Triumph of visual design over interactive design. These days, most “designers” only care about graphics visually. The much deeper science of how people use and understand things is beyond them. Worse, they think the problem is that everybody else does not “get” visual design.

Style over substance.

My concern with this take is that it positions the switch as all downsides. You do not get any of the Linux benefits, just the compromised experience on Windows. You may decide it is not worth it even before switching.

What I am most excited for in COSMIC is the promise of tiling in a full DE. I like the idea that you can switch back and forth.

I started trying it out a month or so ago. Still pretty incomplete. Promising though.

The fact that it may drive the Rust GUI ecosystem forward is exciting as well. I do not need to see everything re-written in Rust but it will be great if Rust is a realistic option for new app dev.

I actually do not like Discord and wish they did not use it. That said “absolutely no reason not to use Matrix” is clearly an objectively untrue statement.

Andreas has always been very pragmatic. He will choose the tools he likes best.

I have been using Linux since 1993. Maybe it is time to move on.

I have defended Red Hat a fair bit over the past year. Their level of contribution to the community is a big reason why.

It is clear though that their prominence comes with a downside in the paternal and authoritative way that their employees present themselves. Design choices and priorities are made with an emphasis on what works for and what is required for Red Hat and the software they are going to ship. The impact on the wider community is not always considered and too often actively dismissed.

Even some of the Linux centrism perceived in Open Source may really be more about Red Hat. For example, GNOME insists on Systemd. Both projects are dominated by Red Hat. There have been problems with their stewardship of other projects.

To me, this is a much bigger problem than all the license hand-waving we saw before.

Linux does this all the time.

ALSA -> Pulse -> Pipewire

Xorg -> Wayland

GNOME 2 -> GNOME 3

Every window manager, compositor, and DE

GIMP 2 -> GIMP 3

SysV init -> SystemD

OpenSSL -> BoringSSL

Twenty different kinds of package manager

Many shifts in popular software

If you are a Linux user and like commercial games, you probably would prefer them to work on Linux.

“Market share” on Linux aligns the vested interest of game makers and Linux game players. If the company thinks it can make money, it will do more to allow games to run, or at least do less to stop them.

In my view, the “community” reaction was terrible. Regardless of if you agree with them or not, the response should be honest and rational. I found the reaction, emotional, political, and frankly dishonest. The response was that Red Hat was suddenly going proprietary, that they were violating the GPL, and / or that they were “taking” the work of untold legions of free software volunteers without giving back. They were accused of naked corporate greed by companies whose whole business is based on using Red Hat’s work without paying ( peak hypocrisy ).

Let’s start with what they actually did. Red Hat builds RHEL first by contributing all their code and collecting all the Open Source packages they use into a distribution called CentOS Stream. Once in a while, they fork that and begin building a new release of RHEL. That requires lots of testing, packaging, configuration, documentation, and other work required to make RHEL above and beyond the source code. Previously, they made the output of all this work publicly available. What they did was stop that. So, what does it look like now?

Red Hat now only distributes the RHEL SRPM packages to their subscribers ( which may be paying customers or getting it free ). The support agreement with Red Hat says that, if you distribute those to others, they will cancel your subscription. That is the big controversy.

What you cannot do now is “easily” build a RHEL clone that is guaranteed “bug for bug” compatible with RHEL and use it to compete with Red Hat. You will notice that those making the most noise, like Rocky Linux, want to do that.

So, are Red Hat violating the GPL? No.

First, Red Hat distributes all the code to make RHEL to the actual people they “distribute to” ( to their subscribers ) including everything required to configure and build it. This is everything required by the GPL and more.

Second, less than half of the code in RHEL is even GPL licensed. The text of the GPL itself says that the requirements of the GPL do not extend to such an “aggregate” ( the term the GPL itself uses ). So, Red Hat is going quite above and beyond the licensing by providing their subscribers code to the entire distribution. Yes, beyond.

Third, CentOS Stream remains open to everybody. You can build a Linux distribution from that that is ABI compatible with RHEL. That is what Alma Linux is doing now. Red Hat contributes mountains of free software to the world, both original packages and contributions to some of the most important packages in the free software world. Red Hat is not required to license packages they author under the GPL but they do. They are not required to make all of CentOS Stream available to the public but they do. They are certainly not freeloaders.

But what about this business of cancelling subscriptions? Isn’t that a restriction in violation of the GPL? Not in my view.

The GPL says that you are free to distribute code you receive under the GPL without fear of being accused of copyright violation. It says you can modify the code and distribute your changes. It says you can start a business in top of that code and nobody can stop you. Do RHEL subscribers enjoy all these freedoms. Yes. Yes they do.

What happens ( after the change ) when a RHEL subscriber violates the terms of their subscriber agreement? Well, they cease to be a subscriber. Does this mean they lose access to the source they got from RHEL? No. Does it mean they can be sued for distributing the code? No. I mean, you could risk trademark violation if you sell it I guess.

So, what does it mean that RHEL cancels your subscription? Well, it means they will no longer support you. I hope people see that as fair. It also means as bs they will no longer distribute their software to you IN THE FUTURE.

That is it. That is the outrage.

If you give away the results of Red Hat’s hard work to productize CentOS Stream into RHEL, they stop sending you future releases.

Again, that is it.

You can do whatever you want with what they already sent you. You have all the rights the GPL provides, even for software licenses as MIT, BSD, Apache, or otherwise. Nothing has been taken from you except access to FUTURE Red Hat product ( other than totally for free via CentOS Stream of course ).

Anyway, as you can see, they are the devil and we should hope their business fails. Because, why would we want a commercial successful company to keep contributing as much to Free Software and Open Source as they do?

I may actually give this a go.

With the addition of non-free firmware in Debian ( so better hardware compatibility ) and the rising popularity of Flatpak and Distrobox ( so access to newer software ), the advantages of Ubuntu are narrowing and the problems with Ubuntu continue to mount. Basing something like Mint directly on Debian makes sense to me.

I have been considering trying Debian with Distrobox / Arch to fill any application gaps. LMDE might fill that void instead.

Why sentence somebody that wants to live to die ( by denying them a transplant ) so that the organ can be wasted on somebody making choices inconsistent with survival.

All transplants have waiting lists. Getting an organ probably means denying one to somebody else.

The headline should be “Idiot sacrifices their life opening a spot for somebody smarter to live”.

If this is true, he and Starlink should be sanctioned. That is a pretty incredible contribution to the Russian war effort.