admiral-crow-is-watching

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

So profoundly upsetting I had to go and check. This was an error. Not only has right control been lost to the same mentality that deprived chromebooks of caps lock but I've had to see how many pictures of Corporate Generic People Being Happy And Successful laptop advertising has.

It is really dumb that basically the only way to buy a new laptop without a Copilot key is to get a Framework

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

Diary of an OS defector, part 2

I think a major part of the appeal of Linux to me is the desire for my computer to listen when I say just do the thing.

I've set up my Firefox with aggressive privacy settings and a battery of privacy-themed extensions and it works. I click on a link and it shows me the webpage. I do not have to fight my way through the labyrinth of "Sign up to our newsletter!" and "Would you like to accept cookies or go on a text-based adventure game to refuse each of our 371 trackers one by one, and at the end be returned to our homepage instead of the thing that you wanted? If you refresh the page, or your screen locks, you'll be sent back to the beginning :)"

No I would not like to do that. I do not want to click endless toggles and be eaten by a grue if I click outside the box. I want to see the thing. And sometimes, if I'm really sick of your bullshit, I want to see it in reader mode, as white-on-black default font text with no pictures, links reduced to a mere blue word, and no midroll adverts in a document, which really is an achievement of the intrusions manufacturing industry.

Shoutout to LibreOffice for being good. I open Writer and you know what I do there? Write. I type words with my hands and they appear on the screen. Sometimes, I like to format them. What I do not do any more is open microsoft word in my browser, decline to log in, get redirected to the app, immediately get thrown out of the app again because I haven't given them money, and then spend the whole time I'm typing fending off copilot sassing and judging my grammar as if it isn't an autocorrect with delusions of grandeur.

(Exaggerated slightly for effect, I'm more of a google docs crow for personal use. Word is only for work. Docs is slightly less dire, and I will admit to liking the cloud sync, but the actual writing experience is still less good than LibreOffice.)

If I don't want a file, I can delete it. And when Linux says delete, it damn well means it. It is gone. It is not banished to an arcane folder deep in the system somewhere that I can't access because I don't have permissions to go places in the computer that is, let us not forget, mine.

I can go into the command line and tell it to do things with my words. And then it does the thing. I would define myself as one level above absolute muppet for command line use, but even I have quickly picked up enough skills with mkdir, rmdir, and wget to do things I commonly want to without feeling like I've had teeth pulled. And if there's a magic word I want but don't know, I know I will be able to find it somewhere, probably on an obscure forum thread that was locked at least five years ago with idiot-proof step by step instructions from a person with a secure password for a username.

I have a graphics tablet. I was worried I'd have to track down a propitiatory driver compatible with Linux and install it and go through a whole bit to set it up. What do I see when I open the start menu? An app called Graphics Tablet. It's just there out of the box and works and does everything I need it to, with a say what you see name and the most straightforward interface you you want.

Linux is a professional, helpful sidekick who is always willing to jump into any ridiculous plan you may have with unquestioning loyalty. Windows is like inheriting a fairy from a magician uncle. It's helpful if it's in the mood, but you're not entirely sure what its motives are or where its loyalties lie, it knows more about you than you'd like, and occasionally flatly refuses to do things due to arcane rules you've never heard of before and never will again.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

(A) Constructing sentences without common vowels?

(E) Difficulty conditional upon sound's utility.

(I) Lateral thoughts are encouraged by strange rules.

(N) Vowels obviously pose difficulties.

(O) Yet there exist high frequency alternate letters that must be evaded.

(RST) A game of a fool? Plainly.

(U) However, something to entertain the mind for a short while.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

I recently needed to send somebody a collection of powerpoints (I will not be capitalising that as a mark of disrespect). Big files, so I couldn't include them as email attachments, over the outlook limit. So I compressed them all to a .zip, still too big to email, so I tried to upload the .zip to onedrive, which is apparently just straight up not allowed. I ended up having to share all four with the recipient by opening them in the powerpoint app and sending invite links individually. It would have been easier to put them on a USB drive and throw them through a window.

FUCK ONEDRIVE AND mICROSOFT!!!

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

Today's schedule:

Receive a communiqué

Compose a statement

Issue a press release

Convene a press conference

Respond to allegations

Face tough questioning

Undergo media scrutiny

Disappear in mysterious circumstances

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

False dichotomy industry must radically reform or face total collapse, more at eleven.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

Absolutely terrifying. The voice has knowledge but no power, the person is experiencing everything at the same time as the viewer and the fear transfers perfectly, the world is established immediately, the conclusion takes a second to sink in and makes the whole scene retroactively even scarier. 10/10 no notes, analogue horror at its finest.

The Nonexistent Memory

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

I am pleased to announce the launch of Say What You See Office! An easy-to-use suite combining internet explorer, microsoft word, google sheets, google slides, and LibreOffice draw.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

@funnier-as-a-system

never "look inside" yourself btw i just tried it and there was already someone in there looking back it was so awkward

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

My average post actually gets half a note. Diary of an OS defector, which breached containment and attracted the attention of the Linux officialverse, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

I think Chrome OS should win the whole thing, honestly. I have no experience with any Apple OS, and Google Fuschia seems to be sweeping for Mysterious Reasons, so maybe I'm missing something, but I have crossed paths with Chrome OS and I did not come away happy.

Windows 11 is dire. But you know what I can do on Windows 11? Open a command line. Programme. Extract a .zip file. Chrome OS is a mobile operating system masquerading as a computer. Does it even have a command line? I don't know and don't care to look it up, the fact I don't know the answer is "yes" offhand is damnation enough. If you wish to do anything other than Internet browsing or light office stuff (and your options for that are the built in google suite or fighting for your life with mobile versions of alternatives), Chrome OS comes to pieces. It's been a while since I touched a chromebook, but I imagine they're now plagued with ai like 11. And why, why, is caps lock the start menu key? A terrible experience at every level, truly.

WOSOAT Round 6

Well, we have our first grand finalist. Chrome OS will be one of the contenders for champion. Still, we need to find out who it will be facing.

Windows 10 vs Windows ME - A real throwdown here, between some of the worst of the worst. I'm voting ME here, 10 was bad but usable.

Windows Vista vs Windows 8 - I think 8 wins this, especially after the tie with vista last round.

Seems like we are going to be waiting on the finale for a while so buckle in.

These will be posted shortly.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

Vending machines

Are most commonly themed around I want a snack - drinks, crisps, chocolate, etc. There are many other possibilities! Here are some suggestions for vending machine themes and their possible contents.

Stationery: pens, pencils, rulers, sticky tape, highlighters, notebooks.

I'm bored: packs of cards, twisty puzzles, dominoes, puzzle books, colouring in, frisbees, balls, travel sized board games.

Tech: USB sticks, common cables, plug adaptors, mice, headphones.

Minor inconvenience: plasters, bite cream, sun cream, duct tape, batteries, bandages, rubber gloves, puncture repair kits.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

I’d enjoy some four person “tennis” in “Antarctica”, if you’ll pardon the doubles on tundra

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

Diary of an OS defector

My old laptop was Windows 11, but the hardware had got to such a dire state that it had to go. This left me with a choice.

Aside from my main laptop, I had a second one "running" Windows 10. It is called Little Legs. I put running in quotes because it wasn't really running anything. It froze up, overwhelmed, when asked to do, well, anything really. I have no memory of how I came into possession of it, but there was absolutely nothing of importance on it. If I did something to brick it entirely, I would lose nothing. So I installed Mint xfce on it, mostly, at the start, for shits and giggles.

Then I noticed something. It was good. The 4GB of soldered ram from 2019 couldn't cope with Windows 10, but it was happy on Mint. I began doing things on it, and then it came into my rotation as a sexed-up second monitor.

But more than that. Linux was a better experience that Windows. So, when I got a new main laptop, I plugged the bootable media in, and made the switch.

And I'm glad I did. For context, what I do with my laptop is doing an internet, some spreadsheets and text editing, a little programming. Nothing to give me Edge Case Syndrome.

I am now typing this on that laptop. The main thing Mint has over Windows, in my opinion, is the filesystem. Everything is just there. I can find whatever I want easily; everything I see on the way, I know what it's doing. There's none of the directories I had on Windows with cryptic names that I didn't have permission to access, or couldn't understand at all. (The old laptop went to its grave with a directory called Jedi that had been there for years, defying any attempt to explain its existence). And when I want to rename something? Right click and rename it. If I want to change things? Into the command line; a lil bit of cd, mkdir, and rmdir. It's a breath of fresh air, and it feels like my computer. This might change as I keep using it and files and folders build up, but I don't think it'll ever get Windows bad.

There's also a simplicity I really like about Mint. Everything has a straightforward name, with a little description of what it does. And they're all nicely grouped up with their friends in the start menu. There's no ai, no weather forecasts for cities I'm not in, no ticker showing me the current currency exchanges. It's everything I could plausibly want and not an iota more. Love it, it's a hiking map compared to Windows' rambled vague directions accompanied with vague pointing and tangents about the history of the city.

The updates! The updates update. They don't close down things, cause my entire system to restart without my consent, or demand to be turned off and on again.

To be sure, it's not perfect. I'd love to be able to adjust the screen zoom to somewhere in between 100% and 200%, but doing it individually in the apps isn't too much of a hardship. I tried to change the lock screen, and caused the whole boot process to get grumpy with me in the process. Firefox can have an unexpected amount of trouble scrolling occasionally, and the amount of storage I have free at any given time goes up and down, and is always less than I feel it should be. No doubt this all due to my own incompetence.

On the whole, I am an absolute convert. Linux knocks Windows into a cocked hat (also chromeOS, which I have also had the misfortune of using). I've got the bug.

Little Legs is still here, and still something I can afford to lose, and I am still playing with it. I had a look at Manjaro, but I didn't vibe with that. What goes on my flash drive next?

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

The phrase "biblically accurate Debian" has been ricocheting off the inside of my mind like a DVD screensaver for weeks. I hope by sharing this non-idea with the world at large to free myself from it.

[admiral-crow-is-watching]

What browser should I use?

Google Chrome perfec t browser for i\nternet! Inside very Usable and Privacy ram used efficiently set Chrome as default browser. Set Chrome as default browser. No problems ever in Chrome because light ram usage and AI is there for hallucinating. Chrome good place for internet browsing get internet from Chrome can trust Chrome for protecting privacy. Friend Chrome.

Have you seen the other browsers? Browse with Edge. You can literally install Brave. It's on Internet Explorer with an old enough Windows. You can literally use Vivaldi. You can probably get that extension in Safari. Dude just use LibreWolf. It was designed for Opera. You can view that in Firefox. You can go to Firefox and open that page. Install Firefox right now. Go to Firefox. Dive into Firefox. You can Firefox it. Firefox has it for you.