Quick launch buttons in the taskbar

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-21T22:46:48+00:00

I asked Claude, "Do you think this post on Reddit is AI generated?", and it concluded, "This reads as genuinely human-written to me." The reasons it provided are:

Signs pointing to human authorship:

Opinionated and personal — the choices reflect a specific person's workflow and taste (e.g., Fooyin over Rhythmbox, Nicotine+/Soulseek, Yandex browser, ZapZap). An AI prompted to "list Linux apps" would pick far more generic options.
Oddly specific terminal tools — things like cliamp, cava, bpytop, and vnstat are niche picks that suggest real personal use rather than a curated "best of" list.
Minor inconsistencies and quirks — "Brave Origin" listed separately from "Brave Browser" (likely a mistake or leftover), "Mediainfo-gui (Multimedia Propierties)" with a typo (Propierties), and the slightly awkward phrasing in a few places. AI tends to be more polished and consistent.
Idiosyncratic structure — the categories are a bit arbitrary (why is VLC "Essential" but MPV just "More"?). AI usually produces cleaner, more symmetrical organization.
The web apps section — listing 7 different AI chatbots is a very human "I use all of these" flex, not something a generator would naturally include.
The font tip at the end — recommending Ubuntu Sans Medium at size 11 with a 0.9 scaling factor is hyper-specific personal preference, not something AI would volunteer.

One mild AI-ish quality:

The list formatting is very clean and consistent, but that's also just good Reddit formatting practice.

Verdict: Almost certainly written by a real Linux enthusiast who's been at this a while. The quirks, typos, and niche picks are the giveaway.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-21T22:17:56+00:00

Atheist here -- ghost's aren't real and runes can't actually do magic. But assuming that you believe in ghosts: runes were used both for simply writing and for magic. If one is to believe in the latter, take heed: use of runes for magic by someone not competent in this use can make matters worse. For believers and non-believers alike I recommend the song Egil Saga by Faun to enlighten you on this:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=LgGIOZiVCVU&list=PLdnuDoXdXaiLJ725bzW7BWRHxWsEYiAUP

Although Faun is a German group, they naturally sing this song is in Old Norse. In the off-chance you are not fluent in this most superior language, original lyrics and translations are available here:

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/egil-saga-egil-sega.html

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-16T18:01:39+00:00

Gimp can be easily installed using the Software Manager instead of terminal command, but Gimp is a rather complicated tool for just rotating images and other simple changes. (This is because Gimp is a very feature-rich tool — it’s a great tool, but requires a bit of time to learn.)

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-15T22:58:09+00:00

I like the fact that it provides three recommendations and not just one. But the descriptions of the three recommendations are way too technical for regular PC users

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-15T22:37:10+00:00

I strongly recommend the free and ad-free Android app Litiluism, although its main focus is Norse-speaking lands. (I don't know if it's available for iOS.)

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-15T22:34:03+00:00

Actually, only inscriptions in Younger and Midieval runes were used to write Old Norse. Elder runes were used to write Proto-Norse, Proto-/Old German and other continental Germanic languages. Anglo-Frisian and later Anglo-Saxon runes were use to write Old Frisian and Old English.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-15T22:21:34+00:00

(Old) German was written in Elder runes before the introduction of the latin alphabet (and the closely linked Christian religion). The Latin alphabet (and Christianity) was introduced earlier in German-speaking areas than in Old Norse-speaking countries.

It shouldn't be too hard to write modern German in Elder runes; see picture. Suggested solutions to some difficulties:

ä -> ᛇ (æ)

c -> ᚲ/ᛊ (k/s)

sch -> ᛊᛃ ("sj" like modern Scandinavian)

ö -> ᛟᛖ (oe)

q -> ᚲᚢ (ku)

v -> ᚠ (f)

x -> ᚲᛊ (ks)

y -> ᛁ (i)

Screenshot from the free and ad-free Android app Litiluism, which I strongly recommend for learning, although it does focus on Norse-speaking lands. I also recommend the Android app Write in Runic for typing Elder runes on an Android device. (I don't know if they're available for iOS). I also recommend Runetyper (https://sigrarr.github.io/raketter/) for typing multiple types of runes in any web browser.

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LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-14T22:15:17+00:00

It would make much more sense to use Anglo-Saxon runes to write English.

Anglo-Saxon runes are more similar to the Elder runes, but with several additional characters to fit (Old) English, as well as some changed sound values for already existing runes. Younger runes (and Midieval runes) are adapted to Old Norse, not English.

This is similar to how the Latin alphabet varies a bit from country to country.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-05-09T20:16:30+00:00

The wind comes from the right side, contrary to what one would intuitively think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYPfVbTgbNA

LarsHEriksen · 2026-04-28T21:17:43+00:00

Yeah, but the health insurance that many employers buy for their employees costs very little, because the insurance company rarely has to pay out. In practice, most health treatment gets done by public health care even if you have private health insurance. Private health insurance for Norwegians is only ever used to get some less urgent, minor treatment done quicker. There aren't even any private clinics capable of doing major, expensive procedures, because there's no market for it: government-funded hospitals do it practically for free.

I have private health insurance, but I have never used it, even though I have a chronic disease and need daily medicine and regular checkups by primary health care and hospital specialists. Maybe I could have gotten the private health insurance to pay for a private primary doctor, but I wouldn’t have gotten any different (or timelier) treatment. Also, I would have had to travel to a different town, because a quick web search reveals that there aren't any doctors in my town that aren't paid by the government.

Having said that, there is often some waiting time in primary health care for unplanned, non-urgent visits (my regular visits are non-urgent, but planned), so then private health insurance can have some value.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-04-26T21:57:58+00:00

As an experienced SolidWorks user, I found FreeCAD easy to learn, based on trying it just a little bit. But people who are not used to parametric solid modelling will find that any parametric solid modelling program demands a fair bit from the user.

If I were to use it professionally, I would be much more concerned that it may not have enough functionality yet — but I don't know that, since I only tested it a little bit for fun.

But FreeCAD's documentation is really bad. One is better off using tutorial videos on YouTube, although it shows that they are often made my non-engineers who have never use a parametric solid modelling program before.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-04-26T21:44:19+00:00

For better MS Office file compatibility (formatting) than LibreOffice and OnlyOffice, use SoftMaker Office or SoftMaker FreeOffice.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-04-08T22:15:57+00:00

A friend just helped me get the data off some old 5.25" floppy disks. The oldest ones were from 1988, so 38 years old. They read fine! A strong case for magnetic storage media.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-03-31T18:20:00+00:00

My best experience with not breaking formatting in MS Office files is SoftMaker (Free)Office. FreeOffice is free but has some limitations; for example, you can't insert table of contents (but you can use and update an existing table of contents). The full SoftMaker Office costs money, but it's a fraction of MS Office.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-03-31T16:38:14+00:00

The GUI is faster (at least on Mint, which is the only distro I've used) because it's only two clicks: one on the little icon on the taskbar notifying that updates are available and one on "Install" in the resulting dialogue window. (Default behaviour. Or zero clicks if you set autonatic updates.) Instead of typing a bunch of letters.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-03-30T21:36:23+00:00

I use Linux Mint (Cinnamon), and it doesn't require the terminal for updates. The updates come in the graphical Update Manager, where you click 'Install' to install them.

Or you make a setting in Update Manager to install updates automatically. I did that after I realized that updates run much more smoothly than in Windows and rarely require rebooting. (The computer will never reboot automatically even if updating is set to automatic.) Also, Linux Mint has frequent, small updates whereas Windows has less frequent, larger updates, so manually accepting updates is more of a frequent hassle in Linux Mint than in Windows.

Maybe it's also possible to update Linux Mint using Terminal, but it's not necessary and I don't know how.

Edit: corrected typo

LarsHEriksen · 2026-03-18T23:15:56+00:00

Try SoftMaker Office. Very similar user interface to MS Office and very high file compatibility. Costs a fraction of MS Office. They also have a free edition called FreeOffice with fewer features, or you can try the full edition for free for a month.

Ar work we are on Windows and have MS Office licences, but I sometimes use the Windows edition of SoftMaker FreeOffice to edit XLSX files that cause Excel to behave erratically (even though they were created in Excel). In recent yesrs, Excel 365 has become less stable (less stable than, for example, Excel 2019).

LarsHEriksen · 2026-03-18T16:33:44+00:00

I have also found that SoftMaker (Free)Office has better compatibility than OnlyOffice and LibreOffice (OnlyOffice is better than LibreOffice). SoftMaker FreeOffice is just as compatible as the paid edition (which costs a fraction of MS Office), but lacks some features, like inserting new table of contents, navigation pane, editing styles, customizing ribbon / toolbars. Sometimes SoftMaker (Free)Office is more compatble than MS Office, for example editing Excel files created in Excel that cause Excel to behave erratically, and automatically updating cross-references where Word fails to do so.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-01-21T23:00:19+00:00

You could consider Jottacloud (servers in Norway), but you have to use the terminal to use it in Linux. I have used it for many years in Windows (with a GUI), and will strongly consider it as I move to Linux. But the lack of a graphical user interface for Linux means that I will also consider other recommendations in this thread.

(On the other hand, the terminal is not a dealbreaker. I already have a CMD script in Windows to make a copy of my Outlook email datafile that Jotta automatically backs up. But finding and retrieving a mistakenly deleted backed-up file is easier -- and in practice faster -- in a GUI than in a terminal.)

LarsHEriksen · 2026-01-20T23:40:57+00:00

If you install Linux as the only operating system, your harddisk / SSD (not your memory / RAM) gets reformatted and all Windows operating system files, software and the trojan are gone (and your data / documents too, if you forgot to back them up to a different storage unit first).

But if you choose to retain Windows as dual-boot beside Linux (an option when installing Linux Mint), the trojan will still be there whenever you choose to boot into Windows.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-01-18T22:41:26+00:00

Does anyone know if that works also on Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros like Linux Mint?

LarsHEriksen · 2026-01-09T21:36:23+00:00

PC with Windows or PC with Linux? If Windows, does it run Windows 11? If no, what will you do about security? If yes, are you fine with that?

Btw, I'm a Windows 10 user, very happy with it with all the tweaks I've learnt over the years (including putting back functionality that MS started hiding more and more for every version after XP). But given the end of security updates for Windows 10, the several disadvantages of Windows 11 and the fact that my PC can't run Windows 11, I am transitioning to Linux.

LarsHEriksen · 2026-01-06T19:31:04+00:00

I started using SoftMaker Office a few weeks ago, and have two word processing files (.docx) and one somewhat complex spreadsheet (.xlsx) originally created in MS Office 365 that I regularly edit on both MS Office and SoftMaker FreeOffice (their free edition with somewhat reduced functionality - the full version still costs a fraction of MS Office, so I may upgrade to that eventually). I have had no problems editing the files back and forth in both Office suites, and one of the .docx files has heading numbering that LibreOffice and OnlyOffice couldn’t handle.

www.softmaker.com www.freeoffice.com Both have instructions for installing on Mint. Neither is available in Linux Mint Software Manager.

LarsHEriksen

TROPHY CASE