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OldFartPhil

@ OldFartPhil @lemmy.world

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16
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • The Situation: “Evident Clinical Symptoms”

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  • From what I've read, that only applies if the President is incapacitated (presumably temporarily). He can re-assume the office just by saying that he's ready to return to the job. Removing a President who claims he's able to hold the office require a 2/3 majority of both the House and Senate.

  • Final Nail in the (Windows) Coffin

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  • So, the OP shared a success story about switching to Linux and your response is to grouse about their choice of DE and text editor? No wonder people think the Linux community is difficult.

    Anyway, welcome aboard, OP. Hope your Linux journey is a happy and rewarding one.!

  • Distro/DE recs for 2-in-1 laptop that folds into tablet mode

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  • Congrats on the new gear! I have a 2-in-1 Dell laptop and a Surface Go 2, both running Debian 13. In laptop mode, I really like GNOME, in tablet mode it's... fine. The biggest problem is the GNOME OSK, which honestly is not great. It frequently needs to be manually triggered (instead of automatically opening when clicking in a text-entry zone) and it's missing just about every modifier key unless you're in terminal mode. And GNOME (in its infinite wisdom), decided that the user shouldn't have the choice of when to put the keyboard in terminal mode. There is one extension, https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5949/gjs-osk/, which helps, but it just duplicates a hardware keyboard virtually instead of providing a fully featured mobile-style keyboard.

    On my tablet I use Phosh, which can be installed on top of GNOME and provides a mobile-forward UI and a much better OSK. The Phosh-tablet metapackage in Debian 13 doesn't take up much disk space and, IMHO, will give you a much better touch experience than vanilla GNOME (if you don't mind switching back and forth depending on whether you are in tablet mode or laptop mode). Other than the inconvenience of switching back and forth, the only bug I've noticed is that maximize/minimize/close buttons need to be restored when switching from Phosh back to GNOME Shell.

  • Trump struggles to find his economic messaging amid voter skepticism

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  • The only messages Trump has are lies and bigotry, and even his supporters aren’t buying his lies anymore. Normalizing his demented horseshit as some kind of coherent economic message is how we got to where we are today.

  • Republican Matt Van Epps holds deep-red House district in Tennessee special election

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  • There are two types of gerrymandering, packing and cracking. A packed district is where you concentrate voters from the opposition party into one district. You give up a seat, but the remaining districts swing more heavily in your favor. A cracked district is what you are describing, where you dilute the margins of the opposition party by breaking up their strongholds into multiple districts and combine them with areas that vote in your favor.

    This was not a "middle of nowhere" district as it included a chunk of the city of Nashville and its suburbs. It was a classic cracked gerrymander as Republicans split Nashville into multiple districts and combined them with large swaths of red countryside (see also the notorious Austin gerrymander in Texas). The margins can sometimes be close enough in a cracked district for the opposition party to win, but in this case it was unlikely as it was Trump +22 in 2024 (in spite of including some of Nashville).

  • In wake of Windows 10 retirement, over 780,000 Windows users skip Win 11 for Linux, says Zorin OS developers — distro hits unprecedented 1 million downloads in five weeks

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  • Posting from a Surface Go 2 running Debian Trixie with Gnome+Phosh. Everything except the webcam just works on the stock kernel (for webcam support you need the patched Surface kernel). Vanilla Gnome is fine, too, if you use a hardware keyboard. I run Phosh because the onsceen keyboard is much better than Gnome's.

  • Pentagon says it's launching 'thorough review' into Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly

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  • I don’t think a bullshit investigation of a high profile, decorated veteran is going to go as well for the fascists as they think it’s going to.

  • People who have moved away from your home town/area, what do you miss most?

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  • Yes, mostly rain on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. Rain and 45 F is pretty much the default for winter here; you'd probably like it. I don't mind the cold (within reason), but the constant cloudiness gets to me. I miss the sun already, and the rainy season has just started.

  • People who have moved away from your home town/area, what do you miss most?

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  • The weather. Moved from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest. I like it here, but even after three decades the winter gloom still gets to me.

  • This is How Trump’s Monstrous Ballroom Will Dwarf White House

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  • First thing that crossed my mind, too.

  • Texas Republicans pass gerrymandered congressional map requested by Trump

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  • It depends on how many of the gerrymandered districts are packed (large Democratic majorities) and how many are cracked (Democratic population centers are split up into multiple districts with small-ish Republican majorities). Cracked districts can be won if Democrats turn out in record numbers. Packed districts just produce more lopsided majorities in favor of the Democratic candidate.

    Of course, this gerrymander is only one of the voter suppression tactics that Texas Republicans will use to lower Democratic turnout.

  • Musk ‘very welcome’ in Europe after Trump bust-up, EU official says

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  • They can have him. He's already done far too much damage here.

  • Finally making the move to Linux, and I have questions before I get started.

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  • I use Keep for checklists and disposable notes, and Joplin (similar to Obsidian, but open source) for my "forever" notes. I look for apps that give you the option of exporting notes in a common format (currently markdown), and I have notes that have followed me through several changes of note taking programs.

  • Finally making the move to Linux, and I have questions before I get started.

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  • You're already using Obsidian, so my suggestion is... Take notes! Take notes on cool software you've discovered, take notes on your settings and configurations, take notes on any issues and bugs you've had to fix, take notes on how to use unfamiliar programs, take notes on Linux terminology. You have a huge personal knowledge base from years of using Windows. Linux is not hard to use, but it takes time to become second nature to you.

  • Linux users, what desktop environment do you use?

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  • GNOME. Been using Linux since before GNOME Shell was a thing and when it became a thing it just clicked for me. In my opinion, it's by far the most polished DE and provides the most elegant and intuitive launcher and workspace switcher of any DE or OS I've used. At least they did, until they fucked it up by moving from vertical to horizontal workspaces and made the workspace previews so small you can no longer see what's in them.

    Which is the downside of GNOME. Sometimes their developers are their own worst enemies. Fortunately, there are usually extensions to fix the most egregious "enhancements".