Iron Maiden's gonna get you, no matter how far ►
◄ Iron Maiden: six years, six albums (1980-1985)
This entry is part of my Project Zebra series covering migration to Linux for personal computing use.
Title reference: both literal and figurative. The story was written for an American department store and published in 1939. The frequently-memed moral is that deviation from the norm will be punished unless it's exploitable.
Having had one of their recent feature phones I'd suggest you don't buy HMD "Nokia" but I don't have a good alternative worked out yet. Specifically, if the screen is on, even with the keypad locked, holding the up arrow still enables the flashlight LED and drains battery. It's an incredibly ****ing stupid design flaw. Other keys also aren't locked, I think to allow calling 999 or 911 (because obviously that's something you want a phone to be able to do without user interaction whilst it's in your pocket). And the phone also has ****ing hard coded ****ing manufacturer surveys baked into the OS. This is enshittification writ large.
The Firefox Android beta changed the way it handled tabs and tabs had Desktop mode on by default. It turns out a slider in Settings > Site settings had become enabled, apparently as part of an update?
Google Keep provides no way to increase font size except whole system settings, making it hopeless for accessibility.
Debian doesn't provide a reboot command like Ubuntu, so it's systemctl reboot instead.
Thunderbird tray notification icon for Linux coming in beta 130, but won't include minimise to tray yet:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/1eq5wfz/thunderbird_130_beta_includes_a_tray_icon_for/
El Reg mentions lighter Qt... is there a need now? Plasma isn't exactly heavy
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/15/lxqt_21/
Google might be forced to divest its crown jewel: Chrome, which would be fitting karma for the crap they're trying to pull against ad-blockers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4g193qezno
An off-topic discussion about lead in petrol and paint, etc
https://m.slashdot.org/story/436209
Raymond Chen on the art of customer service
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/06/raymond_chen_support_desk_advice/
Still no Android 3.6 VLC release, but it's coming
https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc-android/-/commits/master
I like the retro of keyboard integrated computers but wouldn't like to be dependent on a non replaceable keyboard now.
https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-500-review
XFCE moves forward
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/12/xfce-4-20-released-this-is-whats-new
https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/18/xfce_420_is_out/
I was reminded recently that as well as Snap shenanigans, Canonical withholds certain LTS security updates. Now, Debian has its own LTS https://www.debian.org/lts/ arrangements as it isn't a commercially driven organisation, but the way this is implemented does make me glad to have moved on.
Following a tip from OMG!Ubuntu earlier in the year that VMWare is now free for personal use, I've verified that it can get Windows 11 working where VirtualBox, at least on normal settings at the point I tried recently, wasn't having any of it. Useful to know. I still can't get over how much Win 11 looks like a poorly integrated distro using a variety of widget toolkits without any regard for how they clash.
Quick moderate contrast themes for RetroBar based on this Win 10 Dark theme. Download here if you want.
RetroBar is currently one of the few ways to have a (replacement) taskbar at the top of the screen with Win 11.
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