Recently built https://entrycast.com/ - there are other products kind of like it on the market already but I had some specific use cases I wanted personally, and decided rather than making it just for me, I'd for the first time in my life make it something others could buy too. No customers so far, but I don't really mind, to be honest!
I would argue that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Adding a cost to commenting that requires aging accounts I think might discourage fly by night operations and "experiments".
Gnome Shell in particular offers a ridiculously coherent, sane window management. Nobody agrees with all the choices the Gnome Team took to get here, but it sure is nice there being one way of doing everything that makes sense contextually.
I don't even know if Gnome and Gnome Shell are the same thing. One thing I do know is the default install of Gnome on Debian 13 leaves you without a dock, without a system tray, and without minimize/maximize buttons. They purposely remove the three most important tools the average user relies on for navigation.
It's like trying to make a car without any round edges because "square edges are better". Good luck with the wheels!
I can fix that somewhat with extensions, but every normal person I know will take one look at the defaults and abandon it. That's a reasonable choice in my opinion. Why use something where the first interaction gives you a clear indication you're going to be fighting against developer ideology?
If you want to customize your DE a lot - Gnome isn't for you.
If you just want a clean and productive environment by default... Gnome is great.
Once you stop fighting it, sigh, and go with the flow... modern Gnome is genuinely pleasant in that I spend almost zero time thinking about it, and shit just works.
I still run other DEs for some specific purposes where "general use" isn't the goal, but I can reliably hand non-technical family members a machine with Gnome and they don't have to come ask me a bunch of questions.
My problem with GNOME (after having used it as my main desktop on my Linux systems for many years) is that it removes some really useful features and they are not just expert features, but also features that non-technical users are used to, such as system tray icons and menu bars. You can bring them back with GNOME Extensions, but for instance, the system tray icon extensions are very buggy.
KDE on the other hand just has these and is also great out-of-the-box (I pretty much run stock KDE).
literally the only two reasons I still have windows on my laptop currently are fusion360 and apex legends. I was happily playing Apex Legends on Linux for years until EA decided to disable Linux support due to "cheating". While I understand their concerns, I can't say as a regular player the cheating problem is any better or worse than it was before they removed Linux support.
As for fusion360... Freecad is getting mighty good these days...
It's not free but...zw3d has full* native Linux support. You'd be forgiven for not knowing this because they only offer it on their Chinese website, even though it comes complete with a fully localized English version that you just have to switch on in the settings.
* Integrations with online parts libraries don't seem to work (don't know why they didn't bother, as it looks like it just spawned a web browser anyway), and the simulation add-ons aren't available either, but the main program itself is equivalently functional.
I love this sorta stuff! I once had my blog hosted on a docker container on my Robot Vacuum. I switched back to a saner host when I started getting uptime alerts when the vacuum went under my bed and lost wifi signal!
text of tweet: So I bought a networked printer recently and as you do decided to try connecting to it a few different undocumented ways. I tried telneting to it. It turns out that whatever you type, it prints typewriter style. That was a pleasant and hilarious surprise. #internetofshit
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