That’s exactly why I always enable the Compose key. It’s the fastest and easiest way to just type a variety of Unicode glyphs. The key combinations trend to be intuitive as well.

There’s a good chance the default config file will have a pretty decent selection. Although I have edited the config in the past, I haven’t done it under KDE. The KDE article on setting up the compose key seems to say that KDE uses a different config file anyways.

Turning on the Compose key is pretty straightforward as I recall, just another setting under Keyboard settings. Finding that config file is still useful if you can’t guess the right combo for your desired glyph.

Very useful for using character common in math and science.

Not exactly what you may be looking for, but one of the first things I set up in Linux is the “Compose” key. Sun keyboards in the 90’s had a dedicated Compose key, and you can enable the functionality still. I usually set it to Right Alt.

The Compose key is kind of like an extended shift key, so ‘Compose’ + “c” + “/” for example will give you “¢”.

The key combinations and characters can be edited in a config file (can’t remember off the top of my head).

Not as versatile and an “Emoji picker”, but allows quick insertion of Unicode glyphs into text. Useful for ¢£€¥™×° type characters.

Australia? New Zealand? UK? Is CANZUK going to be a thing? Kind of got to know quick, Germany, France and Denmark just asked us out.

In all seriousness, I think this would be a great idea, with two caveats. First being, we aren’t that close to the other EU countries, because we aren’t in Europe. I don’t know how that would interact with the hypothetical benefits of EU membership. Being able to take a high speed train from Spain to Germany has as much to do with geography as it does EU membership. Sure, political reality means you can’t take a train from Poland to Belarus, but geography also means you can’t take a train from Poland to Sweden. Actually, I think there is a bridge/tunnel across the Orseund now. Point being I don’t think there is going to be a bridge from Canada to the EU anytime soon. Besides there

My second concern is that there is some risk to tying ourselves to the EU. Short term, we have seen per capita GDP stagnate in the EU and Canada. Assuming we also join the Eurozone, we also loose control of our own currency, offset by joining the second most “powerful” (Fungible? Useful?). This is a double-edged sword, but I think we are offering a lot of stability to the Eurozone, especially when compared to some other Southern/Eastern EU countries.

On balance, I think it’s worth it to pursue. Despite the drawbacks, Canada historically has been an exporter of raw materials, a “country of lumberjacks and hockey players”. Having a built in market for Canadian goods the size of the EU is just a plain benefit.

Google soft-forked Linux for Android (maintained in parallel IIRC) but re-merged into the mainline, presumably because why maintain a whole operating system?

In theory the Linux Foundation would keep Google, Microsoft, AMD, whoever playing nice with each other for mutual benefit and maintenance of Linux, but like you said, and the source of my worry, is who else would have Linus’ combination of prestige, principles, and perseverance?

I’m sure there are others who could fill the role, but even Linus is still bullying Nvidia with only partial success. The most vital role Linus probably has had for some time now is leadership. But even someone who might have superior soft-skills wouldn’t have the history, which certainly contributes to his authority.

Glad someone finally mentioned Bus Factor.

On topic, I wonder if Linux technically has a bus factor problem. In theory, anyone could fork, take all the source give and start making Johnix, Tomix, or Whosix. Everything is documented and all the code is available.

In the real world, you have multiple teams and individuals submitting code from all over the world. Sure you’ve got the Linux Foundation, but who would have the respect and authority to keep everyone contributing instead of forking off?

Didn’t think Knoppix was obscure, but that was my gateway to Linux first on all my personal PCs.

I guess the years have passed it by.

I remember when 128 but SSL Encryption was export restricted in the mid 90’s. When I first opened an online banking account, the Bank sent a CD with a customized version of Netscape Navigator with 128 bit SSL, and the bank logo in place of the Netscape N.

I think it was PS3 that shipped with “Other OS” functionality, and were sold a little cheaper than production costs would indicate, to make it up on games.

Only thing is, a bunch of institutions discovered you could order a pallet of PS3’s, set up Linux, and have a pretty skookum cluster for cheap.

I’m pretty sure Sony dropped “Other OS” not because of vague concerns of piracy, but because they were effectively subsidizing supercomputers.

Don’t know if any of those PS3 clusters made it onto Top500.

The police also knocked and only entered after he answered it sounded like. While certainly armed and probably prepared for something wild, they didn’t force entry with guns at the ready.

Once again, mostly comparing to videos of US police interactions, which is kind of weird as a non-USian commenting on a German police interrogation. Would be curious to see an “audit the audit” type review of this.

Respect. Only through destruction can we be purified.

VAX/VMS was still around then, and as far as I recall, that was the king for uptime.

Linux back then supported much less hardware. I can remember even in the early aughts, there was while families of popular wireless network chipsets that weren’t supported.

Pretty much exactly what happened to me. Mostly open source apps on Windows. Set up dual boot with Windows default. One day I noticed I was switching to Linux more often than not, so changed to Linux default.

I’ve got a 15 year old SD/USB combo card on my keychain. I plugged it into a TV around 6-7 years ago because there were a couple of kids movies on there.

I also know I have some Portable apps on there, but probably a little out of date

This has been my experience. I used Fedora for a while years ago, but rpm was already second fiddle to deb. Plus, I was already selling into my “old man distro” so I kept ending up with some Ubuntu version.

I did recently Manjaro and Linux Mint, but ended up with Ubuntu again, although this time Kubuntu, Ubuntu with KDE!

No shade from me though for going with Red Hat.

ISO 8601 ftw!

Filters out the casuals.

Yep, can confirm. I used Xubuntu primarily for years, and never had an account on the official XFCE forums or Git, because why would I? I’m just a user, the software is very stable, and stuff tended to just work.

Just started using Thunderbird again a couple of months ago. Like it! I never really stopped liking it, just stopped using it because all the webmail interfaces and “appification”.

Was just trying to get K-9 Mail working on my phone again (after years of using umpteen different apps) and it’s not as smooth as I remember.

I’m with you.

I sort of petered out distro-hoping 10-ish years ago, I’ve just used boring old Ubuntu LTS ever since. All the Unity/Gnome/KDE, Snap/Flatpak and systemd stuff I’ve successfully ignored.

I have no doubt that there are “better” distros out there, but Ubuntu works.

It wouldn’t be terrible, as long as it’s based on an open source foundation. Although that depends on the specific open source license. As long as the engine can be forked, the worst of IE6 should be avoidable.

But yes, with Opera moving to Blink, you’ve got really only two-ish browser engines. KHTML/WebKit/Blink and Gecko. WebKit/Blink are Open Source, but I think mostly BSD, so Apple/Google could migrate to a proprietary license easily.

Gecko is MPL, which IIRC is somewhat Copyleft like the GPL, just a bit less stringent.

With the Apple/Google impasse with WebKit/Blink, I think we should be able to avoid an IE6 situation, but I would feel better with a stronger Copyleft license.

As much as I love Firefox, I think Firefox has less browser share than it did back in the IE6 days.