I've been writing books for over 30 years now. I began publishing them in 2011. So far, I unleashed 21 books unto the wild. By and large, fiction is super easy to write. You just use your own head. Even my technical works on kernel crash analysis, problem solving, ethics, or career help were relatively simple to jot down. Recently, though, I had completed my most ambitious project yet. A military history book.

Nonfiction is hard. You cannot wing it, use your experience or imagination. You must work with references, tons and tons of them, read other books, you must use citations, and so forth. Well, for the past three months, I have engrossed myself into this ultra-complex endeavor. Now, it's done. The book weighs 90K words, it has some 35 figures and tables, each, plus almost 700 citations. It also includes a piece of simulation code, for a specific combat scenario, written in Matlab-like octave. And I did all of this work using Linux and Linux tools. Well, 90% of the work. Let me tell you more. Linux from the perspective of a seasoner author with fifteen million words under their belt.

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Here's something I never quite expected to write. But recently, I've been playing and playing with some old games, most notably the wonderful Caesar III and Pharaoh, and I decided to expand my adventure. And I thought, well, Max Payne, a lovely title of yore. After all, I enjoyed this game immensely back in the early 2000s, and I must have finished it four or five times at least. So I wondered, can it run in Linux?

To see what gives, I went rummaging in my old game archive. As it happens, Max Payne is one of those majestic games that simplify things for the user - it's largely self-contained. So you simply grab the directory with all its contents, and copy that to a different host. Boom. Now, how does a 2001 game handle a 4K screen on an old yet powerful laptop with Kubuntu 24.04, plus Nvidia PRIME? Well, let's find out.

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As you well know, and if you don't, let's establish this once more: I love the Plasma desktop environment, I use it extensively, and it's simply the best desktop out there. But I am not blind to its flaws and problems, and there were quite a few the first three times I tested the brand new Plasma 6. While KDE should be commended on being able to retain the look and feel and functionality without ruining the user experience, and just building on it with a new tech stack, there are still a lot of hurdles and obstacles in making Plasma 6 rock.

Well, there's a new version out there, Plasma 6.3. In October yesteryear, Plasma 6.2 turned out to be fine. Now, I must test the latest release, and see if and how the KDE team has improved on the proven formula. I was thinking about being adventurous, and doing a test on a system with Nvidia drivers, but I decided to be consistent, and continue with my IdeaPad 3 machine and its AMD processor and graphics. So we begin.

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Remember my old Lenovo G50 laptop? Well, it's still around, still working reasonably well. As you may recall, it's got a fabulous eight-boot setup, and I've used it for dozens if not hundreds of distro tests. Currently, the machine runs Windows 10 (which I've not used on this box in three-four years), CentOS 7 and 8, Rocky Linux 8, Manjaro, MX Linux, Fedora, and Ubuntu 20.04. I mostly run the latest, and it's been an okay experience overall. Surprisingly fast and smooth. But an SSD refresh can't go wrong.

Much as I did with my 2014 Lenovo Y50 machine, I'm going to revitalize this 2015 G50 box. It's not sluggish by any means, but the boot times are ridiculous. We're talking two minutes just to log into the Ubuntu session. That's silly. But once logged in, things work well. I can do 1080p playback without any stuttering, the browsing speed and page loading is good. There's really nothing missing from the "modern" experience. So things ought to be even better with a new disk. Let's begin.

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Here I was, a decadent European minding my own European business, pondering art and chocolate and the price of diesel, when, just a day ago, I accidentally came across an article that mentioned something called Android System SafetyCore being installed on people's phones without consent. I read more about this app, and it turns out, among other things, it's a crappy, intrusive prude filter for idiots. It enables a "safety" framework for the "classification" (shh, don't call it scanning) of potentially "sensitive" content. And of course, this would be nudity, a forbidden word across the pond.

I checked my phones, and yup, on one of these, this little turd had indeed been installed without my consent. So, we might have a privacy violation on our hands, which I'm going to examine in detail and, if needed, report to the relevant regulatory bodies. Second, I can't even begin to express my disdain about this feature and its intended purpose of tech-imposed moralism. But I'll try. Let's have an article.

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Without exaggeration, this is one of the sweetest tutorials I've ever written on Dedoimedo. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, I used to play Sierra's fabulous Caesar III and Pharaoh (and Cleopatra) RTS titles for many an hour. The experience was phenomenal. With time, it became harder and harder to enjoy these games on modern machines, due to various compatibility issues. And yet, I persisted.

Just a few days ago, I showed you how to set up Caesar III, bought from GOG, in Linux. While technically the game isn't supported on Linux, it works great. Not only that, you can also use the amazing, amazing Julius program to run Caesar III in HD. You get to enjoy one of the finest games ever made on modern hardware, you get to do it with style. But Pharaoh does not have its Julius equivalent. So what then? Well, let me show you.

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Even though I own Caesar III physical media and a Steam copy, I decided to purchase the Good Old Games (GOG) version of the game, too. Why not. It's not expensive, I end up supporting a nice DRM-free marketplace, and I get to have a digital copy of one of my most beloved and cherished games, plus a top-notch RTS title, to boot. Among the first articles I ever published on Dedoimedo some 19 years back.

Over the years, I've shown you many different ways on how to play this fine game on modern systems. First, by using a virtual machine in Windows XP, then the compatibility mode in Windows 7, then by using the Steam version through Proton in Linux, all part of my long-going migration away from Microsoft's tools and onto Linux, for all and everything, gaming included. But that's not all. When I did that, I also used the Julius program, which is a superb, superb open-source re-implementation of Caesar III, allowing you to run the title in HD on brand-new machines and operating systems. You still need game files (like once upon a time with OpenTTD) and Julius is specifically designed to work with the more recent, digital editions of the game. So let's see how the GOG experiment went.

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Like many a nerd, yesterday and today, I read a whole bunch of news on how Google intends to remove SMS as an option for 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) for Gmail accounts. On its own, this wouldn't be a biggie. Perhaps even a good thing. But the hailed replacement, in the form of QR codes, is an alarming development. Utter nonsense, if you ask me.

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Normally, I try to avoid Internet drama, so to speak, but something rather interesting caught my eye this week. The OBS Studio maintainers raised an issue with Fedora regarding their use of an unofficial OBS Studio Flatpak package. Naturally, the "incident" created quite a bit of furor in the Linux community. Specific IP issues aside, most people seem to think that Fedora folks are in the wrong for maintaining their own Flatpak repositories, rather than using the community-maintained FlatHub. Well.

I find this event to be so important that I decided to write an entire article dedicated to it. As it happens, I recently tested Fedora Kinoite, which uses Flatpaks for apps, and I wrote about the many, many problems with multi-source package management in my openSUSE Tumbleweed review. Now, with those in mind, once again, I would like to address the issue of official and unofficial software, chain of trust, and the way things are done in the Linux world.

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Let's talk about Tux babe, let's talk about you and me. Let's ponder all the good thing and the bad things in me Slimbook Executive laptop and its operating system, chosen to be Kubuntu 22.04 by its owner, ergo me. Now, I may upgrade soon, but that's a separate story. We're here to talk about the latest round of my escapades with this machine. I got the device so it can do productive stuff, and productive stuff it does. Most of the time.

By and large, the Executive is awesome. It's an extremely lovely piece of hardware. The only downside is that the operating system keeps misbehaving, every now and then. You run an update, and boom, you get a silly regression. Nope. Don't want. I want a stable, robust system. I wanna have fun. Plural. Funs! Well, in the seventh report, I expressed my disappointment. Perhaps today, the muses of source and compilation will be more favorably inclined toward me and my laptop. Commence, we must.

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Have you run out of good Internet? Worry not. I got a fresh supply. First, on the Kultur front. Do you walk the walk? Do you talk the talk? Well, unless you've had an occasional visit to Urban Dictionary, I've got some bad news for you. Dear Internetian, you might not be as well versed in everyday street lingo as you think. And by street, I mean the Web. Worry not, there's still time to redeem yourself. Hop over to Urban Dictionary, and educate yourself.

Now, on the gaming front. DOS? DOS! Who in the name of the command line still uses DOS? Well, it turns out, quite a lot of people. Whether you're a diehard romantic and you pine for the good ole days, whether you like ancient games and feel like playing them now and then, whether you're a DOSBox user, or just curious about old stuff, Vogons is there to help you. But with more flair and less bureaucracy than you'd expect.

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It is time for me to do another long-term review of a laptop in me possession. This time, we shall focus on the Slimbook Titan, a machine with handsome specs; a beefy, Linux-only machine I purchased with the explicit goal and mission of moving away from Windows for good. So far, I've given you four reports about this system. The journey started badly, got much much better, and then it went south again, as a result of bad updates. The same type of problem that affected my Slimbook Executive, as well. A confidence rollercoaster.

Before you blame my choice of operating system, please take a look at my recent hardware piece, and read through my software management section for the openSUSE Tumbleweed review. Those shall explain a few things, including: a) Kubuntu is probably the least bad big-name choice out there b) the hardware is fine, as I had tons of problems with pretty much any distro on pretty much any machine. Now, with that in mind, let's commence to start another Titan piece. I will address all sorts of different aspects of everyday usage, including gaming, which is one of the major blockers for leaving Windows and its silliness behind. Let's start.

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Quite often, I wonder how much nostalgia plays part in our perception of past events. Luckily, with software, you can go "back" and retest it, and so there's no need for any illusions and misconceptions. To wit, I decided to reinstall and try Windows 7 again (as a virtual machine, but still), to see whether my impressions of the dross we call "modern" software today are justified.

If you're wondering how I feel, I've said it before. Windows 10 is about the same as Windows 7. There aren't any big differences, except more annoyances and more "online" nonsense that adds zero value to the actual user experience. For me, the leap from XP to 7 was a good one, mostly because the latter came with improved 64-bit support. But ever since? I left XP with three years remaining on its support clock. I left 7 with maybe a month left. With 10, I have absolute zero intentions of moving to the low-IQ Windows 11. Linux, it is, but if push comes to shove, Mac might also be an option. But I digress. Let's check the last real desktop Windows.

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I said this many times before, and I'll say it again. Plasma is by far the best, most elegant and ergonomic desktop out there. It's visually pleasing, it's designed with clever thought and passion, and it comes with a bewildering array of options and settings so you can set it up just the way you like it. One such feature is the task manager, the thing where all your icons and notifications and system tray stuff goeth. Y'know, something that isn't really a given in the desktop world, believe it or not.

Well, Plasma lets you have it any which way you want - windows, icons, everything. But seemingly, Microsoft Windows seems to have one advantage: it can combine tasks when full. But wait just a moment. Plasma can do one better. It can combine them selectively, only for specific programs you want. Sounds like a major productivity win, and it is. Let's elaborate then.

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My first encounter with Kubuntu 24.04 was not very successful. Retro, but not in a good way. Since then, I've persevered with the distro, testing it every few months, usually after a nice, big round of updates. Overall, there's a solid, positive trend. It's getting better. Sure, one could argue that an LTS should be top-notch quality from the start, and that it needs to distinguish itself from the lesser short-support versions by being simply better, not worse, but hey. We can't go back in time.

Forward, we can. And so I'd like to give this distro its third round of testing. Well, fourth, to be fair, but who's counting. My scapegoat machine is a 2014 vintage IdeaPad Y50-70. 'Twas a fairly beefy and capable machine back in the day, still is, and with some modern technology under the hood (hint: SSD), it purrs nicely. The only question is, can its operating system match the hardware enthusiasm? Begin, we must.

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I consider myself an amateur photographer and video creator. That means, most of the time, I'll get by fine just by using ffmpeg, VLC, GIMP, and KDEnlive for my artistic endeavors. But now and then, I wonder whether I can up my game, and try my luck and skill using a top-notch tool like DaVinci Resolve. This near-3GB program offers a lot of goodies, and it's heavily used in the film industry. Well, perchance.

And so, I tried. I encountered many a snag. To that end, I decided to write this tutorial, which outlines all the little bugs and problems and issues you may encounter trying to configure DaVinci Resolve in Linux. In particular, I tried it in Kubuntu 24.04 (well, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base), and it wasn't trivial. So, let's proceed then, and handle all manner of wee problems. In the end, you will have the program running, all dandy like.

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It is time for me to talk about my smartphone again. Again. This will be the seventh time I review this device. Ever since I got it, I've been caught in a neverending loop of tweaking, customization and various annoyances, all of which comprise the everyday usage experience with the A54. And the loop must continue.

For a while, I thought there would be peace, and that the device will have settled. But no. There's always something new, something fresh that demands my attention. The phone works, but the experience is not consistent. There be problems, and I'm not very happy. I mean the hardware is good, the camera is good, the long-term support and reasonable purchase price elements are there. Then, as I told you in my iPhone 11 review five years down the road, if you need proper dual SIM functionality, Samsung is among the few vendors still offering this without any eSIM nonsense. Well, it's time for another piece of drama. Let's see what's new.

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"Why did you get a Slimbook? If you had bought a more upmarket brand, it wouldn't have happened." I'm paraphrasing roughly a dozen emails I received after I published my seventh Slimbook Executive report, in which I complained a lot about buggy firmware and botched system updates that temporarily rendered my beautiful and elegant laptop into a nerdy sandbox.

As a result, I wanted to write an article that summarizes roughly 15 years of laptop usage, with this or that Linux distro, with this or that result. In this manner, I will try to answer the question written above. Sadly, the conclusion is, it doth not matter which hardware you choose, or which distro you choose, until there's a professional "wedding" of components, software and silicon, there will always be issues. After all, even Windows systems often have driver-related problems, despite the full, heavy OEM support in making the bits and pieces behave. Therefore, don't blame Slimbook. To wit, let's get into details.

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Dedoimedo here, reporting for my periodic dose of masochism. Every few months, I power on my test laptop, which has Windows 11 installed on it (in a dual-boot setup), and I check whether anything has cardinally changed in this system. My latest escapade, back in September, was rife with problems.

But it's not all gloomy. I recently read an article on The Register, which shows that not only has Windows 11 user share not grown, it has shrunk! Ah. Beautiful. Music to my ears. After all, I love reading the AI-flavored marketing self-hype by various big-shot executives, side by side with a nice bundle of hard reality check. But it makes sense. Windows 11 is useless, the file manager is slow, Settings is not as good as Control Panel, and hardware requirements prevent people from "upgrading". Well, well, well. Karma and all that. Shall we?

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Here's an interesting little problem. A friend of mine gave me an older iPhone 11, so I could play with it, test its long-term abilities, do all sorts of everyday checks, and whatnot. I've already written some on this endeavor, including, for instance, how to use KDE Connect for music transfer. Next, I snapped a few photos with the camera, and I didn't notice that these were taken in the rather funny HEIC format.

I tried to view these files on my Slimbook Executive, which runs Kubuntu 22.04, and I had no success. So I did some reading, installed a few packages, and eventually got around the issue, relatively easily, to be fair. However, since the resolution has several layers, let me tell you all the different aspects of this adventure. Follow me.

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To the best of my memory, and I'm purposefully not checking me own article history, I've never reviewed openSUSE Tumbleweed. It's an interesting beast, because it's supposed to be a rolling release of the namesake distro. In other words, instead of you being "locked" to specific kernel, driver and app versions, you always get everything new and fresh, with implied potential instability that something like that could bring into your distro. Sort of like Manjaro, or perhaps CentOS Stream. Things, of course, get more complicated when you factor in Flatpaks or snaps, as they technically make any distro rolling. But I digress.

A second reason for why I'm writing this piece is because, after I wrote my Slimbook Executive report 7, which wasn't very happy, lots of people emailed me, telling me to ditch Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu), and try something else. Now, I am convinced that Ubuntu (or rather Kubuntu) is the least bad option there. Could the desktop be more amazing, more fun? Sure. But overall, its combo of stability, long-term support and overall ease of use are probably the best compromise you'll get in the Linux world. In other words, whatever you choose, there will always, always be Linux issues, the pro-am underdog nonsense that won't go away. All right, with that in mind, let us begin.

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Your humble peasant has finally laid his grubby hands on an iPhone. I am now no longer a plebe, for I am able to use a posh phone! Rawr! However, before you get overly excited, I must inform you that the device in my possession is a hand-me-down from a friend, an iPhone 11, dating back to 2019. My friend got himself a brand new device, and instead of throwing out the old piece, he gave it to me. Now, I can do all sorts of cool things and experiments. Chiefly, answer a question, how well does a five-year-old phone handle the "modern" reality?

This question is quite important, because I'm always wondering what the long-term value of mobile devices really is. For example, I still have a bunch of old Androids around, but some of these no longer receive any updates, some of these are a bit slow, some of these are a bit broken. Therefore, should one pay more money and get themselves an expensive iPhone, which ought to be supported for many years, or pay "less" money and get an Android? Because this question is a bit silly, let me elaborate.

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Until recently, my Slimbook Executive laptop has worked beautifully. For a year, it had a spotless record, it worked elegantly, without any major issues or errors. Then, in a span of just one month, so many things went badly, a result of poorly tested and integrated firmware and system updates that turned my sweet machine into a nerdy sandbox. In fact, I don't care why or how, the end result was: keyboard issues, mouse issues, network management issues, power management issues.

My tribulations are outlined in three progressive worse long-term reports on my usage of this machine, from the mildly skeptical fifth to angry sixth to fully disenchanted and bitter seventh article on this topic. Sure, a fresh wave of updates did resolve most of the problems, but not all. Power management remains iffy. However, I think I'm starting to see a pattern, and there may be some workarounds. If you're a Kubuntu 22.04 user, and your Plasma box is experiencing some weird power management problems, I might be able to help.

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Recently, two things happened. A friend of my gave me his old iPhone, so now I have it available for all sorts of testing. I wrote an article on how to copy local music, sans any cloud nonsense, to the iPhone, using VLC. And then, I wrote a second tutorial, on how to accomplish this with KDE Connect. Three things. Three.

Nobody expects Dedoimedo to quote Monty Python, ha. But now, let's expand on the endeavors above. Namely, my not-cloud music is now on the iPhone, and it plays well. However, it does not show in Apple Music. For some reason, this app does not reflect my locally sourced collection of songs, regardless of where they reside on the device. I thought, well, perchance the iTunes program can help. Only it's not available for Linux. Let's see if we can work around this problem.

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I don't like IPv6, for many reasons. In the home environment, it brings zero value. But I can tolerate it, and usually don't go too much out of my way to disable it (but I still do). My dislike has gone to eleven recently, though. Why? Well, a kernel update (specifically the ipv6 module) botched my productivity on two laptops, one Slimbook Titan and one Slimbook Executive. In both cases, the culprit was, it seems, the IPv6 code.

Well, this prompted me to completely disable the protocol and functionality on my two Kubuntu 22.04 systems. On its own, this was an annoying ordeal, because it's not very easy. I had to add a GRUB parameter AND blacklist a kernel module to stop IPv6 issues. This is Windows-level hack0ring to stop something that used to take a single sysctl directive in a not-so-distant past. But there's more. Since, even though IPv6 is disabled in the boxen, Network Manager still tries to set IPv6 addresses, nonstop, spamming the system log. This article will show you, with focus on Plasma, how to stop the noise. Follow me.

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My benevolence truly knows no bounds. Not only have I just announced a mega-awesome Smashwords holiday sale 50% deal on all my e-books published yonder, you're going to get another splendid gift, too. From Thursday, December 19 till Monday, December 23, midnight to midnight inclusive, The Amazing Advetures of Dashing Prince Dietrich is going to be free for grabs in the Amazon Kindle store. Hear, hear.

Now, if you're wondering what this effusive title is all about, the novel follows the merry and convoluted escapades of one Prince Dietrich, a cowardly, spoiled, entitled, self-centered, prurient nobleman, who will do everything in his power to avoid responsibility and yet become king. This book is grim-fun, fun-dark, gunpowder-rich and laced in humor and wit. But most importantly, it's the first book in a trilogy, and the holiday freebie allows you to get a good taste for the rest of the series. The name of the trilogy? Woes and Hose. Yes, you got it right. If that superbly superb name does not sway your heart, nothing ever will. Peace out, me hearties, and may your reading be fun.

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Lately, my Executive has been misbehaving somewhat. Wait. That's not a correct statement. Let me rephrase it. The laptop had worked amazingly well until a random kernel (plus firmware) update ruined it. The story of modern operating systems, designed and released without any testing, because words like DevOps, canary and unit testing have replaced hard, grueling work as the words de jour. No one wants to do boring QA. Everyone wants to be a leet coder.

The tribulations I've experienced are detailed in my fifth and sixth Executive reports. From a perfectly stable experience to a nonsensical rollercoaster of crappy quality. Now, any one issue would not be a problem, but together, they create a horrible impression. And then, just when I thought, well, that's it, peace and quiet again, a whole new range of issues assailed my box, and so, here we are, in the seventh installment of my Slimbook Executive saga, and it's the worst one yet. Follow me.

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Here's something I've not done before - I haven't tested an immutable AKA atomic Linux distro just yet. The idea is, your system is sort of read-only, and it can only be updated in a robust, reliable, atomic manner. Sounds like a cool concept. Necessary? Good for the end user? Well. We need to find out.

Indeed, when I decided to give atomicity its due attention, I faced a dilemma. There are many different flavors of immutable distros out there. Why join efforts and work on one cool thing, when you can fork and fight and dilute the already thin resources even further? The story of the Linux desktop. Browsing around, I sort of honed in on Fedora (and I tested the KDE version of the 41st release just recently). I had a choice. Gnome, KDE. Well, the latter obviously. This thing is called Kinoite, and you can install it like any other distro. To wit.

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All right, listen up. Are you sitting down? Good. Here we go. I am running a discounted sale for all of the books I've published through Smashwords. From December 12 through the end of the year, you can grab a bunch of fiction and nonfiction works. These include the four volumes in The Lost Words fantasy series, and please note the first book, The Betrayed is FREE (zero cost), my mythological novel I Shall Slay the Dragon!, and the recently published How to Make Your Career Suck Less, your one-stop shop to reducing work-related suffering.

I hope you will take advantage of this fine offer, especially the career-focused book, as it's dandy, witty and mightily useful. The books are DRM-free, no strings attached. If you can't use Smashwords, these books are also available through half a dozen other stores, like Apple, Kobo, Everand, Vivlio, Fable, and more. Now, if the repertoire above does not satisfy your reading desires, there are yet other works you can buy on Amazon. That would be all for now.

Read more ... (My Smashwords page)

Okay, okay. First, lemme tell you. I unpeasanted myself. I got an iPhone. But hold your horses. It ain't a new one. Far from it. My friend got himself a brand new device, so he gave me - for free - his old iPhone 11, which was released back in 2019. Essentially, it's identical to the same model I tested on Dedoimedo a while back. Well, now that I have it, my first order of business is customization, testing, tweaking, and you guessed it, putting some fine LOCAL music onto the device. Usually, easier said than done.

But wait. I've already shown you how to do this using VLC. This amazing program slash app allows you to upload your media into its folder, on the iPhone. And that's it. You don't need to bother with any cloud stuff, any subscriptions or anything like that. Today, I will "extend" the article and show you how to use KDE Connect, another great program, to pair with your iPhone, and send content and whatnot to and fro. Let's begin with this experiment, shall we then? After me.

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A few days ago, I wrote a review of Ubuntu 24.10, my first proper Ubuntu article in some six years. As you know, I have significantly reduced my distro testing efforts in the past couple of years. The nonstop emotional rollercoaster between excellence and total nonsense, the pro-am seesaw, the regressions, the lack of focus, the so-called dev-centric approach that has nothing to do with ordinary people, and the general mediocrity of the vast majority of systems I tried, all of these made me stop trying. Why would I waste my energy with software that's simply going nowhere? Here and there, I make an exception. Ubuntu last week, Fedora this.

Ah, you see, I am an eternal optimist, and I still use Linux heavily, like on my Slimbook Executive and Titan laptops, with focus on thorough, everyday use. Occasionally, the results are good, fun, promising, I get excited and swept away, thinking, this is it, this is the year of ... and then I get disappointed. I have become quite jaded and very reserved in what I choose to test and review. MX Linux was a nice gem, recently. Ubuntu was pretty much what I expected. So how about Fedora then? Well, let's commence.

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The problem you're facing is as follows. You would like to watch a movie in foreignese, and for that you need subtitles. Nowadays, it's quite trivial finding subtitle files for whichever movie you want, in a whole range of languages. You just need to grab an SRT (.srt) file, name it the same as your movie, and Bob's your uncle. Any self-respecting media player - or failing that, go for VLC, which is the best - will automatically load and display subtitles. But what if they are out of sync?

I talked about Linux and subtitles a long, long time ago. Most of what I wrote in that guide still holds. But I didn't cover the topic of time shift in the subtitle files. Perhaps you have the right words, but they are shown too late or too early. Even as little as 300ms difference can make the watching rather annoying. Anything above that is simply unplayable. Well, let me show you how you can quickly, and easily fix subtitles. After me.

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The more sharp-eyed among you will have noticed: I've not done an Ubuntu review in some six years. The reason is quite simple: I've worked for Canonical for a bunch of years, and since I have a strict policy of separation between home and work, and in the interest of objectivity and impartiality, I skipped this distro in my testing. And since I no longer work for Canonical, I can now do a fresh test. It's can-onical rather than cant-onical. Excuse my pun.

First, don't expect any reactionary drama. That's not me. Second, by and large, my expectations are low. One, the Linux desktop is pretty stagnated, and has been for quite a while. Two, even my darling desktop Plasma has misbehaved some recently, as I outlined in my latest Slimbook Executive report. Three, speaking of desktops, I don't like Gnome 3. It's simply anti-ergonomic, plain and simple. Nothing personal. Just pure usability and pragmatism. I'm not convinced there will be any revolutionary outcome today, especially since Gnome has become even more rigid (you need to compile themes to change basics like font color). Four, I used to love Ubuntu, it was my primary distro for many years, until the parent company switched to Gnome, when I went elsewhere. I still claim that Unity has been amazing, and to this day, it is superior to the desktop environment that succeeded it. With that in mind, let's have a review.

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Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Yup. This coming long weekend, tens of millions of Americans will be forced to endure the company of their in-laws and awkward cousins over Thanksgiving family gatherings. I would like to help them, and what better way to avoid social unpleasantries than a good reading! My book, How to Make Your Career Suck Less, will be offered at a discount, from the Draft2Digital chain of stores.

It is not just the Americans who can take care advantage of this fine offer. From Thursday, November 28 till Tuesday, December 3, my book will be available for 50% off in about a dozen online stores, including Apple, Kobo, Everand, Smashwords, Vivlio, Fable, and others. We're talking digital edition, not print, mind. And remember, ALL my self-published e-books are available DRM-free. A deliberate choice. Well, that would be all. Enjoy.

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I like driving. Even so, I think a reasonable, practical limit is around 500 km a day. But when necessity calls, you do more, if you must. When such rare occasions strike, it's best to be seated and buckled in a nice, comfy, cosseting cruiser that will confidently take you to your destination. For my one-day trip stretching a proper 1,000 km, I had one Skoda Superb 2.0 TDI at my disposal.

You've seen this model on Dedoimedo before. I drove it in Germany and Belgium during one of my Eurotrips. But this was back in 2014, and 'twas a different generation back then. As circumstances would have it, I had a fresh opportunity to try my luck with this car. The expectations are high. After all, the Superb could be as good as Audi A6, for all practical purposes. The big difference is you don't get the top-end engines in it, otherwise, the purchase choice would be obvious. Well, let's roll. A short review, to an extent.

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Let me define deja-vu for you. In my fourth Slimbook Titan article, I used the following sentence: I'm writing the fourth long-term usage report for this laptop much sooner than I normally would. Now, here, my sixth Slimbook Executive article (those be two different laptops, mind), I am going to use that sentence again, with just a slight variation: I'm writing the sixth long-term usage report for this laptop much sooner than I normally would. Why? Because fresh problems, that's why.

A brief recap before we dive into the full story. I have two Slimbook machines. Both are quite nice. The Titan is intended to be a beefy system, focused on gaming, and I'm trying everything I have on it, to make sure I'm ready for the final transition off Windows sometime in the near future. Now, the Executive is a productivity machine, used for the 99% everyday stuff. Because it has no discrete graphics, only the integrated bit, overall, it's behaved quite impeccably until very recently. More or less in parallel to the Titan, it began exhibiting some hardware-related errors, which point to bugs in the kernel. Annoying, pointless, but here we are. Follow me.

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First one, it's all about computer games. All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost. This iconing, goosebump-inducing quote comes from the legendary fantasy series, The Lord of the Rings, by it also rather aptly applies to computer games. Old computer games, to be exact. Throughout the 80s and 90s, tons and tons of computers games came and went, game platforms and consoles and operating systems came and went, and now, fast forward a bunch of decades, you may find yourself wondering if and how you may obtain some of those classics. You wonder if there's a way to play them today, without too much difficulty or compatibility problems. RetroGames says: yes, there is a way.

Second one, it's also all about computer games! I have already featured Steam on my list of Greatest sites a long time ago, but now, it's time to add another Steam-related entry to this fine hall of game. A third-party site called SteamDB, designed to give gamers and players tons and tons of useful information about content hosted on the titular platform. Using all sorts of API in the background, SteamDB can provide detailed information on trending games, top picks, popular releases, sale events, fresh new additions, and then some.

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The problem you're facing is quite innocent and yet annoying. In VLC, audio and video files play normally. But, with audio files, when you jump to a different timestamp, there's a playback delay, say 1 second. Furthermore, the playback supposedly jitters a tiny bit behind the intended mark. So you jump from say 0m34s to 1m22s in a song, and VLC then briefly starts playing, reconsiders, and goes back to 1m21s. Happened to me.

I have no idea why the problem suddenly manifested itself. I never had such issues with VLC before, but they are now present in the media player in my Kubuntu 22.04 on my Slimbook Executive. Now, considering I've encountered a whole range of issues with this machine lately, mostly due to buggy kernel updates and bugs with the Plasma desktop, I wouldn't be surprised if VLC isn't another collateral victim of the problem. Luckily, you can work around this relatively easily, so let me show you.

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This is the sixth long-term report of my usage of one Samsung A54 device. I purchased this phone roughly a year ago, as a replacement for my finicky Nokia X10. It's always been a compromise choice. I tried to balance hardware specifications, cost, and long-term support, and in the end, decided to go for this particular model. In retrospect, it's been (mostly) a mistake, for many reasons. All of these are outlined in my previous five reports.

In my last review, I was almost optimistic when it came to the longer-term usage prospects. I thought the phone's annoying ecosystem had finally quieted down, and that I could use the device without having to pay homage to the hyperactive low-IQ mobile hysteria that comprises the touch-based usage mode. Alas, this was not to be. As soon as I published my fifth report, and even since, a barrage of new pointless problems has continued, turning everyday usage into a distraction, a chore, a nuisance. Let's talk about it. In no particular order, the woes and the troubles ...

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Rough start. Very much so. A time travel back into the past, but not in a good way, if you will. I was not very happy the first time I tried Kubuntu 24.04. The distro felt extremely unpolished. Just a few weeks later, the distro had a major update, and along the way, a good few dozen bugs and issues went away. Rather quickly, Kubuntu became reasonably pleasant to use. You could say, just wait a few months. Or you could say, don't release the distro when it's not ready, just wait a few months. 24.07 or 24.09 sounds just as good as any other sequence of numbers, as long as the user experience is great. No one ever said, oh, I don't want to use that particular version, the numbers are all wrong.

All right, how are things now? Well, first, I need to tell I've not yet applied the dot release. On purpose. Second, I've been using the distro for a couple of months now, and I've got a few fresh things to share. Good things, I must say, in a similar vein to what we've seen in the previous review/report. It's only fair to share the positive side of things as much as the negative one(s) of any which system, especially when you're using it long-term and such. Let's commence then.

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The Plasma desktop environment is amazing. Hands down, the best Linux offering by a parsec. Not only is it the prettiest, it's also the most consistent, the most professional-looking, has the most options and customization, it also comes with a pretty solid bundle of KDE programs, many of which are mature, elegant and powerful. One such program is Spectacle, the screenshot tool.

My relationship with this simple yet important utility goes back a long, long time. Over the years, I used it extensively, liked it a lot, and yet, resented the lack of a simple toggle to turn the shadows and borders off, so I wouldn't have to manually crop them. This was an option in the past, it went away, and is now back again in the latest version of Spectacle available for the Plasma 6 edition, the most recent (and still WIP) iteration of this desktop. But the reason for this article is something else. I want to talk to you about a superb feature recently added to Spectacle (or rather enhanced). It's the editing capabilities in the rectangular area mode. A secret hidden in plain sight, but you get so much. Let me show you.

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Running operating systems as virtual machines is a pretty magical thing. You want to try something, but you don't have spare hardware? No issue. Power on a hypervisor, create a virtual machine, and then inside it, test whatever you need, be it Windows, Linux, DOS, or something even more arcane and ancient. This elegant magic brings in a few complexities of its own. Like display configuration, 3D acceleration, and associated problems.

I have already talked about the Linux black screen problem in VirtualBox a while back. That tutorial still stands. But now, I've encountered a brand new issue. This one manifests inside a running system, not on login. What happens is, you boot your distro, you let it be, you come back after a period of idleness. The screen will have timed out and turned dark/black in the guest operating system. The problem is, when you try to "wake" it, as any one action will normally do (e.g.: move your mouse cursor), the screen will stay black. A reboot helps, but that's no solution. Let's talk about this some more, shall we.

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For me, the Plasma desktop is the best work environment out there, hands down. But it ain't without its faults and unfortunate (and unfortunately avoidable) regressions. The release of the brand new, mega-major 6.X version was quite tumultuous. Rife with bugs. I tested it no less than three times, on three different systems, and every single time, there were lots of issues and problems. Some of these are semi-understandable, after all, the KDE team is adopting the brand new Qt6 framework. But others are just ... unnecessary.

Well, now, version 6.2 is out, and I was happy, even eager to test it. After all, I love it, and I want it to succeed. That said, I still believe that major version releases aren't an excuse for "delayed" QA, whereby software gains maturity a year or two after the official go-live date, and all of the testing is done live, with real human users. Nope. Alas, this seems to be the modern trend, whatever fast, iterative software development means these days, and it affects the KDE world, too. Well, Plasma 6.0 was meh. Plasma 6.1 was a bit better. Let's see what 6.2 can do for us.

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I love all (well, most) things automotive. I've been an avid fan of cars and associated vehicular gadgetry since the tender age of four or so. Even then, I could tell different vehicles apart just by the sound of their engine (perhaps this is not something I should brag about). I've read and collected hundreds of car magazine issues in four different languages. Track days, car reviews, almost daily driving in car simulators, you name it. And then, recently I've read a whole bunch of articles talking about the overall decline in EV sales, particularly in Europe, where regulations be important ...

Also recently, I've been rewatching old Top Gear seasons. In particular, Season 12 Episode 7 got stuck in my mind. It was when James May drove a hydrogen-powered Honda Clarity, and talked about the future of electric vehicles. This was 16 years back, and here we are, in a world where electric vehicles do not look like the cars of today, and based on the market readings, they don't seem to be the future, either. I decided to explore this topic a bit more, and share my opinion.

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We must talk about my Slimbook Executive laptop, again. Well, we don't really have to, but it's been about three months since I last talked about it, and the whole purpose of these reports is to assess the quality and usability of the machine and its operating system in real-life conditions, long term. I won't repeat myself too much as to why, how or when. TL;DR: I have a Linux-only productivity machine, and I use it in earnest for all sorts of things. So far, it's been working beautifully, on all levels.

The hardware is excellent. The ergonomics are sweet - great case, great keyboard, nice audio, fantastic, crisp display. Kubuntu 22.04 LTS, which I use as the operating system of choice, has also been behaving remarkably well. Few bugs or issues, superb workflow and looks, and I've been doing pretty much everything I can. Even some gaming, although the bulk of that (testing) is reserved for the Slimbook Titan machine. Well, let's see what happened since June. After me.

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Several days ago, I showed you how to become an awesome memeista. We converted an HD video into an HD GIF file, so you can do the same, and share your wonderous creations with your friends, if you have any. We used the awesome ffmpeg tool for that task. The only caveat? Our GIF was huge!

Today, I would like to revisit the topic of GIF files from a different angle. Multiple angles to be exact. I will show you how to create GIF files using GIMP, ImageMagick (convert), and ffmpeg. I will also highlight the usage differences and notable advantages of these tools. Now, we will do our work in Linux, but since all of these tools are also available for other operating systems, the principle is the same. The only thing that will change is how you install and set up the programs. So let's begin then. Let's GIF it, GIF it good.

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Here's a sad little scenario for you. Imagine you have a local network set up, with multiple computers, including at least two Windows hosts. Let's say you want to copy files from one Windows host to another. Let's also assume you have properly configured sharing, and the other relevant machine is easily accessible through Windows Explorer, e.g.: via \\MACHINE. Now you copy a file, great. Three minutes later, you try to copy a second file. Windows Explorer throws a hissy, no can do. What now?

I've encountered this exact problem a few days ago. As is my nature, I always assume something is wrong with how I do things, how I set up my systems, etc. Check router, no problem. Try to access the target Windows host from a Linux machine, no problem. Network connectivity issues, nope. So what then? Let me show you what has happened, and if you ever hit the same snag, how to get around it, quickly.

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As you well know, I've stopped doing distro reviews, for the most part, a couple of years back. I found the lack of progress in the distro space quite disheartening. And by lack of progress, I mean the constant seesaw of quality and stability, the missing factor of "finished" product. That said, now and then, I do make an odd exception. Recently, I wrote a review of Kubuntu 24.04. Today, I will give MX Linux a full, proper look.

Why so? Well, if you've been reading me articles, as you very well should, then you will have come across a glowing article showcasing an amazing revival of one old, lowly Asus eeePC. This was done by installing a modern, contemporary MX Linux distro on a 14-year-old netbook, with pretty decent results. I was so impressed that I decided to test Libretto on my relatively newish AMD-powered IdeaPad 3. We shall thus commence this review. After me.

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The problem you're facing is as follows. You've updated your Linux machine, there was a kernel update, and now, your machine is experiencing weird behavior. The symptoms include random desktop freezes that last for a few seconds, during which your machine is not usable, but recovers every single time. Reconnecting to Wi-Fi access points takes a long time. And in your kernel log (via dmesg), you see the following line: workqueue: pm_runtime_work hogged CPU for 10000us 4 times, consider switching to WQ_UNBOUND.

I encountered this issue on my Slimbook Titan in my last report. My machine is behaving erratically, and it's hard to use it. The error above points to a kernel bug, as outlined in the following bug report, and was supposed to have been solved. But as of early September 2024, my fully patched Kubuntu 22.04 machine still exhibits the freezes. Well, let's work around this nonsense. Follow me.

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I believe, in all my years of writing on Linux and covering Plasma, I've only briefly touched on the customization of the login and lock screens. But as you well know, this desktop environment is super-customizable, so you can do pretty much anything you like. Well, just recently, I encountered a scenario that prompted me to take a more profound look at these two elements, and tweak them to my liking.

My 2014 IdeaPad Y50-70 laptop, which runs Kubuntu 24.04 on it, has a 4K screen. This means, even if you configure desktop scaling, the login screen will, by default, look weird. Tiny, out of place. Add the bland wallpaper used in Kubuntu 24.04 into the mix, and you're really not starting your session on a positive note. The lock screen does respect your scaling, but it does not use your wallpaper. Let us rectify all these tiny issues, so we have a spotless desktop. Begin, we shall.

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Just a few weeks ago, we talked about Upscayl, a truly excellent AI-powered tool that can upscale your images. Before you say ZOMG AI, wait. This is a fully offline, open-source, cross-platform utility, and it doth not phone home or anything like that. Your work stays local. But the quality of upscaling will vary from image to image, as I've outlined in my review.

Now, what if you cannot use this program, for whatever reason? What if you have an unsupported integrated graphics card (as is typical on many a laptop), but you still want to try to upscale your old photos, reduce the blur, and make things better? In today's tutorial, I will tell you how well I fared using ImageMagick on the command-line, plus some wizardry with GIMP. Let's do 4K stuff the old-school way.

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Long long ago, in a galaxy far ... Nah. Back in 2010, I got myself a netbook. It was an Asus eeePC thing, small, robust, lovely, and reasonably priced. Fast forward a good decade, I've used it everywhere. Inside and outside, in rough outdoor conditions, and it's survived a dozen business trips with pride. Practical use, too, including mail, browsing, music, videos, writing books, everything you can imagine.

Over the years, though, its tiny, super-ancient processor started lagging behind the (mostly unnecessary) growth in computing demands for ordinary things. My last endeavor with this box was around 2019. I installed MX Linux 18 on it, and this fine, frugal distro gave it a fresh breath of life and relevance. I wasn't sure how much longer the system would receive updates, and what to do once that episode ended. Well, as it turns out, just when I thought it might be time to retire the eeePC, it snapped its red clamshell cover and shouted: I ain't dead yet. Well, let's talk about it, shall we?

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Every few months, I power on my test machine, emphasis test machine, and start the Windows 11 instance installed there, and check what has changed in the operating system, often for the worse. I do this for several reasons: 1) masochism 2) get new material for my blog 3) see what Microsoft is planning for the average user, and update my doomsday prepper toolbox. I did that a few days ago, and boy was I angry.

You may think I'm exaggerating of course, for populistic reasons. Nope. I tried to update the system, the update failed. I encountered a whole bunch of fresh ergonomic travesties. I encountered new inconsistencies in the Windows UI, and then some. Follow me.

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I am writing this review before the 24.04.1 release hitting me box. However, you may read it after the major point upgrade. Now, the reason I decided to create this piece is, I've been using my one Kubuntu 24.04 instance for several weeks now. It all started with an SSD upgrade on a 10-year-old laptop. The upgrade went fine, and I chose Kubuntu 24.04 as my distro. The operating system installation did not go well. The distro drivers setup was clunky, and I was quite unhappy.

Then, I wrote an entire, negative review on Kubuntu 24.04, and I felt it was rather mediocre, a regression in many aspects (much like the rest of the distrospace in the past few years). Since, the system has received a whole bunch of updates. The first round, a whooping 750MB worth of stuff. Then another and another, and with each iteration, things changed. I thought, if I'm writing about Kubuntu when things are bad, I should also write when things are good. Fairness, and all that. Well then, let's talk about that, shall we.

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Recently, I uploaded a new video to my Youtube channel. When I tried to add a description to the clip, Youtube wouldn't let me proceed to the next step. First, it told me I cannot use angled brackets, which is fine. Then, it told me that if I wanted to use URLs (to my own blog no less), I needed to verify myself. What.

And so I explored this venue a bit more, decided not to play ball with this nonsense, and removed the links from the description. But I also decided to write an article about this pointless experience, about this tiered reward conditioning mechanism. It highlights oh-so many things wrong with the whole modern media industry, and I want to express myself. Here we go.

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As you can see, I'm writing the fourth long-term usage report for this laptop much sooner than I normally would. My typical cadence for these periodic (but not period ha ha) pieces is roughly three months in between (or longer), but I had to make an exception this time, and give you a more "timely" update. Why? Well, we shall soon discover.

In my previous report, I remarked on how I'm finally happy with the Slimbook Titan. It's settled down after a rather rough start, and things are working smoothly. Well, were working smoothly. My system suddenly started experiencing some rather weird behavior. Things would sort of freeze for a few seconds, then go back to normal, but without the accompanying oops or kernel panic. This would happen mostly early on in a session, but not just. And thus, my good feeling of progress has gone down the drain. Follow me.

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Hear, hear! I am happy to announce the publication of my latest nonfiction, tech-related book. It comes with a snarky title How to Make Your Career Suck Less. Or, in other words, A Guide to a Less Painful IT Existence. This book is a culmination of some twenty years of my fairly successful work in the tech industry, where I've faced many an absurd situation, hordes of yesmen, tons of bureaucracy, and heaps of nonsense. And I bet, if you work in the tech space, you've experienced it all, too.

Well, there's no reason why future generations ought to suffer. Reflecting on my own career, I would like to help people achieve higher job satisfaction and self-realization, if possible. In a way, this book is a practical howto on a lot of topics, with a simple aim: navigate the IT world career with greater ease. If this sounds like this something you might want to sample, even for pure fun, without any higher goals, then please, follow me.

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Normally, I am rather disdainful of many things AI. Not because there's anything inherently wrong with the idea of Artificial Intelligence per se. No. What I dislike is the buzz and hype around technologies and products purporting to be AI, when they are, at best, glorified statistics, lathered with a thick layer of marketing nonsense. Now... Say you have lots of old, low-res, blurry images. Can you make them better? With AI?

If you've watched TV crime shows from the early 2000s, you just "enhance" stuff. Only, every time you upscale an image, James Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann spin in their graves, because you're violating the laws of thermodynamics. Entropy and that. Creating data out of nothing. Magic. But that's actually what AI-powered programs promise. The question is, can you do AI without surrendering your soul to the cloud overloads? Ah, seems like you can, after all! One such tool is Upscayl. Open-source, cross-platform, AI image enhancer. Sounds fantastic. Now, let's see if it actually works as advertised.

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How many zips could a file manager zip if a file manager could zip some zips? All right, here's a possibly pointless scenario for you. Say you have a compressed archive of some kind (zip, 7z, tar, rar, whatever), and you want to create a new archive, using the existing one as a source. For instance, you have a file called dedo.zip and you wish to "compress" it further into dedo2.7z.

If you ask around, you will realize that multi-level compression doesn't necessarily have any benefits. Depending on the scenario, the file format, and the compression algorithm, your second-level archive may in fact be larger than the source, and if you also use encryption, in some scenarios, you might even degrade the security this way. But I'm not here to change the world, I'm here to solve a simple issue. Plasma's file manager, Dolphin, does not seem to be able to create multi-level archives. If you select a compressed file, right click, there won't be an option to compress, only extract. All right, so how do you work around that, then? Today's article shall reveal.

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Here's something fun and yet technical for today! I made a video of a rather jolly driving session in the fantastic racing simulator Assetto Corsa. To be more precise, it's an eight-minute clip of my record-setting lap, made in-game, transcoded using OBS Studio, and then polished with KDEnlive (in Linux), showing (off) what I've been able to achieve playing this sweet title. This won't make the world a better place, but it just might be entertaining for the petrol heads and gear heads among you.

In more detail, it took me roughly four months of non-stop driving to reach the result of 7:20.069 at Nurburngring Nordschleife Touristenfahrten (Tourist Lap) in a BMW M235i Racing in Assetto Corsa. I would drive every day, 4-5 laps each time, trying to improve, to nail down the entries and the exits. Looking at the video, there's still more room for improvement, like an even wider line, somewhat later entries, earlier exits, and then some. But why don't you watch it, and judge for yourself?

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Over the years, in my various Windows-related articles, I've written a great deal about these programs and their value (or lack thereof). Seemingly, there ought not to be any fresh reason to talk about them yet again. But there is. Just recently, Microsoft announced it was deprecating Control Panel, and then quickly went back and reworded the phrasing of this statement, following massive, massive backlash. You see, complaining does work wonders!

Well, reading that page, one specific phrase triggered me immensely. It was the totally deluded statement regarding Settings, reading: "...Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience". Ah, the modern and streamlined experience! Hot garbage. Well, for the umpteenth time, I will talk some more about Control Panel, Settings, the infestation of low-IQ touch-based stuff on the desktop, and such. Follow me, if you please.

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Several weeks ago, I told you about the "can't send video" problem in WhatsApp. You wanna share dank memes with your buddies, and technology be standin' in your way, fam, fr. Well, in that guide, I explained how you can work around the issue - by sending HD videos, duh. But then, if you only have SD quality content, what can you do? On the phone, it ain't trivial, but on the desktop, you have a range of options.

In today's wee tutorial, I will revisit an old and powerful media editing tool - ffmpeg, your one-stop shop for everything audio or video. This program lets you manipulate media files any which you want - convert among many different formats, split and join clips, scale, extract individual frames, add subtitles, change playback speed, and so much more. Well, let's talk about converting video into animated images, GIFs.

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I think the concept of purchase verification in digital stores is a great one. Really. But. The implementation of the said idea can sometimes be rather crude. Lo and behold, my latest experience with the Google Play store. I presume the application received an update, and when I launched it, instead of getting into the main interface, Google Play popped a full home screen banner, telling me I've not set any purchase verification.

True. Because I have NO payment method in the store, so there's no point to any verification, now is there. Only I could not dismiss the notification. I could either set biometrics (nope), or a password. The thing is, I don't mind the password, but right then, I didn't want to do it. Not when Google decided to "activate" me. I had opened the store for a very specific reason, I wanted to install an app, and the system was forcing me to do admin work. But there's no button to exit or skip this step. Well, let's skip this step.

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A brief intro for those of you wondering what this is about. DOSBox is an emulator for MS-DOS, an operating system from before the Windows 95 era. Y'know, DOS. Great. It lets you take screenshots of games and programs running inside the emulator window.

I've written about DOSBox many times before, as early as 2006 when I created this website. Then, I crafted a number of articles that highlighted my success in reviving old DOS-era games, the 80s and 90s classics. The best thing, DOSBox lets you emulate both IPX and Serial connectivity, so you can even play multiplayer games on your LAN. Recently, I also wrote a tutorial that shows how to resize/rescale the DOSBox window so that you can play the old, ancient titles with good clarity on modern HD/UHD displays. And that, finally, brings the question. If you take screenshots of these old games in say a 1920x1440px window, do you get same-size images? The answer is no. So how do we fix that? Aha.

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If you think I harbor disdain for mid-level management borglings, sycophants and their minions, you're absolutely right. I do. The perfect blend of cowardice, lack of imagination, shifty morals, and inability to truly inspire others is hard to like. And yet, these seem to be the defining characteristics of the vast majority of managers in the tech world. Wherever you work, whatever your role, there's a pretty good chance, at least 80% I'd say, your manager will be Bill Lumbergh from Office Space. Or one of his near-identical clones. On top of that, your boss wants you to be productive! Hear hear.

More disdain. Indeed, whenever I hear any workplace mention "let's measure productivity", my BS klaxons fire off. Not because the concept is bad. No. It's because the concept is completely misplaced, misguided, and impossible to achieve. And in this article, I will explain why, and also vindicate thousands upon thousands of people who tried to tell their manager it can't be done, only to be met with a blank stare of incomprehension. Begin, we shall.

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All right. This is a somewhat niche, convoluted topic. Let me start with some background information. A couple of years ago, I started a journey of trying to migrate away from Windows. To that end, I'm using a laptop, one Slimbook Titan, as my experiment platform. I'm trying to do everything I want or need on it, in an attempt to fully mirror the Windows experience. Part of that setup includes using excellent-but-Windows-only software running through WINE. By and large, this has been a rather successful experiment so far.

However, I did encounter a rather weird snag. During the setup and configuration of SketchUp Make, which I use for 3D modeling, I somehow managed to "bork" the WINE-specific system menu and task manager launchers in my Plasma desktop. They no longer work. The program runs great, but it can only be really invoked on the command line. The usual GUI-driven tools simply fail, quietly. In this article, I will show you how you can fix orphaned WINE system menu entries (probably due to multiple WINE version installations), and create custom launchers that will always work. Let us commence, then.

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How long does it take for one to have a quiet, peaceful smartphone experience - Android, specifically - from the moment of purchase, past initial tinkering and configuration, past some updates and such, until the user is happy and confident the things are as they ought to be? My experience shows that the number varies vastly, from one manufacturer to another, from one device to another. With the Samsung A54, that number has yet to be determined.

Without going into too many details - after all, that's what the original review is for - I have a new phone, and I'm not too happy with it. The hardware is good, the camera is reasonable, the price is really nice, and it will have five years of updates and patches. Awesome. But the software is annoying, the Samsung ecosystem is really in-yer-face, the phone apps are many and pointless, and worst of all, some nine months later, I still occasionally have to fiddle with the phone, changing this or that little setting. All of these escapades are outlined in rich detail in four long-term reports. Start with the fourth, and work your way back. Now, let's see what this fifth review will bring.

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My early experience with the Titan wasn't a good one. The setup was rather messy, and there was a moment where I almost considered physically demolishing the device. Luckily, hard-earned and hard-spent money begets respect, and so I eschewed hardware-focused violence and went on with nerdy suffering instead, taming the laptop and its operating system to a usable state. Fast forward two long-term reviews later, the Titan is a-OK.

It is time for me to give you a fresh look at this machine, its Nvidia graphics and its Linux distro, some six months since my last essay. I consider these occasional re-reviews highly important. I chose this machine for a rather particular reason - to test the viability of using Linux as a primary operating system in all aspects, including the critical domain of gaming. I want to get rid of Windows in me household, if possible, and that means being able to replace every aspect of functionality with a Linux equivalent. I don't want to compromise on usability, and in parallel, I don't want to reduce my IQ by using Windows 11. Hence, this series of tests and trials and tribulations and happy moments. Report 3, here we go.

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There I was, minding my own business, not doing anything harmful to the environment when a need arose for me to invoke the Windows Task Manager on a Windows 10 box. I did, and I immediately noticed something different. Instead of showing thumbnails of graphs of different resources (network, disk, CPU, etc) in the sidebar on the left, the Task Manager was only showing these blobs of color.

On its own, this wouldn't be a problem if this is how my box was configured. But it wasn't. The disappearance of the thumbnail graphs alarmed me. Because if you don't introduce any changes to the system, the system shouldn't change. Basic physics. And yet, this happened. The only thing that could explain it, barely, is that the machine had received some (unfortunate) Windows Updates earlier in the month. My job was to figure out how to restore the little graphs. Follow me.

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Let's start with a disclaimer. I know the product name ought to be capitalized. But that makes for a somewhat chewy reading, and so, you will forgive me for spelling things out a bit differently. That will not change the essence of this review. Speaking of, let's do a software review! Our candidate for today is OnlyOffice Desktop Editors, a free software office suite a-la LibreOffice or Microsoft Office. Of course, one cannot mention one without the other (two). Mostly.

I've already reviewed this product twice before (and OnlyOffice has a range of other solutions, as well). My general impression was that you get a pretty solid, rounded suite, with lots of goodies, lots of nice, convenient extras, decent file format support, and modern looks. That said, the performance and Microsoft Office compatibily could be better. All right then, let's have a fresh take. Begin.

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In my Kubuntu 24.04 review a few days back, I asserted that the distro does not have a GUI driver management utility, and that this is probably the worst aspect of this system. As it turns out, I was wrong, but for all the right reasons! Now, this wee fiasco actually allows me to write an important article that addresses basic usability in Linux distros. I find it a bit weird to be writing this, in 2024, but hey, the Linux desktop has not really progressed much in the last decade, and even regressed a lot in many aspects.

Let me show you how things went, and why I came to my wrong conclusion, and then how, the over-nerdiness can actually lead you down the wrong path. This article will be useful, as it's going to highlight a dozen cardinal problems with how Kubuntu (and Linux in general) manages basic user-facing stuff. Let's commence.

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Your favorite dinosaur reporting for duty! Blissfully optimistic and full of hope, I shall commence to test the latest edition of the Plasma desktop environment. I've tried the 6.0 release three times already, on three different systems, with varying degrees of success, and lots and lots of bugs. Most of those were caused by the underlying problems in KDE neon, the chosen test bed. But since one cannot really separate the distro from the desktop environment, the results are, ipso facto, one and the same. Meh.

In the scenarios where I was able to separate system from userspace, Plasma 6 delivered decent results. My opinion is that Plasma (version independent) is the best desktop UI for Linux, and in general, offers a really nice, slick experience. However, I'm no fanboy, and therefore, I don't just blindly accept all and every decision introduced by the KDE team, or ignore the problems that crop up in the development of the system. So far, my impression with Plasma 6 is not as stellar as it could be. Let's see what 6.1 can do. Follow me.

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It would seem, if it were up to tech bros, assorted corporate magnates, and random deluded executives and associated ladder climber sycophants out there, we would all be paying a subscription to use our own kidneys and expected to be grateful for it. Indeed, the level of greed in the modern tech space (and broader) is so shamelessly blatant and rampant, one almost reminisces with more than mild nostalgia for the days of the First French Republic and their use of stringent quality control measures. Fact, there were zero software bugs back then.

Alas, we now live in a "democratic" world, and we cannot resort to a more literal use of physics to solve problems. We must have a civilized discourse, right. Predictably, you may assume that words won't change anything, and most of the time, you'd be correct. But there's one really cool thing about the Internet - it likes to amplify negativity, and negativity is the only thing the big companies fear. Thus, your own weapon against being spiritually and financially degraded by the corporation is to immediately, vehemently and most loudly voice your complains about their stupid ideas and solutions. As it turns out, you may win some.

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In many ways, LibreOffice is the Linux of office suits. What do I mean by this? Well, some releases are good, some bad, there are often seemingly random regressions in between, and it never quite fully manages to become the ultimate replacement for Microsoft Office. On top of that, LibreOffice is dogmatic, and it sticks stubbornly to an ideology that, in the long run, actually causes more harm than good. My opinion, of course.

That said, I've been using it forever, I like it, it's my primary office suite, and I've written many a book using it. The problems almost always revolve around document format support, and the fact publishers and companies out there insist on Microsoft standards. This forces me to always make the very last revision to any one of my manuscripts in Word, even if the entirety of work is done in LibreOffice until that point. But I digress. I would like to review the new LibreOffice version, 24.2. A year-month naming convention, perhaps it spells an additional, fresh, much-needed change to the suite? Begin, we do.

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It's like Mediciens Sans Frontiers, only different. Let's start with some basic claims. The Plasma desktop environment is great. It's also very fast and responsive, and seem to be getting better and better all the time. You're not likely to suffer from its performance much, and yet it can be made even sprightlier. Ahoy.

In parallel, until very recently ( Plasma 6 to be more accurate), Plasma's default screenshot tool Spectacle would take screenshots with borders and shadows enabled, and no GUI option to turn these off. This would result in images with a roughly 200-300px frame, composed of a lightly shaded alpha layer. Annoying if you want clean pictures of specific application windows. Well, today, I want to show you how to kill two dinosaurs with one meteor. A tweak that will give you both performance improvements and borderless, shadowless screenshots.

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A couple of years ago, I stopped doing Linux reviews. I realized my efforts were pointless. Most distros do not want to succeed. They don't want to be big. They don't want to be in the spotlight. They prefer to be the underdog, so they can always duck into the shadows when the maturity pixies come a-callin'. Sounds harsh, but it's the cruel, sad reality. The simple fact is, today, the vast majority of distributions isn't any better than what we had 10 years back, and in many cases, they are actually worse, for a variety of reasons.

Today, I will break my own rule. I am going to write a review - sort of - of Kubuntu 24.04. I'm not doing this with a happy face. In fact, I'm seething with anger. If you've read my article on how I made an old laptop youthful again with the replacement of a mechanical disk with a solid state one, then you already know the gist of it. Yes, it should have been a happy article, but it turned into an old-school command-line and GRUB troubleshooting of totally pointless, useless, dejecting stuff. Why? Because Linux. Follow me.

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Linux security is an interesting beast. Because Linux, by and large, is not a consumer-facing product, its security solutions also aren't consumer-facing. In other words, if you use Linux for work, there are lots of security programs and tools that can help you get the desired results. However, these are made for professionals, they are not easy to configure and use, or they are easy to use but also quite expensive.

This makes the home user security somewhat tricky. If you expect simple, GUI-driven tools to scan your system and give you a clean bill of health, you're probably going to struggle finding some, or any. Here on Dedoimedo, I've reviewed a number of Linux scanner utilities in the past. Most notably, chkrootkit and rkhunter, both command-line tools and quite nerdy at that. Interpreting the results of these tools was quite difficult, and you're more likely to have to deal with false positives than real infections. This brings me to Lynis, a security auditing, testing and hardening tool. Not for home users, then. But could they, perhaps, still somehow benefit from it without going overboard?

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In recent years, the amount of stupidity going into Windows has risen exponentially. If you're not in the mood to be treated as a chimp, you need to invest time removing pointless features and options from the operating system. This can be done in two ways: (mostly) manually, as I've shown you in my Windows 11 taming guide, or using third-party apps that can do some of the hard work for you. Both approaches have their advantages. The manual work is slower, more frustrating, but you have better control and understanding of what you're doing. But speed is also good, especially if it comes with accurate results.

After I posted my abovementioned usability tutorial, the floodgates of email came wide open. Dozens of people contacted me, telling me of this or that tweaking program or utility, all designed to make Windows less pointless. Well, today, I'd like to talk about one of the recommendations. Or rather, two. A set of programs by O&O, which can turn off most of the annoyances in Windows rather quickly. But there's also the question of efficiency and safety. So let's see how this experiment went.

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Back in 2014, that would be 10 years ago, I bought myself a bargain. A beefy laptop that did not cost an arm and a leg, just a leg, and it delivered in turn an i7 processor, 16 GB RAM, an Nvidia card (GTX 860M, equivalent to GTX 580 back then), plus a 4K display. The only downside? It had a mechanical disk, a 5,400rpm 1TB HDD, albeit with an 8GB hybrid, cache-like SSD add-on. The machine performs diligently over the years, and eventually, I made it into a Linux-only system. The only downside? Ultra-long boot times.

What I find a bit sad is that it would seem most mainstream distro developers nowadays simply assume their users run the same gear as they do, namely powerful rigs with ultra-fast storage. They seem to forget the mechanical hard disks. This is a bit of an irony, because Linux is supposed to be the savior of old hardware, due to its frugal requirements. Well, not so when the boot times are 2-3 minutes. So I thought, let's "revive" this machine. I splurged 70 dollars and got me a 500GB Samsung EVO 870 SATA SSD. Can this make the Y50-70 sprightly again? Let's check.

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This could be a good name for a new Clancy's blockbuster. Or something. Now listen. A friend of mine contacted me (yes I do have friends), and told me how his Windows laptop shows a Hidden network in the list of Wireless networks that he can use. He had no idea whence it comes. I said, interesting, would you like me to help. And so I began a lil' sleuthing operation. The plot thickens.

I brought my own hardware to test, as I assume other people's devices aren't necessarily configured correctly, and so, I don't want to use bad data to make wrong assumptions - I want to use good data to make wrong assumptions. I fired up my Linux laptop, and I couldn't see any hidden networks using some basic tools in a terminal. I then booted a Windows laptop, and lo and behold, the hidden access point was there. I started moving around his house, and the signal strength wouldn't drop. I assumed this may be a Windows bug. Or is it?

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Over the past five years or so, I've written about half a dozen articles on how to manage desktop and application scaling in Linux on high-density displays. It all started with my Slimbook Pro2 laptop and its 14-inch display, capable of showing a lovely 1920x1080px grid, too small to properly view at such a small screen. And so I started a tutorial on how to manage scaling in the Plasma desktop, specific tweaks for various applications, and then some.

Since, I've written other guides on this topic, covering snaps, WINE applications, Steam, DOSBox, and whatnot. Because the information is scattered over multiple tutorials, and search engines ain't what they used to be, i.e., not quite as useful and accurate, I thought of making one big compilation that should help you find all of the relevant tweaks and commands, for all your Linux needs, in one place. Let's go.

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Let's talk about my Slimbook Executive, shall we. 'Tis a productivity laptop I purchased about a year back, as a replacement for my older Pro2 machine, also from the same vendor. The former system had been in pretty heavy use for about five years, and I foresee a long future ahead, now that I've replaced its battery. Over the years, I wrote no less than fourteen periodic, long-term usage reports detailing everyday use, problems, niggles, and the good side of using Linux as your primary system for real-life needs.

In the past year, I continued the long-term usage tradition of reports with the Executive. There have been three reports thus far, and they show a pretty consistent trend. This is a solid laptop. It's stable, robust and fun. The ergonomics are excellent, from the case via its delightful, color-rich screen to its sturdy, well-spaced keyboard. Kubuntu 22.04, chosen as the operating system, also behaves, delivering pretty good results. Well, it's time for another lil' review. Let's see what's happened since.

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The Internet is a battlefield. On one side, you have ordinary people who just want to browse the net and consume stuff without any great fanfare. On the other, you have advertisement agencies and companies who would, if they could, force everyone to watch pointless ads 24/7. You would assume most people don't care, but as it turns out, in the past few years, more and more people are actively blocking ads. For many good reasons. They are largely pointless (low quality, low value, low intelligence), they waste bandwidth and power, they can be a vector for malware, active and passive. The need to block them is great. And there are some awesome adblockers out there.

This wouldn't a topic that needs any great re-discussion except ... Google decided to change the extensions model for Chrome, something called Manifest V3. This thing comes with a variety of technical changes, for a variety of reasons. TL;DR: Whether you accept what Google claims to be valid or not, Manifest V3 could limit the effectiveness of classic adblockers, by a huge margin. Coincidence? Doesn't matter. The question is, are there any V3-compliant adblockers that could still offer the same adblocking functionality as before? Well, the creator of the fantastic UBlock Origin (UBO) extension has produced a new tool - UBO Lite, designed to help people stop stupidity, come the full force of Manifest V3 sometime soon.

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Here's a scenario. You go to a fair at the outskirts of your town. There, among the many rides, you find this machine. It works like this: you insert a token, you ask it a question. The machine vomits out a slip of paper, and on it, there's an answer. A piece of wisdom. Welcome to 2024 and the so-called AI chatbot thingies.

Today, there's an enormous amount of hype around AI. Not only is this annoying, it's also aggravating. Nothing insults intelligence quite as much and quickly as the passive-aggressive combo of corporate buzzwordology, greed and incorrect use of technology. First, AI ain't AI, it's just machine learning. Second, the fact it speaks like a human doesn't make it even remotely human. Alas, the distinction is lost on the masses. Indeed, if you think about it, the great danger in this AI hype is that its only viable purpose is to make stupid stupider.

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