Just FYI, WINE is for running MS Windows software on Linux, not Linux software on MS Windows^1. As others have mentioned, I think cygwin was sort of the reverse-WINE. Also, I think KDE made a push to get their apps running on MS Windows because QT was cross-platform.
I was using WINE to play StarCraft back in like 2000. I think it predates running most Linux software on MS Windows, except for a few big, multi-platform packages like Firefox (back when it was still Netscape, then Mozilla Suite (don't remember what it was called), then Phoenix, then Firebird (right? the same name as a database, so they had to change it, iirc). Those were usually developed for each platform specifically, not just for Linux and then run with an emulator.
^1: not trying to be snarky or anything. just put it in in case you didn't know or maybe had a brain fart. Or maybe I'm wrong about the origins of WINE.
I realize it isn't technically foreign "investment", but international tourism to the USA is way down, which is having a huge impact on all the areas that rely on tourists.
Good question - does the browser plug in sync to the internet or is any part of it internet accessible? I've not used it. I just know a lot of people are put off by the idea of their passwords being "in the cloud" or otherwise accessible through the internet.
Looking at the add-on for Firefox, it looks like it communicates with the local keepassxc instance, which should be fine for many people.
krename is another excellent, but not as well known as it should be, KDE app.
krename can rename files and directories, and directories recursively, to almost anything. You can rename:
using information from the files or about the files (image info, date / time info, etc)
with templates (like #### for incrementing 0001, 0002, 0003, etc)
by adding parts of the original file name (first three characters then the last 4 characters, for example)
using find and replace (spaces to underscore, remove special characters, etc), including regular expressions
by changing case
or with a mix of everything.
krename has a simple mode and an advanced mode for renaming, so you don't have to jump into the deep end with the features.
You do have to be careful with some of the file info functions - it will happily try to rename a movie or a pdf with (non-existent) image EXIF info, for example. That would result in a file with a name you did not intend.
krusader is a dual-paned file manager for KDE. It runs on Linux (of course), MS Windows, and Mac OSX.
Folder sync is what makes krusader outstanding, even if you don't care about dual-pane file management. Open the two folders you want to sync in the panes and go to Tools > Synchronize Folders. You can synchronize both ways, exclude files, delete lone files, etc. Very powerful.
Being a KDE app, krusader does not skimp on features, so there are lots of other things that krusader can do.
Around 4 or 5 years ago, the Audacity project was acquired by a company that has several other open source music / audio related programs. The first few months did not go well because the company did several things with Audacity that the community didn't like (like the telemetry that others have mentioned). It seemed like the company was trying to take an uber-popular open source project and convert it into something not in keeping with community expectations. Some forks of Audacity were started.
As others have said, the controversy seems to have died down. Gentoo at least, and probably many other Linux distros, have Audacity and not the forks in their repositories.
A little trick for people who are worried about putting business / work passwords in web-hosted managers such as Bitwarden: put just the username in Bitwarden, and put all the full information into KeepassXC.
Bitwarden will recognize the site and fill in the username - meaning you are at the correct site and are not being phished. Then, you can fill in the password from KeepassXC. This gives the benefits of browser-based managers while keeping more sensitive passwords (and recovery info) local-only.
Just to be clear, there is no official app for Android (and, I assume iPhone). If you are using SyncThing on desktop or laptop computers, there are downloads at the official syncthing.net site. On Linux, it should be available from your distribution.
High school teacher here. Obviously, I don't speak for everyone, but many of us wish school would start at a more reasonable time for students. We don't enjoy trying to teach first (and second, and third) period classes where many students are either absent or asleep. And of course, we care about the students and know it would be much healthier for them to sleep in. School can start around 10:00, thanks.
But, as others have pointed out, the schedule is not dictated by what is best for the students.
Edit: some of the students in the schools I work at have to get up around 5:00. The often wait for 30+ minutes for buses to come (but that is a "the district doesn't care about the students" issue, not a start time issue).
Not as bad as the log in button taking you to the sign up page, but my local library's site has a "log in" button that, when you click it, brings up "log in" and "sign up" options on a CSS drop down (though I'm sure they use javascript, just because why do it the easy, safe way). You literally have to click "log in" twice to get to the log in page.
Yes, this, but I don't think just for organization's login pages. The email may also lead to a google sign in (for example) or some other single sign on (SSO). The site you are on needs to know the email to decide what to show next to continue the log in process.
That said, web devs should be coding the fields correctly.
In addition, carts of MS Windows computers (before everyone went 1-to-1) were not great in the classroom - students would save documents to the C drive and then the next day, on a different computer, they shockingly couldn't find their documents. When my school had a legacy MS windows cart and a couple of Chromebook carts, the students would groan and grumble if their class ended up getting the MS Windows cart.
Also, because MS Windows had (and still has) much higher hardware requirements, the MS Win computers were much more expensive AND time consuming for the techs to maintain. Couldn't really justify throwing out and replacing a $1000 computer (back in the day). A $200 Chromebook, no big deal. And, with 1-to-1, we can try to get the parents to pay to replace a broken Chromebook. I don't think we could ask them to replace a much more expensive MS Windows computer.
Yeah, I think this happens somewhere in Germany every few years. MS then makes a concerted effort to woo some politicians back, and a few years later we have news that a city or state is moving back to MS.
Yes, it is good that cities / states are trying Linux and challenging MS, but there is soo much more to any of this than technical superiority or licensing fees.
I reckon it’s because you can’t resist tinkering and never READING THE INSTRUCTIONS
I think you may have hit on the answer here. If you don't mess around with Linux, it will usually run fine for years. Mess around, and you can do things that only someone with you+2 years experience can undo.
I'm really curious what things people can't get running or didn't have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn't choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.
If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?
In my experience:
MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)
KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don't have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)
The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.
I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)
I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I'm not sure, because I didn't need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you'll probably have to worry about it.
Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don't - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.
One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn't create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a 'suite' in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.
(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)
Oops. Thanks. I had seen a shortened version of the video already, thought this was the same version, but it isn't. The one I saw was just the Tesla plowing through the wall.
Just FYI, WINE is for running MS Windows software on Linux, not Linux software on MS Windows^1. As others have mentioned, I think cygwin was sort of the reverse-WINE. Also, I think KDE made a push to get their apps running on MS Windows because QT was cross-platform.
I was using WINE to play StarCraft back in like 2000. I think it predates running most Linux software on MS Windows, except for a few big, multi-platform packages like Firefox (back when it was still Netscape, then Mozilla Suite (don't remember what it was called), then Phoenix, then Firebird (right? the same name as a database, so they had to change it, iirc). Those were usually developed for each platform specifically, not just for Linux and then run with an emulator.
^1: not trying to be snarky or anything. just put it in in case you didn't know or maybe had a brain fart. Or maybe I'm wrong about the origins of WINE.
I realize it isn't technically foreign "investment", but international tourism to the USA is way down, which is having a huge impact on all the areas that rely on tourists.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/31/travel/international-tourist-decline-united-states
Wow. I just realized how old I am.
I usually just multiply by 2, subtract 10%, and then add 32. Usually easier than 9/5 and gives same result.
Good question - does the browser plug in sync to the internet or is any part of it internet accessible? I've not used it. I just know a lot of people are put off by the idea of their passwords being "in the cloud" or otherwise accessible through the internet. Looking at the add-on for Firefox, it looks like it communicates with the local keepassxc instance, which should be fine for many people.
Thanks. I was not aware of this option.
krename is another excellent, but not as well known as it should be, KDE app.
krename can rename files and directories, and directories recursively, to almost anything. You can rename:
or with a mix of everything.
krename has a simple mode and an advanced mode for renaming, so you don't have to jump into the deep end with the features.
You do have to be careful with some of the file info functions - it will happily try to rename a movie or a pdf with (non-existent) image EXIF info, for example. That would result in a file with a name you did not intend.
krusader is a dual-paned file manager for KDE. It runs on Linux (of course), MS Windows, and Mac OSX.
Folder sync is what makes krusader outstanding, even if you don't care about dual-pane file management. Open the two folders you want to sync in the panes and go to Tools > Synchronize Folders. You can synchronize both ways, exclude files, delete lone files, etc. Very powerful.
Being a KDE app, krusader does not skimp on features, so there are lots of other things that krusader can do.
link: https://krusader.org/
Around 4 or 5 years ago, the Audacity project was acquired by a company that has several other open source music / audio related programs. The first few months did not go well because the company did several things with Audacity that the community didn't like (like the telemetry that others have mentioned). It seemed like the company was trying to take an uber-popular open source project and convert it into something not in keeping with community expectations. Some forks of Audacity were started.
As others have said, the controversy seems to have died down. Gentoo at least, and probably many other Linux distros, have Audacity and not the forks in their repositories.
A little trick for people who are worried about putting business / work passwords in web-hosted managers such as Bitwarden: put just the username in Bitwarden, and put all the full information into KeepassXC.
Bitwarden will recognize the site and fill in the username - meaning you are at the correct site and are not being phished. Then, you can fill in the password from KeepassXC. This gives the benefits of browser-based managers while keeping more sensitive passwords (and recovery info) local-only.
Just to be clear, there is no official app for Android (and, I assume iPhone). If you are using SyncThing on desktop or laptop computers, there are downloads at the official syncthing.net site. On Linux, it should be available from your distribution.
High school teacher here. Obviously, I don't speak for everyone, but many of us wish school would start at a more reasonable time for students. We don't enjoy trying to teach first (and second, and third) period classes where many students are either absent or asleep. And of course, we care about the students and know it would be much healthier for them to sleep in. School can start around 10:00, thanks. But, as others have pointed out, the schedule is not dictated by what is best for the students.
Edit: some of the students in the schools I work at have to get up around 5:00. The often wait for 30+ minutes for buses to come (but that is a "the district doesn't care about the students" issue, not a start time issue).
Not as bad as the log in button taking you to the sign up page, but my local library's site has a "log in" button that, when you click it, brings up "log in" and "sign up" options on a CSS drop down (though I'm sure they use javascript, just because why do it the easy, safe way). You literally have to click "log in" twice to get to the log in page.
Yes, this, but I don't think just for organization's login pages. The email may also lead to a google sign in (for example) or some other single sign on (SSO). The site you are on needs to know the email to decide what to show next to continue the log in process.
That said, web devs should be coding the fields correctly.
In addition, carts of MS Windows computers (before everyone went 1-to-1) were not great in the classroom - students would save documents to the C drive and then the next day, on a different computer, they shockingly couldn't find their documents. When my school had a legacy MS windows cart and a couple of Chromebook carts, the students would groan and grumble if their class ended up getting the MS Windows cart.
Also, because MS Windows had (and still has) much higher hardware requirements, the MS Win computers were much more expensive AND time consuming for the techs to maintain. Couldn't really justify throwing out and replacing a $1000 computer (back in the day). A $200 Chromebook, no big deal. And, with 1-to-1, we can try to get the parents to pay to replace a broken Chromebook. I don't think we could ask them to replace a much more expensive MS Windows computer.
Yeah, I think this happens somewhere in Germany every few years. MS then makes a concerted effort to woo some politicians back, and a few years later we have news that a city or state is moving back to MS. Yes, it is good that cities / states are trying Linux and challenging MS, but there is soo much more to any of this than technical superiority or licensing fees.
That's what makes Linux so much fun.
I think you may have hit on the answer here. If you don't mess around with Linux, it will usually run fine for years. Mess around, and you can do things that only someone with you+2 years experience can undo.
or pdfarranger works well, too.
I'm really curious what things people can't get running or didn't have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn't choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.
If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don't know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?
In my experience:
MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)
KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don't have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)
The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.
I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)
I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I'm not sure, because I didn't need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you'll probably have to worry about it.
Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don't - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.
One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn't create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a 'suite' in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.
(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)
edit: spelling error / typo
Oops. Thanks. I had seen a shortened version of the video already, thought this was the same version, but it isn't. The one I saw was just the Tesla plowing through the wall.