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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Please somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I really don’t find the “chip makers don’t have to pay licence fees” a compelling argument that RISC-V is good for the consumer. Theres only a few foundries capable of making CPUs, and the desktop market seems incredibly hard to break into.

    I imagine it’s likely that the cost of ISA licencing isn’t what’s holding back competition in the CPU space, but rather its a good old fashioned duopoly combined with a generally high cost of entry.

    Of course, more options is better IMO, and the Linux community’s focus on FOSS should make hopping architectures much easier than on Windows or MacOS. But I’d be surprised if we see a laptop/desktop CPU based on RISC-V competing with current options anytime soon.


  • In my experience it Just Works ™️. I spin up a distro/toolbox, compile some software (e.g. Emacs) then run the executable inside the container, and up pops the GUI window.

    If you use distrobox, you can even distrobox-export desktop files, at which point a containerised gui application is practically indistinguishable from one installed on the host system





  • There’s a common thread between a lot of the missteps listed here and Embeacer group’s recent troubles. The idea that you could fund 230 Spiderman 2’s for the same price as buying 1 Activision-Blizzard-King really drove the point home to me.

    The problem (in my obviously uneducated opinion) is that when you spend so much money in acquisition, especially of established companies, you’re neither funding nor rewarding innovation. You spend $70B on ABK and some randos in suits get a huge payout that they invest in oil or crypto or whatever. Spend $70B on talent and early career devs and you could unleash a tidal wave of creativity and experimentation.


  • By default, XWayland apps are now allowed to listen for non-alphanumeric keypresses, and shortcuts using modifier keys. This lets any global shortcut features they may have work with no user intervention required, while still not allowing arbitrary listening for alphanumeric keypresses which could potentially be used maliciously

    This is… very smart actually. Any reason this is limited to Xwayland? (Is that XDG portal a thing yet?)



  • The point of Linux on phones isn’t to have a phone that requires you to constantly fix it with CLI tools. The point is to have a free and open software platform for a device that is increasingly necessary for daily life.

    As a side effect, developing Linux for phones would probably help us eliminate the need to reach for the terminal on desktop Linux as well. I believe snaps (which laid the groundwork for flatpaks) were originally developed for Linux on “smart” devices. The whole ecosystem improves when we try to bring Linux into a new domain.

    P.S. I use termux (a terminal for android complete with its own tiny Linux environment) from time to time when I need to access my server over SSH. It’s a bit clumsy, but super handy!



  • I wish there was an option for an android style system where, when an application wants to use a permission for the first time, you get a pop up asking you to grant that permission.

    Or, more generally, just some way to ensure that (a) a flatpak isn’t granted the permissions it wants automatically and (b) I can then manually grant those permissions as conveniently as possible


  • samc@feddit.uktoAndroid@lemmy.worldDoes Android still need third-party launchers?
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    7 months ago

    I’ve had to give up on KISS launcher recently because of this. 95% of the time it works fine, until it scrolls right to the end of the lost and won’t allow you to scroll back. Swiping left and right then also breaks and the only thing to do is force stop quickstep.

    EDIT: Just tried with Niagara and got the same issue almost immediately. (Seems to be triggered by opening recent apps from the launcher itself)

    For reference, I’m on a Fairphone 5 using the stock ROM





  • samc@feddit.uktoGaming@lemmy.mlSoftware Emulators vs FPGAs
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    9 months ago

    I guess the argument would be that software fixes need to be implemented for each ROM separately. Which also involves the pain of decompiling. Yes FPGAs are probably a pain, but they potentially offer perfect emulation of every game.

    One thing I’m not sure about is how portable FPGA logic is. If I write a NES emulator in verilog for one FPGA, can that code be reused on a later model if, for example, my FPGA goes out of production?