I think Iceweasel is long gone. It was basically rebranded Firefox that Debian issued. There was some issue at work with licensing/trademarks/logos and the like.
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Ask me anything: I switched from Mac to Linux because of Apple's surveillance
- Thread starter crymimefireworks
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I can't swear to this...but I think I've heard people say Foxfire.
The surprising thing for me...about a year ago, I was mentioning Firefox as seemign to be the best choice for one on-line service. I got the sense the person I was talking to had never heard of Firefox. I realize, of course, a lot of people just use what's there--so it's IE or Edge on Widows, Safari on Mac/iOS/iPad OS, and Chrome on Android. But still...I'd have thought Firefox was a big enough name to be recognizable. But I'd have thought wrong.
I tried to replace IE (or Edge today) with Firefox but Grandmom can't figure it out (it's that different to her that she gets confused. she's 93 years old I can't blame her) so she keeps calling me asking me to remove her 'foxfire'. She still can't say 'firefox' correctly. She doesn't even understand the URL bar. She has all her websites as desktop shortcuts. Been doing that since windows 95. Any time she has to replace a laptop I have to make all those desktop shortcuts again. The mere concept of typing 'facebook.com' vs. double-clicking an icon for it doesn't register. I might be old fashioned myself but lord help me if I ever get that bad!
Appreciate your perspective! Generally I agree. Here's my take:
Switching due to CSAM is drastic and premature
Switching is drastic. This CSAM feature doesn't affect your daily use at all. It's invisible, zero impact. If Apple hadn't announced it, you wouldn't ever notice it. Even if you hate the feature, just turn off iCloud Photos and poof it's gone. You can still use all the other iCloud services and...
forums.macrumors.com
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This is a great point, for so many people a computer is just a way to get on the internet. It's part of why the "mobile" revolution has been hard for us desktop/laptop users to understand.
I know that feeling!
I do worry about myself sometimes--in many ways, I don't keep up with the times particualrly well. I try to comfort myself, and tell myself that I'm capable of dealing with technology--but I'm selective with technology that actually has use/value for me.
And not just get on the Internet as such--but do certain Internet things (e.g., social media).
And I'm definitely guilty of being the desktop user who can't understand the mobile revolution. More accurately, the thing I can't really understand how phones can be a one and only device (or close to it) for so many. I see phones as potentially useful--but as a secondary device. I like having a large screen and a real keyboard to work with.
I need a phone to do phone things, a tablet for tablet things, a laptop for laptop things. There are just different use cases. Once, when I was still setting up Linux to my liking (skeuomorphism and all) I had killed the internet driver but needed to go to Straight Talk to fix a billing issue. I was forced to attempt to use my tablet to browse the site. Boy what a pain in the neck that was! It was obvious the site wasn't intended for tablet use and the fact the tablet was over a decade old sure didn't help. I eventually used it to complete the task but I was reminded why tablets aren't laptops, and especially why phones will never be tablets. They are different devices, different sizes with different use cases for me. I probably will never get out of that habit. Tablets for me are media consumption devices, phones great texting, music players, cameras, etc, and laptops for real work. For example, none of the ECU programming software I use at work to program automobile ECUs will ever run on a tablet or Android or iOS. It requires windows. Won't run on Linux even via Wine (I tried). No way it will run on a modern smartphone much less my HTC Thunderbolt. Don't even get me started on mobile sites. They're a cancer for me. I hate when a laptop browser pulls up what appears to be a mobile site and there's no workaround. Facebook.com, Credit Karma and various others seem to be what are known as 'responsive' sites which translates to 'screw you if you use it on anything like a laptop, you luddite!'
Considering the compute power of mobile devices, the fact they’re always to hand and the high screen resolution what is there not to understand?
NickDalzell1 notes his displeasure when a laptop pulls up a responsive mobile site. I get frustrated when I’m on my phone or iPad and I don’t get the desktop site.
Fundamentally this boils down to a single common problem which is poor site design.
Given you can now upload and download files on a mobile (iOS) device I don’t think there’s anything you can’t do vs a desktop or laptop.
The whole responsive site on a laptop could well be that on older laptops the screen res is so low, or Window size so reduced, the code in the style sheet that detects screen width, incorrectly assumes you’re on a phone or tablet.
Pretty much this. When doing a site these days I have to take a mobile-first approach and work up from there. Can't cover every single resolution so you will get the closest not always the best in some instances. It is never about the device you are using always the browser size you are viewing in.
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Its my understanding that Apple were under pressure to introduce a feature like this. I still think they prefer to support user privacy. They have managed to resist pressure about encrypted messaging from governments etc. I guess its harder to say no when its child abuse on the line.Appreciate your perspective! Generally I agree. Here's my take:
Switching due to CSAM is drastic and premature
Switching is drastic. This CSAM feature doesn't affect your daily use at all. It's invisible, zero impact. If Apple hadn't announced it, you wouldn't ever notice it. Even if you hate the feature, just turn off iCloud Photos and poof it's gone. You can still use all the other iCloud services and...
Believe it or not there’s still some sites that detect what browser and device you’re on and render on that. Probably far and few between these days since most of the responsive frameworks and templates work purely on screen width.
When developing it makes life so much easier when you can drop screen width to a set width to see what a phone and tablet will render like 🙂
Ugh, so even with all the hair pulling and frustrations I have had trying learn and use Linux and being utterly lost at times, being basically illiterate with the OS and even thinking about switching back to windows or even booting that box up (even though it's be a lot easier for some task) I have a heck of a time actually going through with it.
I do have a VM for a couple oddball items but it's mostly been Linux.
I do have a VM for a couple oddball items but it's mostly been Linux.
The biggest issue most people have with Linux is that at first glance, there's a lack of GUI. and that primarily is because most are not used to having something at the CLI level anymore along with a GUI. That's where Windows 95 screwed everything up. Most forget that Windows, especially back in the 3.1 days, was more like Linux; a GUI running on top of DOS (the CLI). Once a person gets into X with a window manager, it's a lot easier to use. At that point, it comes down to getting used to the window manager being used.
BL.
That's not been my experience - Installing, ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and popos, I've always had a gui. The issue as I see it is people who are used to windows or Macs, and switching to a desktop that is much different. Gnome, KDE, etc. Now a days with the likes of popos and elementOS, things have improved so the UIX is very similar thus reducing the learning curve.
Only when you use Linux on servers is the likelihood that there'll be no gui
Then it could be just me, because for the distros I have used, most drop you into runlevel 3, which gets you multi user with networking, so once getting logged in, you'd either have to start X to get a window manager by running startx, or editing the inittab to set the default runlevel to 4 and reboot, so Linux would go straight to the GUI on the next restart. One would easily be lost if they didn't know what to do regarding that.
On servers, definitely true. This is not only because of the overhead with running a GUI, but also because of security, since X opens standard ports over clear text. So if X isn't encapsulated under SSH, all of that data goes out in clear text.
Not good for servers.
BL.
I've never needed to start a windows manager using Ubuntu, PopOS, or Fedora's typical install process. Heck, their livecds (liveusb now?) all boot up to a desktop manager
I've been using Linux since about 2005, and I've never seen anything but a graphical desktop once the system is up and running. But the systems have all been intended as desktop systems. Some distros probably assume that. I have a vague recollection that in the early days that there might have been some option in the installer that might have influenced the installation.
Actually, it would be DVDs these days, given the size requirements. I can vaguely recall one distro (probably more than one distro, actually--but I remember the discussion with that one distro) having that bit of growing pain many years ago--the CD was standard, and there were arguments for CDs. But it just reached the point where the CD wasn't big enough.
But these days, a live USB flash drive would be more likely. Everyone seems to have instructions for how to make one, using the live DVD ISO. And at least one distro (antiX, based on Debian) has features that allow one to permanently use a USB flash drive based system. (Possibly a nice solution for people looking to revive computers with failed hard drives without getting a new hard drive.)
The Most Extensive Live-usb on the Planet! – antiX Linux
antixlinux.com
I haven't seen a console login in Linux since VectorLinux 6 in 2009. I personally hate that the GUI is on by default since sometimes it doesn't work properly and instead of dropping me into a terminal, it reboots itself into initramfs, which is utterly a mess to get out of once it's in that mode.
You might enjoy playing with Digital Ocean droplets or AWS instances then - all CLI all the time!
Oh, my NAS uses console only as well, but the only time I need to access it is when resetting the wifi driver, or shutting down, powering up or just checking the status. It's up all the time and I hardly ever have to mess with it, and I can remote SSH into it or browse it via any file explorer on any device on the wifi.
Oh no question, one of my first forays into Linux required a lot of hands on, but that experience was probably 20 years ago - give or take
mine was in 2001. You had to compile source tar.gz files one by one and pray X actually fired up when you typed 'startx'
Call it stupid, but is there a linux distro that looks polished? I've looked online at lists and videos for the best distros and they all seem like cheap macOS or Windows clones, or if not just something from 2014. I'm not looking for anything crazy, just something like chromeOS even. In fact, I wish I could use chromeOS (as I believe that's really close to Linux) but that doesn't seem like an option for most devices (and even then it doesn't seem perfect)