This was my failure.

Did you notice if it seemed to improve a bit with time?

Mmm… no. I just more violently drag across the trackpad until it works and then resume what I was doing. 😅

I don’t have problems with high DPI … only problems I’ve come across is … I DID have scaling problems with Wayland

This is exactly my point. You did have problems with high DPI. You had to fix some random config and avoid Wayland.

I don’t want to deal with this. I want to be able to use whatever software I want and have it work with minimal or no extra “fixing”. I value this over slightly neater pixels.

Here’s a screenshot I just took from my Framework 13. Notice how some of the text is clear, but the entire menu to the right is blurry.

Common “fixes” are “move to Fedora” or “just enable some experimental flag in some random config”. This all misses the point though: I don’t want to have to do any of that. I just want a system that works with the most amount of apps.

Of course, it depends on what you specifically value. For me, I value broader software compatibility over slightly neater pixels. Some people might like it the other way around. That’s fine, but it’s something important to know.

Minor gripe about the trackpad sticking intermittently

Aaaah!!! It’s not just me! I used a track pad on another computer and realized the Framework’s stickiness wasn’t just in my head!

I currently own a Framework 13… and… after daily driving it for a year, I decided I don’t like it.

The deal beaker for me is the high dpi display. Linux just isn’t 100% compatible with hpi displays. I’m tired of my apps either having blurry fonts or tiny text. Ironic because hi dpi displays are supposed to look better.

With Framework, you’ll be pushed into using Fedora (it doesn’t solve all the scaling issues) or pushed to stop using apps you like because they’re using older GTK (some times there are no alternatives). You’ll also have to dive into debugging scaling issues.

I just switched back to my Dell XPS 13 9310 FHD and it was a breath of fresh air having everything just work. Any distro, any apps, no scaling debugging, text is readable and crisp, app UI elements look properly sized.

I only ever switched out the modular ports once, but honestly it would have been better to buy a dongle instead because that would work on any computer.

Oh, and I tried the higher resolution screen. It didn’t fix the scaling issues.

Oh, and, I actually had a display fail on me! After like 8 months, half the display went black. Thankfully, they were nice enough to send me a free replacement, but it definitely left me feeling like the Framework isn’t that sturdy or durable.

The shell also dents easily. I dropped a small music player from desk height onto the top lid and it left a small dent. (I have like 3 dents on the lid.)

Repairability is the one feature that the Framework beats everyone else on, but to me the cons outweigh the pros.

Yeah, you’re right. Bad advice actually. Oops.

Shortcut: use Tailscale to create your own private network and avoid hosting on the big, bad Internet. Otherwise, you really have to be careful on how you protect your services.

Minor downside (or upside) is that you’ll have to install the Tailscale app on each device you want to make part of the network.

This made hosting at home a lot easier for me.

Update: Ah! I misread the post. Tailscale doesn’t make sense for this use case. My bad! 😅

Interesting! I didn’t realize this! https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors.

So it seems like the FSF does this in order to be able to enforce GPL. Buuut, these guys really gotta be the exception. I feel like the probability of the FSF selling out and going full corporate evil is pretty low…

a good idea to have a CLA so that’s no conflict that the project owns the code.

That’s exactly the problem though. The project owning the code, instead of the contributors owning the code.

I don’t think the type of license matters too much if you have to sign a CLA, since the company can just change it whenever they want. For example, you can be AGPL today (Joplin) and then not AGPL tomorrow.

The Thunderbird desktop app for Linux has a “Export to Mobile” feature. It generates a QR code that you can scan on your phone to, I guess (I haven’t tried it), transfer the login info of your email accounts from desktop to phone. After that, IMAP should take care of syncing the emails from the server to each device.

Seems like the owners of Gitea did something like a self-coup and kicked out community members from the project. https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/

Forgejo is the community-driven fork of Gitea.

People like to act like Docker containers and environment variables are simple. But so often these things are not.

Oh for sure. I hate it when apps are like “EZ one line install” but then spin up a bunch of Docker containers. It’s just more potential for shit to break.

A huge reason I like Navidrome is because it’s just a single static Go binary. Can’t get much easier to manage than that. Plus a bunch of native music apps are available as well. Wish more software was like that.

For the specific case I’m talking about (CLAs), I check if the project (on GitHub or wherever) requires signing a CLA to contribute. In Joplin’s case, they do:

• https://joplinapp.org/news/20221221-agpl/#what-does-it-change-for-developers
• https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/blob/dev/readme/dev/index.md#signing-the-individual-contributor-license-agreement

Basically, with a CLA they can change the license at any time to whatever they want. If they want to go closed source tomorrow they can with zero trouble. Without a CLA, they would need approval from everyone who has contributed to the project to do a license change, giving the project proper open source protections.

One thing I would like to see is a way to distinguish which apps do Real™ Open Source vs fakie open source. For example, I see Joplin on there saying “Your secure, open-source note-taking companion”. I guess that’s technically true at this point in time, but they also force contributors to sign a CLA so they have the option to pull the rug later on. (Something which does happen.)

They even say so explicitly:

This is necessary so that if we ever want to change the license again we are able to do so

— https://joplinapp.org/news/20221221-agpl/#what-does-it-change-for-developers

And fine, if they want to do that it’s up to them. I’d just like a quick way to tell the difference between open source 😒 and Open Source 😄.

Hosted apps means you can use them on multiple devices. Otherwise, I have to wait until I get home, power up my laptop, wait for the OS to boot, wait for the app to load, then do the thing I wanted to do.

Any thoughts on how to solve the data sync problem without hosting? I guess I remember some apps doing a local network sync to get data to multiple devices. I kinda remember having problems with that not working all the time…