammer to get the apps (not just qt, gtk too) to look like the rest of the OS.
and in linux specifically I wish we had more ‘basic display driver’ like tools to handle emergency situations.
It's true. It would make the whole thing more resilient.
Given how things have been, we might not even be in the next world cup
... Or so I'm told. I don't watch soccer. The only "ball" sport I have any patience for is Basketball lmao.
Linux is absolutely the gold standard when it comes to supporting legacy stuff.
With Windows trailing behind. At least Microsoft tries to support stuff from older versions of Windows, whereas Apple just says "**** you" every few years.
I feel like with libre/open source software, this is a lot less of a problem -- So long as it is still possible to add it back by messing around under the hood, we are pretty much fine with the "Main" branch of some software dropping legacy support?
It'd be unreasonable to expect the devs of anything to keep supporting things that are over 20 years old.
And like, if you're using 25 year old kit at this point you're either a hobbyist collector of vintage stuff, OR an enterprise with mission-critical assets on old legacy hardware/software -- In either of those scenarios, "figure out how to go under the hood and fix stuff" (or in the enterprise's case, "hire someone who does that for you") is not an unreasonable expectation to have.
The smelly part is of course proprietary software and hardware, where "dropped official support" might as well be the signing of a death order. We desperately need a "right to repair and maintenance" regulation on every country in the world.
I feel like the problem is less with the technology itself and more with some of the stuff within and around it. So let me list my favourite bugbears:
- Buttons!
Here's the thing about buttons and knobs: they are definite. When you press them, you KNOW you pressed them, you can use your finger to feel for them without activating other stuff by accident. Back in the day with my cheap-ass chinese MP3 player, I could change tracks and playlists without taking it out of my pocket just by using tact and muscle memory.
Nowadays with my smartphone even something as basic as skipping a track requires me to take it out and unlock the screen. It's like. Sure, the phone does a lot more stuff, and can stream stuff from the internet so I don't have to download every track (even if I keep a local library for my favourites in ogg format), it has bluetooth for wireless headphones, a lot of good shit -- But that little bit of user experience is just dead and buried.
Heck, my older sister tells me she used to text her friends in class without taking her phone off her pocket. Imagine! IMAGINE typing a text on one of those old phone number pads, just by muscle memory and tact! It may not be the ideal user experience, but holy shit, it was possible! Try doing anything even close to blind typing on a modern smartphone.
Another point: when something goes unresponsive on a device with just a touchscreen, you experience a confusing and annoying experience as all you have feedback-wise is the screen and sometimes it freezes and you're swiping and tapping and just praying something happens.
When a computer with keys and buttons goes unresponsive you can do the three-fingered-salute and that usually gets it to do something, and because the keyboard is a physical object, it can't be hidden from you by a crashed OS.
Nowadays even kitchen appliances are dropping buttons and knobs. My parents' dishwasher is all touch-buttons, sometimes they brush against it while walking around the kitchen and lo and behold, their butt pauses the washing cycle. Something that wouldn't be an issue with a much cheaper set of regular-ass buttons.
To say nothing of cars and the horrid security issue that fusing a tablet to the dashboard and replacing every control with just that has proven to be.
- Customization!
Used to be, Windows 9x let you change every colour of your UI right from the built-in settings app and came with a dozen colorschemes built-in, and Windows XP came with three built-in themes and could with just some changing around (you replaced like ONE dll file, a single copypaste), support themes that totally changed the look of the OS. Nowadays you get "White" and "Black" and that's it.
And like, that's windows, a corporate-ass proprietary system for corporate jerks -- But even Linux -- Linux! the darling of nerds who like to change everything in their computers (like me!) has caught this illness -- And you'll see people defending this. Saying that having no theming support and only having users be able to change highlight colours if even that is the "right way" to do it.
On the note of customization -- In the back-then times, chat applications let you set fonts and colours to give your messages "your look", and your friends could do the same. -- Fuck! The application me and my mates used for playing RPGs by text back in the early 10s supported not just font colours, but also complete rich-text, and would let you set different colours for like, things said by a character vs. narration, resulting in an utterly beautiful formatted text.
Don't get me wrong, we use Telegram/Discord for that now and having a fully searchable archive of everything that we did and talked about is great and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But the most customization you get is -- Setting a profile picture. The most formatting you get is bold/italics.
Webforums would let you have an avatar, a user title under the avatar (that many forums let you customise!), and a signature. Nowadays with things like Lemmy you have to squint to see a person's username.
And like, it's not like there is something about the modern technologies unto themselves that prevents these bits of customisation: Computers are better at drawing shit on screen than ever, internet connectivity has only gotten faster, and we figured out 'sending some markup codes to make rich text' as a thing way back in the 80s. We lost all that simply because the people making the applications don't want to have it.
I feel like for every neat thing that new technology provides us, it takes three steps back for entirely human and not at all technological issues. ^read:^ ^capitalism^
Best we can do is a remote controlled plane with guns.