Why did they have their own builds of these projects in the first place? Did they have custom patches they maintained?

I know your pain! (Cries in Nvidia laptop) when i bought mine i literally couldn’t find a laptop with AMD graphics in my region.

There is some hope these days. In addition to the previously mentioned Frameworks laptop, there’s also this TUXEDO Sirius 16 - Gen1. (Tuxedo is a German company specializing in Linux-compatible computers). It might not be exactly what your looking for, but AMD graphics laptops are so few and far between I thought I should put it out there.

+2 for KDE Connect, the integration is amazing. I’ve used it on KDE and Gnome (gsconnect), all works very well

Thanks for explaining (For some reason my mind went to Dodge Challenger the car, not the Challenger shuttle)

I never new there were that many ignored warnings for the Challenger shuttle disaster. It remains an important cautionary tale to this day. The poor crew never saw it coming

Story time?

Another good option on Windows is PDF XChange Editor, though I’m using an old version so I can’t vouch for how much or little enshitification has happened in newer versions

I did this too :D I used to have 20 pairs of non-identical black socks, which made matching hard and it felt wrong to wear socks of slightly different type or size. Much easier now

I keep getting socks for Christmas though, which I never wear cause they’d mess up the simplicity

2nd for Kobo! It’s a good device, supports more standards, and doesn’t fund any of the Too Big Tech Giants

Application Z requires another 3GB because it needs Gnome runtime version X+1, not version X. Although I do believe Flatpak does some kind of reduplication so actual used space is somewhat less.

It’s also less of a problem if you flatpak all the apps vs having just a handful. The more apps the better chance they’re actually sharing runtimes.

Flatpak updates are handled very smoothly by KDE Discover, I always assumed Gnome Software did the same, so no additional package manager required.

Despite the few downsides Flatpak is still wonderful. As a Kubuntu user it’s nice to say Farewell random PPAs whenever there’s a need for an actual newish version of an application

This is a very outdated take. With SteamPlay and Proton most games these days are literally just click Install click Play. The main exceptions are VR and certain competitive games with invasive AntiCheat where the devs has not enabled Linux support.

These days you should not need fiddle with Wine directly, Proton, Lutris etc should handle Wine for you

Like maxmal said, FreeCAD has an Architecture (and BIM) workbench, which is heavily developed by one of the main FreeCAD Devs. Try it out and see if it works for you

Calling the architecture workbench a plugin is technically correct, but a bit misleading, as all core features are technically plugins(workbenches). The Architecture workbench is a built-in default feature

Kate on Linux, Notepad++ on Windows.

Also, Kate on Windows (it’s really good)

Sadly Obsidian is not open source or free as in free speech. For individuals it is free as in free beer though

The AI arms race has begun!

Isn’t this kinda thing happening already in the recruitment industry?

PixelDroid for Android. It’s available on F-Droid too

Proxmox is so good it’s hard to believe. It’s VMware levels of features and convenience, while also supporting LXC containers, no license shenanigans, no enshitification, and the full flexibility of Debian under the hood

The recent-ish addition of Proxmox Backup Server is the cherry on top, with de-duplicated , incremental system image level backups with support for individual file restore

Yes both!

I use Qalc for unit conversions (I often need to convert measuring units without acces to internet) and SpeedCrunch for everything else

Agreed, that sounds perfect for right now.

A certain community I’m subscribed to is very active right now, to the point of almost drowning out all other committees in my feed. A “temporary hide” would be very welcome

And scrolling up and down constantly cause there’s not enough screenspace to show all the information (because 90% of the screenspace is empty or used for enourmous padding)

Well that aged like fine wine (talking about Embrace Extended Extinguish and how Google abandoned XMPP):

In theory, a company like Meta could run that playbook here. It could launch Fedigram or Fedbook or whatever, gain a lot of users, and then slowly shut out the broader ecosystem.