From 6aad100966eb0dd94ccbf6f32a4f2907fa4db903 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: speedie Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2023 12:33:55 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] blog.php now generates RSS feeds --- blog.php | 65 ++- rss.xml | 1478 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---------- 2 files changed, 1262 insertions(+), 281 deletions(-) diff --git a/blog.php b/blog.php index 1473aef..807770d 100644 --- a/blog.php +++ b/blog.php @@ -15,8 +15,10 @@ spl_autoload_register(function($class){ use md\MarkdownExtra; define('BLOG_PATH', dirname(__FILE__). '/articles'); - define('BLOG_EXT', 'md'); +define('BLOG_TITLE', "speedie's blog"); +define('BLOG_DESC', "speedie's blog, about stuff I want to talk about."); +define('BLOG_URL', "https://speedie.site/blog"); define('BASE_URI', str_replace('/index.php', '', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'])); define('SELF', $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']); @@ -231,25 +233,24 @@ $action = isset($_REQUEST['action']) ? $_REQUEST['action'] : 'view'; $newPage = ""; $text = ""; $html = ""; +$rss = ""; -if ($action === 'view') { - $page = preg_match('@^/@', @$_SERVER["PATH_INFO"]) ? - urldecode(substr($_SERVER["PATH_INFO"], 1)) : urldecode(@$_REQUEST['page']); - $page = sanitizeFilename($page); +$page = preg_match('@^/@', @$_SERVER["PATH_INFO"]) ? + urldecode(substr($_SERVER["PATH_INFO"], 1)) : urldecode(@$_REQUEST['page']); +$page = sanitizeFilename($page); - if ($page != '') { - $filename = fileNameForPage($page); +if ($page != '') { + $filename = fileNameForPage($page); - if ( file_exists($filename) ) { - $text = file_get_contents($filename); - } else { - $newPage = NULL; - include('php/404.php'); - die(); - } + if ( file_exists($filename) ) { + $text = file_get_contents($filename); } else { - $action = 'home'; + $newPage = NULL; + include('php/404.php'); + die(); } +} else { + $action = 'home'; } if ( $action === 'home') { @@ -266,9 +267,43 @@ if ( $action === 'home') { // Page list $date_format = __('date_format', TITLE_DATE); + // Create the RSS feed + $rss .= "\n"; + $rss .= "\n"; + $rss .= " ". BLOG_TITLE ."\n"; + $rss .= " ". BLOG_DESC ."\n"; + $rss .= " \n"; + foreach ($filelist as $pageName => $pageDate) { + $pubDate = date('r', strtotime(getDateForPage($pageName, $date_format, $pageDate))); + $link = pageURL($pageName, $pageName); + $filename = fileNameForPage($pageName); + $text = file_get_contents($filename); + + $description = toHTML($text); + + $rss .= "\n"; + $rss .= " $pageName\n"; + $rss .= " $link\n"; + $rss .= " $link\n"; + $rss .= " $pubDate\n"; + $rss .= " \n"; + $rss .= " \n"; + $rss .= " \n"; + $rss .= "\n"; $html .= "

".pageLink($pageName, $pageName).", written ".getDateForPage($pageName, $date_format, $pageDate)."

\n"; } + + // End the RSS feed + $rss .= "\n"; + $rss .= "\n"; + + if (file_get_contents('rss.xml') != $rss) { + file_put_contents('rss.xml', $rss); + echo "GNU"; + } } else { // convert the page and view it $html .= empty($text) ? '' : toHTML($text); } diff --git a/rss.xml b/rss.xml index 605269e..2cd1028 100644 --- a/rss.xml +++ b/rss.xml @@ -1,293 +1,1239 @@ speedie's blog - https://speedie.site/blog - Note that these are archived blog posts and are only here because deleting blog posts is dumb. - + speedie's blog, about stuff I want to talk about. + - Normies are destroying GNU/Linux - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Normies+are+destroying+GNU+Linux - https://speedie.site/articles/post50.php - Thu, 09 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - So, because this blog post marks blog post number 50, and because the first blog post is 1 year old today, I thought to celebrate I'd do a rewrite of my first blog post, which still holds true, actually more so than when I intially wrote it. Granted, the original blog post is terrible, it was fueled out of frustration and nothing more so let's give the topic the chance it deserves.

-

As well all know, GNU/Linux is an operating system and it has always been the outcast, it has always been less popular than other operating systems like Windows and macOS. Out of the outcast operating systems like BSD, Haiku and more however, it's pretty popular and it's growing in popularity. While this may seem like a good thing at first, when you actually dig deeper into what that means for GNU/Linux, you'll find many problems and I want to talk about those today.

-

So let's go back into the early days. Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel, which was used in combination with the GNU project. This means we now have a completely free software operating system. Great, now we don't have to use spyware nonfree software that doesn't respect your freedom anymore and everything is good for the small userbase. Previously GNU/Linux followed the UNIX philosophy rather closely, which is what made it so great. Of course there were exceptions to this rule, such as X11 (and today Wayland), however most software was minimal, and closely followed the UNIX philosophy like it was a religion, as that was expected out of software.

-

As GNU/Linux got more mainstream and normies got their hands on it, this freedom, this minimalism, all this stuff that made GNU/Linux so great started to disappear. When normies found this free operating system, naturally being normies they didn't want to actually learn anything about minimalism and free software, and certainly didn't want to enjoy any of the perks of it. Instead of that, they initially whined and complained about how it was different from what they're used to. And we, members of the GNU/Linux community in response did everything in our power to make the "Year of the GNU/Linux desktop" happen. Except..

-

We didn't. In response to normies complaining, we as a community at large started developing garbage, bloated software that throws everything that makes GNU/Linux and UNIX in general so great in the trash. We're no longer using text streams, we're no longer writing quality software with quality code, instead we're focusing on developing libraries on top of libraries that just add bloat to a project and create huge basically packages of software in an effort to please normies who refuse to appreciate the beauty of UNIX-like operating systems and just wanted to stick to what they're familiar with.

-

Here's the thing, If you're this kind of person who doesn't want to learn GNU/Linux, you don't want to learn about UNIX-like operating systems and you don't want to spend any time out of your day learning this stuff then why even bother using a new operating system in the first place? At that point, you might as well stick with Windows or macOS. But alright, fine. We can still have our section of the GNU/Linux community where traditional UNIX/Minimalist views are still appreciated, right? Well, no because eventually programmers start writing software which of course depends on all this normie software which is absolutely awful and now it becomes almost impossible to have a functioning system on GNU/Linux without this garbage software.

-

I haven't given any examples yet, but in my first version of this blog post I referred to Snaps, AppImages and Flatpaks, and while those do still meet the criteria here (although not in the present), I want to give some more examples which might make more sense. First, systemd. systemd is a collection of tools for GNU/Linux, and although many people hate systemd because it is "an init system", it is really a suite of tools. Therefore calling it bloated is not justified. However what is justified is valid criticism towards it. systemd provides a tool named "logind". So many programs depend on this, it is pretty much impossible to have a modern GNU/Linux system without this program installed on your computer. Now, that should be taken with a grain of salt because there are many different implementations of this tool, and those of you that use Gentoo may be familiar with one implementation called elogind. Still, I think this is an excellent example of dependencies that are used so much you cannot escape them.

-

But there are so many programs like these that we can't really escape, and the cause of these programs existing is usually the same. Normies want "easy" software, so in response we write terrible software which a normie will think is easy because Windows is terrible. However the worst of it came around the time Linus Tech Tips and all these other well known technology "entertainment" channels started covering GNU/Linux and giving it attention. When that happened and Windows/Mac users gave this OS a proper chance, developers around here scrambled to write as much normieware as possible to please these new users in the hopes of converting them into GNU/Linux users. Of course this failed, and just resulted in more terrible software.

-

I call this the "gaming wave", because suddenly all these gamers (often with NVIDIA graphics cards) came over here, because that's what Linus Tech Tips' fanbase is and wanted to play games. Of course, this failed because despite the effort from the people who play games around here, most GNU/Linux users don't really play games. In fact I barely play games myself anymore. I have nothing against people who play games, but the people who play games on GNU/Linux certainly have some blame to take here.

-

Lastly, before I end off this blog post I want to mention a few things regarding Wayland. In short, I'm definitely against it and that's for a few reasons. Wayland brings a lot of good things to the table, such as a cleaner codebase, less screen tearing, perhaps HDR support in the future, and so on and all that is fine by me. No complains there. Where the problem starts to show however is from a developer perspective. Yes, the Wayland display protocol is more minimal than X11 (that's not really an achievement) but a lot of that is because the Wayland mess has been moved over to the compositor forcing any developers to write thousands of lines of just absolute junk. This is absolutely terrible, and until the developers of Wayland change direction (highly doubt they will), I'm sticking with X11 until it's no longer feasible to do so.

-

Either way, that's what I wanted to say, stop using all of this stupid software whenever possible, and become a based GNU/Linux minimalist. I plan on getting a page up on replacements for stupid software which will kind of act as a guide on how to get into GNU/Linux minimalism for those of you that fell for this stupid software. If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to send me an email.. and have a good rest of your day.

+ Host your own services NOW + /blog.php/Host+your+own+services+NOW + /blog.php/Host+your+own+services+NOW + Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Host your own services NOW - ]]> - - - - Important site update (and the Matrix) - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Important+site+update+%28and+the+Matrix%29 - https://speedie.site/articles/post51.php - Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - I'm going to keep this one short and to the point. As some of you may know, my domain is going to expire. It is going to expire on the 31st of March 2023, which is not far from today and that's what I'm going to talk about.

-

For those of you that don't know, my website uses a "free" TLD (top level domain). This seemed like a good option last year, but as I want to continue this stuff, it presents a problem. Freenom is the company that provides the .gq TLD, along with a few more domains such as .tk. Freenom has shown themselves to be problematic, and they have done things like taking away domains from people after the websites have become too popular. Renewing their domains is also difficult and annoying, and even then doesn't work all the time for all people.

-

Because of this, I decided to write this blog post, and to make sure my readers have a place to keep up with me if my website does collapse, I've created a Matrix channel which I recommend you join. You can join it here. You can start with Element, it's all free software unlike the previous Discord server.

-

I don't plan on making this a big thing like Forwarder Factory was, and in fact I don't want that either. This is simply going to be a small place for me to talk to my readers, discuss the website and other things like that.

-

Either way, my domain expires March 31st if I'm unable to renew it. If I manage to renew it, you can continue using the site like normal for an additional year. Otherwise, I'm simply going to purchase a new domain. I do not yet have another domain, which is why I recommend you join the Matrix channel.

-

That's really all I wanted to say, as the writer here I think it is important that you are informed about everything. My website code is all available for free on Codeberg so you can still have that if you want. Thanks for reading, have a good day!

- ]]> - - - - Friendship ended with Gentoo, now Arch is my best friend! - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Friendship+ended+with+Gentoo%2C+now+Arch+is+my+best+friend - https://speedie.site/articles/post52.php - Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - Alright so I have a brief announcement or something today and that is, I have officially stopped using Gentoo. Yes that's right, the Gentoo elitist is now an Arch cuck. But why, why would you commit such a crime you might say? Well, Gentoo has actually been giving me more and more problems for months now, and it doesn't seem to get any better.

-

I've had so many dumb issues with Gentoo recently, such as Xft fonts being broken, packages failing to emerge, --depclean removing my entire system, and the final straw, gnome-keyring issues that just do not occur on other GNU/Linux distributions. In case you're not aware, I have been using Arch on my laptop for months now, and while Arch has some annoying issues such as GPG keys constantly breaking pacman when updating, I find that it works much better now.

-

To make matters worse for Gentoo, syncing the repositories takes a very long time, and it's valuable time that I do not want to spend just because a program is slow and written in Python. Moving over to Arch was not difficult though. I said 'fuck it' yesterday at around 04:00 in the morning, and started installing Arch over Gentoo. Thankfully, as you guys know I have an arch repository containing nearly the same programs as my gentoo repository (overlay), and as such I was able to install my config files and all my programs using one command. It's super nice, otherwise I would've probably spent much more time on this.

-

Anyways, as for my overlay, I will probably update it every once in a while using maybe a docker container, but I'm going to be focusing on the arch repository because it's what I'm using. For those of you that actually use Arch, this might be good news for you because it means you will always be able to install my software using pacman. I know that some of you will probably be disappointed about this, because I'm kind of known as a Gentoo user at this point, but I just can't take Portage's stupidity anymore. If you need to however, feel free to remove my feed!

-

I also took the time to move /home to a separate partition, which is really nice if you want to reinstall quickly. Whatever, that's all I needed to say with this blog post. Have a good day!

- ]]> - - - - I switched back to Microsoft, here's why! - https://speedie.site/blog.php/I+switched+back+to+Microsoft+Windows%2C+here%27s+why - https://speedie.site/articles/post53.php - Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - As you guys may know if you have been a speedie.site reader for a while, I was a Gentoo user, and recently I switched to using Arch full time. However, I am yet again switching operating system because I just found out Windows is the best operating system ever made.

-

Linux sucks, but Windows is awesome!

-

Now, most of you probably use some open source Linux distribution on your computer. But Linux is open source, and that's bad. That means Russian hackers can steal your porn collection because of course they can see all the source code and backdoor it. When you're using Microsoft Windows on the other hand, the only one who can access your data is Microsoft, who will send that data to the NSA. This also makes sure your data is safe, and that you're following the law like any good citizen. When I'm using Windows I feel safe and no malware has access to my data. The same cannot be said for Linux or any other open source operating system

-

These Linux users who never go outside or shower will say that this is malicious, or that it is spyware, or any other nonsense but the fact of the matter is the government already knows everything about you anyway. You should not care about privacy if you have nothing to hide, so of course Linux users have a lot to hide. The government would never do anything bad anyway, they only want the best for you.

-

Tiling window managers suck

-

Why would you use a tiling window manager? Only hackers use those. Tiling window managers are also really hard to use, I mean think about all the keybinds you need to remember to get good at using one.

-

What about speedwm? I'm just kidding, I've been secretly using GNOME for years, and I was never using speedwm in the first place. Hating Wayland? Actually, I've been using a Wayland session on GNOME for a long time now. As we all know, X11 is old and slow, and it's not written in Rust so that makes it instantly bad. spmenu? It's just rofi with a theme.

+

2023-06-24

-

C programming language? Hell no, it's so hard to learn and it's so old. Real programmers use JavaScript for the frontend and Rust for the backend. Recently though, I've started using C# which is superior to both of these in every way. We all love Micorsoft.

-

Vim is only used by furries, neckbeards and weirdos

-

Vim is a meme Linux users force onto new users. In reality, Vim is hard to use and it's so slow, I can't even figure out how to exit it. If I can't even exit it, how can I use it to write code? Why wouldn't you just use a mouse anyway? It's not 1983 anymore, we have modern, proper computers for real people now. The only people who still use Vim are neckbeards who want to look cool on the internet but in reality don't have a life.

-

Visual Studio Code on the other hand is the greatest code editor ever and it's what I've been using for months now, while people were under the impression that I'm an avid Vim user. It's "open source" so that the Linux neckbeards will use it, but uses a mouse, because it's 2023 and if you're not using a mouse for everything except typing, you're lost in the past. It also supports JavaScript plugins and has a lot of Microsoft telemetry, so they know you're doing a good job writing programs for the future.

+

I talk a lot about freedom, privacy and free software on this blog, but today +I want to talk about hosting your own services. But why should you host your +own services? Isn't that really scary and difficult? Doesn't it require very +powerful hardware? No, not really and I'm going to talk about some of +the benefits here.

-

Installing programs

-

Linux users claim that using their terrible package managers is better than downloading executables from the internet directly. This is just not true, because the package managers can be hijacked remotely by Russia to spread propaganda to all of the users. This doesn't happen when you download random executables from the internet, because Microsoft Defender is guarding your computer, and has a 100% success rate. As soon as malware tries to attack your computer, Microsoft Defender is there to stop it.

-

Software minimalism

-

Software minimalism is all a big joke. Why do you need your computer to use 100MB of system RAM idle? Unused RAM is wasted RAM. Microsoft makes sure to leave no RAM wasted, which makes it much better. Unlike suckless, Microsoft makes feature complete software that normal people can use. In fact, suckless is just a software project created by Microsoft's worst employees created to trick Linux users into thinking Linux is unusable, thus getting them to move over to Windows. Microsoft makes sure people join the beautiful land of Windows, where no one falls for memes, and everyone is secure.

-

Conclusion then. After I found out Windows is better than Linux, I have decided to stop working on my meme projects, and join Bill Gates in helping him build the best operating system for normal people. Linux furries and neckbeards, join the land of Microsoft today, stop using the Matrix meme, come back to Discord, assist Microsoft and the NSA in catching criminals, and become a real member of society today. It's only a $100 operating system.

- ]]> - - - - News/important update regarding the site - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Important+update+regarding+the+site - https://speedie.site/articles/post54.php - Fri, 14 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - I will keep this one short so you can actually read through it. Yesterday (13/04/2023) I purchased a domain, because as we all know I do not trust Freenom to keep my site up. This domain is a lot more reliable, however it does mean you will have to swap out '.gq' for '.site'. I have redirected some parts of my site. I have redirected the main speedie.gq domain, and I have also redirected rss.xml so that RSS readers won't complain. You should still change the URL, however if you exclusively consume my website through RSS you will get the message anyway because of this. Finally I redirected the wiki.

-

Switching over is not hard. The page is identical, and although SSL was not functioning earlier today, I have resolved the issue. So to switch over, just replace 'speedie.gq' with 'speedie.site'. This is especially important if you use Arch and my repository. If you do, you must edit /etc/pacman.conf and replace the URL. There may be a few sharp edges as of now, as I simply ran a few sed commands on the old site without looking through it properly, if there are issues please email me so it gets fixed. I should also add I moved from Nginx to Apache a few days ago, so the speedie.site wiki and the speedwm wiki should be functional again.

-

Anyway, that was just a short blog post about something relatively important. I will probably keep the speedie.gq domain updated as well, but I cannot guarantee it will work properly. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, or simply join the Matrix space. Either way, that's it, have a good rest of your day!

- ]]> - - - - Why most blogs suck - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Why+most+blogs+suck - https://speedie.site/articles/post55.php - Wed, 19 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - Now that most of my issues regarding this site are resolved, I want to start writing about something. I have a lot of topics I want to talk about, however for many of these topics there's just not much content to them, so I apologize for the length of some of these.

-

Anyways what better topic to start with than this one. My blog isn't perfect, I post a lot of garbage here quite often, but what pisses me off is when people will write blog posts, have an RSS feed and then ruin it with one thing. They will put about 1/10 of the blog post in the description tag, and then they will have the blog post in full on their website.

+

Alright so let's talk a bit about why you should host your own stuff and what +you can host. There are many different services you can host. I'm hosting my +website, some files, a Git server, wiki, email server and might host more in +the future. But there are many cool things you can host, such as a Matrix +homeserver, IRC network, SearX instance, PeerTube, NextCloud, it goes on +and on. I won't be talking much about the specific services you can host today. +But why should you host all of this stuff? Why not just use Gmail, or a +public SearX instance, or GitHub, or any of these public services?

-

This is extremely annoying, because it means I have to open up my bloated web browser just to view your blog post which could normally be read using my RSS reader, which is designed for reading blog posts. What if I want to read your blog post on the command line? Or what if I want to read your blog post when I don't have internet?

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Good RSS readers like Newsboat and sfeed store the full feed locally, meaning you can actually read the articles even when you don't have any internet connection. But when you force me to go to your website, I can't just save it when I do have internet and read the blog post whenever I want to read it.

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Now, I know why you would do this. If you have a site, chances are you want people to visit it. RSS is convenient, very convenient and I'm going to admit I don't actually visit the sites for blogs I follow very often, usually I read the feeds every day and then very occasionally visit the websites. But I still think this is annoying.

+

It's because as the sysadmin, you are very powerful and have a lot of power +over your users and your services, and my site and services are no exception. +You have power over everyone that uses your site and services. The ability to +delete their accounts, look at what they're doing, all of these different +things that you have no control over. When you host your own services though, +the only one who is going to be able to see what you upload to your server is +you (and your VPS provider if you're hosting using a VPS). Maybe other people +can see it if they manage to compromise your server or you let your web server +serve content that you don't want public. But in general, you're the only one +who is going to be able to see that.

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So, if you're going to have a blog and you plan on using RSS, please provide the full blog post in the description tag. I know this can cause issues with paragraphs, but you can steal my feed as a base if you want. Thanks for reading, and have a good day.

- ]]> - - - - Why I don't use Wayland (and how it can be improved) - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Why+I+don%27t+use+Wayland+%28and+how+it+can+be+improved%29 - https://speedie.site/articles/post56.php - Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - Today I want to talk about Wayland, and why I don't use it. In case you're a normie and don't know what Wayland is, Wayland is this new display protocol created by the people over at Freedesktop. They want it to be better than the display protocol most GNU/Linux users are already using called X11. While I'm not against the idea of a new display protocol, in my opinion Wayland is a failure, and it fails at doing everything X11 did right, and that's what I want to talk about here. Note that most of this will be from a developer's perspective; if you're using GNOME, KDE or maybe even one of the many wlroots based compositors, your experience on Wayland is probably going to be pretty good.

-

Terminology

-

First, let's talk terminology. On X11 we have something called a 'Window manager', and as the name implies it manages your window. The window manager is the root window, meaning it's the first window. Other than that, it's just like any other window you may have. This is quite powerful, because it means in theory anything can be a window manager. You can try this for yourself on Xorg and xinit by running startx /usr/bin/firefox. What you should have is an X11 session with only firefox open and nothing else. This is why we have window managers, they allow us to spawn more windows and place those windows whereever we want. Even desktop environment users have a window manager, because your desktop environment comes bundled with one.

-

On Wayland and X11, we have something called a compositor. Let's ignore Wayland's definition completely for now. On a basic level, the compositor provides fancy effects such as transparency, rounded corners with anti-aliasing, shadows, animations and other things you may or may not want. One of the most popular compositors today is called Picom, and most standalone window manager users use it, if they use a compositor at all. This works by creating buffer where these effects are added, and then displaying the buffer to the user. This is why older machines may feel slow when a compositor is running, it's just not displaying that buffer quickly enough.

-

In X11, a client is pretty much the same thing as a window. I am going to be using the term 'window' throughout this blog post, but client is what I usually use when referring to an X11 window.

-

'Xorg' is an implementation of the X11 protocol, and it's the implementation most users are using. There are other ones like XFree86, but most users use Xorg.

-

The compositor problem

-

This is where Wayland's problem for me comes in. On X11 these two components are separate, so I can pick and choose each component and just combine what I like. With Wayland, they have decided to combine the compositor and window manager into one program, which to make it even more confusing is also called a compositor. Now, why is this so bad?

-
    -
  • Less modular
    • -

    By combining the compositor and window manager, you're slowly making the display stack less and less modular. The days of choosing your compositor and choosing your window manager are now gone. It's all one big program, meaning even if you avoid desktop environments you're still going to have one big program that does everything. This is just not the way forward if you ask me. I believe the main reason for this is "making the desktop easier for new users", but at this point the GNU/Linux community should give up on new users who aren't willing to learn our technology.

    -
  • Window managers are so complex
    • -

    It is incredibly easy to make an X11 window manager, because again it's a window like any other. You really just need to create a window, read atoms and finally move/resize windows around. On Wayland you now also need to implement a compositor, which adds a lot of complexity and room for failure. Even one of the more minimal Wayland compsitors dwl, a dwm rewrite for Wayland has many more lines of code than the original dwm, because now you also need to do the compositing yourself. Not to mention, if you're using a minimal compositor like dwl, you can't have fancy effects and a minimal window manager, that's just not possible anymore, at least as of now.

    -

    This added complexity led to libraries like wlroots being created, and its slogan really says it all; "about 60,000 lines of code you were going to write anyway". However even with wlroots you still need to implement compositing, there's no way to have a separate compositor with your window manager.

    -
  • No, a Wayland compositor is not a window like any other.
    • -

    As I said earlier, a window manager on X11 is a window like any other. The only difference is it's the first window spawned (root window), and it is responsible for creating, resizing and displaying all other windows, although this is technically not a requirement. This is good because you can for example startx /usr/bin/firefox and have an X11 session that runs Firefox. Nothing else, just Firefox. This goes for any graphical program such as your terminal emulator, text editor, Emacs, etc. On Wayland, this is not possible, because windows do not implement compositing whatsoever. They are only responsible for creating themselves.

    -
  • How about no compositor
    • -

    I think this is worth mentioning as well. A lot of X11 users simply don't use a compositor at all. They deem it unnecessary, and it makes sense. If you don't need transparency, fancy effects, Vsync and other nice features like that, why should you waste your system resources on a compositor? Good luck omitting the compositor when you're using Wayland. You can't.

    -
-

Those are the problems that come as a result of combining the compositor and window manager. While I'm sure there could be benefits to combining the compositor and window manager as well, I just cannot think of a single reason.

-

What change do I want to see?

-

I want a more minimal display protocol. Wayland is more minimal so I think it passes here. What I also want is a more modular display protocol, and this is where Wayland seems to fail. X11 did this right, but I want it even more modular than X11. Everything should be separate, as long as it doesn't harm the user experience. Not to mention, more modular software is usually more secure, because each module is much smaller and easier to maintain.

-

I also want a library which allows creating BOTH X11 and Wayland clients without writing any extra code for it. This would be ideal, although I'm sure there are potential challenges from doing it this way. You might say, "Just use GTK or QT" but they also require writing extra code for Wayland or X11 support. This leads to developers not supporting one or the other.

-

For example, I want to add Wayland support into spmenu. I'd be happy to do so, but the problem is it would require rewriting the code for creating the window, handling events, keybinds, clicks, drawing, mapping, and more. It's just not something I want to deal with, which is why I've chosen to not write any of my software to use Wayland native libraries. There is XWayland, but to my knowledge there's no such thing in reverse.

-

Conclusion

-

I want to mention that I'm very much open-minded towards a new display protocol. I'm all for a new, more minimal, more stable display protocol. It's just that Wayland makes it a pain to write compositors, and in many ways it's a downgrade from X11, which is really old I might add. That's not to say Wayland has no improvements and X11 is perfect. The most popular X11 implementation, Xorg is extremely bloated and has a lot of legacy code that really doesn't matter today and the protocol itself is probably not much better.

-

It also has absolutely horrible security. But all things considered, I think X11 just has much better ideas on what the desktop should be than Wayland does. If Wayland improves the things I don't particularly like, I may end up switching to it. But as of now, X11 works fine for me and the benefits of Wayland just aren't worth it, so I am going to be sticking with X11. If you know of any solution to this problem, I'd love to hear it, and I'd love to give Wayland a proper chance.

-

Thank you for reading, have a good day!

+

Let's take a public SearX instance for example. Let's say you visit +searx.speedie.site and use it as your primary engine. Now, this search engine +does not exist because I host my SearX instance locally but anyways, if you visit +my SearX instance and use it to search for things, I have the power to log the +search queries you search for, and I have the ability to see all the anime pornography +you search for with great shame. Do you really trust me to not look at your +search queries? No? So why should you trust any other SearX instance or hell, +even Google for that matter. For this reason, you should take matters into your +own hands and host your own services that you have control over. That way, +you have the power to customize anything and everything about the service you're +hosting, shut it down at any time to perform maintainence, set up logging, +shred all logs and log absolutely nothing, etc.

- ]]> - +

But, doesn't hosting your own services require spending a lot of money? Doesn't +it require a very powerful computer? No. If you want to host many, massive big +files on a VPS or server that you rent, you may not have that much disk space. +But even if that's the case you can host from home on a cheap old Dell Optiplex +or maybe even a Raspberry Pi and just connect storage to it. I'm hosting a Git +server using Gitea, and all the repositories Gitea handles combined only takes +up approximately 870MB. And my public folder where I host downloads to all my +software only takes up about 30MB. That really isn't much, and you can host +that and much, much more on a cheap VPS. And the spmenu wiki I host takes up +31MB. So unless you want to host many, massive files I think making the +argument that you don't have space is ridiculous. Any desktop computer +from.. say 2008 or later is going to be able to handle hosting your site, +and the terrible hard drive it has is going to be able to hold all of +your files as well.

+ +

You can get a cheap VPS from Vultr for $3.50, and you can get a domain for +usually very cheap as well. I went with Namecheap for my domain name, and they +seem quite reliable and not very expensive. If you want to get a VPS from +Vultr, feel free to use my referral link. +There are other VPS companies though, and I still recommend hosting from home +if you are able to, and your ISP reliably allows you to because it's likely still +going to be a bit cheaper, but more importantly means you avoid the ability for +your VPS provider to look at the contents of the virtual hard disk, and you are +able to use more disk space. You have a lot more freedom that way. Still, a VPS +is not a bad choice if you just want to host a few services and your personal +site, but it's probably not the best option if you want to host NextCloud or a +lot of big files or use it as a media server or anything like that. It also +makes a lot more sense if you want to, for instance set up a VPN. Doing that +on your own network doesn't make much sense unless you use the VPN away from home.

+ +

I won't get into hosting from home as that isn't something I'm familiar +with (although I might try it at some point), and I also won't get into more +complex setups or containers, just the basics. While I'm not a particularly big +fan of Debian based GNU/Linux distributions, simply because of their old +packages and the apt-get package manager, it's a fairly good choice if you want +things to just work and serve your content all day every day. Despite not really +liking Debian very much, it's what this website is hosted on, along with my +other services I have.

+ +

When I'm using a VPS, I usually start by adding a new user and giving him a +password. Then I usually install doas because it's smaller and has had fewer +vulnerabilities than the more bloated sudo that people use. Then I will copy +over my SSH keys to that user's .ssh directory. Finally, I always disable +authentication using passwords for SSH, and more importantly I disable SSH as the +root user. I do this because the root user is present on almost every machine, meaning +if you want to gain access to someone's server by bruteforcing, a safe bet is to +try to gain access using the root account. Then for extra security I will disable +the actual root user, so the only way to gain superuser is to use doas +Now you may have to open ports to be able to host anything on it. If you want to +host websites you will have to open TCP port 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS. On +Vultr VPSes this is done using the ufw command, which is the firewall the VPS +comes with. It should be noted though, that if you want to host an email server +you will need to open port 25 used for SMTP, and should be done with the ufw +command as well, but you also need to file a ticket on Vultr's website giving +a valid reason for wanting the port to be opened. Usually they will accept your +request, though.

+ +

Now that you've opened the ports you need, you can start hosting the services you +wish to host. I would probably install Apache and php-fpm for PHP to get my +website set up now. A VPS is going to function exactly like any GNU/Linux computer +you're used to, although it will not have a graphical environment. Therefore you +should expect to get familiar with Vim, it is your best friend. Anyways, you should +host your own services, instead of using public services because it's more +private, more secure, and you have much more control than with a public service +that many people are going to use.

+ + ]]> + - Ungoogled Chromium: The best browser for most people - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Ungoogled+Chromium+-+The+best+browser+for+most+people - https://speedie.site/articles/post57.php - Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - Today I want to talk about my favorite web browser which I have been using for several months now and that is Chromium, specifically Ungoogled Chromium. Ungoogled Chromium is the best browser because it's fast, it respects your privacy, but also doesn't provide any extra bloat or anything, it's just a fast, privacy respecting web browser that does everything you need and nothing more. In a lot of ways it's the best web browser for minimalists, but also for normies because it requires no learning coming from Chrome or whatever.

-

If you are on Arch, you can get it from the AUR, and I also have a package available in my arch repository, so if you're using speedie-aur you can just pacman -S ungoogled-chromium. When you start it for the first time, if you're coming from regular Chromium or maybe the horrible spyware that is Google Chrome, you're going to notice that it looks a bit more minimal. That's because most of the Google junk has been removed, so what you have is what you actually need out of a web browser. By default, no search engine is active/enabled though, but if you want one you can go to the settings like in regular Chromium and simply add one.

-

The second thing you're likely going to notice pretty quickly about Ungoogled Chromium is by default it actually doesn't save cookies, so after you close your web browser you have to log in again. Now, I consider this a feature rather than a bug for security reasons, and while this isn't a security oriented web browser, most of its users are privacy enthusiasts, so I consider this a nice default. If you don't like this though, you can just change it in the settings. If you're setting up this browser for a normie, you may want to enable saving cookies, because in the society we live in normies would be very confused when their web browser doesn't keep them logged in.

-

Ungoogled Chromium is not hardened by default though. For good security I would install JShelter, uBlock Origin, LocalCDN, and a few other privacy oriented extensions. I would probably also install Vimium, which allows you to follow links using f and use general Vim-like keys to navigate the web, and of course a dark theme of some kind. But how do we install extensions anyway?

-

The reason I find this browser is better than others is because it's based on the Chromium web engine making it extremely fast, but it also respects your privacy by removing all the Google junk. Chromium is a good browser outside of all that Google spyware, because Google knows what a good browser is. A good browser is fast, minimal and allows you to view websites and nothing more. Google has known this since the beginning, and that's why this is such a good web browser. Other web browsers often fail at this.

-

I should note that due to all the Google junk being removed, you can't actually install extensions through the Chrome Web Store. However there's an extension you can install manually, which will allow extensions to be installed from the web store anyway, but you should RTFM for that. The extension is available here, and was designed with ungoogled-chromium in mind. While you don't need it, it makes the process of "manually" installing extensions a whole lot easier. It even does updating for you, although it requires some user input.

-

As if this web browser wasn't already excellent, The --app argument makes it even more useful. In fact it makes all Electron applications basically obsolete. If you do.. for example chromium --app="https://speedie.site" you'll pretty much have an app for my website as the name implies just like Electron would do, except it's using your existing web browser. This makes it slightly more appealing. It even changes the icon to the favicon for the site. I'm using this feature for Element (the Matrix client I use) and Discord. I combine this with my run launcher to have super awesome web apps.

-

Overall, I highly recommend this browser. While it's not the most secure (you'd probably want GNU IceCat or LibreWolf for that), it's super fast, it's free as in freedom and it's minimal and clean. It provides sane defaults such as not storing cookies by default. It's a good web browser for both normies and people who know how to use technology, because I think both groups of people find its features appealing. If not, I guess the normie can continue using Chromium and you can use Ungoogled Chromium and get privacy from it. Thank you for reading, I highly recommend Ungoogled Chromium, and have a good day!

- ]]> - + Distros need to stop promoting nonfree software + /blog.php/Distros+need+to+stop+promoting+nonfree+software + /blog.php/Distros+need+to+stop+promoting+nonfree+software + Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Distros need to stop promoting nonfree software + +

2023-06-22

+ +

It is no secret that I can't stand the absolute state of the modern +GNU/Linux desktop. Even putting all of that aside though, there are +some other issues I want to talk about. I've talked a lot about +package management, audio and more, but the biggest problem is how +we (the community) approach the normies. Many of these easy +distributions come with a graphical package manager. Fair enough if +you're new, right? These package managers often have a "featured" +section, I know PopOS has one, and that's where the problem lies. +PopOS and likely other distributions are actively recommending +nonfree software through the "featured" section.

+ +

That is a huge problem because by recommending nonfree software you are telling +normies that they SHOULD continue to use nonfree software, and they should not +adapt to our ideas and start using free software alternatives. I get that some +nonfree software just does not have good free software replacements, but you +as the distro maintainer need to be able to put your foot down, and stop +recommending Google Chrome or Microsoft Office or LastPass or other nonfree +software when there are clear free software alternatives that usually +accomplish the same task, and usually does a better job at it too.

+ +

The solution: Nonfree software should not be recommended by the GNU/Linux +community. There is no harm in keeping it available, if not intentionally +making it a little bit harder to install, because some users just are not able +to move away from it for many different reasons. But we should not make it as +easy to install nonfree software as it is to install free software. When you +install GNU/Linux, you should be encouraged to move away from nonfree software +for the most part in favor of free software that respects the user's +freedom and privacy. By recommending nonfree software, you are encouraging the +user not to care about privacy, and use GNU/Linux +because "it works better than Windows" rather than "I care about my privacy and security".

+ +

If you have read ploum.net's excellent article titled +We need more of Richard Stallman, not less +you're no doubt aware of this already, but the free software foundation has +slowly been replaced by the more corporate friendly open source movement which +doesn't care about your freedom, only the collaboration aspect of free software. +These same people want Stallman and the Free Software Foundation gone, because +they actively dislike free software. The thing is we NEED Stallman's extremist +views on software. We need to go all out on free software, not just use SOME +free software but mostly nonfree software, because if we don't we still have +terribly privacy and security. And when a "faster" or "better" version of the +free software comes out, why shouldn't we just use that instead?

+ +

The best way to spread free software and avoid spreading nonfree software is to promote +free software, and shame nonfree software for not respecting users' freedom and +privacy. Normies usually get into free software by using GNU/Linux, so there's an +excellent opportunity to promote free software rather than nonfree software.

+ +

Let me know what you think. Do you think it's justified to promote nonfree software? +Do you think we should be even more strict, maybe not even allow nonfree +software in the main repositories? I'm interested to hear about it. Have a good day.

+ + ]]> + - Swedish man rants about licenses again - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Swedish+man+rants+about+licenses+again - https://speedie.site/articles/post58.php - Tue, 23 May 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - It is no secret that I strongly believe in copyleft licenses like the GNU General Public License (often shortened to GNU GPL or GPL) and the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Copyleft licenses as the name implies are the opposite of copyright licenses. With copyleft licenses, the user has the freedom to modify, study and distribute the software and source code. But unfortunately in recent years copyleft licenses have fallen out of favor thanks to tech companies like Microsoft heavily pushing too permissive licenses to developers. These licenses (which I will call 'cuck licenses' from now on) rob developers of their work. Now, it should probably be noted that I am not a lawyer, nor am I more experienced in any legal system that most people. I'm just here to talk about the best software license today.

-

With cuck licenses, the developer writes the code and puts it out on the internet like usual. The difference is there is nothing that prevents anyone from forking it and changing the license. You might ask why this matters. It matters because big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and many more will take these free software projects, change the license to a nonfree license and no longer distribute the source code for the software. Most of these cuck licenses only require that the license notice is kept in every piece of code. However you're only distributing a binary though, the license isn't noticeable anyway.

-

I'm sure you can tell by now, but tech companies LOVE cuck licensers, because cuck licensers do the work for them and for free. The companies then just steal that source code and make their own proprietary variant. No attribution, no money, nothing. Some developer writes the code for free and a big tech company will steal it and make a nonfree spyware variant of it. When tech companies write software, they will usually license their own software too under the BSD licenses or more commonly, the MIT license. The MIT license is probably one of the worst licenses out there in terms of stripping the developer of his/her freedom. The user still has the freedom to use, study and modify the software. That is, until a tech company forks the project and changes the license to a nonfree one.

-

An example of a bad case of cuck licensing is MINIX, a portable UNIX like operating system. Because this project is cuck licensed, Intel decided to fork the project, apply some spyware modifications to it and relicense it under a proprietary license so no one knows what the code really does. Now all Intel users have this backdoor in their computer in what's called the Intel Management Engine (ME). Or take Google Chrome. Google forked the Webkit engine and made their own web engine called Blink. The Chromium browser which implements this engine is free software, but Google Chrome (which is very similar) is a nonfree program which does god knows what.

-

But you, the developer can fight back against this by licensing your software under a copyleft license. Copyleft licenses usually require that the forked software is licensed under the same license. So if you license your software under the GNU General Public License version 3, all copies of the software including forks are going to be licensed under that same license. This is great for developers because their code is always used for free software and not nonfree software. It's also great for users, as it means there will be less nonfree software to use and more free software to use instead.

-

I should note that I switched all software I've written from scratch to the GNU General Public License version 3 about a year ago or so from the MIT license and it gives me more freedom, and it also means everyone who uses my software or forks of my software is guaranteed freedom. It's a win for everybody, and it means together we're working towards a more free computing experience for everyone. It has its flaws though, which is why some may consider the LGPL or Lesser General Public License. This license unlike the regular GPL allows embedding the software in proprietary programs. This may actually be preferable in some cases, but in general you should stick to the regular GPL. I know there are more licenses than the GPL and MPL, but I'm not going to get into license specifics too much here. I'm mainly talking about the GPL because that's what I license all my software under.

-

Conclusion then. Cuck licensers write the software for big tech companies for free. They get nothing in return and users get a piece of crap proprietary program when the big company forks the originally free software program. With copyleft licenses on the other hand, the user is guaranteed the freedom to modify, study and distribute the source code or program. Switch to the GNU GPL today or any of the other GPL compatible copyleft licenses and truly become a free software computer programmer.

- ]]> - + The Wayland experience + /blog.php/The+Wayland+experience + /blog.php/The+Wayland+experience + Fri, 17 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 + + The Wayland experience + +

2022-06-17

+ +

Today I want to talk about my experience using Wayland compositors and software, +as well as developing Wayland clients for Wayland using the wayland-client library. +I've talked about the protocol itself in the past, usually in a negative light +because that's how I see it for the most part, but after using Wayland for a bit +I have some more things to say about it, and I want to talk about those today.

+ +

First of all, Wayland is not a display server, just like X11 isn't a +display server. X11 and Wayland are both display protocols, which then have to +be implemented. X11 has a standard implementation, called Xorg. While this +isn't the only implementation of the X11 protocol, it is by far the most +used one. This is called a display server. Wayland on the other hand does +not have a single implementation more popular than others, because each compositor +has to implement the Wayland protocol themselves. This can lead to issues if a +compositor doesn't implement a core part of the protocol. This means the compositor +is also the display server. But because implementing an entire display server and +following the Wayland spec is complicated and time consuming, libraries such as +wlroots and swl have been created, which implement a lot of the Wayland functionality +for you. This is really as far as standards go with Wayland, because every Wlroots +based compositor is compatible with each other. The problem now is everyone is +going to base on Wlroots, and for good reason because no one really wants to +write all that code.

+ +

Except not everyone wants to use Wlroots. For example GNOME and KDE both have +their own Wayland implementation (because of course they do), and this leads to +problems such as software only being written to work with Wlroots based compositors +or GNOME/KDE. From a developer's perspective, you can't just leave out GNOME +because GNOME is incredibly popular and used by a very significant amount of GNU/Linux +users, but at the same time if you leave out Wlroots based compositors a lot of +power users aren't going to be able to use the software on their favorite compositor, +so no power users are going to be using the software. So the developer has to +support BOTH GNOME and Wlroots, and most likely also test on both Wlroots and +GNOME, unless the program has a significant enough userbase. GNOME has a history +of doing their own thing instead of following a standard, and making decisions +that only benefit GNOME and no one else, which is likely why they implemented their +own version of the Wayland protocol. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter, +because right now there's no standard implementation of the Wayland protocol, +leading to more work for the developer.

+ +

As you probably know, about two weeks ago I finished porting my program +spmenu over to Wayland. While I was working on the +port however, I almost immediately noticed how lacking Wayland really is in terms +of features. They claim this is for "security", but I don't buy this argument +for several reasons. spmenu has a feature to position itself at a specific X or +Y position on the screen, but in the name of security wayland-client +(the library used to create Wayland clients) does not allow you to do this. +I ended up disabling this feature in the final product, which really should not +have to be done. I get that this can't be done with a standard window, but this +is a layer window, meaning it's supposed to be layered above all other +windows, so it makes sense to allow it to be placed anywhere.

+ +

The reason I don't think security is a valid excuse here, is because with the +wlr-layer-shell protocol you can grab the keyboard and (almost) all input, and +grab the focus all to yourself. That's a much higher security risk than allowing +the window to position itself anywhere. Instead of allowing a specific position, +we instead have anchors, allowing us to anchor the window to a predefined part +of the screen, such as top, bottom and center. Also, if you have programs +doing malicious things by positioning itself, you have a much bigger problem. +Wayland does do some things in the name of security that I think are somewhat +justified, such as not allowing a client to move another client, or read +keystrokes when the program isn't actually used. That's very useful for +keylogging and other nasty things. But at the same time, if you have malware +on your computer, then you have bigger problems than that, and there are +legitimate uses for logging keys or moving other clients, which now aren't +going to be possible anymore in the name of security.

+ +

Alright, so we've established that Wayland has fewer features than X11, how could +things get any worse? GNOME has the answer to that. Because there's no standard +implementation, you can just choose not to implement certain features. wlr-layer-shell +is a unstable protocol, but despite this it's the only way to create a +run launcher that functions like.. a run launcher, at least on the Wlroots +implementation of Wayland. GNOME however doesn't implement wlr-layer-shell +so any programs that use wlr-layer-shell will not function under GNOME, +and spmenu is no exception to this. It doesn't make it any better that GNOME has +a very high authority over the direction Wayland is going in, and really the +direction GNU/Linux as a whole is going in.

+ +

Okay, but what's Wayland really like to use for the average user? Mixed, let's +just say that. If you're using a desktop environment, chances are you don't even +notice any difference between it and the same desktop environment on X11, at least +none that isn't positive. If you're using a window manager on the other hand, +you're going to notice things right away. Many programs that you may be using +just will not function anymore, particularly the programs that capture the +display. Wayland shills will claim that Wayland has support for all your X11 +programs, but while that's not entirely false, anything that captures the +screen itself is going to be totally broken on Wayland.

+ +

One thing I noticed fairly quickly is that screenshotting doesn't work. +I'm using a tool called maim for this, and maim is X11 specific. Great, use +XWayland right? XWayland doesn't work for this purpose, and as a result the +capture is just black. What about ffmpeg and x11grab? Nope, doesn't work and +all you get is a black screen. Turns out on Wayland you need Pipewire +(or another tool) to capture the screen, and ffmpeg doesn't support this, +so if you had plans of using Wayland and at the same time using ffmpeg to +capture your screen, you're out of luck. While replacements for the X11 +specific software does exist, much of it is very buggy, broken, not in +repositories or just not the same thing. Recording using ffmpeg can be +replaced using a command line utility called wf-recorder, but screenshots +are little more complex.

+ +

On Arch, you need to manually compile a program called wayshot (a program that +functions as a maim replacement) because the version you can get from the AUR +is out of date and doesn't support using slurp (a slop replacement), meaning +you can't select. After that though, everything works pretty much as expected. +But what about copying the image to the clipboard? Well, on X11 we can just +pipe the image into xclip -sel clipboard -t image/png, but as you might expect +this isn't built to use Wayland natively. It does work, at least with XWayland +compatible compositors but to do it natively you'll want a replacement called +wl-clipboard and the wl-copy command. The wl-copy command works pretty much +in the same way, pipe the image or text into it. Unlike with xclip though, you +don't need to specify a type, and wl-copy only supports one clipboard so you +don't need to specify a selection either.

+ +

Normal X11 programs though that run in a normal window or floating window usually +work fine, and I was able to carry on using my X11 terminal emulator which is st +just fine, with no noticeable loss in speed. No configuration is required for +these to function with most compositors, although some don't support XWayland +such as Qtile, so with those you may not be able to use your X11 specific programs.

+ +

What about Wayland compositors? Most of them are terrible in my experience. Maybe +there's some secret awesome compositor, but every single one I have used so far +has had some major flaw that makes it unusable. I started off my Wayland journey +on Hyprland because I hear that's what most people use. The default keybinds are +absolutely awful, and a good example of that is Super+q which doesn't quit Hyprland +or close a window, but rather spawns Kitty, which isn't even a Wayland specific +terminal emulator. Certainly a weird default. Even after some configuration +though, Hyprland has several issues. For one, if you set a wallpaper using +swaybg or hyprpaper the computer runs much slower, and Chromium seems to freeze +at random. This happens with all my computers, with both Intel graphics and AMD +graphics. I ended up determining that it was a problem with Hyprland because +with dwl,sway and river everything worked perfectly with a wallpaper set. +Most of these compositors also do not have a built in bar, sway is the only one +I found that has one, not even dwl which is supposed to be a dwm clone has a +built in bar, despite using way more lines of code than the original dwm.

+ +

Wayland has several issues as well that make the entire product completely +unusable. For one, I have never been able to get it to work on my NVIDIA +GPU (GTX 1060 6GB) system. Not with the free software driver and not with the +nonfree nvidia driver. It's possible it works with GNOME or KDE, +but I have no interest in running any of those, and I don't care for desktop +environments. While it isn't fair to blame Wayland or Wlroots for this, +in practice I'm unable to use Wayland on my NVIDIA system, and as such I decided +it was worth mentioning.

+ +

By the way, I should also mention that I have implemented Wayland screen capturing +into dfmpeg-spmenu +and screenshot-spmenu if you +want to use spmenu for screenshots or screen recording. This is also X11 compatible, +so you don't need to switch script whenever you switch back to X11.

+ +

Anyways, I'm done with Wayland as of now. I will keep a session around to try +out my own software in and will continue to support Wayland in spmenu, but I will +not use Wayland anymore, and I am very happy to go back to dwm and X11. I may eventually +make a second part to this blog post where I talk about actual code and programming +in C for Wayland, but I'm going to end this blog post here. If you had an interesting +experience with Wayland or thoughts on Wayland, feel free to share it with me. +Thank you for reading, have a good day!

+ + ]]> + - Yet another update post. - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Yet+another+update+post - https://speedie.site/articles/post59.php - Fri, 03 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - Wow, look at that. Even more junk to fill my catalog and make it look like I've done more writing than I actually have. Oh well. I'll get straight to the point. At approximately 02:32 I quickly made the decision to move from cgit to Gitea for hosting my Git repositories and projects. For this reason, links to the old Git repositories need to be changed. This mainly applies to those of you that are using speedie-aur, or speedie-overlay. I'm assuming that's quite few of you, but just in case I'm putting this out there.

-

If you're using speedie-aur, you'll need to edit /etc/pacman.conf and change the Server to Server = https://git.speedie.site/speedie/speedie-aur/raw/branch/master/$arch If you're using speedie-overlay you'll want to remove the overlay and add it again. See the repository for more information. The Arch wiki article has been updated to reflect these changes as well, and so has the overlay.xml.

-

I have also moved over a lot of GitHub repositories to my Gitea instance, such as my Gentoo kernel for my ThinkPad and desktop, multiple OpenCore configurations, and more, but all Codeberg and GitHub repositories are still accessible. It should be noted though, that I plan on moving all website development to the Gitea instance rather than Codeberg.

-

What you may be screaming right now is WHY? I'll tell you why. Cgit is an excellent Git viewer, but that's all it is. A git viewer. It doesn't handle your repositories, no issue tracking, no pull requests, no users, nothing. This is fine when you're the only one working on a project, as you're going to do most work locally on your computer anyway, and then push using Git from the command line.

-

The problem is when you want to have any kind of collaboration, which is something I realized today (and yesterday). As some of my projects are becoming increasingly complex, I need a way for people to submit bug reports and fix issues. Emailing isn't convenient for the user, and it isn't convenient for me either. Now that I'm using Gitea, any user may create an account and simply create an issue or pull request. There's not any more to it, just simple. If you're familiar with GitHub or even one of the public Gitea instances like Codeberg, this is likely nothing new to you.

-

Now, while I'm writing this blog post I also want to talk about some future changes. I want to slowly move from w2wiki to simply a static website that people can edit through issues and pull requests. In my opinion this is a lot better, not only for security but convenience and flexibility. W2wiki is pretty good, but it is definitely not designed with security in mind, and it isn't hard for anyone to simply remove the entire thing with minimal effort, as happened to the speedie.site wiki a while ago.

-

While it is a static site for the most part, I may still be using PHP if necessary, especially for maintainence. No JavaScript however, although it should be noted that the Gitea instance does use JavaScript. There is just no way around it as far as I know, so it will have to do. All the JavaScript is free as in freedom, which is the important part. I have no plans to put JavaScript anywhere else on my site though, as long as it's feasible.

-

Anyways that's just a small site update. Have been busy with my spmenu Wayland port and other things like that, but now that it's complete I plan on posting more blog posts, as I have a lot of things I want to cover eventually. That's it for me, have a good day!

- ]]> - + You don't need to justify your decisions + /blog.php/You+don%27t+need+to+justify+your+decisions + /blog.php/You+don%27t+need+to+justify+your+decisions + Thu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + You don't need to justify your decisions + +

2023-06-08

+ +

I often hear people following my blog or just know me for one reason or +another, and usually it goes something like this:

+ +
+

Hello speedie I enjoy reading your blog.

+
+ +

Thanks!

+ +
+

I’m using X nonfree software or Y desktop environment, sorry about that.

+
+ +

This is the problem. I see far too many people apologize for their choices +in technology, but I want to make one thing clear. I am not here to judge your +technology choices. If you want to read my blog on Windows and/or Mac, use +nonfree programs, hate my software or ideas, or do something else I’m not +personally a fan of then you are 100% free to do so. You don’t need to +justify your use of software or hardware, that is a personal decision you are +making. I am not going to make that for you, and while I may not agree with +your decision, it is not mine to make.

+ +

I may suggest replacements for the software you’re using if I believe it’ +s something you would benefit from (such as learning Vim or getting into +tiling window managers), but I’m never going to force you to use/do something, +or shame you for using the nonfree software or software I simply don’t +like. I am also never going to force you to believe the same thing as me, that’s +idiotic, and the definition of an echo chamber, something I’m very against. I don’t +want 15 speedie clones, you should have your own ideas, and I should have my own +ideas. If we agree then we do, if we don’t, then we don’t. I make decisions +you may find stupid, you make decisions I may find stupid, and if we don’t debate +each other’s ideas, we lose the ability to think for ourselves.

+ +

That’s not to say it’s harmful to criticize the choices others make, but you need +to be willing to see both sides of the coin, and like it or not you need to accept +the choice the other person is making, whether you approve of it or not. That’s +just a short blog post for today, as I see this far too often, and I think it’s +important to say this. I’m probably going to talk about Wayland development, +Wayland libraries, Wayland protocols and Wayland implementations next time now that +I’ve truly given Wayland development a fighting chance to win me over. +That’s it for me, have a good day!

+ + ]]> + - You don't need to justify your decisions. - https://speedie.site/blog.php/You+don%27t+need+to+justify+your+decisions - https://speedie.site/articles/post60.php - Thu, 08 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - I often hear people following my blog or just know me for one reason or another, and usually it goes something like this:

-
-

Hello speedie I enjoy reading your blog.

-
-

Thanks!

-
-

I’m using X nonfree software or Y desktop environment, sorry about that.

-
-

This is the problem. I see far too many people apologize for their choices in technology, but I want to make one thing clear. I am not here to judge your technology choices. If you want to read my blog on Windows and/or Mac, use nonfree programs, hate my software or ideas, or do something else I’m not personally a fan of then you are 100% free to do so. You don’t need to justify your use of software or hardware, that is a personal decision you are making. I am not going to make that for you, and while I may not agree with your decision, it is not mine to make.

-

I may suggest replacements for the software you’re - using if I believe it’s something you would benefit from (such as learning Vim or getting into tiling window managers), but I’m never going to force you to use/do something, or shame you for using the nonfree software or software I simply don’t like. I am also never going to force you to believe the same thing as me, that’s idiotic, and the definition of an echo chamber, something I’m very against. I don’t want 15 speedie clones, you should have your own ideas, and I should have my own ideas. If we agree then we do, if we don’t, then we don’t. I make decisions you may find stupid, you make decisions I may find stupid, and if we don’t debate each other’s ideas, we lose the ability to think for ourselves.

-

That’s not to say it’s harmful to criticize the choices others make, but you need to be willing to see both sides of the coin, and like it or not you need to accept the choice the other person is making, whether you approve of it or not. That’s just a short blog post for today, as I see this far too often, and I think it’s important to say this. I’m probably going to talk about Wayland development, Wayland libraries, Wayland protocols and Wayland implementations next time now that I’ve truly given Wayland development a fighting chance to win me over. That’s it for me, have a good day!

- ]]> - + Yet another update post + /blog.php/Yet+another+update+post + /blog.php/Yet+another+update+post + Sat, 03 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Yet another update post + +

2023-06-03

+ +

Wow, look at that. Even more junk to fill my catalog and make it look like I've +done more writing than I actually have. Oh well. I'll get straight to the point. +At approximately 02:32 I quickly made the decision to move from cgit to Gitea +for hosting my Git repositories and projects. For this reason, links to the old +Git repositories need to be changed. This mainly applies to those of you that are +using speedie-aur, or speedie-overlay. I'm assuming that's quite few of you, but +just in case I'm putting this out there.

+ +

If you're using speedie-aur, you'll need to edit /etc/pacman.conf and change +the Server to +Server = https://git.speedie.site/speedie/speedie-aur/raw/branch/master/$arch. +If you're using speedie-overlay you'll want to remove the overlay and add it again. +See the repository for more +information. The Arch wiki article has been updated to reflect these changes as +well, and so has the overlay.xml.

+ +

I have also moved over a lot of GitHub repositories to my Gitea instance, such +as my Gentoo kernel for my ThinkPad and desktop, multiple OpenCore configurations, +and more, but all Codeberg and GitHub repositories are still accessible. It +should be noted though, that I plan on moving all website development to the +Gitea instance rather than Codeberg.

+ +

What you may be screaming right now is WHY? I'll tell you why. Cgit is an +excellent Git viewer, but that's all it is. A git viewer. It doesn't handle your +repositories, no issue tracking, no pull requests, no users, nothing. This is fine +when you're the only one working on a project, as you're going to do most work +locally on your computer anyway, and then push using Git from the command line. +The problem is when you want to have any kind of collaboration, which is something +I realized today (and yesterday). As some of my projects are becoming increasingly +complex, I need a way for people to submit bug reports and fix issues. Emailing isn't +convenient for the user, and it isn't convenient for me either. Now that I'm using +Gitea, any user may create an account and simply create an issue or pull request. +There's not any more to it, just simple. If you're familiar with GitHub or even one +of the public Gitea instances like Codeberg, this is likely nothing new to you.

+ +

Now, while I'm writing this blog post I also want to talk about some future changes. +I want to slowly move from w2wiki to simply a static website that people can edit +through issues and pull requests. In my opinion this is a lot better, not +only for security but convenience and flexibility. W2wiki is pretty good, but +it is definitely not designed with security in mind, and it isn't hard for anyone +to simply remove the entire thing with minimal effort, as we saw with the old +speedie.site wiki a while ago.

+ +

While it is a static site for the most part, I may still be using PHP if necessary, +especially for maintainence. No JavaScript however, although it should be noted +that the Gitea instance does use JavaScript. There is just no way around it as +far as I know, so it will have to do. All the JavaScript is free as in freedom, +which is the important part. I have no plans to put JavaScript anywhere else on +my site though, as long as it's feasible. +Anyways that's just a small site update. Have been busy with my spmenu Wayland +port and other things like that, but now that it's complete I plan on posting +more blog posts, as I have a lot of things I want to cover eventually. That's +it for me, have a good day!

+ + ]]> + - The Wayland experience - https://speedie.site/blog.php/The+Wayland+experience - https://speedie.site/articles/post61.php - Sat, 17 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - Today I want to talk about my experience using Wayland compositors and software, as well as developing Wayland clients for Wayland using the wayland-client library. I've talked about the protocol itself in the past, usually in a negative light because that's how I see it for the most part, but after using Wayland for a bit I have some more things to say about it, and I want to talk about those today.

-

First of all, Wayland is not a display server, just like X11 isn't a display server. X11 and Wayland are both display protocols, which then have to be implemented. X11 has a standard implementation, called Xorg. While this isn't the only implementation of the X11 protocol, it is by far the most used one. This is called a display server. Wayland on the other hand does not have a single implementation more popular than others, because each compositor has to implement the Wayland protocol themselves. This can lead to issues if a compositor doesn't implement a core part of the protocol. This means the compositor is also the display server. But because implementing an entire display server and following the Wayland spec is complicated and time consuming, libraries such as wlroots and swl have been created, which implement a lot of the Wayland functionality for you. This is really as far as standards go with Wayland, because every Wlroots based compositor is compatible with each other. The problem now is everyone is going to base on Wlroots, and for good reason because no one really wants to write all that code.

-

Except not everyone wants to use Wlroots. For example GNOME and KDE both have their own Wayland implementation (because of course they do), and this leads to problems such as software only being written to work with Wlroots based compositors or GNOME/KDE. From a developer's perspective, you can't just leave out GNOME because GNOME is incredibly popular and used by a very significant amount of GNU/Linux users, but at the same time if you leave out Wlroots based compositors a lot of power users aren't going to be able to use the software on their favorite compositor, so no power users are going to be using the software. So the developer has to support BOTH GNOME and Wlroots, and most likely also test on both Wlroots and GNOME, unless the program has a significant enough userbase. GNOME has a history of doing their own thing instead of following a standard, and making decisions that only benefit GNOME and no one else, which is likely why they implemented their own version of the Wayland protocol. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter, because right now there's no standard implementation of the Wayland protocol, leading to more work for the developer.

-

As you probably know, about two weeks ago I finished porting my program spmenu over to Wayland. While I was working on the port however, I almost immediately noticed how lacking Wayland really is in terms of features. They claim this is for "security", but I don't buy this argument for several reasons. spmenu has a feature to position itself at a specific X or Y position on the screen, but in the name of security wayland-client (the library used to create Wayland clients) does not allow you to do this. I ended up disabling this feature in the final product, which really should not have to be done. I get that this can't be done with a standard window, but this is a layer window, meaning it's supposed to be layered above all other windows, so it makes sense to allow it to be placed anywhere.

-

The reason I don't think security is a valid excuse here, is because with the wlr-layer-shell protocol you can grab the keyboard and (almost) all input, and grab the focus all to yourself. That's a much higher security risk than allowing the window to position itself anywhere. Instead of allowing a specific position, we instead have anchors, allowing us to anchor the window to a predefined part of the screen, such as top, bottom and center. Also, if you have programs doing malicious things by positioning itself, you have a much bigger problem. Wayland does do some things in the name of security that I think are somewhat justified, such as not allowing a client to move another client, or read keystrokes when the program isn't actually used. That's very useful for keylogging and other nasty things. But at the same time, if you have malware on your computer, then you have bigger problems than that, and there are legitimate uses for logging keys or moving other clients, which now aren't going to be possible anymore in the name of security.

-

Alright, so we've established that Wayland has fewer features than X11, how could things get any worse? GNOME has the answer to that. Because there's no standard implementation, you can just choose not to implement certain features. wlr-layer-shell is a unstable protocol, but despite this it's the only way to create a run launcher that functions like.. a run launcher, at least on the Wlroots implementation of Wayland. GNOME however doesn't implement wlr-layer-shell so any programs that use wlr-layer-shell will not function under GNOME, and spmenu is no exception to this. It doesn't make it any better that GNOME has a very high authority over the direction Wayland is going in, and really the direction GNU/Linux as a whole is going in.

-

Okay, but what's Wayland really like to use for the average user? Mixed, let's just say that. If you're using a desktop environment, chances are you don't even notice any difference between it and the same desktop environment on X11, at least none that isn't positive. If you're using a window manager on the other hand, you're going to notice things right away. Many programs that you may be using just will not function anymore, particularly the programs that capture the display. Wayland shills will claim that Wayland has support for all your X11 programs, but while that's not entirely false, anything that captures the screen itself is going to be totally broken on Wayland.

-

One thing I noticed fairly quickly is that screenshotting doesn't work. I'm using a tool called maim for this, and maim is X11 specific. Great, use XWayland right? XWayland doesn't work for this purpose, and as a result the capture is just black. What about ffmpeg and x11grab? Nope, doesn't work and all you get is a black screen. Turns out on Wayland you need Pipewire (or another tool) to capture the screen, and ffmpeg doesn't support this, so if you had plans of using Wayland and at the same time using ffmpeg to capture your screen, you're out of luck. While replacements for the X11 specific software does exist, much of it is very buggy, broken, not in repositories or just not the same thing. Recording using ffmpeg can be replaced using a command line utility called wf-recorder, but screenshots are little more complex.

-

On Arch, you need to manually compile a program called wayshot (a program that functions as a maim replacement) because the version you can get from the AUR is out of date and doesn't support using slurp (a slop replacement), meaning you can't select. After that though, everything works pretty much as expected. But what about copying the image to the clipboard? Well, on X11 we can just pipe the image into xclip -sel clipboard -t image/png, but as you might expect this isn't built to use Wayland natively. It does work, at least with XWayland compatible compositors but to do it natively you'll want a replacement called wl-clipboard and the wl-copy command. The wl-copy command works pretty much in the same way, pipe the image or text into it. Unlike with xclip though, you don't need to specify a type, and wl-copy only supports one clipboard so you don't need to specify a selection either.

-

Normal X11 programs though that run in a normal window or floating window usually work fine, and I was able to carry on using my X11 terminal emulator which is st just fine, with no noticeable loss in speed. No configuration is required for these to function with most compositors, although some don't support XWayland such as Qtile, so with those you may not be able to use your X11 specific programs.

-

What about Wayland compositors? Most of them are terrible in my experience. Maybe there's some secret awesome compositor, but every single one I have used so far has had some major flaw that makes it unusable. I started off my Wayland journey on Hyprland because I hear that's what most people use. The default keybinds are absolutely awful, and a good example of that is Super+q which doesn't quit Hyprland or close a window, but rather spawns Kitty, which isn't even a Wayland specific terminal emulator. Certainly a weird default. Even after some configuration though, Hyprland has several issues. For one, if you set a wallpaper using swaybg or hyprpaper the computer runs much slower, and Chromium seems to freeze at random. This happens with all my computers, with both Intel graphics and AMD graphics. I ended up determining that it was a problem with Hyprland because with dwl, sway and river everything worked perfectly with a wallpaper set. Most of these compositors also do not have a built in bar, sway is the only one I found that has one, not even dwl which is supposed to be a dwm clone has a built in bar, despite using way more lines of code than the original dwm.

-

Wayland has several issues as well that make the entire product completely unusable. For one, I have never been able to get it to work on my NVIDIA GPU (GTX 1060 6GB) system. Not with the free software driver and not with the nonfree nvidia driver. It's possible it works with GNOME or KDE, but I have no interest in running any of those, and I don't care for desktop environments. While it isn't fair to blame Wayland or Wlroots for this, in practice I'm unable to use Wayland on my NVIDIA system, and as such I decided it was worth mentioning.

-

By the way, I should also mention that I have implemented Wayland screen capturing into dfmpeg-spmenu and screenshot-spmenu if you want to use spmenu for screenshots or screen recording. This is also X11 compatible, so you don't need to switch script whenever you switch back to X11.

-

Anyways, I'm done with Wayland as of now. I will keep a session around to try out my own software in and will continue to support Wayland in spmenu, but I will not use Wayland anymore, and I am very happy to go back to dwm and X11. I may eventually make a second part to this blog post where I talk about actual code and programming in C for Wayland, but I'm going to end this blog post here. If you had an interesting experience with Wayland or thoughts on Wayland, feel free to share it with me. Thank you for reading, have a good day!

- ]]> - + Swedish man rants about licenses again + /blog.php/Swedish+man+rants+about+licenses+again + /blog.php/Swedish+man+rants+about+licenses+again + Tue, 23 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Swedish man rants about licenses again + +

2023-05-23

+ +

It is no secret that I strongly believe in copyleft licenses like the GNU +General Public License (often shortened to GNU GPL or GPL) and the Mozilla +Public License (MPL). Copyleft licenses as the name implies are the opposite +of copyright licenses. With copyleft licenses, the user has the freedom to +modify, study and distribute the software and source code. But unfortunately +in recent years copyleft licenses have fallen out of favor thanks to tech +companies like Microsoft heavily pushing too permissive licenses to developers. +These licenses (which I will call 'cuck licenses' from now on) rob developers +of their work. Now, it should probably be noted that I am not a lawyer, nor am +I more experienced in any legal system that most people. I'm just here to +talk about the best software license today.

+ +

With cuck licenses, the developer writes the code and puts it out on the +internet like usual. The difference is there is nothing that prevents anyone +from forking it and changing the license. You might ask why this matters. +It matters because big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Nvidia, +Meta, and many more will take these free software projects, change the license +to a nonfree license and no longer distribute the source code for the software. +Most of these cuck licenses only require that the license notice is kept in +every piece of code. However you're only distributing a binary though, the license +isn't noticeable anyway.

+ +

I'm sure you can tell by now, but tech companies LOVE cuck licensers, because cuck +licensers do the work for them and for free. The companies then just steal that +source code and make their own proprietary variant. No attribution, no money, +nothing. Some developer writes the code for free and a big tech company will steal +it and make a nonfree spyware variant of it. When tech companies write software, +they will usually license their own software too under the BSD licenses or more +commonly, the MIT license. The MIT license is probably one of the worst +licenses out there in terms of stripping the developer of his/her freedom. The +user still has the freedom to use, study and modify the software. That is, +until a tech company forks the project and changes the license to a nonfree one.

+ +

An example of a bad case of cuck licensing is MINIX, a portable UNIX like +operating system. Because this project is cuck licensed, Intel decided to fork +the project, apply some spyware modifications to it and relicense it under a +proprietary license so no one knows what the code really does. Now all Intel users +have this backdoor in their computer in what's called the Intel Management +Engine (ME). Or take Google Chrome. Google forked the Webkit engine and made their +own web engine called Blink. The Chromium browser which implements this engine +is free software, but Google Chrome (which is very similar) is a nonfree program +which does god knows what.

+ +

But you, the developer can fight back against this by licensing your software under +a copyleft license. Copyleft licenses usually require that the forked software is +licensed under the same license. So if you license your software under the GNU +General Public License version 3, all copies of the software including forks are +going to be licensed under that same license. This is great for developers +because their code is always used for free software and not nonfree software. +It's also great for users, as it means there will be less nonfree software to +use and more free software to use instead.

+ +

I should note that I switched all software I've written from scratch to the +GNU General Public License version 3 about a year ago or so from the MIT license +and it gives me more freedom, and it also means everyone who uses my software or +forks of my software is guaranteed freedom. It's a win for everybody, and it +means together we're working towards a more free computing experience for everyone. +It has its flaws though, which is why some may consider the LGPL or Lesser General +Public License. This license unlike the regular GPL allows embedding the software +in proprietary programs. This may actually be preferable in some cases, but in +general you should stick to the regular GPL. I know there are more licenses than +the GPL and MPL, but I'm not going to get into license specifics too much here. +I'm mainly talking about the GPL because that's what I +license all my software under.

+ +

Conclusion then. Cuck licensers write the software for big tech companies for free. +They get nothing in return and users get a piece of crap proprietary program when +the big company forks the originally free software program. With copyleft licenses +on the other hand, the user is guaranteed the freedom to modify, study and distribute +the source code or program. Switch to the GNU GPL today or any of the other GPL +compatible copyleft licenses and truly become a free software computer programmer.

+ + ]]> + - Distros need to stop promoting nonfree software - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Distros+need+to+stop+promoting+nonfree+software - https://speedie.site/articles/post62.php - Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - It is no secret that I can't stand the absolute state of the modern GNU/Linux desktop. Even putting all of that aside though, there are some other issues I want to talk about. I've talked a lot about package management, audio and more, but the biggest problem is how we (the community) approach the normies. Many of these easy distributions come with a graphical package manager. Fair enough if you're new, right? These package managers often have a "featured" section, I know PopOS has one, and that's where the problem lies. PopOS and likely other distributions are actively recommending nonfree software through the "featured" section.

-

That is a huge problem because by recommending nonfree software you are telling normies that they SHOULD continue to use nonfree software, and they should not adapt to our ideas and start using free software alternatives. I get that some nonfree software just does not have good free software replacements, but you as the distro maintainer need to be able to put your foot down, and stop recommending Google Chrome or Microsoft Office or LastPass or other nonfree software when there are clear free software alternatives that usually accomplish the same task, and usually does a better job at it too.

-

The solution: Nonfree software should not be recommended by the GNU/Linux community. There is no harm in keeping it available, if not intentionally making it a little bit harder to install, because some users just are not able to move away from it for many different reasons. But we should not make it as easy to install nonfree software as it is to install free software. When you install GNU/Linux, you should be encouraged to move away from nonfree software for the most part in favor of free software that respects the user's freedom and privacy. By recommending nonfree software, you are encouraging the user not to care about privacy, and use GNU/Linux because "it works better than Windows" rather than "I care about my privacy and security".

-

If you have read ploum.net's excellent article titled We need more of Richard Stallman, not less you're no doubt aware of this already, but the free software foundation has slowly been replaced by the more corporate friendly open source movement which doesn't care about your freedom, only the collaboration aspect of free software. These same people want Stallman and the Free Software Foundation gone, because they actively dislike free software. The thing is we NEED Stallman's extremist views on software. We need to go all out on free software, not just use SOME free software but mostly nonfree software, because if we don't we still have terribly privacy and security. And when a "faster" or "better" version of the free software comes out, why shouldn't we just use that instead?

-

The best way to spread free software and avoid spreading nonfree software is to promote free software, and shame nonfree software for not respecting users' freedom and privacy. Normies usually get into free software by using GNU/Linux, so there's an excellent opportunity to promote free software rather than nonfree software.

-

Let me know what you think. Do you think it's justified to promote nonfree software? Do you think we should be even more strict, maybe not even allow nonfree software in the main repositories? I'm interested to hear about it. Have a good day.

- ]]> - + Ungoogled Chromium - The best browser for most people + /blog.php/Ungoogled+Chromium+-+The+best+browser+for+most+people + /blog.php/Ungoogled+Chromium+-+The+best+browser+for+most+people + Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Ungoogled Chromium: The best browser for most people + +

2023-05-01

+ +

Today I want to talk about my favorite web browser which I have been using for +several months now and that is Chromium, specifically Ungoogled Chromium. +Ungoogled Chromium is the best browser because it's fast, it respects your +privacy, but also doesn't provide any extra bloat or anything, it's just a fast, +privacy respecting web browser that does everything you need and nothing more. +In a lot of ways it's the best web browser for minimalists, but also for normies +because it requires no learning coming from Chrome or whatever.

+ +

If you are on Arch, you can get it from the AUR, and I also have a package available +in my arch repository, so if you're using speedie-aur you can +just pacman -S ungoogled-chromium. When you start it for the first time, if +you're coming from regular Chromium or maybe the horrible spyware that is +Google Chrome, you're going to notice that it looks a bit more minimal. That's +because most of the Google junk has been removed, so what you have is what you +actually need out of a web browser. By default, no search engine is +active/enabled though, but if you want one you can go to the settings like in regular +Chromium and simply add one.

+ +

The second thing you're likely going to notice pretty quickly about Ungoogled +Chromium is by default it actually doesn't save cookies, so after you close +your web browser you have to log in again. Now, I consider this a feature +rather than a bug for security reasons, and while this isn't a security +oriented web browser, most of its users are privacy enthusiasts, so I consider +this a nice default. If you don't like this though, you can just change it in the +settings. If you're setting up this browser for a normie, you may want to +enable saving cookies, because in the society we live in normies would be very +confused when their web browser doesn't keep them logged in.

+ +

Ungoogled Chromium is not hardened by default though. For good security I +would install JShelter, uBlock Origin, LocalCDN, and a few other +privacy oriented extensions. I would probably also install Vimium, which +allows you to follow links using f and use general Vim-like keys to navigate +the web, and of course a dark theme of some kind.

+ +

The reason I find this browser is better than others is +because it's based on the Chromium web engine making it extremely fast, +but it also respects your privacy by removing all the Google junk. Chromium is +a good browser outside of all that Google spyware, because Google knows what a +good browser is. A good browser is fast, minimal and allows you to view websites +and nothing more. Google has known this since the beginning, and that's why +this is such a good web browser. Other web browsers often fail at this.

+ +

I should note that due to all the Google junk being removed, you can't actually +install extensions through the Chrome Web Store. However there's an extension +you can install manually, which will allow extensions to be installed from the +web store anyway, but you should RTFM for that. The extension is available +here, and was designed +with ungoogled-chromium in mind. While you don't need it, it makes the process +of "manually" installing extensions a whole lot easier. It even does updating +for you, although it requires some user input.

+ +

As if this web browser wasn't already excellent, The --app argument makes it +even more useful. In fact it makes all Electron applications basically obsolete. +If you do.. for example chromium --app="https://speedie.site" you'll pretty +much have an app for my website as the name implies just like Electron would +do, except it's using your existing web browser. This makes it slightly more +appealing. It even changes the icon to the favicon for the site. I'm using this +feature for Element (the Matrix client I use) and Discord. I combine this with +my run launcher to have super awesome web apps.

+ +

Overall, I highly recommend this browser. While it's not the most secure +(you'd probably want GNU IceCat or LibreWolf for that), it's super fast, +it's free as in freedom and it's minimal and clean. It provides sane +defaults such as not storing cookies by default. It's a good web browser +for both normies and people who know how to use technology, because I +think both groups of people find its features appealing. If not, I guess +the normie can continue using Chromium and you can use Ungoogled Chromium +and get privacy from it. Thank you for reading, I highly recommend Ungoogled +Chromium, and have a good day!

+ + ]]> + - Host your own services NOW - https://speedie.site/blog.php/Host+your+own+services+NOW - https://speedie.site/articles/post63.php - Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0100 - - I talk a lot about freedom, privacy and free software on this blog, but today I want to talk about hosting your own services. But why should you host your own services? Isn't that really scary and difficult? Doesn't it require very powerful hardware? No, not really and I'm going to talk about some of the benefits here.

-

Alright so let's talk a bit about why you should host your own stuff and what you can host. There are many different services you can host. I'm hosting my website, some files, a Git server, wiki, email server and might host more in the future. But there are many cool things you can host, such as a Matrix homeserver, IRC network, SearX instance, PeerTube, NextCloud, it goes on and on. I won't be talking much about the specific services you can host today. But why should you host all of this stuff? Why not just use Gmail, or a public SearX instance, or GitHub, or any of these public services?

-

It's because as the sysadmin, you are very powerful and have a lot of power over your users and your services, and my site and services are no exception. You have power over everyone that uses your site and services. The ability to delete their accounts, look at what they're doing, all of these different things that you have no control over. When you host your own services though, the only one who is going to be able to see what you upload to your server is you (and your VPS provider if you're hosting using a VPS). Maybe other people can see it if they manage to compromise your server or you let your web server serve content that you don't want public. But in general, you're the only one who is going to be able to see that.

-

Let's take a public SearX instance for example. Let's say you visit searx.speedie.site and use it as your primary engine. Now, this search engine does not exist because I host my SearX instance locally but anyways, if you visit my SearX instance and use it to search for things, I have the power to log the search queries you search for, and I have the ability to see all the anime pornography you search for with great shame. Do you really trust me to not look at your search queries? No? So why should you trust any other SearX instance or hell, even Google for that matter. For this reason, you should take matters into your own hands and host your own services that you have control over. That way, you have the power to customize anything and everything about the service you're hosting, shut it down at any time to perform maintainence, set up logging, shred all logs and log absolutely nothing, etc.

-

But, doesn't hosting your own services require spending a lot of money? Doesn't it require a very powerful computer? No. If you want to host many, massive big files on a VPS or server that you rent, you may not have that much disk space. But even if that's the case you can host from home on a cheap old Dell Optiplex or maybe even a Raspberry Pi and just connect storage to it. I'm hosting a Git server using Gitea, and all the repositories Gitea handles combined only takes up approximately 870MB. And my public folder where I host downloads to all my software only takes up about 30MB. That really isn't much, and you can host that and much, much more on a cheap VPS. And the spmenu wiki I host takes up 31MB. So unless you want to host many, massive files I think making the argument that you don't have space is ridiculous. Any desktop computer from.. say 2008 or later is going to be able to handle hosting your site, and the terrible hard drive it has is going to be able to hold all of your files as well.

-

You can get a cheap VPS from Vultr for $3.50, and you can get a domain for usually very cheap as well. I went with Namecheap for my domain name, and they seem quite reliable and not very expensive. If you want to get a VPS from Vultr, feel free to use my referral link. There are other VPS companies though, and I still recommend hosting from home if you are able to, and your ISP reliably allows you to because it's likely still going to be a bit cheaper, but more importantly means you avoid the ability for your VPS provider to look at the contents of the virtual hard disk, and you are able to use more disk space. You have a lot more freedom that way. Still, a VPS is not a bad choice if you just want to host a few services and your personal site, but it's probably not the best option if you want to host NextCloud or a lot of big files or use it as a media server or anything like that. It also makes a lot more sense if you want to, for instance set up a VPN. Doing that on your own network doesn't make much sense unless you use the VPN away from home.

-

I won't get into hosting from home as that isn't something I'm familiar with (although I might try it at some point), and I also won't get into more complex setups or containers, just the basics. While I'm not a particularly big fan of Debian based GNU/Linux distributions, simply because of their old packages and the apt-get package manager, it's a fairly good choice if you want things to just work and serve your content all day every day. Despite not really liking Debian very much, it's what this website is hosted on, along with my other services I have.

-

When I'm using a VPS, I usually start by adding a new user and giving him a password. Then I usually install doas because it's smaller and has had fewer vulnerabilities than the more bloated sudo that people use. Then I will copy over my SSH keys to that user's .ssh directory. Finally, I always disable authentication using passwords for SSH, and more importantly I disable SSH as the root user. I do this because the root user is present on almost every machine, meaning if you want to gain access to someone's server by bruteforcing, a safe bet is to try to gain access using the root account. Then for extra security I will disable the actual root user, so the only way to gain superuser is to use doas. Now you may have to open ports to be able to host anything on it. If you want to host websites you will have to open TCP port 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS. On Vultr VPSes this is done using the ufw command, which is the firewall the VPS comes with. It should be noted though, that if you want to host an email server you will need to open port 25 used for SMTP, and should be done with the ufw command as well, but you also need to file a ticket on Vultr's website giving a valid reason for wanting the port to be opened. Usually they will accept your request, though.

-

Now that you've opened the ports you need, you can start hosting the services you wish to host. I would probably install Apache and php-fpm for PHP to get my website set up now. A VPS is going to function exactly like any GNU/Linux computer you're used to, although it will not have a graphical environment. Therefore you should expect to get familiar with Vim, it is your best friend. Anyways, you should host your own services, instead of using public services because it's more private, more secure, and you have much more control than with a public service that many people are going to use.

- ]]> - + Why I don't use Wayland (and how it can be improved) + /blog.php/Why+I+don%27t+use+Wayland+%28and+how+it+can+be+improved%29 + /blog.php/Why+I+don%27t+use+Wayland+%28and+how+it+can+be+improved%29 + Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Why I don't use Wayland (and how it can be improved) + +

2023-04-28

+ +

Today I want to talk about Wayland, and why I don't use it. In case you're a +normie and don't know what Wayland is, Wayland is this new display protocol +created by the people over at Freedesktop. They want it to be better than the +display protocol most GNU/Linux users are already using called X11. While I'm +not against the idea of a new display protocol, in my opinion Wayland is a +failure, and it fails at doing everything X11 did right, and that's what I want +to talk about here. Note that most of this will be from a developer's +perspective; if you're using GNOME, KDE or maybe even one of the many wlroots +based compositors, your experience on Wayland is probably going to be pretty good.

+ +

Terminology

+ +

First, let's talk terminology. On X11 we have something called a 'Window manager', +and as the name implies it manages your window. The window manager is the root +window, meaning it's the first window. Other than that, it's just like any other +window you may have. This is quite powerful, because it means in theory anything +can be a window manager. You can try this for yourself on Xorg and xinit by +running startx /usr/bin/firefox. What you should have is an X11 session with +only firefox open and nothing else. This is why we have window managers, they +allow us to spawn more windows and place those windows wherever we want. Even +desktop environment users have a window manager, because your desktop +environment comes bundled with one.

+ +

On Wayland and X11, we have something called a compositor. Let's ignore +Wayland's definition completely for now. On a basic level, the compositor provides +fancy effects such as transparency, rounded corners with anti-aliasing, shadows, +animations and other things you may or may not want. One of the most popular +compositors today is called Picom, and most standalone window manager users use +it, if they use a compositor at all. This works by creating buffer where these +effects are added, and then displaying the buffer to the user. This is why +older machines may feel slow when a compositor is running, it's just not +displaying that buffer quickly enough.

+ +

In X11, a client is pretty much the same thing as a window. I am going to be +using the term 'window' throughout this blog post, but client is what I +usually use when referring to an X11 window.

+ +

'Xorg' is an implementation of the X11 protocol, and it's the implementation +most users are using. There are other ones like XFree86, but most users use Xorg.

+ +

The compositor problem

+ +

This is where Wayland's problem for me comes in. On X11 these two components are +separate, so I can pick and choose each component and just combine what I like. +With Wayland, they have decided to combine the compositor and window manager +into one program, which to make it even more confusing is also called a +compositor. Now, why is this so bad?

+ +
    +
  • Less modular
    • +
+ +

By combining the compositor and window manager, you're slowly making the display +stack less and less modular. The days of choosing your compositor and choosing +your window manager are now gone. It's all one big program, meaning even if you +avoid desktop environments you're still going to have one big program that does +everything. This is just not the way forward if you ask me. I believe the main +reason for this is "making the desktop easier for new users", but at this point +the GNU/Linux community should give up on new users who aren't willing to +learn our technology.

+ +
    +
  • Window managers are so complex
    • +
+ +

It is incredibly easy to make an X11 window manager, because again it's a window +like any other. You really just need to create a window, read atoms and finally +move/resize windows around. On Wayland you now also need to implement a compositor, +which adds a lot of complexity and room for failure. Even one of the more minimal +Wayland compsitors dwl, a dwm rewrite for Wayland has many more lines of code +than the original dwm, because now you also need to do the compositing yourself. +Not to mention, if you're using a minimal compositor like dwl, you can't have +fancy effects and a minimal window manager, that's just not possible anymore, +at least as of now.

+ +

This added complexity led to libraries like wlroots being created, and its slogan +really says it all; "about 60,000 lines of code you were going to write anyway". +However even with wlroots you still need to implement compositing, there's no +way to have a separate compositor with your window manager.

+ +
    +
  • No, a Wayland compositor is not a window like any other.
    • +
+ +

As I said earlier, a window manager on X11 is a window like any other. The only +difference is it's the first window spawned (root window), and it is responsible +for creating, resizing and displaying all other windows, although this is technically +not a requirement. This is good because you can for example startx /usr/bin/firefox +and have an X11 session that runs Firefox. Nothing else, just Firefox. This goes +for any graphical program such as your terminal emulator, text editor, Emacs, etc. +On Wayland, this is not possible, because windows do not implement compositing +whatsoever. They are only responsible for creating themselves.

+ +
    +
  • How about no compositor
    • +
+ +

I think this is worth mentioning as well. A lot of X11 users simply don't use a +compositor at all. They deem it unnecessary, and it makes sense. If you don't need +transparency, fancy effects, Vsync and other nice features like that, why should +you waste your system resources on a compositor? Good luck omitting the compositor +when you're using Wayland. You can't.

+ +

Those are the problems that come as a result of combining the compositor and +window manager. While I'm sure there could be benefits to combining the +compositor and window manager as well, I just cannot think of a single reason.

+ +

What change do I want to see?

+ +

I want a more minimal display protocol. Wayland is more minimal so I think it +passes here. What I also want is a more modular display protocol, and this +is where Wayland seems to fail. X11 did this right, but I want it even more +modular than X11. Everything should be separate, as long as it doesn't harm the +user experience. Not to mention, more modular software is usually more secure, +because each module is much smaller and easier to maintain.

+ +

I also want a library which allows creating BOTH X11 and Wayland clients without +writing any extra code for it. This would be ideal, although I'm sure there +are potential challenges from doing it this way. You might say, "Just use GTK +or QT" but they also require writing extra code for Wayland or X11 support. +This leads to developers not supporting one or the other.

+ +

For example, I want to add Wayland support into spmenu. I'd be happy to do so, +but the problem is it would require rewriting the code for creating the +window, handling events, keybinds, clicks, drawing, mapping, and more. +It's just not something I want to deal with, which is why I've +chosen to not write any of my software to use Wayland native libraries. +There is XWayland, but to my knowledge there's no such thing in reverse.

+ +

Conclusion

+ +

I want to mention that I'm very much open-minded towards a new display protocol. +I'm all for a new, more minimal, more stable display protocol. It's just that +Wayland makes it a pain to write compositors, and in many ways it's a downgrade +from X11, which is really old I might add. That's not to say Wayland has no +improvements and X11 is perfect. The most popular X11 implementation, Xorg +is extremely bloated and has a lot of legacy code that really doesn't matter +today and the protocol itself is probably not much better.

+ +

It also has absolutely horrible security. But all things considered, I think X11 +just has much better ideas on what the desktop should be than Wayland does. If +Wayland improves the things I don't particularly like, I may end up switching +to it. But as of now, X11 works fine for me and the benefits of Wayland just aren't +worth it, so I am going to be sticking with X11. If you know of any solution +to this problem, I'd love to hear it, and I'd love to give Wayland a proper chance.

+ +

Thank you for reading, have a good day!

+ + ]]> + + + + Why most blogs suck + /blog.php/Why+most+blogs+suck + /blog.php/Why+most+blogs+suck + Wed, 19 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Why most blogs suck + +

2023-04-19

+ +

Now that most of my issues regarding this site are resolved, I want to start +writing about something. I have a lot of topics I want to talk about, however +for many of these topics there's just not much content to them, so I apologize +for the length of some of these.

+ +

Anyways what better topic to start with than this one. My blog isn't perfect, +I post a lot of garbage here quite often, but what pisses me off is when people +will write blog posts, have an RSS feed and then ruin it with one thing. +They will put about 1/10 of the blog post in the description tag, and then +they will have the blog post in full on their website.

+ +

This is extremely annoying, because it means I have to open up my bloated web +browser just to view your blog post which could normally be read using my RSS +reader, which is designed for reading blog posts. What if I want to read your +blog post on the command line? Or what if I want to read your blog post when +I don't have internet?

+ +

Good RSS readers like Newsboat and sfeed store the full feed locally, meaning +you can actually read the articles even when you don't have any internet +connection. But when you force me to go to your website, I can't just save it +when I do have internet and read the blog post whenever I want to read it. +Now, I know why you would do this. If you have a site, chances are you want +people to visit it. RSS is convenient, very convenient and I'm going to admit I +don't actually visit the sites for blogs I follow very often, usually I read the +feeds every day and then very occasionally visit the websites. But I still think +this is annoying.

+ +

So, if you're going to have a blog and you plan on using RSS, please provide the +full blog post in the description tag. I know this can cause issues with +paragraphs, but you can steal my feed as a base if you want. Thanks for +reading, and have a good day.

+ + ]]> + + + + Important update regarding the site + /blog.php/Important+update+regarding+the+site + /blog.php/Important+update+regarding+the+site + Fri, 14 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Important update regarding the site + +

2023-04-14

+ +

I will keep this one short so you can actually read through it. Yesterday +(13/04/2023) I purchased a domain, because as we all know I do not trust +Freenom to keep my site up. This domain is a lot more reliable, however it does +mean you will have to swap out '.gq' for '.site'. I have redirected some parts +of my site. I have redirected the main speedie.gq domain, and I have also +redirected rss.xml so that RSS readers won't complain. You should still change +the URL, however if you exclusively consume my website through RSS you will get +the message anyway because of this. Finally I redirected the wiki.

+ +

Switching over is not hard. The page is identical, and although SSL was not +functioning earlier today, I have resolved the issue. So to switch over, just +replace 'speedie.gq' with 'speedie.site'. This is especially important if you +use Arch and my repository. If you do, you must edit /etc/pacman.conf and +replace the URL. There may be a few sharp edges as of now, as I simply ran a +few sed commands on the old site without looking through it properly, if there +are issues please email me so it gets fixed. +I should also add I moved from Nginx to Apache a few days ago.

+ +

Anyway, that was just a short blog post about something relatively important. +I will probably keep the speedie.gq domain updated as well, but I cannot +guarantee it will work properly. If you have any questions, feel free to +email me, or simply join the +Matrix space. Either way, that's +it, have a good rest of your day!

+ + ]]> + + + + I switched back to Microsoft Windows, here's why + /blog.php/I+switched+back+to+Microsoft+Windows%2C+here%27s+why + /blog.php/I+switched+back+to+Microsoft+Windows%2C+here%27s+why + Sat, 01 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + I switched back to Microsoft Windows, here's why + +

2023-04-01

+ +

As you guys may know if you have been a speedie.site reader for a while, I was a +Gentoo user, and recently I switched to using Arch full time. However, I am yet +again switching operating system because I just found out Windows is the best +operating system ever made.

+ +

Linux sucks, but Windows is awesome!

+ +

Now, most of you probably use some open source Linux distribution on your +computer. But Linux is open source, and that's bad. That means Russian +hackers can steal your porn collection because of course they can see all the +source code and backdoor it. When you're using Microsoft Windows on the other +hand, the only one who can access your data is Microsoft, who will send that +data to the NSA. This also makes sure your data is safe, and that you're +following the law like any good citizen. When I'm using Windows I feel safe +and no malware has access to my data. The same cannot be said for Linux or +any other open source operating system

+ +

These Linux users who never go outside or shower will say that this is malicious, +or that it is spyware, or any other nonsense but the fact of the matter is the +government already knows everything about you anyway. You should not care about +privacy if you have nothing to hide, so of course Linux users have a lot to +hide. The government would never do anything bad anyway, they only +want the best for you.

+ +

Tiling window managers suck

+ +

Why would you use a tiling window manager? Only hackers use those. Tiling +window managers are also really hard to use, I mean think about all the keybinds +you need to remember to get good at using one.

+ +

What about speedwm? I'm just kidding, I've been secretly using GNOME for years, +and I was never using speedwm in the first place. Hating Wayland? Actually, +I've been using a Wayland session on GNOME for a long time now. As we all +know, X11 is old and slow, and it's not written in Rust so that makes it +instantly bad. spmenu? It's just rofi with a theme.

+ +

C programming language? Hell no, it's so hard to learn and it's so old. +Real programmers use JavaScript for the frontend and Rust for the backend. Recently +though, I've started using C# which is superior to both of these in +every way. We all love Micorsoft.

+ +

Vim is only used by furries, neckbeards and weirdos

+ +

Vim is a meme Linux users force onto new users. In reality, Vim is hard to use and +it's so slow, I can't even figure out how to exit it. If I can't even exit it, +how can I use it to write code? Why wouldn't you just use a mouse anyway? +It's not 1983 anymore, we have modern, proper computers for real people now. +The only people who still use Vim are neckbeards who want to look cool on +the internet but in reality don't have a life.

+ +

Visual Studio Code on the other hand is the greatest code editor ever and +it's what I've been using for months now, while people were under the +impression that I'm an avid Vim user. It's "open source" so that the +Linux neckbeards will use it, but uses a mouse, because it's 2023 +and if you're not using a mouse for everything except typing, you're +lost in the past. It also supports JavaScript plugins and has a lot +of Microsoft telemetry, so they know you're doing a good job +writing programs for the future.

+ +

Installing programs

+ +

Linux users claim that using their terrible package managers is better +than downloading executables from the internet directly. This is just +not true, because the package managers can be hijacked remotely by Russia +to spread propaganda to all of the users. This doesn't happen when you +download random executables from the internet, because Microsoft Defender +is guarding your computer, and has a 100% success rate. As soon as malware +tries to attack your computer, Microsoft Defender is there to stop it.

+ +

Software minimalism

+ +

Software minimalism is all a big joke. Why do you need your computer to +use 100MB of system RAM idle? Unused RAM is wasted RAM. Microsoft makes sure +to leave no RAM wasted, which makes it much better. Unlike suckless, Microsoft +makes feature complete software that normal people can use. In fact, +suckless is just a software project created by Microsoft's worst employees +created to trick Linux users into thinking Linux is unusable, thus getting them +to move over to Windows. Microsoft makes sure people join the beautiful land +of Windows, where no one falls for memes, and everyone is secure.

+ +

Conclusion then. After I found out Windows is better than Linux, I have +decided to stop working on my meme projects, and join Bill Gates in +helping him build the best operating system for normal people. Linux +furries and neckbeards, join the land of Microsoft today, stop using the +Matrix meme, come back to Discord, assist Microsoft and the NSA in +catching criminals, and become a real member of society today. +It's only a $100 operating system.

+ + ]]> + + + + Friendship ended with Gentoo, now Arch is my best friend + /blog.php/Friendship+ended+with+Gentoo%2C+now+Arch+is+my+best+friend + /blog.php/Friendship+ended+with+Gentoo%2C+now+Arch+is+my+best+friend + Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Friendship ended with Gentoo, now Arch is my best friend + +

Alright so I have a brief announcement or something today and that +is, I have officially stopped using Gentoo. Yes that's right, the Gentoo elitist +is now an Arch cuck. But why, why would you commit such a crime you might say? +Well, Gentoo has actually been giving me more and more problems for months now, +and it doesn't seem to get any better.

+ +

I've had so many dumb issues with Gentoo recently, such as Xft fonts being +broken, packages failing to emerge, --depclean removing my entire system, +and the final straw, gnome-keyring issues that just do not occur on +other GNU/Linux distributions. In case you're not aware, I have been using +Arch on my laptop for months now, and while Arch has some annoying issues +such as GPG keys constantly breaking pacman when updating, I find that it +works much better now.

+ +

To make matters worse for Gentoo, syncing the repositories takes a very +long time, and it's valuable time that I do not want to spend just because a +program is slow and written in Python. Moving over to Arch was not difficult +though. I said 'fuck it' yesterday at around 04:00 in the morning, and +started installing Arch over Gentoo. Thankfully, as you guys know I have +an arch repository containing nearly the same programs as my Gentoo +repository (overlay), and as such I was able to install my config files +and all my programs using one command. It's super nice, otherwise I +would've probably spent much more time on this.

+ +

Anyways, as for my overlay, I will probably update it every once in a +while using maybe a docker container, but I'm going to be focusing on +the arch repository because it's what I'm using. For those of you +that actually use Arch, this might be good news for you because it means +you will always be able to install my software using pacman. I know +that some of you will probably be disappointed about this, because I'm +kind of known as a Gentoo user at this point, but I just can't take +Portage's stupidity anymore. If you need to however, feel free to remove +my feed!

+ +

I also took the time to move /home to a separate partition, +which is really nice if you want to reinstall quickly. Whatever, that's +all I needed to say with this blog post. Have a good day!

+ + ]]> + + + + Important site update (and the Matrix) + /blog.php/Important+site+update+%28and+the+Matrix%29 + /blog.php/Important+site+update+%28and+the+Matrix%29 + Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Important site update (and the Matrix) + +

2023-03-15

+ +

I'm going to keep this one short and to the point. As some of you may know, +my domain is going to expire. It is going to expire on the 31st of March +2023, which is not far from today and that's what I'm going to talk about. +For those of you that don't know, my website uses a "free" TLD (top level +domain). This seemed like a good option last year, but as I want to +continue this stuff, it presents a problem. Freenom is the company that +provides the .gq TLD, along with a few more domains such as .tk. Freenom +has shown themselves to be problematic, and they have done things like +taking away domains from people after the websites have become too +popular. Renewing their domains is also difficult and annoying, and even +then doesn't work all the time for all people.

+ +

Because of this, I decided to write this blog post, and to make sure my +readers have a place to keep up with me if my website does collapse, I've +created a Matrix channel which I recommend you join. You can join it +here. You can start with Element, it's all +free software unlike the previous Discord server. I don't plan on making +this a big thing like Forwarder Factory was, and in fact I don't want that +either. This is simply going to be a small place for me to talk to my +readers, discuss the website and other things like that. +Either way, my domain expires March 31st if I'm unable to renew it. If I +manage to renew it, you can continue using the site like normal for an +additional year. Otherwise, I'm simply going to purchase a new domain. I do not +yet have another domain, which is why I recommend you join the Matrix channel. +That's really all I wanted to say, as the writer here I think it is important +that you are informed about everything. My website code is all available for +free on Codeberg so you can still have that if you want.

+ +

Thanks for reading, have a good day!

+ + ]]> + + + + Normies are destroying GNU Linux + /blog.php/Normies+are+destroying+GNU+Linux + /blog.php/Normies+are+destroying+GNU+Linux + Thu, 09 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 + + Normies are destroying GNU/Linux + +

2023-03-09

+ +

So, because this blog post marks blog post number 50, and because the first +blog post is 1 year old today, I thought to celebrate I'd do a rewrite of +my first blog post, which still holds true, actually more so than when I +intially wrote it. Granted, the original blog post is terrible, it was +fueled out of frustration and nothing more so let's give the topic the +chance it deserves.

+ +

As well all know, GNU/Linux is an operating system and it has always been +the outcast, it has always been less popular than other operating +systems like Windows and macOS. Out of the outcast operating systems like +BSD, Haiku and more however, it's pretty popular and it's growing in +popularity. While this may seem like a good thing at first, when you +actually dig deeper into what that means for GNU/Linux, you'll find many +problems and I want to talk about those today. +So let's go back into the early days. Linus Torvalds developed the Linux +kernel, which was used in combination with the GNU project. This means +we now have a completely free software operating system. Great, now we +don't have to use spyware nonfree software that doesn't respect your +freedom anymore and everything is good for the small userbase. +Previously GNU/Linux followed the UNIX philosophy rather closely, which +is what made it so great. Of course there were exceptions to this rule, +such as X11 (and today Wayland), however most software was minimal, +and closely followed the UNIX philosophy like it was a religion, +as that was expected out of software.

+ +

As GNU/Linux got more mainstream and normies got their hands on it, +this freedom, this minimalism, all this stuff that made GNU/Linux so +great started to disappear. When normies found this free operating system, +naturally being normies they didn't want to actually learn anything about +minimalism and free software, and certainly didn't want to enjoy any of +the perks of it. Instead of that, they initially whined and complained +about how it was different from what they're used to. And we, members +of the GNU/Linux community in response did everything in our power to +make the "Year of the GNU/Linux desktop" happen. Except..

+ +

We didn't. In response to normies complaining, we as a community at large +started developing garbage, bloated software that throws everything that makes +GNU/Linux and UNIX in general so great in the trash. We're no longer +using text streams, we're no longer writing quality software with +quality code, instead we're focusing on developing libraries on top of +libraries that just add bloat to a project and create huge basically +packages of software in an effort to please normies who refuse to +appreciate the beauty of UNIX-like operating systems and just wanted to +stick to what they're familiar with.

+ +

Here's the thing, If you're this kind of person who doesn't want +to learn GNU/Linux, you don't want to learn about UNIX-like +operating systems and you don't want to spend any time out of your day +learning this stuff then why even bother using a new operating system +in the first place? At that point, you might as well stick with Windows +or macOS. But alright, fine. We can still have our section of the +GNU/Linux community where traditional UNIX/Minimalist views are +still appreciated, right? Well, no because eventually programmers +start writing software which of course depends on all this normie +software which is absolutely awful and now it becomes almost +impossible to have a functioning system on GNU/Linux without +this garbage software.

+ +

I haven't given any examples yet, but in my first version of this +blog post I referred to Snaps, AppImages and Flatpaks, and while those +do still meet the criteria here (although not in the present), +I want to give some more examples which might make more sense. +First, systemd. systemd is a collection of tools for GNU/Linux, +and although many people hate systemd because it is "an init system", +it is really a suite of tools. Therefore calling it bloated is not +justified. However what is justified is valid criticism towards it. +systemd provides a tool named "logind". So many programs depend +on this, it is pretty much impossible to have a modern GNU/Linux +system without this program installed on your computer. Now, +that should be taken with a grain of salt because there +are many different implementations of this tool, and those of +you that use Gentoo may be familiar with one implementation +called elogind. Still, I think this is an excellent example of +dependencies that are used so much you cannot escape them.

+ +

But there are so many programs like these that we can't really +escape, and the cause of these programs existing is usually +the same. Normies want "easy" software, so in response we write +terrible software which a normie will think is easy because +Windows is terrible. However the worst of it came around the +time Linus Tech Tips and all these other well known technology +"entertainment" channels started covering GNU/Linux and giving +it attention. When that happened and Windows/Mac users gave +this OS a proper chance, developers around here scrambled to +write as much normieware as possible to please these new users +in the hopes of converting them into GNU/Linux users. Of course +this failed, and just resulted in more terrible software.

+ +

I call this the "gaming wave", because suddenly all these gamers +(often with NVIDIA graphics cards) came over here, because +that's what Linus Tech Tips' fanbase is and wanted to play +games. Of course, this failed because despite the effort from +the people who play games around here, most GNU/Linux users +don't really play games. In fact I barely play games myself +anymore. I have nothing against people who play games, but +the people who play games on GNU/Linux certainly have some +blame to take here.

+ +

Lastly, before I end off this blog post I want to mention +a few things regarding Wayland. In short, I'm definitely +against it and that's for a few reasons. Wayland brings +a lot of good things to the table, such as a cleaner +codebase, less screen tearing, perhaps HDR support +in the future, and so on and all that is fine by me. +No complains there. Where the problem starts to show +however is from a developer perspective. Yes, the +Wayland display protocol is more minimal than X11 +(that's not really an achievement) but a lot of that is +because the Wayland mess has been moved over to the +compositor forcing any developers to write thousands of +lines of just absolute junk. This is absolutely terrible, +and until the developers of Wayland change direction +(highly doubt they will), I'm sticking with X11 until +it's no longer feasible to do so.

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Either way, that's what I wanted to say, stop using +all of this stupid software whenever possible, and +become a based GNU/Linux minimalist. I plan on getting +a page up on replacements for stupid software which +will kind of act as a guide on how to get into GNU/Linux +minimalism for those of you that fell for this stupid +software. If you have any questions or thoughts, +feel free to send me an email.. and have +a good rest of your day.

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