maple "mavica" syrup [6502] @mavica_again@computerfairi.es

Operating systems aren’t actually that interesting or important. Their purpose is to let people run apps with a minimum of fuss

The purpose of an app is to let people do a specific thing they want to do, which is usually something unrelated to computers. The things people want to do are the important part, not the apps

Tech culture is a vast collective effort to deny these obvious facts because they threaten our sense of our own importance. We’d rather create imaginary kingdoms to rule than admit we exist to serve others

new on the #linkcache

mini-itx.com - A website maintained since the mid 2000s dedicated to the Mini-ITX form-factor of motherboards

Tom's Toys - A collection of web toys, games, tools and experiments

Mike's Digital Pog Page - Maybe we should bring these back along with 88x31 web buttons

3D GIFs by Dave Sutton - A wonderful, free-to-use collection 3D web animations that retain a GeoCities-like charm

https://links.netizen.club/

@jk Linux can't be a cohesive system because Unix never reconsidered configuration as it evolved from a pile of CLI tools with man pages and a dedicated expert admin to a graphical OS where the user is the admin. an operating /system/ would solve the configuration problem once for all programs. in practice *nix people hear this, think "windows registry" and then implement their own config file parser. or they go GNOME and use dconf (good!) but also remove settings for fun

i use linux every day. and when i want to configure something? i don't know where to look, don't know which one of the many configuration utilities to use, have to go on a big forum thread research session to find out what the best practice is for my situation, don't know which config file to alter, don't know if the file will be overridden in the near or far future, don't know why the changes i'm making aren't working, etc. everything is the Principle of Most Surprise, and it sucks

newer mastodon users please stop trying to rationalize antisocial behaviour challenge (impossible)

@mavica_again it's the same with like, fundraiser/donation posts, I see ones with stuff like 'please donate I have 2 days to raise $500 to not get kicked out' and there'll be 5+ times the number of likes compared to boosts and it's like, you are not helping, you are not contributing, you are telling a vulnerable person you saw their struggle and couldn't be bothered to press one button to give them a slightly wider reach