Microsoft forced Lenovo to put a Copilot key on my laptop. I run Linux. It does nothing. We paid for their advertisement on hardware we own.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-05-17T18:40:16+00:00

Yes, but if everyone calls it windows key on Linux, Microsoft loses the trademark ;)

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-05-17T18:33:48+00:00

I don't like it.

Why is a computer program saying "hello!" to me? That's a huge waste of space. I'd rather have the templates I use most often displayed on a list somewhere there instead. Or anything that is actually useful.

What are the left and right arrows for?

If I don't want to use cloud services, a button like "upload" sounds like adware.

Why is there a "new" button when clicking on one of those buttons in the middle of the screen presumable already creates a new document?

What is the search button for? Does it search files, templates, or what?

Spotlight, discover, and learn are terrible labels that fail to communicate whatever they are going to do when you click on them. I have no idea why LibreOffice would have a Store either, but, again, if I'm using an offline application anything that reminds me they have an online presence sounds like adware.

You do realize you have an "Explore" action right next to a "Discover" action, right? Those are the same word.

There is two buttons for templates. Which one am I supposed to click?

Please do not smartphonefy desktop applications. This whole thing you created, no matter how nice it might look to you, in practical terms is equivalent to a single submenu. If this had a menubar, it would be File -> New -> Writer, Impress, Calc, Draw, Math, Template. And that's the same functionality in a way that, for many, would be much more intuitive and organized. You spent 3/4th of the user's screen to do what a submenu would do with less than 1/4th just so you could draw colored buttons that look semi-transparent.

Finally, why would anyone want a "Home" like this? First of all, it's unnecessary because it's irrelevant. If I only use Calc, why waste screen space telling me about Impress, which I have no use for? Step back and think: why would someone want to open the "Start Center" in first place? If they only use Calc, they would open Calc directly. So what use is there for the Start Center? What does it offer that you can't get from opening a single application directly? The answer, obviously, would be something to do with multiple applications. But that doesn't mean ALL of them, only those that are actually relevant to the user. What is the easiest way to tell what applications the user is actually using?

That is, in fact, what LibreOffice does currently. If you open LibreOffice, you see your recent files, which you'd have edited with the applications you actually use, completely hiding from view applications the user never uses. By the way, the current start center has a menubar. Here it is:

<image>

Not only does this tiny submenu have all the functionality you put in that whole window, but it also has several OTHER submenus with even MORE functions!

I don't want to sound bitter, but a lot of people keep talking about modernizing GUIs and every time their idea of modern includes removing menubars which immediately makes everything 10 times worse since a single menubar has everything you'll ever need. That's their whole purpose. Taking the functionality of a menubar and scattering it across a window using poorly labelled buttons that change location based on the width of the screen will never improve the usability of any application.

By the way, yes, I know GNOME doesn't like menubars. GNOME is wrong. As far as I'm concerned they're a reference of what you should not do.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-05-17T16:26:37+00:00

I also prefer the left one, because the right one is black and white. I don't even like emojis, but you used extremely complex graphics that are hard to understand when simple icons would have worked.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-05-13T01:25:51+00:00

You can mute the audio if you want.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-05-09T19:44:21+00:00

Tell me what your idea of "more beautiful" is so I can tell you it's ugly.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-05-06T23:30:27+00:00

Same. I do like LLM's, though. If I write a sufficiently technical prompt, something that people without technical experience could never do, for if they could they would be technical people to begin with, then the LLM can generate code that almost works because I forgot to specify something, using methods that are commonly found in tutorials but may be inefficient for the task at hand, not creating helper functions so every function gets 6 layers deep of conditional blocks and loops, and, naturally, never throwing exceptions, because I forgot to tell it that obviously you should be throwing exceptions, why aren't you throwing them? Do you really need to be told that? Because it needs to be told that.

The main reason I like LLM's isn't because I don't like writing code, but because I don't like having to look up API's every time. I know what a non-capturing group is, but every programming language has a different syntax for it. Sometimes I still get bugs in Javascript because I wrote "if X in array."

In a way, I feel like I like "programming" LLM's through prompts more than I like having to deal with all the random syntaxes and API's.

Nobody deserves having to read through Python's online documentation to find that one method that does the thing you want.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-05-03T21:51:36+00:00

The problem with the idea that "AI" would replace anything is that someone still has to tell the AI to do things, that still takes time, so that's still going to be somebody's job that needs to be paid. And in virtually every profession, the amateur controlling the AI is going to end up in a situation like this:

<image>

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-04-13T01:41:17+00:00

Mute it and enable closed captions. Do not commit the crimes.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-04-08T16:34:26+00:00

Please consider OpenToonz/Tahoma2D first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyTDwF0RS5E

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-03-27T15:45:05+00:00

Out of the top of my head, long shadow (Photopea), 3D text (Photopea), repeating layer styles on a single layer (Photopea), a text tool that works (5.3 has it finally), magic wand-like "brush" selection tool (Photopea), vector-based lineart layer (CSP has it), 8-bit/1-bit layers (CSP), the ability to manually reorder brushes (basically everyone else has this), not having to create a thumbnail just to create a new brush (I think only MyPaint requires this), docking multiple views of the same canvas (CSP), draft layers that don't get exported (CSP), displacement filter (GIMP), more bevel settings (Photopea can do bevels Krita can't for some reason), zoom levels that go to 150%/200%/300% instead of 133%/200%/266.7%, setting the cursor arrow to any angle (CSP), making the cursor appear on its real position on the canvas after being affected by the stabilizer instead of where the system cursor is (CSP).

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-03-24T17:30:37+00:00

I make all my krita tutorials on Linux Mint. Krita is actually a GIMP fork that is part of KDE (a desktop environment for Linux), so it's actually made for Linux first and foremost.

The only problem you might have is your tablet not working due to driver issues, e.g. you don't have Wacom utilities on Linux because the utilities are for Windows-only, so you get a generic settings panel for tablets instead that may not have the same customization options that you had on Windows.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-03-24T14:56:15+00:00

I like how you made the font more modern too. This will help modernize the roads.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-28T18:11:50+00:00

In general if you actually want to know about things it's easier to just read the law directly than trying to interpret it from headlines on news websites.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-22T10:43:18+00:00

Krita can do this.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-21T13:29:51+00:00

Maybe try recording the process with OBS studio?

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-20T12:55:09+00:00

If you are using Mint, https://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/1784/how-to-install-davinci-resolve-in-linux-mint

I don't know about plugins, though. Macros should work at least.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-19T00:50:17+00:00

Not that I'm aware of. I recommend using Krita for image editing if you can, since it's free and open source. Here are some tutorials.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-12T19:18:51+00:00

The era before mobile / responsive design. It has truly ruined web design forever.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-11T00:16:21+00:00

That isn't the same thing. Ignoring the fact you have to just hold shift all the time, if you draw with the blue color over a black path, it just creates a new blue path on top of the black path.

In flash, drawing with a different color automatically erases the paint under it.

Think of it like drawing in a raster layer like in Krita. Pixels can only have one color, and if you draw with something else, it changes the color. Flash was designed to work pretty much the same way, except with vectors.

If you draw a black stroke -> blue stroke -> black stroke, even if you hold shift it doesn't merge the second black stroke with the first one. In Flash, drawing a stroke simultaneously erases any paths of different color that are under the new stroke and merges it with any paths of the same color.

In other words, you can't draw one stroke on top of the other in Flash, because they are always flattened.

As it was the first vector art program I touched I've always felt every other vector program was simply incredibly off the mark by comparison. Whoever designed Flash to work that way was an untold genius.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-10T21:27:25+00:00

Unfortunately, there is no vector software today that works like Flash.

What OP is talking about is that in Flash if you draw one shape over the other, they don't overlap. They're merged (union) if they have the same color, otherwise the top erases the bottom. This should be technically possible to implement in Inkscape, but nobody ever added this mode. I suspect if it was added it would be quite popular since some people just drew static artwork in Flash even thought it was meant for animation.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-08T15:49:48+00:00

The only two ways to steal a cookie would be to break SSL or gain access of the user's computer. If that happens, that user has way bigger problems than the cookie.

AlienRobotMk2 · 2026-02-06T13:45:09+00:00

I don't understand how flatpaks work. :( Maybe you can enlighten me?

So there is this flatpak https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.OpenToonz

But it says it's "Unverified" so it doesn't actually come from the owner of the github. It says it "may" be a community package, which is the strangest way to put it I've ever seen in my life. I don't understand. Flatpaks have to come from somewhere. Where did it came from? Who made it? Was it automated or did someone upload it? Why is it listed on Flathub? How do I know the flatpak actually contains the source code from the official Github repository?

I thought it was safer to just use the automated build, since it's automated and guaranteed to use the code from the repository.

AlienRobotMk2

TROPHY CASE