I recently found a laptop cooling pad whose advertised software controls require a 115 MB Windows-only application. The hardware works manually on Linux, but its USB protocol is undocumented, preventing the community from building a native alternative.
This is common across computer accessories. Manufacturers should not be required to develop Linux software, but they should document the protocols needed for lawful third-party interoperability.
I started an Illinois petition asking lawmakers to protect operating-system choice, open device protocols, and warranty coverage for people using alternative software.
I have also contacted my state representative and senator directly. I’d appreciate feedback from the Linux community, especially from anyone experienced with hardware interoperability or right-to-repair advocacy.
It's my favorite game of all time, and it's open source and runs natively on Linux. It's a bit hard to get into at first, but very rewarding later.
There are a lot of different formats, PvP, FFA and PvE. 8v8 is the most popular, but events can go up to 40v40 and even more. It's really fun and I think more people should give it a try.
I'm pleased to announce the first beta release of MiDesktop 1.2.0!
This project began ten years ago with a little hankering of mine for classic, no, vintage KDE. In the last couple of years, lots of progress has been made towards bringing it back to modern Linux. After the last few weeks of knocking out dozens of bugs, I feel ready for this beta release finally.
It goes without saying that practicing necromancy, even on software, can have interesting and unpredictable results, so it's very possible you will run into bugs or corner cases on the beta. However, I have been daily-driving MiDesktop for a while now, and am actually posting this from a MiDesktop session.
You can grab the source code here if you prefer to build from scratch, or, if you run Debian or Ubuntu, you can grab pre-built packages following the instructions here.
Note: If you installed MiDesktop packages previously from the developer preview, you will need to uninstall those packages and remove that package repository prior to installing the beta. It's unfortunate, but two things make that necessary: first, I named the packages ~pre1, which was a bad idea in the naming scheme so updating to the beta without uninstalling first wouldn't work right. Secondly, I've moved the repositories to a new site, which makes my job much, much easier, and also easier for the user, as MiDesktop and Osiris now use the same package repository. You can also now choose between stable, testing, and nightly builds, which you couldn't previously. Source packages are also now included on the repository. This isn't something that will happen frequently, was just a necessary change to make things better in the long run.
On a brighter note, a small sample of the fixes in this beta:
Scrolling now works correctly. Previously, scrolling with the mouse wheel only worked when the mouse pointer was directly over the scrollbar. Now, it works when over a window.
Fonts now display correctly, leaving the ugly X Bitmap non-anti-aliased fonts in the dust (though, you can switch back if you really must)
One of the bigger changes is the new MiPanel. MiPanel is based on Corel's version of KPanel, as shipped with Corel Linux. You'll notice that both taskbars are combined at the bottom now for a cleaner look and more display real-estate. (You can switch back to the legacy KPanel if desired).
Fixed a bug causing menus to disappear or click randomly on the panel
Fixed the tree list in the Control Center. Trees expand properly now, instead of requiring the window to resize for them to show up
Applications ported in: KCalc, KHexdit, KScreenshot, Ark, KNotes, and more
Firefox (and other GTK applications) behave correctly now and do not resize infinitely off-screen
There's way more than I can list here, but I think those are the most important fixes.
Given that most of this is from the 1990s, there are a few things known to not work, the biggest one being multi-monitor support. MiDesktop will display on all available monitors, but is unaware of individual screens, meaning windows won't snap to or enlarge only on one screen, etc. It's also worth noting that I'm the sole developer, and so my ability to test across a lot of systems, distros, etc., is fairly limited, so I'm very grateful when bug reports and patches are submitted.
I hope you enjoy the authentic computing experience that MiDesktop provides!
I say this as a Linux professional with a heavy server background: the Linux desktop ecosystem is stuck. I wanted to see how far things have come, but it’s the same old story. We are still dealing with a profound misallocation of engineering talent.
The community spends massive energy on technical micro-optimizations that nobody actually needs. We get a 0.76x faster compositor or another window manager rewritten from scratch, but basic desktop fundamentals are still completely fractured. If a desktop ecosystem can't even handle universal notification standards, predictable UI spacing, consistent app continuity, and standard hardware defaults without forcing the user to dig through a terminal and edit config files, it is failing at being a modern desktop.
To make it worse, look at where the money and attention are going. A single project raises $15 million for a niche, immutable framework, and the entire community hypes it up like it's a revolution. Strip away the marketing, and it’s a glorified, hyper-opinionated dotfile setup. It looks great in screenshots, but underneath, it completely lacks the basic settings panels and normal desktop mechanics that a real user needs to get work done. We are literally pouring millions into someone else's desktop configurations while core desktop infrastructure remains a mess.
Please stop recommending me distros. The underlying distro isn't the problem—the fractured state of the Linux desktop is.
What is the actual, structural solution to this? How do we stop the community from fracturing into a hundred different forks every time someone dislikes a padding rule? How do we force a pivot away from flashy hype cycles and vanity configuration files, and actually shift resources toward building a standardized, cohesive desktop environment that follows strict interface guidelines out of the box?
Until the community addresses this fundamental coordination problem, the Linux desktop will remain a massive waste of time for anyone who just wants a polished, reliable workspace.
Edit: '10 years ago' was an exaggeration, but altering the timeline doesn't change the core problem.
EDIT: Sorry for the confusing title. I tried to make a new thread but AutoMod instantly deleted it. We can't include Discord in titles it seems, but yes the subreddit is not going anywhere, we're just talking about going from Discord to Fluxer.
Hey all. I'm one of the lead mods over on r/debian and I felt like sharing the news over here since a lot of cross-traffic exists between this subreddit and r/linux. In a nutshell, we've had a community Discord exist for a long time & many of our users come from the subreddit since before new mods were put in place over on r/debian.
We are instead promoting an FOSS alternative to our Discord instance on Fluxer that we've worked on since February, and what better way to spread the word about a widely used alternative to proprietary software than also spreading it here. My hope is by doing this, others will consider giving it a chance and we can get more people using platforms that don't ask for your ID to participate, but rather govern themselves under equitable conditions that are effective enough to protect users.
Hello everyone, I built Salmon after discovering that Syncthing had silently been broken on one of my machines for weeks while I had no idea. I wanted something much simpler than a traditional monitoring stack: if an important service fails, make a tray icon blink and annoy me until I deal with it.
Originally implemented the bare minimum in 2021 and sat on it for a few years using it just for myself, now finally polished it enough for v1.0.0, and so releasing it.
Salmon can:
Monitor systemd services
Run arbitrary command-based health checks
Combine incidents from multiple machines into one desktop app
Show tray icon, desktop notifications and a small local web UI
Snooze incidents temporarily
It consists of a small monitoring service installed on each Linux machine and a desktop app that collects their incidents.
For remote machines, it supports managed SSH tunnels or TLS+bearer authentication.
Here's a better picture of where it's at, courtesy of Cloudflare data, and not the inflated representation of what we see on Statcounter which is so widely circulated and should be taken with a grain of salt.
