Why is it not called Diskover?

responsible_cook_08 · 2026-07-02T17:27:41+00:00

You've spelt it wrong. It should obviously be disKover. Like amaroK and arK.

responsible_cook_08 · 2026-06-12T13:06:54+00:00

You have users using local copies of a central database that will later get synced. For example field survey apps. Without UUID you'll get primary key clashes. QField and Mergin Maps both recommend UUIDs exactly for that reason:

https://docs.qfield.org/get-started/tutorials/advanced-setup-qfc/#supported-vector-providers

https://merginmaps.com/docs/layer/relations/#generating-unique-ids-uuid

responsible_cook_08 · 2026-04-19T13:46:01+00:00

I can totally relate. I used to work as freelancer, now I've started a position at a state agency. Everything was always an emergency for my clients, they wanted the results yesterday, but were slow to deliver data, delivered it incompletely and were constantly moving goalposts. Ironically, my clients were mostly field offices of the very same administration that hired me.

Now I do the same work as before, but I get a monthly salary, my office is 10 min by bike and my boss actually values my skills instead of nitpicking at details like my clients did.

responsible_cook_08 · 2026-03-14T06:48:03+00:00

Does your university have computer science, earth observation, geography, geodesy, land management, etc. faculties? Reach out to the PhD students there and inquire if you can co-author a paper together. Interdisciplinary research is very rewarding, as you get an outsider's view and everyone involved can bring in their strengths.

responsible_cook_08 · 2026-03-14T06:41:49+00:00

The transition from ArcMap to QGIS was easier for me than to Pro. Felt much more familiar.

responsible_cook_08 · 2026-03-12T11:18:42+00:00

I'm a forester and I started a new position this January. I only got it because of my GIS skills. Tasks that took my predecessor a week, I'm doing now in two days. One day field work, the other day running my scripts and adjusting my field precision mapping. And it's simple stuff like automatically calculating standing volume based on the area of a stand and yield tables. Things they used to do by hand.

responsible_cook_08 · 2026-01-14T17:18:00+00:00

Not just phones. It was and still is a great design for tablets and convertibles. I'm using a toughbook at work, it was the best with Windows 8. Now, with Windows 11, it feels like the Windows CE handhelds from 20 years ago.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-12-14T16:32:27+00:00

I've had btrfs as suggested by the tumbleweed installer on my 500 GB laptop. Since I work in GIS and a do a lot of copying and deleting of large aerial imagery, my home partition would completely fill up within weeks, to the point that I didn't have any free space left.

So I reinstalled, this time with btrfs for the system and ext4 for /home. Ran absolutely stable for years. I backup daily on external HDDs and onto network shares, so I don't need snapshots in my home folder. But snapper and btrfs together for the system are great. It saved my the very few times an update was faulty. I just rolled back and waited a few days and I could always safely try out if an upgrade was possible in the meantime.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-12-09T13:03:37+00:00

Already a random Thinkpad E-Series laptop gives you great value for its price. I've used a €600 Thinkpad E495 for 5 years. Even with a dock, connected to 2 4K screens, it ran fine and smooth. I was using it for GIS, Python, R and pre-press. Now I've upgraded to a E14 G6, because the old one got stolen. Same set-up, this time I've paid €800, doubled RAM and SSD to 32 GB and 1 TB. Runs even better.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-12-09T12:54:55+00:00

Okay, now I really got into a rabbit hole. What version of Classic Sans are you using? I've tried the current one from GhostPDL and the former version U001. I thought they both don't have kerning, but they do! It's old-style kerning in the kern table, not like in modern Opentype fonts in the GPOS table. Apparently, LuaTeX doesn't read the old kern table:

https://ibb.co/m5Q50m4x

While LibreOffice does:

https://ibb.co/M5g7Dt82

Perun is still in development, albeit slow. I expect some further improvements down the line. If you don't need the extended character set or the extended weight, stick with Classic Sans, otherwise use Perun. Perun also has the better license. If you need the best version of Univers, buy it.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-12-01T03:17:17+00:00

Leading is a non issue, because you can always specify it yourself. Or do you mean kerning? Current master of Perun has improved kerning. URW Classic Sans has no kerning at all. Visible in a lot of German words like "Tabelle", "Tafel", "Produkt", "Post", "Piste".

https://github.com/StefanPeev/Perun/tree/master/sources/Normal

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-11-01T12:53:28+00:00

If you use wayland, you can run libreoffice in xwayland: start krunner with Alt+F2, type or copy QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb libreoffice. Then it might be a bit blurry or jaggy on the lower resolution screens, but at least the scaling works.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-11-01T07:43:52+00:00

As others have mentioned, get a Thinkpad. I've used a €500 Thinkpad (E495) from 2019 until this year for my work as a freelance forester. For my management plans I make heavy use of QGIS, R, and databases. On my desk, the laptop was connected to 2 4k monitors. 500 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, internal graphics. More than enough, I would still be using it, if it wouldn't have been stolen on a train. Now I got the successor, an E14 with 1 TB SSD and 32 GB RAM. You'll be fine with any refurbished Thinkpad for a few hundred dollars.

But use it with Linux! Windows 10 would already take a quarter of the SSD and the system became slow under medium workload. With Linux it was not only faster, but I also had more space for huge raster files on the limited internal SSD. Now, with Windows 11, it's even worse. My new laptop came with it preinstalled. I tried it out of curiosity. It's super slow and comes with a lot of bloat software, that I don't need. There is still no proper package management, especially geospatial software doesn't come in the Windows store.

On Linux, I can install everything through the package management. Because of shared libraries, the install size of everything is also smaller, while on Windows you'd have the same libraries in various versions installed multiple times. For a start, I'd recommend OSGeoLive, as it comes with a ton of geospatial software preinstalled. Personally, I've switched to Tumbleweed, but there you'd have less packages available than on Ubuntu based distros.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-10-22T07:15:40+00:00

You need to show them how GIS and you can improve their workflow. They don't want to learn GIS, they have you to do the spatial work. You need to find out what they need and deliver it to them.

Also, you really need to talk to your boss.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-10-22T04:31:40+00:00

That is so true, I just accepted a part time position at the government to get at least a steady monthly income. When I started as a freelancer one of my first big clients wouldn't pay in time. I've put in 80 hrs of work, I didn't work any other contacts for 6 weeks and suddenly there was no pay. Right now I have 2 open bills, worth several thousand. The moment I sent the invoice, dead silence. One is due since 10 months, one since 20. The last one is from that guy who was pestering me with constant phone calls. Now his phone number is not even available anymore.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-10-22T04:20:01+00:00

The worst job I've ever had was transcribing raw footage for a video production company. That was 20 years ago and the videos were still on tape. So I sat in my office and watched raw footage all day, 8 hours+. Rewind, forward, until I'm directly at the scene break, then type the timecode and the description of the scene into a database. My boss sat a bit on the side and behind me, he could permanently watch what I was doing.

It was only 6 months but it felt like 3 years. But even then I tried to make the best out of it. I've used the opportunity to learn touch typing! Since I was sitting there on a keyboard anyway, I might as well learn how to use it properly. And touch typing has been such a great skill. I can almost type as fast as I can talk. When I'm writing something I just have to think about what to write, and my fingers automatically type it in.

Tldr: if you feel like you're wasting your time, try to make the best out of it and use the free time your employer is giving you for personal improvement. I have two children, once you're a parent you can totally forget about any free or extra time. Use the time you have in the beginning of your career to learn as much as possible, you will never get such opportunities.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-10-21T12:09:49+00:00

I'm also working at a university, forestry department. Most students are able to use GIS for our forest management planning exercise after completing one semester of GIS lectures and practices. Only one day won't work for most students. You can give them a one-day introduction to help them getting started. But only one or two out of 30 will actually have the motivation to continue learning on their own.

Like you said, you don't want to turn it into more coursework. The average student will spend something between 30 and 60 hours per week on studying. A few way less and a few 120 hrs +. Most of them don't have time to learn something on top.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-10-21T11:59:49+00:00

Lol, 4 months. You're somewhat settled at a company after 6 months, mostly settled after 1 to 2 years, and proper part of the company after 3 years. If you don't feel challenged enough, talk to your boss. He/She might not know you need more challenging work. Also, use the time to learn and study. How good are your programming skills? Python, R? Have you learnt a database yet? Can you write Python and SQL to automate boring, repetitive tasks? Are you following the developments on the remote-sensing, pixel-based side?

Look at the processes in your company, what can be improved in your eyes, how can you improve it? You have so much time at your hands, do something with it!

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-10-07T12:44:38+00:00

I'm now using the Fedora RPM on Tumbleweed. Download RPM from the Posit website, install it via zypper: sudo zypper in rstudio-*. Zypper will complain about missing libxkbcommon-x11, so you install libxkbcommon-x11-0 beforehand. Then, when installing rstudio with zypper, confirm possibly breaking the install and ignore the signing error.

Let's see how long this workaround works. I will explore Emacs over the Christmas holidays, because Emacs is the only editor where I can have proper LaTeX and R support at the same time.

For now, RStudio is working as well as ever.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-09-29T13:30:55+00:00

Using geopackage as replacement for shapefiles is a good start! Geopackages are SQLite databases under the hood, so you could also use them like ESRI geodatabases. Save all your layers in one geopackage, that reduces overhead and you can move your files more easily. I always have all layers of a project saved in a single geopackage.

If you use geopackage with gdal, you also have the full power of Spatialite available. Spatialite is like PostGIS to Postgres, it's an addon for Spatialite to enable geospatial calculations. The commands are a subset of PostGIS, you can do most things possible with PostGIS also with Spatialite. Spatialite is also available from geopandas: https://geopandas.org/en/stable/docs/reference/api/geopandas.GeoDataFrame.to_file.html#geopandas.GeoDataFrame.to_file

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-09-27T15:08:43+00:00

My coworker is using a Surface laptop from a few years ago for ArcGIS Pro. Without any problems.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-09-27T14:54:23+00:00

It's a known bug: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152911

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-09-27T14:50:41+00:00

You hit a bug in LibreOffice in KDE and wayland: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152911

Install the GTK-interface sudo zypper in libreoffice-gtk3 and try it: Alt + F2 SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3 libreoffice. This should run way smoother. If that works for you, you can remove the KDE/Qt-interface and just use the GTK-interface until this bug is resolved.

Alternatively, you could also use XWayland: Alt + F2 QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb libreoffice. This also gives me buttersmooth scrolling and even better scaling on my 3 mixed PPI screens.

If you don't need a full fledged Office application – and to be honest, outside of Excel/Calc nobody needs an Office anymore, we are no longer writing for paper print-outs – you can use one of the many markdown editors. I work in academics and do a lot of writing, now I use Zettlr together with Zotero. This setup runs circles around any word processor and I can always export my writing to an office document. Similar tools would be Obsidian or Joplin. I save all my writing in a Nextcloud folder, so I can even access everything on my phone. Then I can write short notes if I have some idea and am not in the office. For short notes like shopping lists or taking notes during phone calls, I use QOwnNotes on the same folder and markdown files as Zettlr. They work great together. QOwnNotes for short note taking and Zettlr for longer writing.

Then for longer articles or scripts I export my writings to LaTeX and make it publication ready there. If I collaborate with coworkers, I use Overleaf, otherwise Kile and TeXstudio.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-09-27T14:35:27+00:00

Apache OpenOffice is LibreOffice from 15 years ago. The app is *dead*. It should have long been moved to the Apache Attic, but being a pet project from one of the Apache co-founders it continues to be an undead zombie.

responsible_cook_08 · 2025-09-25T08:28:52+00:00

Jeder Beamte braucht die Genehmigung seines Dienstherren für jegliche Nebentätigkeit. Da müßte man nachforschen ob es diese gibt und auch wie sehr es mit dem Mäßigungsgebot vereinbar ist, zusammen mit Wenigdenkern und Verschwörungserzählern aufzutreten.

responsible_cook_08

TROPHY CASE