Vivaldi
Ahm, sure?
Yeah, was wondering about that. I’ve just installed it for the first time and while it looks OK, i’m wondering what the catch is.
Any privacy or security holes that one might to be aware of?
Just the usual one: it’s a proprietary fork of Chromium.
Ah.
AI sure killed the motto KISS. Copilot for notepad is literally using a nuclear reactor to light a single bulb.
The new moto is “keep giving me money stupid”
How wasting billions on AI accomplishes that goal, I don’t know but I’m sticking with FOSS apps and platforms just to be safe
Figuratively
- Literally has meant figuratively since it first appeared as a word in the 1700s and this usage is listed in every major dictionary
- https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/20/energy/three-mile-island-microsoft-ai/index.html
Literal is the exact opposite of figurative…
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/figurative
Sanction is the exact opposite of sanction, but you never see people moan about that for some reason
Table can mean “to discuss a topic at a meeting” (British English) or “to postpone discussion of a topic” (American English). Canadian English uses both meanings of the word
Canada . . . seriously? I can’t sanction that type of behaviour.
That’s the problem with being influenced by both British and American English. We have both senses in New Zealand English too, although I think the US one is slowly winning out and the British one might one day fall out of use.
I wonder, why is ‘literally’ so special?
Someone steps out into unexpectedly cold weather and says, “It’s freezing out here.” But it’s not below freezing.
Someone that hasn’t eaten all day takes a bite and says, “I was starving, this is the best burger I’ve ever tasted!” They weren’t really starving, and they probably didn’t just rank every burger they’ve eaten.
We exaggerate and/or use words incorrectly for the effect so often, people are constantly using words “incorrectly” but then they say, “I’m literally dead right now.” and dictionaries change their definitions and people point out semantics. It’s like literally is figuratively magic.
It’s almost like language is radically democratic and words only mean what we largely agree they mean, with fluctuating cases based on particular contexts.
Yeah, somehow “literally” is the only word in a figure of speech that cannot be part of the figure at all! They are so smart for pointing that out
“Freezing” is an exaggeration of “cold”, just like “starving” is an exaggeration of “hungry”. It’s “a lot of X”.
“Literally” is not an exaggeration, it’s the opposite of “figuratively”. It’s “-X”.
Those are two entirely different things. But of course inflammable means flammable.
“Literally” is not an exaggeration
Correct, it’s an “intensifier”
And “terrific” and “awesome” are exaggerations of “scary”.
Yes. Am I meant to add anything here?
Incorrect.
Freezing
“Freezing is a phase transition in which a liquid turns into a solid when its temperature is lowered below its freezing point.”Starvation
“Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism’s life.”You are literally wrong, and I will accept a 1-page apology written in MLA format before the end of this week.
I honestly do not see the contradiction. “Very cold” -> liquid turns to solid. “Very hungry” -> severe deficiency.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/literally
That’s one of it’s senses, yes, but how many of those definitions are the opposite of figurative?
The correct definition is the opposite of figuratively. This has been an ongoing linguistic war for nearly a century, and your WRONG thoughts on how it should be used only serve to further the enemies cause.
This has been an ongoing linguistic war for nearly a century
So after over a century of people using it that way some other people got a stick up their butt about it, cool. Doesn’t make it wrong.
People who get het up about “literally” are fabulous.
If Dickens, Twain and Joyce can use it as an intensifier, then that’s awesome enough for me.
Of course literally is often overused figuratively, flogged like a dead metaphorse; but used literally, literally is often literally redundant anyway.
I think it’s got a third use now though, which is even more fun, using it to troll languague purists who think language drives communication rather than the other way round. That might well have motivated Mark Twain too.
Napoleon! Enemy anti-literalists have infiltrated another thread—we need reinforcements now!
Literally literally means figuratively.
That too.
The use of “literally” is part of the figure of speech you’re pedantically referring to. Saying “figuratively” would be redundant, as everyone knows Copilot is not a nuclear reactor, and also declaring that you are using a figure of speech “weakens” it (like /s for sarcasm). By saying “literally” they are saying “wow, this fits so well that this isn’t even a metaphor anymore”.
If you want to correct everyone for saying literally instead of figuratively, correct every teenager saying “I’m actually dying rn 😂” with “ackshually you’re not ACTUALLY dying, as I can see you are still alive typing tips fedora”Oh. I thought “literally” was just referring to the fact that many of those data centers pull from nuclear grids.
I do apologize for using exaggerated words to beautify my sentences, tostiman, sir.
Gotta scoop all the data from everywhere on your machine, even the temporary notes you don’t save.
They’re not temporary any more, they keep coming back, I keep forgetting and then my PC reboots and I need to make a quick note and have to wait for 50 zombie text files to rise from the dead.
The first nuclear reactor was used to light a single bulb. Presumably it was either an incredibly inefficient bulb or an incredibly inefficient reactor.
Anyway this is all just an extension of everything having an app.
Using an actual nuclear reactor to light a single bulb is literally using a- I’m kidding. I leave lemmy for a couple hours, come back and see a total armageddon, all because there are picky people about the use of words.
And WIRED writes that bsky can’t take a joke. Geez loueez.
Upset about notepad, so downloaded a bunch of random software that has nothing to do with editing text files?
Thought the same thing, nothing wrong with Libre Office, but why not Notepad++?
For me personally, I was using Notepad++, but the enshitification of notepad, to me, was just the last straw. It was another thing in Windows becoming worse, & there was no sign of the enshittification stopping, so I finally jumped ship & switched to Linux.
I think a lot of “Windows 11 sucks!” is kind of overblown. For example:
Have an issue with Co-Pilot in Notepad? Click the gear in the upper right hand corner, scroll down, “Copilot - Off”.
Kind of like when they tried to force Cortana on everyone in Windows 10… super easy to disable, enough people did that, then it got removed.
It sucks that the user has to take steps to clean this crap out of Windows, but it CAN be done and it’s not THAT different from clearing out all the bloatware vendors like HP used to install by default.
For example:
“My start menu is full of advertising!”
So, turn it off.
“I keep getting ads as notifications!”
(They really want people buying Xbox stuff)
Turn that off too:
If you can’t figure out these basic configurations in Windows, switching to Linux will not be an option for you. You’ll have no hope of figuring out Linux settings.
I’ve performed every one of those steps (and a few reg edits besides after the second week of repeated uninstalls and turning off copilot in apps and turning off Edge as a default by going through literally every file type and removing it as a default for everything possible (a few .edge_ files not possible to change). Copilot is back in my apps list and startup files with every boot. W11Pro, originally I installed from lenovo recovery media but reinstalled from recovery media created from the MS download ISO of the major update to W11 a few weeks ago. Problem continues
Not A tipping point but several. They’ve been upset about a lot of things but this was the last straw.
You can get gedit for Windows.
Kate exists on windows and linux
Notepad++ does way more out of the box. I’m saying this as someone who has used npp for over a decade and been using Kate since last September since indefinitely switching to Linux.
It doesn’t have AI tho.
(Joking)
Installing cross-platform programs like that is a great way to prepare for a move over to penguin town, and check for any blockers keeping you from making the leap.
i installed arch on my laptop almost 10 years ago
I have to fix something maybe once a year and I only update once a week, if i remember
reboot maybe one time in a month
the myth that you need to fix Linux constantly needs to die
I switched from W10 to Fedora KDE a little over a month ago, and the amount of troubleshooting I had to go through during this time is unlike anything I’ve ever faced with Windows. I think I have a handle on things now, but the switch to Linux as a casual user was not as seamless as I’d been told over and over.
Others experience may be different of course, but in my experience Linux is not as easy to use as Windows.
Still happy with my choice to not swap back to Windows though.
I have the exact opposite experience: I recently installed Fedora (stock, so Gnome) and had 0 issues. It was easier to install that Windows. The sidenote is that I have a Framework laptop, so my hardware is fully supported. And I was a Linux user before, so nothing looks alien to me. I didn’t need the terminal to get everything working, including wireless printing.
I don’t know what you’re talking about because when I tried Linux it was a nightmare. The only thing that worked properly ironically was the printer. It’s straight up would not play sound, if I plugged in headphones it would play sound but it would not play sound through the speakers. There were lots of people telling me I needed to install new sound drivers, or run arbitrary commands. None of them fixed it.
It ended up being a problem with the USB driver. That’s ridiculous, I shouldn’t have to mess around with a driver for an internal component.
What distro?
Sounds like my experience from a while ago.
Yeah, wondering myself if this guys experience was also from a long time ago or maybe just an obscure device or something.
My fiance is constantly fighting with windows 10 and 11 because shit breaks on there all the time. The challenge isn’t that Linux breaks more often, or that troubleshooting it is harder, it’s that if you have experience with how Windows breaks, and how to troubleshoot windows breaking, Linux breakages and troubleshooting feels entirely alien.
I am a system admin and have to run a ton of Windows servers, I feel it. If you don’t keep up on the patch notes shit can get bad without even realizing it. I hate Windows for all the crap that is layered on it but it wouldn’t be so bad if Microsoft didn’t change shit just to change it and move stuff around without a good reason. The forcing of things is what really makes me upset. IDK about your AI shit Microsoft! ITS NOT HELPING
None of their docs for 10 or 11 are gaurunteed to be accurate either because they keep changing where things are in what menus to “be more intuitive” only it wasn’t intuitive before, and it’s not intuitive now, and when you do a web search for a problem you get instructions from 2 months ago that reference settings and options that don’t exist anymore. (this is me agreeing with you by the way, I’m piling on, not refuting)
I genuinely think at this point if you, dear reader, have a computer, and you want to use your computer, you should be strongly considering installing Linux Mint, MX Linux, or AntiX depending on your hardware not because it will be easier to use than windows, but because it won’t be any harder to use than windows, and you can start building up the knowledge and skills for how to use and troubleshoot linux just like you did when you first started using windows, and it will be easier long term because Windows is just going to keep getting worse and worse and more unusable and less documented and harder to troubleshoot and use.
I accept that I am biased by that I have years of Linux experience, but I switched my 68 year old mother to Linux because she couldn’t update her laptop anymore because of Microsoft shenanigans and she finds MX Linux to be neither harder nor easier to use. It simply is, to her. There are things she doesn’t know how to do on it, but those are things she already didn’t know how to do on windows.
I got my mother in law on Mint linux a couple years ago, it never gives her any problems. It is the way to go with the seniors
100%. We tried it first but her laptop was simply too low powered to run it so we stepped back to MX Linux, which is somewhat of a light to middleweight distro. I really wanted her on Mint since it would be more her speed, but even the XFCE edition was too much for the machine. Also, credit where credit is due, when mom found out MX Linux was developed in conjuction with the antifascist distribution (AntiX) she really wanted to go that route, or even all the way to AntiX 🤣
Tried with my mom, she wanted to go back to windows because it had the games she wanted to play - the mobile shit ported from google play to microsoft store
I am a system admin and have to run a ton of Windows servers
I feel your pain, I am a “Linux System Administrator” and the amount of Windows server crap I have to deal with on a daily basis…
- Why is XBOX Live services running by default on Windows Server???
- Why is co-pilot running by default on Windows Server??!?!?
- And what M$ engineer thought, aah yes the best possible place for a recovery partition is at the end of the main OS partition???!?!?!?!?!
- And lastly, what the actual fuck were they thinking when they put Windows 11s shit UI on Windows Server.
On the less ranty/negative side:
- AD isn’t horrible, while I prefer freeIPA, I can’t complain too much.
- powershell other than being wordy commands, is kinda nice.
why is XBOX live services running on windows server
You reminded me of when i was at an MSP and we had this dental client. And they had some actually pretty cool software that processed 3d X-rays and generated a 3d model and would point out various types of potential issues. Now this was like ~2014 so before photometry or AI was really a thing so it was really impressive.
But to compute that stuff in real-ish time (like under 30 seconds, so by the time the patient walked back to the exam room) you had to offload the processing to a Windows server, but that worked fine.
But like everything, Windows updates continue ever “”“forward”"’ and eventually they added the Xbox game bar. I didn’t think anything of it and just left it running. About a year later and a few updates to the dental software later I am looking at their server and figure “hey, I should disable this. Its a server after all”.
Bad mistake. Their software stops working so now they can’t take any type of scans. I’m trying to figure it out, I’ve got a team of engineers looking at this with me. We can’t figure it out. Everything looks fine except the process just won’t start. No error message, no wrong looking logs. The executable just never starts.
Well turns out at some point along the line they picked up a dependency relying on Xbox game bar for this program to run. So the solution was to just leave the service running lmao.
This is honestly more of a story about bad programming than windows server nonsense but you made me think about it. I wish I figured out what was actually depending on game bar but I left shortly after that. Actually before the patch was pushed out haha
Sadly I have to disagree. If I have an issue on Windows, I just can never find an answer because every result on my search is the microsoft forums, which of course never has any solutions that work.
On the other hand, specifically for arch, the arch forums always have the answer for me because there are actual smart people on there.
A side note, windows and their products always have terrible documentation, which can add to the frustration at times.
I think you’re both right.
If you’ve always grown up Windows, then you generally know the steps to go through to try and fix it, which are oftentimes laborious and sifting through useless answers like
sfc /scannowuntil you finally find some command you need to run likeonedrive.exe /resetand about 12 other steps to get your OneDrive syncing (example problem).Now you switch over to Linux as a fairly new user, oh my audio isn’t coming from my speakers but is from the jack. Uhhhh, the Settings show it all there and working? Oh, here’s a forum answer but it tells me to edit my pulseaudio.conf file? Where the hell is that? Oh, I found it but it’s read only? Oh, I have to type
sudo nano /etc/pulseaudio.confinto a terminal? Woah, what the fuck is this text editor?? I guess I use the arrow keys to move, but no mouse support? Alright I’ve edited it but what the heck Ctrl S isn’t saving? Oh, the legend at the bottom says Ctrl O, and uhhhh, yeah overwrite? Now Ctrl X to exit, and uhhh, okay it’s still not fixed but maybe a reboot fixes it. And if we fast forward 4 hours it turned out to be an audio driver.You get my point. Linux is just different enough where if something breaks, and its something weirdly specific, its a lot of unknowns the user has to rapidly learn where they know these annoying troubleshooting things in Windows already. Linux does have really good forums and answers and documentation but its a learning curve regardless and that can be too much for a really casual user who doesn’t have the time or will to follow through.
It’s especially tricky when one is generally only trying to install xnix on a device that is no longer supported by MS/apple.
Though it seems to be less of a problem for me when I install Ubuntu distros. I recently installed the LT Kubuntu on a Surface Pro 3 with no hiccups, despite how intensely proprietary EVERYTHING on surface devices turns out to be.
I was fine using Windows 10 for a long while. Windows 11 has freaked me the f* out with how intensely the Borg has removed all abilities to customize app installs and wholly eliminated the ability to remove bloatware and have it stay removed. Windows 11 is basically a huge very effective advertisement for every OS that is NOT windows.
I feel that, but in the opposite direction. I’m used to Linux, so the weirdness of Windows is alien to me, and every time I have to try to fix a family member’s computer (“hey you’re good with computers, aren’t you? Could you take a look at a problem I’m having?” I’m a sap like that) I feel absolutely baffled as to what’s broken and how it’s even possible for that to break in the furst place.
“the fuck do you mean the windows can’t detect the laptop’s builtin keyboard?”
Like the error you used to get at boot on AT vintage machines “Keyboard not detected. Press F1 to continue”.
To be fair, back in the day I had plenty of times where Linux refused to recognise the harddrive it had just booted from. Computers are wierd, and their software is built by humans.
Went out for supper the other night with a buddy of mine who came to visit from out of town. He’s a systems technology trainer coordinator at a community college. (Basically, he teaches the teachers about new technologies before they have to teach it to their students the next term.)
We were talking about tech at supper, specifically windows, and I realized that I have been on Linux for so long that I completely lost any knowledge of how to do any of those things in Windows. And I’m honestly okay with that.
Tbh, I disagree. Troubleshooting on windows for me became “reboot or reinstall it.” Back in the days before 10 sure, but after it just got to the point where even microsoft support doesn’t know how to do anything either.
In contrast, I have a problem on linux, I google, I find a stackoverflow page with the answer in a few terminal commands which are usually explained, sometimes I go check that program’s manual or help page before I use it, but the command usually does fix the issue.
And it’s not like you never have to use the terminal on windows, flash drive corrupted by windows and needs to be restored? Diskpart is here and it sucks but it works, CLI though. Editing conf files too, had to find (that was the hard part) and edit a conf.json file last week for a friend of mine who was installing a windows service.
(i agree entirely but if you say that to people who think linux is scary, they think you’re being a dismissive jerk)
What I will offer from my limited experience is that the Mint install I have will begin to topple over after a few weeks if I don’t run updates, whereas my Mac will soldier on without missing a beat if I miss several months of updates.
Same experience here. Despite rolling release and everything.
With the apparent rise of immutable spins, it might get to be even less since user space is separate the OS space. I’m trying Aurora on my laptop to see if there is any advantage to running an immutable spin over the standard distros. I’m kind of torn about it right now, there are some advantages to both and some downsides to both.
I used notepad precisely because it lacks features beyond writing text, this is such an anti feature
SublimeText might be a good next option. :)
Isn’t notepad++ better?
My entire work brain is in there. Hundreds of tabs none of them were ever saved. I was recently looking for something and found notes I took 2 years ago. I love it but I also get why a lot of people don’t.
Not if you want less features. 🤷🏻♂️
Personal preference. :) I use it bare bones but like having the option to extend when needed.
Not if you don’t use windows, or if you want a more modern looking and less busy interface, or integration with what I consider the best git GUI. I used to use N++ long ago, but after trying ST I realized it just feels clunky.
Yeah I have that as well, and I’m surprised how fast and light weight it feels compared to something like VS code
I think in general you can also just expect that any OS, techy or not, ships with a basic, lightweight text editor. The fact that Windows seems to want to change that is an anti-feature for the entire OS.
People complain that Linux is inconvenient but then prostrate themselves upon the broken, buggy, ad-infested spyware that is Windows. Doesn’t seem very convenient to me. This person thought that their Notepad data was private before Copilot? Ha!
“convenient” ≠ “best option” or even “easiest option”.
Linux is inconvenient because they would have to go out of their way to switch to it. Windows is convenient because it’s right there and ready to go on essentially any computer.
And people dont care about “best” or “easiest” options because to most people a computer is just a means to an end.
Sadly most people grow up using and are tought Windows from the first time they touch a computer so its quirks and workarounds of bugs are engrained in the users mind.
Uprooting their entire (current) knowlegebase is inconvenient… but it’s still for the greater good of their privacy and in my opinion effectiveness of whatever they do.
The fundamental roadblock here is: people are generally done with ‘learning’ when they become adult. Not learning computers or software, or anything else in particular. Just learning. There seems to be a somewhat common idea that ‘education’ and ‘learning’ is for children, and as an adult, you should have better things to do. Sadly, we can see all around where such an idea leads us.
Oh wow, I have never heard of such a thing. I hope those people are okay. I know if I stopped learning things i’d probably die from boredom, because all you can do at that point is repeat yourself.
That view definitely needs to change for the people who hold it.
IMO usually a lot easier than learning Windows too. But I can understand them not knowing that if they’ve never tried. All they know about Linux is that it’s nerdy and technical.
My findings: Microsoft keeps changing Windows. You have to keep learning because oh the Start menu looks and works different for the 7th time in my life. All the settings menus are different. Again. Right clicking on this doesn’t work now. I stopped using Windows 10 years ago and I don’t know how it even works anymore. Learning Linux did not feel much different from being presented with Windows 8.1. And Linux doesn’t shift out from under you as fast as Windows does.
All of the Copilot features in Notepad require manual interaction. When you click the button, there’s a menu with options like “Rewrite”, “Summarize”, “Make shorter”, “Make longer”, etc., which either operate on the current selection or the entire document. How exactly that’s implemented is obviously speculation, but most likely it will only send your data to Microsoft when you actually activate one of these functions. In fact, none of them even work without an active Copilot Plus subscription (I’ve tried). There is no free tier here, if try to use any of these features without a subscription, you’ll just get prompted to sign up for one.
Also, the entire thing can be easily turned off from the settings panel.
As a Linux daily driver, LibreOffice is ass. I’ve tried, but it just feels like a cheap, not nearly as good alternative to Microsoft Office. Hate to say it
I don’t understand what people are using office for that libre can’t do. Are we not just putting words on paper?
I use Excel for a lot of advanced things, but even their word processor is garbage. I tried to use it to take notes for DnD but things like bullet points wouldn’t work correctly, spacing got all messed up, etc. Just a ton of small shit. I eventually just switched back to the web version of Microsoft Office.
I absolutely love Linux, but some things Microsoft does better, and Office is one of them.
It’s probably advanced Excel users, mostly. Also, people who heavily use the collaboration features of MS Office.
Collaborative features makes sense. But if I am ever needing ‘advanced’ excel, I am not going to be using excel.
I wouldn’t say it’s ass, but it’s definitely not office.
Back when I last used it (we’re speaking ~8 years ago), I was actually happy using it instead of MSO. …until I opened a Word document and all the tabulations and spacing went to shit. I don’t know whether it got fixed yet, but as soon as they always look identical to the pixel, opened in either editor, I will finally ditch Word.
I guess the same goes for Excel/Calc. Once all the functions are called and work the same, all the formatting looks the same in both, I’ll stick with Calc.
(It might come across as I’m being MS elitist, but it’s quite the opposite - I would love to switch, but if the admin requires docx, I have these two to choose from. I understand it’s not Libre’s fault, but I can’t do much, either)
From what I heard, MSOffice documents saved on their proprietary format will almost always find a way to not look quite right, because haha fuck you, pay for Office365
I even installed it on my work laptop because Microsoft office is ass. I have 1 pet peeve and that is the horizontal scrolling in Calc.
As someone who’s used Apple’s Pages as my primary word processor app for the past 18 years, I’ve spent the past 6 months or so using only LibreOffice in order to get myself to a place where I’m not reliant on Apple hardware.
And oh my fucking god, LibreOffice is dog shit in comparison. It’s horrifically unwieldy, to the point that it’s only marginally easier to use than Word. And Word is God’s continuing punishment of all mankind for what we did to Jesus. Word is ebola tearing through an orphanage. Word is Kid Rock covering the collected works of U2.
And LibreOffice Writer is just a little better than that.
It kills me that Pages is locked to Apple hardware, because it’s just so nice to use.
OnlyOffice is pretty good
OnlyOffice is a bit more polished and similar to MS, have you tried that?
Having used LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, I find that if you need a full office suite, (and fortunately I don’t anymore), LibreOffice has more ‘stuff’ in it and perhaps a bit better comparability with Microsoft 365 than OnlyOffice. Still, I had no real beef with OnlyOffice. It’s a somewhat lighter on space the LibreOffice for sure.
Thankfully, all I really need anymore is AbbiWord and Gnumeric for my now simple and infrequent needs. Soooo much faster and lighter than a full office suite.
If you don’t need to do anything fancy it’s pretty okay. But I also wouldn’t use it for more advanced stuff.
linux is definetly not all of that anymore.
but yes, one step at a time, its time will come for ya.
I’m gradually immersing myself in Linux until my Macbook loses macOS support, at which point I’ll go full time on Asahi, having learned the ropes from Mint on my old Mac mini.
There are still some things that send me scuttling back to macOS, glad that Preview exists with its easy to operate editing and PDF viewing. But I’ll learn to make that stuff second nature in Linux. Eventually.
Hopefully Asahi will support it
It’s an M2 Air, so it does. Runs very well on it, in fact. But as it currently doesn’t support external displays it’s a little limiting. Other than that, it’s a decent experience. But ultimately macOS is still somewhat more polished.
Notepad++ is what real humans use
I feel like there’s a way to communicate “np++ is the best” without calling people fake humans, even as a joke.
You should maybe think about relaxing just a little bit.
Are you concerned we might be upsetting the AIs?
> Vivaldi
Vivaldi is great.
The musician? Sure. The browser? Not so much.
The people who like Vivaldi are the same people who don’t like eating ass
Use Copilot to write your own Notepad. With Blackjack. And hookers.
I’m glad I left Windows again when I did (about 2 years ago). There’s no AI bullshit in vim or mousepad. That said, vim is available on windows, so a full switch isn’t necessary if you’re not all about that Linux life.
Notepad is their digital safe space? Come on.
