garrett

darktable, hands down. It has a learning curve, but it's a pro app and app pro apps have learning curves.

The linear pipeline is great, masking is superb, and the app keeps getting better every release.

The one downside is that darktable is not opinionated by default (so raw files look a little flat to begin with, without doing anything), but it's customizable that you can even change that with auto applied presets. On the other hand, it does let you do what you want to do with an image, versus fighting with defaults (which is what it's like to edit something in Lightroom, if you want to diverge from what it suggests by default).

There are a bunch of great tutorials on YouTube and you'll want to check out https://discuss.pixls.us/ too. Create an account on the Pixls forum, read some threads, try out some "play raws" (where people post their raw files under a CC license and then lots of people try their own take at editing it and post their edit).

Rico Resolves has a half hour getting started video for darktable 4.6 at https://youtu.be/ucjAmTMIEOI

Anything from Bruce Williams https://youtube.com/@audio2u and Boris Hajdukovic https://youtube.com/@s7habo are both great too, and more people are posting darktable videos all the time as well.

The documentation for darktable is actually very good as well. Do not skip it. You don't have to read it all, but try reading the intro parts and going back to it when you want some reference on how a part of darktable works. https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.6/en/

Some tips:

• You can right click on sliders to get a special UI and you can also enter numbers (often even outside the bounds of what the slider would normally permit).

• Modules will be applied in the best order regardless of which one you work on first.

• There are some somewhat redundant modules, as darktable did start out as a "display referred" workflow (just like most all of the other raw editors everywhere) and moved to a "scene referred" (aka "linear rgb") workflow, which provides better editing, improved color handling, vastly better tone mapping, and so on. If there are two similar modules, try to go with the version that has "RGB" in its title. Older modules still exist mainly for older edits. (You can also change darktable back to the old display referred workflow in the settinfs, but I strongly suggest to not do this. Scene referred is much better.)

I used to shoot film and do darkroom stuff years ago. I've used Aperture on OS X. I used Lightroom on OS X and then on Windows. A few years ago, I switched to darktable on Linux... and darktable has gotten so, so much better each release. When I switched years ago, it was more or less a Lightroom competitor (with some advantages and disadvantages). But darktable is really amazing software now, and can give you much better results than Lightroom, when you know how to use it.

I totally agree. whoBIRD is amazing.

I did use BirdNet for quite some time before whoBIRD was available, but it's so great to be able to open up the app (whoBIRD) wherever and have it identify the birds we're hearing without having to wait for a network round trip. The somewhat recent feature of showing bird photos in whoBIRD is nice as well.

Running the app from time to time has had me notice birds in the area I would've otherwise missed.

Thanks to the app, I saw a long tailed tit for the first time and even managed to get a few photos! (They were mixed in with other bird song, but the app said they were singing in the area too. After a little searching, we found them.)

Photos:

https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/677904448182940941

https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/678023083037619560

It's definitely an app that would make someone install F-Droid on Android if they haven't already. (As it's only available on F-Droid and not Google Play.)

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.woheller69.whobird/

For the video problem, it might be codecs; try using Proton-GE if it's in Steam or use Wine-GE if not. (IIRC, Steam will often convert the videos and give you the converted ones in the shader caching if necessary. But those outside of Steam, and sometimes a few still in Steam don't have that workaround.)

For the main issue you're having, try running those games in gamescope, which itself is a compositor with a bunch of neat tricks. In this case it'd make sure to not lose the focus of the game even if the gamescope window loses focus. It can also optionally force windowed or fullscreen modes, upscale (even with FSR1), and lock the framerate.

Changing settings in the game itself between fullscreen or borderless (borderless should usually help with the focus issues) may help too, if the game has that setting, but then you'll probably hit the borders issue due to FVWM. (I don't know if you'd get the fullscreen unredirection optimization in fvwm. That could be a reason to pick one or the other for you too.)

You're probably hitting a few edge cases by using FVWM versus a more modern environment like GNOME or KDE, but to be fair I've seen the focus issue happen before on a game on running through Heroic on GNOME with more than one monitor before. FWIW: I don't remember seeing the issue in games from Steam. (It probably depends on the game itself, however.)

Penpot works perfectly on Linux, and you can even host it yourself in your own computer if you want. It's web-based and works in both Firefox and Chromium browsers. (I think WebKit ones too, but it's been a little while since I've tried it with Epiphany.)

I use Penpot myself all the time on Linux, but I'm usually using the hosted version so I can collaborate with others without having to maintain a server. I have also run locally in a container using Podman, even with Podman's rootless support.

But to start using it, all anyone needs to do is point their browser of choice to https://design.penpot.app/ and sign in. There is no setup process or installation needed; self-hosting is completely optional.

Just pointing this out, as there are non-free services that the apps use:

Frog is awesome, but note that while Frog works offline for OCR, it has TTS (text to speech) which uses an online service. As long as you avoid having it read to you, it's all done locally.

And Dialect always uses an online service. Some of the servers are FOSS, but some aren't. But everything you type or paste into it is sent somewhere else. (This is the case with using translation websites too, of course.) I'm not saying you shouldn't use it; I'm just saying that you should be aware.

Hopefully Dialect will add Bergamot (what both Firefox by default & the "translate locally" extension use for translation) at some point. Dialect has a longstanding issue about it, but no forward motion yet. https://github.com/dialect-app/dialect/issues/183

For something open source that runs completely on your computer for translations, you'd want Speech Note. https://flathub.org/apps/net.mkiol.SpeechNote It's Qt based, but works well. In addition to translation, it can do text to speech and speech to text too. You do have to download models first (easily available as a click in the app), but everything, including the text you're working with, is all done locally.

I use both Frog and Speech Note all the time on my computer (GNOME on Fedora Linux). They're excellent.

It does work in Proton, but without audio.

There's a bug open @ https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/7612

ProtonDB also lists the lack of audio, without workarounds (so far): https://www.protondb.com/app/2512840?device=any

Hopefully there will be a fix and/or workaround very soon; the game looks fun.

Agreed.

Additionally, the graphic oversimplifies things as well. The resulting genetically modified crop is often not even all that close close to the same as the non-GMO, as seen by studies such as this one:

https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-023-00715-6

Basically; GMO soybeans contain proteins which differ and also include additional proteins. This can cause allergic reactions to modified soy where non-modified soy might not cause an issue.

Monsanto supposedly even knew about these proteins and higher risk of allergic reaction and chose to not disclose it. (I saw some research that mentioned this years ago... It'd be hard to find the exact source I read back then.) This specific paper, which talks about additional proteins and side-effects brought in by the new transgenic splicing, also explicitly states that Monsanto did studies themselves and failed to report relevant findings:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5236067/

Obviously, other methods can also change proteins too, but these papers show it isn't as clear cut as the graphic in the original post claims.

Along these lines, here's a study that finds differences not just in soybeans grown organically versus ones treated by glyphosate (Monsanto Round-Up pesticide) but also between GMO and non-GMO crops, both treated by the pesticide.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814613019201

But, yeah this is just a long way of agreeing with the parent post and saying that the end goal is to make the plants resistant to poison, not to make them better for humans, all to make more money. (In this case, Monsanto is even double-dipping by selling both the pesticide and the crops tailor-made for the pesticide.)

Other GMO crops might be closer to the original crop and might also actually be beneficial for humans without drawbacks. However, Monsanto's soybeans are problematic, and other crops might be as well, especially if they're made by companies who have money as their primary goal.

GNOME 46 (currently in release candidate mode and fully releasing later this month on March 20) is adding support for remote graphical logins via rdp:

https://9to5linux.com/gnome-46-to-introduce-headless-remote-logins-via-gnome-display-manager

So you'll be able to do this pretty soon, after upgrading.

It'll be in Fedora 40, scheduled for release around April 16.

https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-40/f-40-all-tasks.html

If you're in Europe, it may be due to the DMA.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2024/03/06/digital-markets-act-how-the-way-you-use-google-maps-and-messenger-is-changing_6591969_13.html

You may also have noticed something new on Google, when looking for the address of a place: It's now impossible to click on the map that appears in your search results.

Google is one of the "gatekeepers" according to the DMA (Digital Markets Act). The law recently went into effect. It is supposed to lessen the amount of preferential treatment the big tech companies give themselves.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act

Yeah, that's a big, weird if though. Most modern apps can rely on the runtimes for their dependencies and not have to ship their own custom dependencies.

It's different from something like AppImage, where everything is bundled (or Snap, where a lot more needs to be bundled than a typical Flatpak, but not as much as with an AppImage).

Additionally, there's always some level of sandboxing in Flatpaks (and Snap packages) and none at all for RPMs, Debs, or AppImages.

Also, Flatpak dedupicates common files shared across flatpak apps and runtimes, so there isn't "bloat" like what you're talking about.

https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2021/11/24/on-flatpak-disk-usage-and-deduplication/

That's not how Flatpak works.

Flatpak has runtimes, which is where most shared libraries are. There's a common base one called Freedesktop, a GNOME runtime, a KDE runtime , an Elementary runtime, and more. (The GNOME and KDE ones are built on top and inherit from the Freedesktop base runtime.)

https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/available-runtimes.html

Additionally, at least for Flathub, they have shared modules for commonly used libraries that aren't in runtimes. (Many are related to games or legacy support like GTK2.)

https://github.com/flathub/shared-modules

Lastly, some distributions are building their own runtimes and apps on top, so the packages they build are available as flatpaks as well. This is the case for Fedora, Elementary, Endless, and others.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flatpak

It certainly is a differentiator: uBlock Origin already works best on Firefox. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox

And when Manifest v3 is fully enforced in Chromium (current date is slated to be July 2024), then the more restricted uBlock Origin Lite would need to be used instead.

(I'm not sure if Arc will fully adopt v3, but they might not have a choice at some point in time.)

The Lite version still works well considering all the restrictions, but has a lot of limitations: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#issuecomment-1507539114

• Filter lists update only when the extension updates (no fetching up to date lists from servers)

• Many filters are dropped at conversion time due to MV3's limited filter syntax
• No crafting your own filters (thus no element picker)
• No strict-blocked pages
• No per-site switches
• No dynamic filtering
• No importing external lists

TL;DR: The way uBlock Origin works on Firefox right now is already better, but if Arc has to go along with Manifest v3 in Chromium in a few months, then it'll be even more of a differentiator.

It also looks like they're even thinking about rolling out their own tracker blocker (instead of using uBlock Origin) as a result of the Manifest v3 changes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArcBrowser/wiki/index/#wiki_how_will_arc_handle_the_transition_from_manifest_v2_to_manifest_v3.3F

https://twitter.com/joshm/status/1728926780600508716

We're rolling our own native @arcinternet Ad & Tracker Blocker in 2024 (since Chrome is restricting them)...

Any creative ideas for how we can go above and beyond, and reimagine the category?

Remove GDPR/Cookie Consents? What else?