Category: Politics

why i’m posting so much, again

whbeebe

Since around the middle of April and on into this month of May, I’ve been on something of a posting tear, posting at least once/day, and recently, two and sometimes three times/day. I’ve been motivated by current events from Florida on up to the national and international stage. It all starts with morning motivation. Here’s what’s motivating me every morning.

These are on the front of my refrigerator at eye level. My wife got them for herself, but I’m not blind (just nearly so without glasses). I quickly glance at them every morning and have since before I officially retired. In the beginning they didn’t affect me one way or the other. Over time, the months and the years, those words on that refrigerator door have gone from slogans that can be ignored to truths that can no longer be ignored. I can’t be silent and fade into the dark end of life. I’ve seen too many injustices and social sins committed since 2016 (and quite a few before then, to be honest, but I chose to be a part of the Silent Majority). I thought everything wrong would magically straighten itself out after 2020, but we know how that’s worked out. And now it looks like the beasts are trying to rise again.

The slogan at the top of this blog is “Cats, Computers, Cameras & Commentary.” I’ve certainly delivered on the first three, only occasionally on the fourth. That mix is about to change. I’m about to inject more commentary more often, heavy on the more. After all it’s my blog and I’ll write what I want to, write what I want to… Sorry, I started channeling Lesley Gore for a minute. I hope I don’t run my regular readers off, but the subjects of my commentaries will be serious (although I hope I can inject a little humor to keep it from being deadly serious).

Here’s to change for the better.

fedora 36 final arrives and i am not happy

whbeebe2 Comments

Fedora 36 Final arrived late morning eastern standard time today, and I downloaded its ISO and installed it in a Parallels virtual machine. No issues at all installing it, and it quickly and easily configured. Two technical issues:

  1. Wayland still doesn’t work properly in a virtual machine on my MacBook Pro running macOS Monterey 12.3.1. I switched to regular old reliable Xorg at the login screen.
  2. I tried to build Parallels Tools and it failed to build and install. Specifically, the kernel driver it builds and installs failed to build. I’d hoped it would work because it worked for Fedora 35, which has the same kernel version, 5.17. But I guess not. I won’t even speculate why it’s broken, but it’s traceable to changes in the kernel sources. I’m sure that in fairly short order an update to Tools will arrive and it’ll build.

Those are VM issues, and not a concern for installing on bare hardware. I am, however, shocked, shocked I tell you, to find an example of someone else’s prudish sensibilities intruding into a distribution I’m seriously considering. See here in the Software application:

It’s called Parental Controls, it has a rating of 1.4 stars, and it deserves every down vote cast against it.

Since when did we need to have parental controls in the middle of a Linux distribution? If you want parental controls you can get plenty of that and more with Microsoft Windows. Have at it. If I wanted to stick Linux in front of a kid, I’d buy them a Chromebook. I have no idea who thought this was a Good Idea, but once again, they should be ejected from whatever specially committee they’re on, that committee in turn should be shut down, and this crap should be removed. I’m not even going to wait for someone to make it removable. I mean the purpose is for adult Linux users to impose their will on their children in such as blunt way? I’m not going to “control restrictions, control how long they can use the computer for, what software they can install, and what installed software they can run.” Fuck all of that. This may come as a shock to many, but the purpose of a parent is to be a parent, which means you devote whatever time and energy is necessary to be a good parent. You don’t buy them tech and then let the tech handle them. This is just utter bullshit. And yes, I checked, and it’s there on Fedora 35 at least. The party or parties responsible for this travesty even wrote in the release notes how they had to make the app uninstallable so that it wouldn’t remove “core desktop components,” which means it broke the graphical desktop. Reminds me of the brltty debacle with Pop!_OS.

Yeah. I thought I was going to install Fedora 36 in place of Pop!_OS, but that probably won’t happen. I’m now looking to choose between Ubuntu and Linux Mint. I know exactly what I’m getting with Ubuntu, whethere I stay with LTS or ride along with their six month releases. When I demand freedom in my operating system, I want it all. I don’t want to see any of this nanny-ware crap anywhere, I don’t care how widely your latest release is lauded.

It’s a good thing we still have choice.