Mastodawn

Danielle Foré

I happen to own a little open source software company that is expressly anti-fascist, has a “No AI” policy, and has recently been called “aggressively queer” in case you’re interested in supporting tech companies like that:

https://elementary.io

Thoughtful, capable, and ethical computing ⋅ elementary OS

Thoughtful, capable, and ethical computing

@danirabbit aggressively queer is a brilliant review!

@danirabbit are .NET apps supported on AppCentre?

@mbrdev We require apps in AppCenter to use GTK for their interface, but @flathub has a more permissive policy and folks using elementary OS can download apps from either store

@danirabbit @flathub perhaps time for me to learn some new tools then, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with .NET and Microsoft lately so seems like good timing! Thanks! 🙏

McNeely Oct 12

@mbrdev @danirabbit @flathub Vala (the language most apps are written in) is not a requirement but it IS inspired by C# so it should hopefully seem familiar

mbrdev Oct 12

@McNeely @danirabbit @flathub that will certainly help, I love the C# language, especially in these newer versions, it’s just Microsoft and the ecosystem I’ve fallen out of love with!

grawity Oct 12

@danirabbit @mbrdev most of the .NET apps I've seen on Linux were in fact using GTK bindings for C#

mbrdev Oct 12

@grawity @danirabbit that’s cool

DelegateVoid Oct 11

@mbrdev @danirabbit and I suppose if you publish your .NET apps as self contained, single file and (optionally) with AOT enabled it should be no problem running them.

(Can't remember if #avaloniaui has a #gtk backend, but you can certainly do gtk apps with C# https://dev.to/kashifsoofi/counter-app-with-gtk4-and-net-8-1j47)

Counter App with GTK4 and .NET 8

GTK and .NET GTK is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating...

DEV Community

@delegatevoid @danirabbit thanks for the info!

Olivier Oct 11

“aggressively queer” - oh my. Nobody's ever said something so nice about me.

@danirabbit

Michael Bishop ☕Oct 11

@danirabbit

Is it Linux?

@MichaelBishop its built on Linux, yes :)

Joakim Melin Oct 12

@MichaelBishop @danirabbit Yes.

Audrey Winter has moved!Oct 11

@danirabbit I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I may?

https://discord.gg/pCenUBu

@audreygwinter questions might be better directed to our Discord! I’ve got kind of a busy Saturday planned 😅

Join the elementary Community Discord Server!

The unofficial community Discord server for elementary OS. | 1437 members

Discord

Audrey Winter has moved!Oct 11

@danirabbit Thanks for the invite!

Dr. Sobek Oct 11

@audreygwinter woudl you mind writing a TL;DR of the questions and answers you got ?

Audrey Winter has moved!Oct 11

@Sobex I plan on asking about whether I'll be able to import my Steam games or have to reinstall them under the new OS, and whether I'll be able to import/play some non-Steam games.

Audrey Winter has moved!Oct 12

@Sobex @danirabbit I have decided elementary OS is not for me. I had issues installing Steam, I felt a lack of true control over things like the desktop, and I didn't care for the "Application"-only menu. The Discord folks did give me the helpful idea to install to an external drive, and I thank them for that. Good luck to you!

Dr. Sobek Oct 12

@audreygwinter Elementary doesn’t run on my HW, and macOS Sequoia (15.7) runs fine (I’ll move to Tahoe *after* my paper deadline, but I don’t think it will be a major issue).

I have a Fedora Asahi Remix, with KDE working too, with which I’m much happier than some Ubuntu based system.

Dr. Sobek Oct 11

@danirabbit So, if I understand correctly, this is a Gnome+Ubuntu LTS derivative.

(I wonder how much is downstream, and how much is meant to be upstreamed / contribution to upstream maintenance and development)

(The documentation is squarely aimed at the general public, and I didn't find a page really explaining what this brought on top of the usual software)

@Sobex No, we don’t use GNOME. We make our own desktop called Pantheon. We do build from Ubuntu LTS repos, but we build from metapackages with Debian LiveBuild so it’s not an Ubuntu spin. We also maintain a Flatpak remote.

You can see all of the repos we maintain here: https://github.com/elementary

Edit: the blog is also a great place to see development details at a higher level with screenshots etc

elementary

Thoughtful, capable, and ethical computing—plus AppCenter, the pay-what-you-can app store - elementary

GitHub

https://oldbytes.space/@Kroc/115066030317215400

Kroc Camen Oct 11

@danirabbit I see a number of companies doing good, and then they get bought out. What immutable poison pills does your company have to prevent take over and destruction? It’s not enough to be doing good, it’s necessary to actively stop the bad people taking over.

Kroc Camen (@[email protected])

You tired of big companies doing terrible things? I'm tired of small companies doing nothing to prevent themselves being bought out and ruined by big companies. Put your code under a non-commercial share-alike licence. Put in place a CLA that requires consent for ownership change. VC vultures are actively looking to destroy anything that threatens to become popular or essential to the freedom of Internet users. Unless you're active in poisoning the bait, your save-the-world promises of user freedom are empty. If you make games, put in the EULA that the game source and resources become public domain on buyout. Toot about it, make sure users know. Make the thing EA wants -- the userbase & brand -- unpalatable. Do it now, before you become big. #enshittification #opensource #freedom

OldBytes Space - Mastodon

@Kroc all of our code is under GPL-family licenses. I think if we used a non-commercial license we wouldn’t be able to use our own code 😅

neongod Oct 11

@Kroc @danirabbit you can’t be bought if you don’t want to sell.

Kroc Camen Oct 11

@neongod @danirabbit That remains a bus-factor of 1

josh g.Oct 11

@danirabbit
don't suppose you're hiring?

Pablo Majster

Oct 11

@danirabbit I used to use this distribution. However, I stopped using it because it had some issues that really annoyed me. That was a long time ago. I hope it's improved now, because the system really had potential. Maybe I should test it again sometime? In any case, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for further development - I really appreciate the policy

@ppaluchowski64 make sure you report any issues you experience in GitHub. We release updates every month!

Pablo Majster

Oct 11

@danirabbit So, when I have some free time, I'll try to test this distribution again and report any issues I encounter. And if everything is decent, I might switch to it

By the way, thanks for the reply. Most founders of such large projects don't have the time for this, so I wanted you to know that it really does matter when a user decides which solution to choose

Cody Boone Ferguson Oct 11

@danirabbit it's not for me (use rocky for the server and macOS - fedora box down for a year and a half but that's another story) but recently I got my mum to use Zorin (for the Windows theme - it was a long time ago she used any unix). Out of curiosity though: I presume both firefox and thunderbird are supported? Along with libreoffice? In other words like a linux distro (or maybe is?) but with looks that might belie it? I love the anti-AI view. Best wishes!

GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)Oct 12

@xexyl Someone in the thread says it’s based on Ubuntu so probably yes

Cody Boone Ferguson Oct 13

@GreenSkyOverMe that makes sense yes. Thanks.

Eberhard Wolff Oct 11

@danirabbit Makes me wonder what "aggressively queer" might look like. 🙂

Chosto Oct 11

Hi @danirabbit ! It's heartwarming to read that a popular FLOSS company is anti-fascist, rejects genAI and supports queer rights.

Lately I've been discussing with open source devs about if/how/where to make the same kind of stance explicit.

I'd be curious to hear about your experience as I think this will be more and more a subject. I've seen that the blog is pretty explicit about it for example, but I cannot find any mention about the company ethics or values on the main page.

Thanks! ☺️

Lutin Discret Oct 11

@danirabbit I know it's about politics but even politics put aside. How the fuck did they came to the conclusion than sponsoring a bunch of scripts maintened by a guy who has enough money to work on it until his death living with a better lifestyle than all if us was the a better investment to support Linux mass adoption than supporting you, who lead the UX fight for Linux. It's complete bullshit (╯°□°）┻━┻

Dave Oct 11

@danirabbit I remember seeing this a few years ago, great to see you're still here and going, love to see it

How compact is the final install? Tempted to install it on my Chromebook again, it has 16GB of storage which makes it a fun test device (it did run Windows 10 for a bit as a test trial)

Dio9sys Oct 11

@danirabbit Super duper neat!

I juuuust barely got my opensuse install back to where I like it, so I likely won't distro hop right away, but I love the PWYW app store idea and the aesthetics of Pantheon. I bought a download just now to at least show my approval.

Do you know if the elementary project packages are still considered experimental/unstable in opensuse tumbleweed?

@Dio9sys I don’t know the status of packaging on other distros, sorry!

Cap E Bara Oct 11

@danirabbit I have always had one eye on this distro because I liked the cut of its jib and now this just confirms it.

I may have to virtualize it for a test drive again -- or maybe even dual boot if there's a path to that on m1

firebreathingduck Oct 11

@cap_ybarra @danirabbit

Danielle can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Elementary has any ARM64 builds right now. I tried to boot the Elementary standard x86-64 .iso in QEMU with x86-64 emulation on MacOS on an M2 Mac Studio, and it works but it's painfully slow.

(Edit: for anyone that doesn't scroll down the thread, Danielle Foré responded that Elementary has experimental ARM builds for sponsors and she hopes to publish a stable ARM build by the end of the year)

I have Elementary installed on a relatively high end HP laptop, and it runs well. Not perfect, but well enough that I'm happy with it. I won't buy another high end HP laptop, though, but that's unrelated to Elementary. The laptop got painfully hot and had awful battery life with Windows 11 and Ubuntu too.

Cap E Bara Oct 11

@firebreathingduck @danirabbit good to know. i'm an apple only hardware person so that'd be a brick wall for me atm

@firebreathingduck we have experimental ARM builds at https://builds.elementary.io for sponsors. Hoping to publish a stable ARM build for everyone before the end of the year!

@cap_ybarra

elementary Builds

Early Access builds of elementary OS

firebreathingduck Oct 12

@danirabbit @cap_ybarra

Awesome, thank you!
Ha! I *am* sponsoring Elementary through GitHub, but I guess I never looked into the sponsor perks. I'll take a look now.

I'm so glad I spoke up, this is cool.

rwrv Oct 11

@danirabbit There's no way I wouldn't call elementary "good", from my testing elementary OS is very polished and nice to use

Fiona Bianchi Oct 11

@danirabbit question: does elementary use systemd or sysv/openrc as an init system? I couldn’t find an answer from DDG or in FAQ so thought it best to ask (apologies if this is a dumb/irrelevant question in the current thread)

Earnest Oct 11

@fionasboots i believe it uses systemd

Fiona Bianchi Oct 11

@earnestma that was certainly my assumption given that it’s based on Ubuntu. Then again it’s possible to rip systemd out (MX Linux, Anti-X, Alpine, Devuan and some others do this). Personally I prefer not to use systemd as it seems like a massively complex set of problems waiting to happen.

McNeely Oct 12

@earnestma @fionasboots it does in fact use systemd

Fiona Bianchi Oct 12

@McNeely @earnestma thanks for confirming. That is a bit of a shame really.

Arthfach 🐻Oct 11

@danirabbit Oooh; I'll be taking a look at this! Thank you for sharing!

decapitae Oct 11

@danirabbit Make the makers love it. Add sweet grbl suites to the repositories! Maker unite! Open source the world!

Deadly Headshot Oct 11

@danirabbit
I might be, it's just I'm not keen on the interface of Elementary. I happily recommend it to people coming to Linux from the Apple ecosystem though...

Cameron Bosch Oct 11

@danirabbit I personally don't use Elementary OS (I prefer KDE's Plasma DE for my use cases), but Elementary OS is a good option as well.

I hope you can work with other distros so that Pantheon can be packaged by them as well. It would be a shame to see it not be available outside of Elementary OS.

And of course, I am so glad that the project is not run by facist nutjobs. Unfortunately, there are too many of them right now, and it's becoming difficult to avoid them...

prozak Oct 11

@danirabbit Dani, how much would you recommend Elementary for someone who does not want to fiddle with OS and just want a “platform” to experiment/play with AI workloads (not LLM, real PyTorch, Tensor old school AI)

🌸 lily 🏳️‍⚧️

θΔ ⋐ & ∞Oct 12

@Prozak @danirabbit this sounds like what elementary os is for (it basically does not let you do anything other than install and use software)

waem Oct 12

@danirabbit right.. good arguments. I might try