• 2 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 1 month ago
Cake day: April 2nd, 2025
  • who@feddit.orgtoLinux@programming.dev•[Linux Experience Report as a Blind Person] I Want to Love Linux. It Doesn’t Love Me Back: Post 1 – Built for Control, But Not for People — firebornEnglish
    156·
    3 days ago

    Running ALSA as root had one huge benefit

    Huh? ALSA is not a sound server, but a collection of kernel components and libraries. You don’t run it.

    With PipeWire or PulseAudio, audio is bound to a user session.

    PipeWire has a system-wide mode of operation. It wasn’t well-tested when I last asked about it, but it might be worth a try.

    GTK3 broke accessibility for years.
    GTK4 released with no accessibility support at all.

    This whole article is focused on GNOME and other GTK-based desktops. The only mention of KDE Plasma at all is to say that a certain GNOME fork (MATE) isn’t like it. This seems like a rather large oversight given that Qt, upon which Plasma is built, has accessibility features built in.

    So, nearly every criticism here is not about Linux after all, but about a specific desktop family. I hope the author eventually notices that others exist, tries them, and discovers things that work better in them. (And it would be nice if they were to post a more comprehensive follow-up article, or at least rephrase this one so that it doesn’t mislead people into thinking it represents the Linux desktop ecosystem as a whole.)

  • who@feddit.orgtoFree and Open Source Software@beehaw.org•How come nobody has forked Mumble to create a better Discord alternative?English
    17·
    4 days ago

    Okay, what’s the biggest and most active gamer community on Matrix?

    I don’t know, and don’t really care. I play games mostly with friends. Listening to a large chat room full of random people doesn’t appeal to me at all.

    Regardless of social preferences, I think you’ll find that there is no Discord alternative with public chat rooms as big and active as Discord’s, nor will there be any time soon. The network effect is strong there.

    Nevertheless, we can choose tools that serve us better, and invite others to join us when it’s practical. Ex-redditors have been doing this with Lemmy. Ex-Windows gamers have been doing this with Linux. Shifting away from an entrenched platform is usually slow and gradual, but not impossible.

  • who@feddit.orgtoFree and Open Source Software@beehaw.org•How come nobody has forked Mumble to create a better Discord alternative?English
    17·
    4 days ago

    Mumble is great, but there are some things that people have come to expect from group chat services that it is not designed to do. For example, running in a web browser, persistent message history, and multi-device access to a single account. Adding such things would be no small amount of work, which is probably the main rason it hasn’t been done. (And, of course, the changes required would make the result incompatible with Mumble.)

    Considering what exists today, I think Matrix has the best chance at becoming a Discord alternative. It already has a lot of the needed features. The new voice/video system (now in beta) looks very promising. And, of course, it also supports self-hosting and end-to-end encryption, both of which Discord lacks.