Over the course of the last 20 years, I’ve gone from Arch -> Void -> Pop!_OS -> Ubuntu, and that is what I use on all my machines (laptops, desktops, servers).

Old School Runescape.

I’m not sure. As long as it keeps working, I’ll probably keep using it until a viable alternative appears. I use my laptop more than my phone, so I don’t actually need passwords on my phone as often.

This one hurts… as I use this as my password manager on mobile :{

I think the “Ubuntu Core 22” means it is the snap based version of Steam rather than the deb version.

If you look at the snapcraft.yaml for the Steam snap, it uses core22 as its base.

Looks like a number of patches are landing in Ubuntu to address this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/2082335

Update: CUPS Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Fix Available

This is a great summary. Thanks!

It looks like you are running XFCE instead of GNOME (the normal Ubuntu desktop). I’m not sure how that happened… but you an always just install another desktop.

For instance, you can try to make sure you have the ubuntu-desktop or ubuntu-desktop-minimal metapackage installed:

sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop-minimal

After that, the login manager should allow you to select the Ubuntu session rather than the XFCE one.

Still using mutt after two decades (with isync for fetching).

Yes, based on the diagrams on their blog, it looks like this only impacts Snaps.

From the Discourse Blog:

The Linux desktop provides XDG Desktop Portals as a standardised way for applications to access resources that are outside of the sandbox. Applications that have been updated to use XDG Desktop Portals will continue to use them. Prompting is not intended to replace XDG Desktop Portals but to complement them by providing the desktop an alternative way to ask the user for permission. Either when an application has not been updated to use XDG Desktop Portals, or when it makes access requests not covered by XDG Desktop Portals.

Since prompting works at the syscall level, it does not require an application’s awareness or cooperation to work and extends the set of applications that can be run inside of a sandbox, allowing for a safer desktop. It is designed to enable desktop applications to take full advantage of snap packaging that might otherwise require classic confinement.

So this looks like it complements and not replaces the XDG Desktop Portals, especially for applications that have not implemented the Portals. It allows you to still run those applications in confinement while providing some more granular access controls.

I used to use VLC for music, but these days I use Symphony to play local files on my phone. VLC tended to struggle when scanning or indexing large folders (which it did all the time…), while Symphony is a bit better at that. That said, I still use VLC for video and for casting things from my DLNA server (VLC supports Chromecast).

For ebooks, I’ve used Librera FD and that has been mostly OK. I’ll checkout the two you mentioned though. Thanks!

I think you meant Pop!_OS (is developed by System76). TuxedoOS is developed by Tuxedo Computers, which is a European Linux focused hardware company.

That said, the point stands… there are hardware companies making Linux supported devices.

I think the WINE project was maintaining a fork of Mono that was used to support running certain Windows applications:

https://wiki.winehq.org/Mono

So in addition to translating traditional WIN32 system calls, WINE also supports .NET applications, which a number of Windows programs require.

Depends on your perspective, I guess. To me, GNOME is now pretty mature, stable, and reliable. That is one of the reasons why I left Pop-shell for a more vanilla GNOME experience.

COSMIC has a lot of hype right now, but based on my experience (and others), it is not at all stable or ready as daily driver. That is not to say it isn’t exciting but at this point in time I value stability and being able to just use my computer and GNOME provides that.

As the Linux luddites used to say, not all change is progress :)

Coincidentally, I received a firmware (EFI) update from Dell today via LVFS. Really nice that it works so smoothly on native Linux (no more manually downloading firmware to USB drives, or relying on Windows).

The reasons for this shift in budget away from funding Free Software and the NGI initiative seems to be an allocation of more funds for AI, leaving internet infrastructure by the wayside. Meanwhile, the EC has thus far declined to comment to share its official reasoning for striking this funding from its budget.

Sigh. It appears that they are chasing after the latest “shiny” thing instead of investing in existing infrastructure. Not surprising, but disappointing.

Pretty happy that we opted out of the Slack AI “feature” at work.

+1 For xournal++. That is what I usually use for annotating slides and drawing with my wacom tablet.

I agree that the amount of work for many students can get quite out of hand and to be honest when I first started teaching, I was pretty guilty of having very work intensive courses.

That said, over the years, I’ve worked to streamline my courses to only have what I believe to be absolutely critical to learning and have added a lot of scaffolding and automated tests (for immediate results). In general, I try to have no busy work and make sure everything assignment is meaningful (as much as it can be anyway).

Additionally, because I understand that sometimes life happens, I have built-in facilities for automate extensions for assignments and even have a system for dropping certain homeworks.

This not to say that there isn’t work in my classes… it’s just that the work is intended to be relevant and reasonable, which most students seem to agree with these days.

I think students should be expected to work less over a longer period of time.

I think this would be a great idea. Or rather, I think it would be great to allow students to learn at different rates… some may want to go faster, some may want or need to go slower.

I think the modern course-based education system is often too rigid and not flexible enough to adequately accommodate the needs of students with different experience levels, resources, or constraints. Something like a Montessori model would be a lot better IMHO.