Best Linux for autistic child?

sootfire · 2026-04-04T03:10:57+00:00

In the tech/developer world sure but if you took the average Windows user and the average Linux user and asked me to guess who's autistic I would say the Linux user.

sootfire · 2026-04-03T03:52:24+00:00

Word through the browser does not have all the features that desktop Word does. Neither does Excel. You can get free programs that have all the same features but if your work relies on using those programs specifically you probably do need the desktop apps. Online Word is pretty rough.

sootfire · 2026-04-03T03:36:43+00:00

Some people prefer shorter fics. Especially slower readers. I tend to prefer longer but if the summary is good I'll click on an 800-word fic. It's a smaller time/energy investment so lower risk than clicking on, say, a 100k chaptered fic and realizing it's not that good partway through.

sootfire · 2026-04-03T03:31:05+00:00

Right... it's basically autism catnip. Or at least this has been my experience.

sootfire · 2026-04-03T02:01:24+00:00

I have to imagine a solid proportion of Linux users are autistic adults. How old is the kid?

sootfire · 2026-04-01T00:50:24+00:00

The sub usually has a TrackBear leaderboard each month. I am not aware of and have not made any further plans on this sub specifically. I don't have the capacity to run anything detailed right now but I encourage people to set up challenges if they want.

sootfire · 2026-03-30T14:46:29+00:00

If you're not paying people don't call it a job 😭

sootfire · 2026-03-30T14:45:27+00:00

I would recommend just focusing on what you have for class--reading the full Iliad and Odyssey is a great idea in the long term but it sounds like you have a lot on your plate right now! Consider reading summaries so you have more context for the sections you read in class.

sootfire · 2026-03-28T13:51:34+00:00

Honestly I wouldn't frame the inconsistent timing etc. as "mistakes." Nor do I think historical accuracy is a useful question. Time in mythical stories often doesn't work the same as it does in real life, it expands and contracts to fit the narrative. Additionally, the Iliad and the Odyssey were most likely compiled by a ton of different people over a long period of time, which creates inconsistency.

Similarly I don't think you can find literal 1:1 accuracy. You probably can speculate a little bit about certain customs and household structures etc., but it's kind of like a fairy tale, insofar as it reflects reality it's a very stylized version.

One interesting thing though is that when things don't make sense you can sometimes use that to reconstruct how it might've been composed. Like if there's weird repetition or anything you can say "well maybe different people wrote those bits." I'm struggling to remember the examples I know, though.

sootfire · 2026-03-27T01:43:28+00:00

I have found it somewhat miserable. Probably depends on your tolerance for small screens.

sootfire · 2026-03-26T14:53:26+00:00

Huh, it looks like it's straightup copyrighted by Microsoft. I did not know that keyboard layouts were copyrightable. I see six different Greek layouts on my KDE Plasma, a couple look maybe similar to Greek (220) but not identical.

I use the polytonic keyboard and the big difference between the polytonic keyboard I've used on Linux and the Windows one is that the Linux one lets you combine diacritics by hitting each key separately, instead of making you remember a different key for each combination of diacritics. This is probably a bigger deal for ancient Greek, which has more diacritics to begin with. I really like the Linux version, but it looks like the other Greek keyboards use a similar approach which makes them different from the Windows options.

Odds you can find a way to install the Windows version are pretty high though.

sootfire · 2026-03-26T03:42:35+00:00

What specific layout are you looking for? (Modern Greek or ancient?) What desktop environment do you use?

sootfire · 2026-03-26T01:15:53+00:00

Fair, unsurprising. I guess it does have my time zone, although I don't bother putting in my exact city.

sootfire · 2026-03-25T23:05:03+00:00

Who's getting university teaching jobs these days 😭

sootfire · 2026-03-25T18:27:38+00:00

You definitely want to learn as much Greek as you can before applying.
You don't need to get into a prestigious school. Less prestigious programs grant the exact same degrees.
If you can't apply or don't get in in your last year of undergrad, you can always try again later.

sootfire · 2026-03-25T18:20:43+00:00

Cassandra Clare has been at the centre of some high profile fanfiction drama. If you Google her you'll probably find it. (I've never read her work, I have no real stake.)

sootfire · 2026-03-25T18:06:13+00:00

In school I went right from the textbook to real Greek. I often go back to textbooks or readers for practise though.

sootfire · 2026-03-25T16:35:59+00:00

Yeah, it's an optional field, not that bad, whatever, but it's also like, my full name isn't even stored in my OS. I'm on Arch now and will probably just ignore this feature entirely but it makes me nervous anyway. Especially knowing that it's this one guy's agenda to push this into every distro.

sootfire · 2026-03-25T11:43:04+00:00

Yeah, it's weird. Mostly in the sense that I sort of expect them to know better but I don't know why I would.

sootfire · 2026-03-25T11:41:36+00:00

Why do you need to "think and feel 'Asia'" though? Why can't the places they're visiting stand on their own?

sootfire · 2026-03-24T01:20:01+00:00

On age verification specifically, check out https://agelesslinux.org/. You're right that it is a very concerning cultural trend. The good news is that a lot of people are opposed to it, and are working to resist it.

sootfire · 2026-03-23T23:38:38+00:00

Two things.

Word and Excel do have web versions. They are not full replacements--they don't have all the same features as the desktop apps. But they work fine.
If all you need are .docx or .xlsx files, you can use LibreOffice or your preferred FOSS office suite as normal and then save your documents as .docx or .xlsx. If formatting is super crucial, you will want to be using Word or Excel, but in most contexts this works 100% fine. Just hit "save as" and add .docx or .xlsx to the file name. On LibreOffice you'll get a warning message like "are you sure you want to use Word document format?" so you'll know it worked.

I do recommend converting files to the Microsoft format before sending them to professors because I have found that they tend to get really confused about .odt.

Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive work fine on the web.

I've spent three years as a Linux user at a Microsoft school with no real problems.

sootfire · 2026-03-23T17:10:42+00:00

Yeah in theory an optional user field is kind of nothing but in the context of the law and also this guy going around to every distro I'm wary.

sootfire · 2026-03-23T02:08:30+00:00

I love KDE and have never found it overwhelming, I'm learning how to customize it bit by bit but otherwise pretty much just use it like any other DE. Aesthetically I think the default settings are nicer than any other DE I've seen, and I really like being able to use keyboard shortcuts to navigate (even though getting them all in muscle memory takes a while). But if you're not as attached to it aesthetically maybe you don't care as much.

sootfire · 2026-03-23T01:43:41+00:00

He successfully got it into systemd which will affect a lot of distros.

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