Mozilla’s recent blog posts explicitly highlight that they are investing in ads for short-term revenue growth. So when they go on to remove the ToS statement about not selling user data, that suggests to me that their strategy is in fact to collect and sell user data.

Perhaps they aren’t doing that yet, but signs are pointing in that direction. So that does make me reluctant to share any data with them.

The Orange Box 2; featuring Half Life 3, Team Fortress 3, and Portal 3.

Fair enough. Thanks for the info.

The winapps link in my post says it is a hard-fork of the one you linked to (and my one has updates as recent as yesterday). So it isn’t abandoned.

Is there a reason why you’ve suggested qeumu in particular for the VM? (winapps suggests two different VM options)

I’ve never heard of OnlyOffice before. The wikipedia page seems to imply that they are web-apps; and the OnlyOffice website talks about pricing for businesses and personal severs or something, listing team collaboration features. So I’m not yet entirely sure exactly what OnlyOffice is - but I suspect it isn’t really what I’m looking for.

Maybe so, but then there’s still Excel and OneNote.

Regarding OneNote in particular, I’m not using that for any collaborative work; but I do have extensive notes and useful past work there. I reckon OneNote is pretty good - but I regret using it now because of the lock-in effect. And there doesn’t seem to be any Linux analogue at all. (What I need is xournal++ integrated into Joplin. I sometimes fantasize about trying to hack that together myself; but that’s just a dream really.)

I haven’t bothered to try it myself, but my internet sleuthing tells me that the latest versions don’t work.

I’d be happy enough to move to Libre Office exclusively; except that I need to be able to collaborate with others who are using MS Office - and that’s a battle I don’t really want to fight right now.

In my experience winapps doesn’t work well enough to use for work. I had almost constant issues with it.

That’s a disappointing to hear - but it’s exactly the experience I hoped to avoid myself by asking about it. So thank you!

Your setup for getting nice *nix stuff on Windows sounds good, but for me it isn’t so much that I want to use *nix stuff but rather that I want to avoid Windows stuff. For example, today I got a popup notification from Microsoft suggesting that I should install an xbox app. … I said ‘no’, and quickly disabled those kinds of suggestions. Easy - except that I’ve disabled various ‘suggestions’ in Windows countless times. Its a constant chore keeping up with new anti-features constantly being added. So that’s really what I’m trying to avoid.

I’d prefer not to rely on browser based versions if I can help it. (I don’t like having a weird hybrid of browser UI and app UI. Also, the browser versions are not as responsive, and are not feature-complete.)

🍷

What is Wine anyway? All I can work out is that it definitely is not an emulator… (probably it’s a fermented drink made from grapes, but implemented in Linux.)

Yeah, I agree that OP’s attitude is unappealing. But it’s not like OP is an official spokesperson or ambassador for Linux or anything like that. It’s just a person giving their opinion. And in any large group of people there’s always going to be some that you don’t agree with. (and often they are the loudest most visible ones…)

I’ve been happily using RSS feeds for many years. I mostly use them for webcomics. I’ve got a bunch of different webcomic feeds. But I also use RSS to follow a bunch of low-traffic sites that I care about the content of but don’t want to have to manually visit just to see if there’s an update.

Also, I don’t have a google account, but I use RSS to follow a couple of youTube channels that I find interesting. (Again, stuff that rarely updates. eg. hbomberguy.)

I’ve found that a lot of blogs do have RSS feeds even if there is no visible link or mention of RSS anywhere on the website. I often just throw the blog URL into the ‘add feed’ box on The Old Reader, and it turns out there is feed info hidden in there somewhere.

Yeah, cars suck.

Yeah. They’ve done a good job. Strategically its so that Steam can’t easily be crushed under Microsoft’s enormous boot. So it’s a good forward-thinking commitment that everyone can benefit from. (Everyone except Microsoft, I suppose.)

I wouldn’t read too much into it. Using “he” instead of “it” is a mistake that a person might make if English is not their first language. It’s pretty easy to imagine that someone working on a browser would not be interesting in messing around with the pronouns in their build instructions. They made an error, and they didn’t think the error was important (which in itself was another error). But it is fixed now. Surely no harm done. They were not actively trying to impede anyone’s progress or deny anyone’s rights, or even say anything negative about anyone at all. They simply made a mistake in their use of pronouns in their build instructions. The mistake is now fixed. And although its fair to take it as a ‘warning’ that maybe there are objectionable views lurking in there, it certainly is not evidence of such views. I really don’t think it’s fair to hang this mistake over them. I’m sure that pretty much everyone in this thread has made worse mistakes throughout their lives. I know I certainly have.

There are real problems transgender people are having, ladybird browser must be low on that priority.

Are you trying to tell me that Ladybird inadvertently referring to a computer process ‘he’ instead of ‘it’ is not a high priority problem for transgender people? What could possibly be worse? :p

(But seriously though. I find it really weird that people are still upset at Ladybird about this. It makes me wonder if there’s some social manipulation going on. Like, is anyone actually upset about this, or is it just an excuse to attack the devs?)

Is this because they used “he” instead of “they” in the build instructions? … They changed that and acknowledged the mistake. Surely that’s enough. It’s the fucking build instructions. I think we can probably find it in our hearts to forgive them.

[edit] Just in case people think I’m joking. I’m not. As far as I’m aware, the critical incident that that has resulted in people calling Ladybird devs anti-trans is that they wrote ‘he’ instead of ‘they’ in the build instructions. That’s what caused the original outrage. And as far as I’m aware, there have been no other incidents. But please, if there is something of substance that I’m not aware of, post about it here.