- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

GNOME's "Attach Modal Dialogs"?
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 26 Nov '23

26 Nov '23

By default, when a GNOME application pops up a dialog, it gets glued to (one of?) the application's window: the dialog sits in front of the Window, glued in place. If you move the dialog, the window moves with it. I'm not sure why this is considered useful behaviour. Perhaps because if you misplace the dialog, you might not know that the application is waiting for a response (I've had that happen in Windows). But it means that the dialog might hide something you need to see on the main window to fill in the dialog. At least on Fedora, you can change this behaviour using "GNOME Tweeks". Under Windows, set Attach Modal Dialogs to "off". Does anyone else like this default? <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/443>

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Linux friendly email providers?
by Karen Lewellen 24 Nov '23

24 Nov '23

Hi folks, let me be more specific..some of you tech wizards run your own mail servers laughs. for context, although google is removing access to basic html in January, they pulled my access to it early..and without warning on Monday. So, what I am seeking now is a provider that can.. 1, allow me to export all of my gmail content to them. 2, either allows for user name / password log in directly with a web interface, or where I can ssh into a shell or workspace and find an email client, think Alpine for example. 3, where I can also send email, in theory once I have all of my gmail content, I can set that email to forward without losing access to a great deal of personal, professional, and legal files. Yes, something like Mutt might or might be configured for imap.gmail.com However, I am not a programmer, and given all the changes google is making, wonder how long they will allow third party access of that type. Would rather locate something Linux friendly, and even pay for a door then need to construct my own house if that makes sense. any good options? Kare

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Re: [GTALUG] Browsers (and Thorium to be specific)
by Evan Leibovitch 24 Nov '23

24 Nov '23

Thorium <https://thorium.rocks/> is basic Chrome that is compile-time optimized for new CPUs. Still does Chrome sync and plugin store. Won't run on any system that doesn't have an AVX2-capable CPU. As a result, it claims a conventional Chrome experience but noticeably faster. Apparently the same dev has done the same to Firefox, called Mercury <https://thorium.rocks/mercury> - Evan On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 10:45 AM ac via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > On Fri, 24 Nov 2023 10:24:20 -0500 > Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> wrote: > > > So ... nobody uses Thorium? > > > i am having a google free black friday... so, Thorium is a web browser? > > which natively does not support .js? or supports it? > > cool name, Thorium. sounds like something like kryptonite for Thor :) > > I can google it 2morrow or you can just tell me today why it is cool? > > > > On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 4:21 AM Ron / BCLUG via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> > > wrote: > > > > > Don Tai via talk wrote on 2023-11-23 15:46: > > > > <snip> > --- > Post to this mailing list talk(a)gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Browsers (and Thorium to be specific)
by Evan Leibovitch 24 Nov '23

24 Nov '23

Hi all. I've been a happy (sorta) user of Firefox for a long long time but I found I have needed a Chromium-based backup because there are some sites that Just Won't Work under FF. Blank white screens, hanging, missing frames, the problem varies but it never exists on Chrome or Edge. (Sorry, Brave, just couldn't get into it.) Now The YouTube recommendation algorithms have been of late feeding me with quite a few reviews of the Thorium browser, some of which come from channels I have watched before. Is it worth the hype? At very least, is it a better alternative to Chrome or Edge? I would like to sync bookmarks, plugins and logins between devices and have some sense of stability (is that it will be around for a while). Is there something else even better? Thanks for any feedback. -- Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56

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Linux Unicorns
by ac 24 Nov '23

24 Nov '23

I have been wondering about tech unicorns and Linux. WARNING : do not read beyond this point if you are not at least somewhat bored. - reading drivel is a choice, and this does at least have a warning label :) Does anyone on the list actually know (as in personal experience) whether/which (or even if) most tech unicorns are Linux based or with a Linux origin story? Of course the very obvious next wonderation would be which distro these peeps used? With FB, I would guess Slack (but maybe Debian??) Personally, early 2000's sometime I moved off slack and onto lfs, but i love most distro's equally - some are just easier than others tho, anyway, unicorns... I am thinking about making a tech unicorn, I have not yet tried making one b4, but how hard can it really be? unicorns are horse like? horses used to be wild, at some point in time at least but nowadays horses all belong to someone. Even wild horses belong to the gov (on public land anyway) and nobody can just go and catch a wild horse, it just is not legal/allowed or even acceptable. Tech unicorns all like to think that they all belong to someone, but well, imo we are still pre 1961 in terms of horse legislation anyway, so right now there is still a possibility of rusling up a tech unicorn, if one be so inclined. all you have to do is make something really cool and universally useful that operates in an entirely new fashion or method (and does not infringe on 5million different software patents) - incase you are wondering, I have other weird thoughts as well, like the advantages of being able to restart drivers without PID collapse (like in minix or micro kernel env) and combining this with re-loops to use for machine learning (i tried this already in the early 2010's btw and yes, it did work) So, you see, I am quite nuts (which helps) If anyone read up to here it would be much appreciated if you could tell me that I cannot make a tech unicorn, as this will then motivate me for the next few years while I get to the gluing of this shiny horn to this currently very unwilling horse :)

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issues with "fractional scaling" for displays
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 21 Nov '23

21 Nov '23

In GNOME (and surely other systems) you can specify that you want the contents of the display scaled. For example, 200% scaling doubles the size of everything on the display in both dimensions. The control for selecting scaling is in GNOME's "Display Settings", under "scale". Easiest way to get there: right-click on empty part of the desktop and select "Display Settings" This is useful if you have a HiDpi (high resolution) display and low resolution eyes. Note: this is different from changing the display itself to a different resolution. Scaling by integral amounts has been available for a long time. But it isn't that useful. It would be better if the system could handle scaling by non-integral amounts like 125%. For example, I have a 13.3" with 2560x1600 resolution. 100% scaling is very fine. Sometimes 150% scaling is easier to read. Wayland allows this non-integral scaling. Yay! XWayland copes poorly with this: everything gets a bit fuzzy, even at integral scaling points (but perhaps not at 100%). XWayland is used by programs that use the X Window System APIs. (I don't even know which programs that I use are using XWayland so I don't know how badly this would affect me.) I was looking forward to fractional scaling in Fedora 39 / GNOME 45. But it seems to be turned off, again: See <https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/357> It appears that the Fedora folk think that: 1. fuzziness at integral scaling in XWayland is unacceptable 2. making a clear user choice "fuzziness is OK" isn't reasonable Fractional scaling has been available before this with a magic incantation. I haven't tested it with Fedora 39. $ dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']" This only takes effect after the next login.

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labwc is unhappy with Debian 12 and LightDM ...
by Giles Orr 15 Nov '23

15 Nov '23

I'm trying to get `labwc` running on a Debian 12 system using LightDM as the login manager. I chose labwc because I'm a long-time Openbox user, and labwc is supposed to be almost a drop-in replacement for Wayland. Unfortunately, it's not available as a package so I had to build it myself. Which went reasonably well - although it demands a newer version of wlroots than Debian has (Debian has 0.15.1, labwc wants 0.16), so it downloaded and built that itself. And at the end of this, I ran `meson install --skip-subprojects -C build/` and it put stuff in the /usr/local/ tree. This dropped a /usr/local/share/wayland-sessions/labwc.desktop file which LightDM has ignored. Probably fixable, but I instead copied it to /usr/share/wayland-sessions/ alongside "weston.desktop". This worked, in the sense that I now have a "labwc" option at the LightDM login screen, but didn't work in that attempting to use it blacks the screen for 5-10 seconds and then returns to LightDM. I should add that the "weston" session works as expected. Also, running `labwc` inside an X session produces a window with a functioning labwc session inside of it. But of course I want to log directly into labwc. Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated. -- Giles https://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr(a)gmail.com

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Introduction and hello.
by Nick Accad 15 Nov '23

15 Nov '23

Hi Yesterday was my first time attending a GTALUG meeting, and as suggested I am sending this to say hello and introduce myself. Originally from Egypt, I got off the boat in Montreal in 2000, and moved to Hamilton in 2009. I was one of the original members of Montreal LUG (mlug.ca) before moving, that group is no longer active. I have been using and managing Linux systems since Kernel 1.1 (Slackware, then RedHat and Debian since 2002), with a smattering of Net/Open/FreeBSD, Solaris, AIX, HPUX and even some OpenVMS. I currently work for Dell Engineering fixing VMware issues while writing bad Python code and Bash scripts. Looking forward to the next meeting, -nick

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(very off topic) torque spec of impact wrench
by William Park 14 Nov '23

14 Nov '23

Hi (another very off topic), Wheel bolts on my VW are seized pretty hard. Standing on 24in breaker bar doesn't help, and that's 300ft-lb torque. So, I'm thinking about getting an impact wrench. Those with greater than 300ft-lb are very expensive. I found one with 250ft-lb spec at my price range. Question is, is there difference between static torque vs impact torque? In other words, will 250ft-lb impact wrench loosen 300ft-lb bolt? Browsing YouTube, I learned that torque specs are always misleading and inflated. This means, I have to find 600ft-lb or greater, and that's serious money.

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GTALUG General Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 14 Nov '23

14 Nov '23

AGM, then ‘You Don’t know Jack about Application Performance’ <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2023-11/> with Dave Collier-Brown <https://gtalug.org/> 14 November, 2023 at 07:30 PM We will start with the AGM, then we will have a talk by Dave Collier-Brown We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl *Time:* November 14th, 2023 7:30 PM Eastern Time *Join us on Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl. Hopt to see everyone there! *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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