pedz

I've been using MATE since Gnome 3. I really liked the simplicity of Gnome 2 and was unable to adapt to their "new" way so I switched to MATE and it just clicked. I tried Gnome 3 a few times again but I just can't.

As for why MATE instead of XFCE or others? Because I already used and tried XFCE in the past and prefered Gnome 2's look and feel. In fact, I have been going out of my way for years to keep every app using GTK2 and my favourite theme because I like how it looks and feel, and Gnome 3 and GTK3 broke this. So MATE it was. They switched to GTK3 too eventually but it gave my time to adjust.

My only "complaints" about it are the file manager Caja, and the way you can list windows, which both feel very basic. I would like those two to get better.

I try and use different DE from time to time, from Fluxbox to E17, but I just go back to MATE. My favorite DE of all time was E16 but it took waaay too long for E17 to be functional and I ended up keeping MATE.

This reminds me of the efforts made against tobacco and for cleaner air in certain areas, but it also reminds me how we do this for other things too.

Radium toothpaste, lead paint and asbestos curtains.

So, as someone that sees cars as a significant source of pollution, from exhausts, brake pads and tires, I find it ironic that some places are banning outdoor smoking in public areas while it's perfectly acceptable to drive a gas guzzler around and among those places.

Like, I'm so grateful nobody can smoke around me on that restaurant's terrace, this way I can fully enjoy breathing the pollution from the thousand of cars around.

Then you can stay on forums that needs to be refreshed, or uuuh.. isn't there a proprietary IRC like thing for young people, something like Disco? Or Discom. Or Discord? Apparently it's much like IRC but without the freedom.

I use TheLounge which saves and display history for me.

Convos also does that.

I am still on IRC, have my own server, and use TheLounge as a client. We can paste mp3s, mp4s and images on the channels. It just works fine for us.

IRC still exists. There's nothing stopping anyone from joining a server and a few channels.

I face the same specific issue. I started with the French (Canada) layout years ago but now Windows sets the default to Multilingual/CSA because it has been made the official one by the government a number of years ago.

So now everyone that got used the "old" one has to fiddle with keyboard settings every time they use a new Windows session/computer.

And it's not exactly a breeze to switch, as Windows often keeps the multilingual one and switches back to it when you use a different application. Gotta make sure to delete the multilingual and leave only one layout. It's a real annoyance.

Why is it sad? No lawn to care about. No snow to remove in winter. No garbage day. No electricity bill. No roof or windows to change. No water heater to worry about.

I much prefer to rent than be stuck owning a condo where I have to deal with the other owners and plan maintenance. And I wouldn't want an "affordable" house that is much too big, in a suburb or in the middle of nowhere, where a car would be a necessity, and another thing to own (or rather pay for).

As far as I am concerned, owning a home is a social construct. A goal imposed on us by capitalism. Our collective dream, should be to own a home in the middle of nowhere before we're too old to have a family, with obviously, a car! But I never wanted to have a "death pledge", nor a family, nor a house, nor a stupid condo. Renting is perfectly fine for a whole lot of people. It's not something to be sad about. The only sad thing is that we don't have enough cheap housing of any kind for everyone.

Around here we have "half furnished" apartments that include appliances.

I've always lived in a place where they are included with the rent. So I don't have to move them up and down the stairs or the elevator every few years. Also, if they break, the landlord just change them.

To me, winning a refrigerator would be a burden. I'd have to store it and sell it. I'd prefer what it's worth in money.

Four to five weeks of vacation is pretty standard in Europe and I don't think it has anything to do with productivity. AFAIK, a German or Belgian would pretty much get the same amount of vacation. I'm in Montreal and the standard by law here is two weeks but my contract with a local employer is giving me four weeks. And, I'm still working when I'm working, even if I have some vacation time at some point?!

I took eight weeks this year. So you're saying I (or a French person?) am not getting anything done when I work, because I took some extended vacation time?

I know this behaviour from big corporations is not exclusive to French companies but my type of work allows me to work from home and I've never seen a company despise WFH so much than my once French employer.

This was before the pandemic and I had the habit of working from home with my previous employer when I was sick. When I changed employer to work for a French hosting company in Montreal, they were adamantly against WFH. Even if sick. They preferred that you missed a day (or two, you know, take your time to recover!1!!) from work, taking "generous" sick days, than letting anyone from the lower ranks WFH. This was a pretty big red flag for me. Anyway their work culture was pretty toxic and I ended up quitting after a few months, but the "no work from home even if sick" policy is the first thing that hit me when I started there.

My current employer allows me to WFH and I've been looking a bit around to see if I could find something else, but they mostly all seem to require some sort of hybrid schedules at the office now, which obviously sucks.

Unfortunately this one depends a lot where you live.

I never owned a car but I live in Canada and public transit sucks. Our provincial government is actively cutting funds to cities' public transit. And intercity routes are detained by VIA Rail or coach buses >!!<that sucks.

It's easier for me to go to the airport and in another country than move in my own province.

VIA Rail trains are infrequent, always late, pricey and most employees are jaded. They also don't take bikes. It's a problem. Sometimes you can get stuck as a prisoner on the train, without food, water or toilets for multiple hours.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/via-rain-passengers-stuck-1.7311176

Another one was stuck for 12 hours last year.

Coaches are cramped and also have very limited intercity services. The city I need to go to frequently only has three coaches a day at inconvenient times. They are usually full and they charge $15 to bring a bike.

I've been car free for 20 years but I've come to hate taking the train or coaches here. I'm slowly realizing that my province really really wants me to get a car.

Not in rescue mode. If you can't mount your root partition because something was fudged in /etc/fstab, for example, you may be stuck in recovery and depending on your distribution, it may not have nano in that minimalist mode.

For me it also happens when I install a VM of Debian using the small image, on my dedicated server in a data center. The company hosting the server requires a special network configuration and AFAIK, there's only vi. So i need to use the console to access the VM and from there, edit /etc/network/something with vi to setup the network. Once done I can reboot and install the rest of the software over the network, including nano.

I've been using Linux for more than two decades. Before nano I was using pico, but it also required to have pine/alpine installed. So knowing the basics of vi has often been helpful over the years for me.

Maybe it's because I like tinkering with VMs and SBCs, and most people will not encounter situations where they don't have nano, but it can happen. And you'll be glad to know at least "i" and ":wq!".