Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
So how’s it going?
Yeah I think you are right, it still has a fair way to enshit before it shakes out.
I think my last computer was the last “toaster” I will get to own until I change platform. Updates were optional and manual, and I owned everything on it outright. I managed to jump through hoops just now to buy a copy of office that isn’t subscription-based or infested with AI, but I feel like a dinosaur watching the asteroids falling.
I think we will see sharper bifurcation between the European market and the US/world market, as well.
There are some really crazy overreaches. I notice Adobe is setting its AI to rummage through subscribers’ image folders (which is a legal and privacy nightmare for the companies concerned) and sysadmins are complaining about how they have to contact Adobe and go through a lengthy process to make it turn that off.
A few years back I switched to using Linux. I have played with it on and off for 20 years or more, but it has leapt forward in strides recently. For technical people, it’s hugely configurable. For non-technical people, I would say we are at the point that it can be used as a daily driver so long as it came pre-installed on your laptop or you know someone who knows how to install an OS. It’s the same difficulty as installing Windows, but computers tend to come with Windows installed which puts Linux out of reach of most people.
The only caveat is software - if you specifically need MS Office and the web version won’t do, or if you need the Adobe suite etc, then you’ll struggle. There are alternatives, but not without their own learning curve. There are also issues if you want to play some online games with certain anticheat software.
But given the average non-technical person uses a laptop only for browsing the internet (in my experience), then I think it’s time for technical people to start installing Linux on all their friends’ computers 😆
I think this is a good thing for us. As a small market it can be hard to have much sway, but if Europe starts putting their foot down then companies may start to have these two tier things like they do today where TVs in the US record what you say and take screenshots of what you’re watching and send what they learn to advertisers, but the same TV sold in Europe doesn’t have this (and I assume not in NZ either). By Europe forcing the companies to provide the more private versions, we can make laws that force them to give us the privacy protecting version. If it was us against the world we might have got told to shove it, but they can’t ignore the whole EU.
Ever since I got a free trial of Photoshop that then charged me $100US to cancel, I have never wanted to touch their stuff (don’t worry, I escalated myself through support tiers until they reversed the charge). I got good* at GIMP instead 😅
* “good” is subjective
I think you’re right about the EU. We have them to thank for C cables on everything.
Those are the exact reasons I had to stick with windows. Office was essential at work (much as I like Libre Office it just doesn’t quite cut it when you need perfect compatibility) and I used to use photoshop a lot (and Dreamweaver ha ha ha those were the days).
GIMP latest release seems to finally have non destructive editing so I will have to take another look.
Work is another beast. You really need to have your whole workplace on LibreOffice. Microsoft loves to tuck proprietary stuff into things that mess up the compatibility we could have.
Last I checked, still no basic shapes though 😅
For workplaces that constantly deal with documents from other workplaces, even making your own one switch wouldn’t work. Microsoft’s evil strategy works - it really does have it sewn up unfortunately.
Wait what why does GIMP not have shapes!? Kudos to you for being able to find your way around its GUI. It hurts my brain.
If you want to do a circle, there are multiple ways but e.g. you can use the ellipse selection tool to select a circle area, then select the outside of it (perhaps with the border select option, setting the width you want), then use the fill tool to colour it in 😅
To do it properly, there’s a lot of pre-work required. It’s listed here: https://developer.gimp.org/core/roadmap/#non-destructive-layer-types
It’s listed simply as “No” 😆, I think this means there is no one actively working on it, but there are people working on the prerequisites.
There was a bit of conversation on Lemmy about it recently: https://lemmy.nz/post/20638412
It’s just what I’m familiar with. I struggle with photoshop, I’d rather use GIMP. But it has it’s limitations!
Some gems in that conversation.
I used to use that exact same circle method in photoshop back in the day, before I learned how to use shapes and paths! (All my photoshop skills are self taught over the years, but I’ve used it for a long time, like you have with GIMP).
The idea of “intuitive” in software interface kind of fascinates me. So much of it is cultural or built on the shoulders of years of habit, but it feels so real and objective even though it isn’t. I wonder about what it does at the level of synapses etc. Like, do you and I have a tiny piece of differing physiology at this point because of GIMP vs Photoshop?
One of the big things these days is “personas”, which is basically sitting down and thinking about all the different people who might use your software. Which might be some guy called Fred who drives trucks doesn’t really use a computer very much. It might be some chick called Jessica that has used the software for years and likes the current layout, or it might be Susan who has used photoshop but doesn’t like the new subscription model so is looking for another tool.
All these people have very different needs, and you need to make sure it works for them all. They will all have quite different expectations about how things should work. Ideally you’ll find people that fit each of your personas and get them to test and give feedback.
Unfortunately when software is made by volunteers, a lot of this side of things can be lost.
That’s super interesting; I had never heard of personas in that context but it makes a lot of sense. How do you come up with/discover the personas?
This is probably a defining characteristic of half a generation!
This is a rambling tangent but one of my super weird memories from the late 90s was being asked to a market research focus group where all they did was give us cell phones and sim cards and video us trying to open the backs and insert the sims. It was new tech for most of us at the time and it’s really funny to me now how challenging we found it.