happyjack

Snap is one of the few reasons that made me ditch Ubuntu forever.

I don't know a ton about Canonical's business model, but was the idea to get everyone hooked on snap and then force a subscription out of it?

Snap is the antithesis of apt or dnf in regards to what I want out of a package manager.

This is my opinion on the matter, whether popular or not.

Yes, I'd rather own than rent. Instances I really don't mind paying a subscription for:

1) an open source product that has a free / freemium model where the base product is great, and the "extra" stuff is cheap like $10 a year (Bitwarden and Zotero came to mind) and well worth the extra $. I'll happily pay for that and think that's worth.

2) anytime hardware is involved. Email and storage services come to mind. You're spinning other peoples disks and using their servers. Shit breaks.

Things I despise paying subscriptions for:

1) desktop software that runs on your own hardware that comes with no support (Microsoft office, adobe, etc.) piss off Microsoft 365

2) desktop Linux. I love RHEL, but paying $175 a year forever to have a workstation with zero ticket support is annoying. I know developers gotta eat, but it's a big turn off. I know Macintosh computers are overpriced for the hardware but you get 10+ years of updates.

I think that's it for now?

I think this is a very likely scenario.

Kudos for the xfce team to keep up the project after all these years. I haven't used desktop Linux in a couple years, but xubuntu and Debian / xfce were always great experiences.

I think this project is really underrated, and I think xfce yo and attitudes towards interface are really good. It's also super stable!

One of the best comments I've read on this site, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Narratives and emotions run the world. Engineering / facts only come into play when there's liability to kill people or lose investors money.

Totally agree ... there is never such thing as a labor shortage; just a shortage of people who will choose to labor at the rate that is offered.

"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plan." - John Lennon

"Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change."- Tony Robbins

This article is amazing. It sums up my questions I had for why Libya was invaded / destroyed, as well as some commentary on Iraq.

I think it's really scary that the powers at be can destroy your 6 million person country overnight.

I vote using Renminbi instead of yuan. I mentally swap it with yen too often.

I'm kind of confused by his comment. Isn't it common knowledge (and even admitted) that American three letter agencies protect their interests at almost full cost?

The fbi had plans to assassinate MLK, and the cia led how many revolutions.

You realize that the CIA exist to keep international interests in line, and the FBI exists for domestic tranquility?

You're indeed 100% right. I think a lot of HN programmer bros miss this point ... that being forced to settle in dollars is not a formality ... it's the whole point!

This! This is the answer! Trading in dollars creates micro transactions where the USA can export inflation and much of its problems.

It is really interesting that the folks running the show in the USA are able to export a lot of the problems with the $ to the rest of the world. Caribbean nations know this first hand, and have given in to the peg.

I worked in oil, and now work in an industry where I sell parts worldwide. I'm not a trained economist, but deal with currency and transfer pricing with labor and goods.

Couple things: what a lot of people don't know or understand is that pretty much all transactions worldwide are intermediate by USD. Meaning, if a company in Sweden wants to buy something in Cameroon, the banks don't swap currency. They buy dollars with krona and then buy francs with the dollar.

This may seem "academic" on paper, but the world essentially has to deal with the dollar and the USA fed and its people with every transaction countries do! They're getting taxes each time they want to trade. Switzerland has purposely devalued its currency because the opposite happened: people were buying Swiss francs as a "safe" investment and not trading or circulating them. I digress ...

The only country I see that could actually disrupt the petro dollar is Russia. Russia is doing this on a small scale by forcing Europe to purchase energy in rubbles. Ghana? They may be seeing a three letter agency from the USA very soon ...

China? They do too much contract manufacturing for America, and no one wants yen or a currency from a dictatorship. Europe? Too much debt, and they would have to centralize spending (trying to do this with EU commission).

I still use last.fm. While I don't find use it's suggestion algorithms or radio function, I think it's amazing to look back at a particular time in my life and see what I was listening too. Or to show people via my profile what kind of music I like.

The only thing I'd wish it'd do is update my play counts from my Sony Walkman NWA.

I had so much fun on there. Scrobbling to last.fm on rhythmbox on Ubuntu Hardy Herron and reading stumble upon ....

Is it just me or was it just more fun back then?

Does anyone remember this site? Don't quote me on the years, but I remember it was absolute gold in 2008-2011 ish. Reminded me of the early web days and finding cool, indie shit online. Anyone have any history or fun facts? I'm assuming it went to shit when they tried to monetize it.

Any other substitutes out there? Would love to stumble on some new stuff.

Interesting comments. My dad was in the printing business. He did about every faction of it: printed ads for supermarket chain, bought / sold equipment worldwide, etc I also asked him why printers shunned digital printing in preference of offset printing. The digital printing could do everything! Saves ink! Customs jobs! Low volume jobs!

His answer "they can shut your machine down with the click of a mouse. You miss your payment? Shut off. New software update you don't want or need, but they can legally do? Pay or you're off.

Sucks for all the blue passports out there (USA).

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

I work in oil / gas. I really think it depends on your customer base, and how often you release updates and new features (you used the word boring a lot). Is the product finished, and you just anticipate maintenance? Do you have regular feature updates?

Typically, most of the software I deal with has one of the following payment models:

1) buy outright, maintenance / support fee (code, phone, email), and usually can use the last version you paid outright for

2) rent the software monthly (license is through a server or usb dongle with expectation date) great for consultants. Starting to see this model a lot + on demand computing via aws or whatever "cloud" you want

3) some sort of academic or consulting price. In my industry, consultants tend to get a discount or a lower rate since consultants often influence software purchases at the companies they consult for

Can you elaborate on your customer base and the cost of your software? For instance, at a large organization buying multiple seats / subscriptions that will typically go through procurement and the customer with haggle with the vendor on cost and maintenance contract.

If your software is $1000 and used by a 20 person office, that can be charged on the company credit card without raising an eye brow.

I used Linux as a daily driver for 7ish years. All flavors.

At the end of the day I pay the tax and buy Apple.

My 2 cents as someone who billed engineering work (not software) for 5 years (again, my experience and it is totally industry dependent!)

For every two hours of billed work, there's an hour of non billable work. There's admin, billing, reporting, business development, etc. that comes with being a contractor ... and that's if you're efficient!

Do you only have one project / client at a time? If so, bill 40 hours and don't bat an eye. Bill at the highest rate you can. My guess is this is the salary at a comparable position divided by 2000 hours ($100k per year is $50 per hour) and add 30% to it or whatever your overhead rate is. If you're talking lawyer rates (~$400 an hour) then yea, you need to bill in small increments and hire out your admin / other stuff to a staff.

Once you dedicate over half of your working hours to a single client / project the rate becomes a comparable employee plus 30%.

"Don't over complicate things, unless you're on Linux."

I love this comment.

I use Mega Sync. It's the best service I've ever used for a "Dropbox" solution. Has support for every OS and mobile imaginable, plus web client is good. It also has a terminal application in which you can set up a WebDAV server, etc. etc. and really "get behind the wheel" if you want. If you don't, the device applications are great! Too many features to list. oh, and it's cheap! I keep everything in the default folders on a Mac / Linux fresh install (documents, music, videos, templates etc.) and sync the whole thing across computers except for desktop folder and downloads folder.

My mailbox.org account came with a few GB of cloud storage. I'll put encrypted documents on there (like tax return) because it's soo easy to encrypt / decrypt on a browser with your GPG key with their web application.

I use Mac devices (iPhone, Mac book) and have a Linux workstation.

I worked as a petroleum engineer running reservoir simulations. While not a "developer" per se, I had to run FORTRAN binaries on a Linux cluster, know shell scripting, run servers, git for code tracking, writing reports in LaTeX, Linux desktop and dependency hell, list goes on. I did this in industry and research (corporate projects, Department of Energy) both as a consultant and full time employee for 9 years counting Internships.

How I got my job: I was an average student in college and can't interview. I've actually never gotten a job I've applied for, but I digress.

I emailed everyone in my home state for a job because I thought I wanted to live there when I was through with school. I lived in a small oil producing state, not a Texas. Long story short, I ended up emailing the lobbyist for the local coal council asking if he knew anyone in the o&g industry in my state and that I was a young college kid looking for an internship. He hooked me up with a local company and I got an internship, and ended up doing simulation and chemical research that universities love. Went back to college and networked with some professors and research groups there and got on a Department of Energy grant. Built skills / reputation and then went off solo consulting.

All this is to say while I enjoyed "the process" of messing around with computers, figuring things out, and going to engineering school, I don't enjoy it anymore. I hate the office life and looking at a screen all day, and politics and meetings. It's just not for me. I found out I really like turning wrenches and seeing physical things being built. I like "blue collar" work more.

I think I put up with it for as long as I did because I was chasing money. I wanted to save money, but it was also a measuring stick for "let's see how much I can charge and justify my ability."

Not sure if any of this helps or not.

I agree to a large extent with your comment. The "office" structure has changed a lot. Secretaries ran the show, and pretty much hand-held everyone in the office and kept the ship pointed in the right direction. Law firms and political offices still have this "outdated" model because if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Now, your company pays insane amounts of $ for software, systems, and data! You have to do your job, schedule your meetings, keep up with the ungodly amount of email, instant message, SLACK, enter the data in your CRM, talk on the phone, schedule the video meetings, etc. while also keeping track of your personal phone because your partner called or the school called and your dog is sick. There's just so much distraction now by not having "office hours" and having our whole lives in our pockets and constant reach that I think productivity has to go down. It's impossible to focus on anything for any amount of time anymore with how accessible we are expected to be.

I'm on mailbox.org . Been using them for 5+ years. I like it a lot! I use it for everything besides "cloud storage" (use Mega instead). Great for email, XMPP, etc.

Set up the DKIM with your DNS and you'll be fine with your own domain. Aliasing is great, too. There webmail / portal is okay (I use desktop / iOS instead). Help pages are really good.

This is probably the best comment thread I've seen on HN.

Mirrors the previous comment. Makes sense to invest in Workstation and help it sell to the big boys and show that they have "full service" solutions.

I have a legitimate question. How big is "desktop" Linux to RHEL (or Ubuntu, etc.) bottom line?

I ran RHEL 7 and 8 workstation when I used to work in engineering / science (not development or comp sci.) and used specialty simulation software and did a lot of Windows emulation via Virtualbox and programming in Octave and Mathematica. I really did enjoy RHEL workstation, and GNOME was a good daily driver. Lot of packages for RHEL (especially with rpm fusion + fusion tainted), although some can be very old. I used it for my 9-5, and even ran a laptop with CentOS. Without the need for specialty simulators, I've converted to the Apple world, though.

Server subscriptions pays the bills for RHEL (governments, banks, large companies, etc.). Is there a real market for "workstation?" Do they development a graphical OS as a community project? Anyone know the future of it? Are there enough paying customers at Universities and defense contractors using workstation that justify development of GNOME, Evolution, graphical programs, etc.?

Would love to hear people's thoughts.