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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • This isn’t intuitive because you can mount anything (mostly) anywhere you want under any path. The whole Linux ecosystem never decided one standard path or mounting method. If you want a disk to be mounted under /home/$USER/Games where /home is also mountpoint to something else, you are free to do so. Desktops automate it and expose UI controls, yet again some apps are from GNOME world, some other from KDE or else and they have different UX and way to expose mounted storage. And I agree it’s not ideal, especially for newcomers.


  • PC computers were already replaced for different use cases so yes, the market shrunk, but they will stay relevant for many others for a long time. Simple tasks can easily be achieved with super convenient rectangles that are effectively computers with different input methods, but they just won’t cut it for anything more complex like 3D modeling, CAD, video editing etc. 30 years ago it was impressive when PCs could hold a large collection of digital music with instantaneous access to all of it. Now it’s just plain irrelevant, as basically all music known to human can be accessed from anywhere with just a handy rectangle. But then even relatively simple tasks like doing taxes is a daunting task on a smartphone, and only a tiny bit more convenient on a tablet.

    Of course at some point computers with completely different input and output methods can put all we know today into obsolescence, but I think we’re not even close. Some may say that VR headsets will be the thing, but personally I don’t believe so. While having virtual 3D viewport is fun and games, people seem to ignore what it takes away. Simple things like being able to see the same thing on a screen by multiple people without some video sinks between headsets or ability to interact with things without having to wear helmet or putting anything on (however lightweight it is), would be gone. Don’t get me wrong, they can certainly have their place and things they’re really good or the best at, but it’s just not going to easily replace more traditional input methods. More likely something like holographic displays paired with motion sensors recognizing body movement or some shit


  • I’m a Linux dinosaur user since mid 00’s and I confirm that despite huge efforts to make it as seamless as possible, it still sucks today. The problem is that you even have different file pickers (that’s what xdg-desktop-portal tries to mitigate but some applications will do it the traditional way by including toolkit library and filepicker from it, or they will even implement their own), there’s a great freedom to how drives can be mounted and multiple systems to manage drive mounts. It’s managed by gvfs or kio or something else, the behavior is a little differently every time. There are attempts to handle all automatic mounts in /run/media and while most distros conform to that, some won’t.

    What I would recommend is to

    • create your own mountpoints for your internal drives that you don’t expect to change too frequently. It’s done in /etc/fstab. If you’re on KDE, the Partition Manager app can help with setting mount points.
    • your primary desktop file manager (like Dolphin, Nautilus or Caja) probably has option to copy absolute file paths. Sometimes copying them is easier
    • If you see GNOME’s file picker, the path is hidden unless you know magical combination of CTRL+L that shows and allows to edit the path

  • There’s absolutely zero reason to expect Linux mass adoption as it is NOT happening anytime soon. What can happen instead is increased market share to something like 10% and even that is super optimistic from a long time user perspective.

    The focus should mainly go to relatively technical users that can at least manage basic stuff and not mass market consumers. It’s good when people try Linux, yes, but it’s even better when they find it useful, it does what they need and they keep using it, not just trying and go back to a primarily supported OS that’s maybe invasive but “at least it works”.


  • no automatic updates

    Well it’s really not entirely true unless you’re on a rolling release (which most people should if they can do basic system administration themselves). Unattended updates were a thing in traditional Linux distros with frozen release cycles since forever. On any Ubuntu-based system it’s a matter of switching a toggle, and I think it could’ve been Mint that enabled that by default (I’m not sure) at least for security updates, because users never updated their systems. They can still be done much quicker and more transparently than Windows does that, without ever forcing users to reboot in any given time.

    The problem is also that once in like 5 years you absolutely have to upgrade system to a newer version to keep it updates in such scenario. Popping up a dialog with info that your system goes EOL and you’ll loose security updates and one click upgrade button should be enough.