To add some more, here’s a list of stuff that I would love to do at some point but haven’t found the time yet:

• A tool that directly translates PCB designs into a format that my resin 3D printer can read so I can abuse its display as a UV etching machine
• An alternative to GPlates that’s a bit easier to use for fantasy worldbuilding. GPlates is great but it’s mostly meant for serious scientific work so its UI is a bit complicated.
• A minimalistic blogging platform that interfaces with ActivityPub
• Many, many games.

Instead of a long-winded post, here’s a quick list of stuff that I’ve worked on in my free time over the last few months:

• Some scripts to automatically set some metadata on my photo library
• A tool that grabs a video stream from an HDMI input (from the OS’s point of view that looks just like any webcam), finds text in it and overlays a translation. I use that to play Japanese visual novels on my Switch
• A simple Bubble Shooter game because my gf was frustrated with some bugs in the one she had found online
• A simple 2D game engine and editor inspired by RPG Maker XP
• Updates to the registration website for a community event that I host twice a year
• Updates to a discord bot that automates some dice rolls for my online TTRPG sessions
• A browser extension that helps me scrape some data from a specific website
• Helped a friend port an old website from PHP5 to PHP8

Overall, it’s mostly stuff that is useful for my hobbies for which I can’t find an existing solution that fits my use case.

Damn, you were faster than I was, I was just calculating the same thing. All I have left is to assume that they won’t be able to fully dry the silver and guess a bit higher… 850g.

I could go on for days about the problems with medical devices. I write software for one of those at my day job and as much as our team would love to port the software to something other than Windows, that would be a logistical nightmare.

The thunderbolt connection alone can break because of a thousand factors, even on the exact combination of hardware and operating system it was tested with. Processing of medical images is often very GPU-heavy which gives us the same problems as with CAD software.

Even if you get all the technical problems out of the way, medical devices need to be certified before you’re allowed to use them for diagnostics. This often includes an exact specification of the platform you run the software on. If you just take something that’s certified for “Windows 10 between 20H2 and 22H2, Intel or AMD CPU, device driver version 8.1.23” and try to run it on Wine, I would expect the American FDA, German TÜV and Chinese NMPA to fight over who gets to kick your door in first. It might be possible to get a certification for a Linux version but probably only for one specific combination of distribution, display server and desktop environment.

Kinda unironically: yes.

Linux is great for some use cases and at least decent for most others but what I’ve experienced in some Linux communities made me understand why people don’t feel welcome. In a thread literally titled “Help me like desktop Linux” that listed a few things I was struggling with, I got hit with a bunch of “you’re an idiot for not using the exact same distro that I like”, “works on my machine” and “you want the wrong things”. Even as someone who already had over a decade of Linux server experience, that almost made me turn around and walk away.

I think you mean Mike Godwin. Poe’s Law is about satire being hard to distinguish actual extremist views.

Edit: I really wanted to add a joke about Ward Cunningham but couldn’t find a good way to phrase it.

One that I read on Mastodon:

Every bad thing about commercial software is the programmers’ fault. Even if it was something that management decided and the programmer fought against it and lost. They claimed you should rather risk losing your job than accepting an inconvenience for your user. Weird take but okay. Then they started comparing software engineers to soldiers “just following orders” during the holocaust. That’s where I blocked them. Cherry on top: they have “if you want to hire me as a software engineer, message me” in their bio. I wonder why nobody wants to hire them…

That using 100% free and open source software is more important than actually getting your work done.

In a thread about Affinity Photo where someone insisted that we should all use gimp and just not edit photos if gimp doesn’t have the features we need rather than asking Serif to port their software to Linux.

Also in several threads about migrating from Windows to Linux where every missing or complicated feature was brushed away with “just get used to not being able to do it, even if it’s critical to your workflow”.

Your comments in this thread sound a lot like you not wanting us to say anything you dislike. I respect your opinions and I would fight for you being allowed to share them. I just think they’re wrong and disingenuous.

Bad: most people who use the term “free speech” don’t understand what it means and what it doesn’t mean. Have a look at this handy xkcd.