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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

I guess the software I use respects the human element more, because it never does these things to me. Why not choose better software?

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Better software doesn't always exist and when it does exist is not always possible to switch (or has other downsides).

But for example Steam updates on boot, which is a (albeit minor) pain when I want to use it. Similar with Spotify. There aren't really any great alternatives to either of them that have equivalent libraries of content.

Or going right to the core, Windows and it's annoyingly frequent updates. Sure I could use Linux (and I do on a few machines), but that isn't possible on my work machines, and introduces incompatibilities on my personal machines.

Unfortunately that's not always feasible. I use Cura a 3D printing slicer (takes a 3D model, generates instructions for your printer), and it's one of the best at what it does (slicing). The UX is horrible though and is clearly 'designed by programmers' with little thought into how people will actually use it. And every time I upgrade there's a 50/50 chance it'll forget all my settings (there's lots of things you need to tweak and customise specific to your printer) and I'll need to start from scratch. Dealing with these issues is easier that switching to different software and learning it from scratch.

yea- deployment of CURA really has several weak points- we did not even got it to work with chocolatey correctly :(

Same here. I don't install much new software anymore and I have removed software that does that.

I can uninstall Microsoft Office from my work Mac but Intune will put it right back because it knows I simply need it to open work documents :)

We don't always have a choice.

Do you have some good examples of such software, to share?

I think that random examples without reference to a particular arena would be...random. If you would like a recommendation for an email client, or a web server, or a programming language, I would be happy to share what works for me. I do everything on Linux, by the way.

https://prism-break.org

I’m really confused how the author generated 88 documents in Preview that are unsaved. What kind of documents and changes were these? Why were they not saved when the changes were made? Preview is mainly used to view image files and do simple editing. Those edits are auto saved as you go long.

I’m sure the author has a point but I’m just distracted by this strange use case.

Because there is no better SW. See Windows 10 or Android for examples.

Almost any Linux distro respects its user more than W10.

And since Android is also a Linux distro, then there are alternative forks based on it too (e.g. LineageOS).

> Almost any Linux distro respects its user more than W10.

It's not that hard to respect users more than W10

> Because there is no better SW. See Windows 10

Windows 10 isn't even the best Windows, let alone the best software in its field.

Just use GNU/Linux (on mobile, too!).

Are there any GNU/Linux distros for mobile that are actually worth using? I'm not aware of any but I'd love to be proven wrong.

As it stands, the only thing keeping my Pinephone from replacing my BlackBerry is better messaging notifications. Calling, messaging (via Matrix), and Firefox are all mostly good enough for me.

Note I'm not saying it's good, but good enough for me. I've been using Arch, as I find the rate of improvement shows in a rolling release distro, and in my experience, Mobian is no more stable.

The closest thing to secure, actually usable Linux distro on phones is Android; if you are serious about security and degoogling GrapheneOS especially. The bad thing is that you have to have a Pixel for that.

Source: I own a Pinephone and has tried both Phosh-based and KDE-based offerings, there is also Sailfish though. Out of these Sailfish is the only one close to usable as of now.

Except in what concerns Google, the Linux kernel is an implementation detail considered no go area for app developers to call into.

Ignoring this advice might lead to application termination.

I think some are getting quite good. I’m following Manjaro/Phosh, and it’s showing promise. I’m not using it for much yet, just watching it develop. I believe other distros are further along.

Yes: Sailfish OS.

My SO switched from Gentoo to Fedora and loves it.

Fedora and Ubuntu seem to work great.

Android apps update in the background. Most don't nag you unless there's some breaking change.

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