You shouldn’t have to defend your existence let alone what computing you do, this blog and its author is doing more for modern computing than anything else I’ve read this year. Keep it up, stay hopeful that things eventually improve.
msgodel 3 hours ago [-]
This is just two people misunderstanding and talking past eachother.
The blogger wants to outsource living his life to other people, the commenter is getting hung up on pedantry too much to communicate what he actually wants to.
bovermyer 3 hours ago [-]
Mm, no, the commenter is not "talking past" the blogger. The commenter is very clearly rude. There is no need for that attitude.
Toorkit 3 hours ago [-]
Linux is just a base that people stack other software on top of. Audio crash? Pulse or Pipe wire?
Then the dozens of desktop environments, each doing things differently, split between X11 and Wayland.
I feel like blind devs should get together and make a distro that, out of the box, has as many accessibility features as possible, because it seems a lost cause to wait for some other distro to pick the right combination of tools.
pacifika 2 hours ago [-]
Segregation is not equality
Toorkit 1 hours ago [-]
Not what I said either. That's like saying we're segregating the Linux Mint from the Ubuntu users.
dgb23 3 hours ago [-]
I couldn't read this in full. Too frustrating.
I feel like we should be able to strive for things to be better while also appreciating what has been done so far.
potato3732842 3 hours ago [-]
This argument ports really well onto a lot of other things tech demographics touch if you just change the subject specific nouns.
throwawayqqq11 3 hours ago [-]
Like: "The linux kernel should embrace future demographics."
And the GNU/linuxers respond: "Then go FOSS yourself and fork it."
AstralStorm 2 hours ago [-]
Like what demographics? People who want to take the kernel, fork it and close it? Perople making low quality patch bombs behind closed doors?
It already is allowing Rust...
As far as the commenter, the GNU bit is still relevant. But you should normally call the distribution its name.
SteamOS is not quite as much GNU as Debian.
throwawayqqq11 2 hours ago [-]
> Like what demographics
The demographics of programming languages choosen/picked up by new generations of foss developers.
With GNU/linuxer i meant the stereotypical stubborn people resisting change not a specific distro.
I guess there will be non-technical frictions between rust and C in the linux project for as long as the GNU/linuxers exist. And like the OP, it can be seen as a matter of accessibility.
msgodel 2 hours ago [-]
Just because we don't want to use your crap and tolerate your condescension doesn't mean we're stubborn. It may very well be that you're asocial/antisocial and your software is low quality.
pickledoyster 3 hours ago [-]
So many quotable parts in the post, a must read for anyone, not just those working on software.
Internalizing the plight of someone with different needs and life circumstances (and this is not just about different abilities, such as sight) is how you actually support, work on, and provide more freedom to others. Took me a while to check my own privilege, but I believe I'm a better person for it.
joshka 3 hours ago [-]
I believe it's actually called GNU/Burn
4 hours ago [-]
WesolyKubeczek 3 hours ago [-]
The truth is, big tech corporations could probably skimp on accessibility as well, but they want their government contracts very much, and software used in governments, as far as at least the proverbial first world is concerned, has an accessibility bar it must meet. And it just so happens that these corporations have large chunks of money to invest in that.
If requirements for being in such lucrative markets loosen up, I'm willing to bet accessibility in Apple/Microsoft offerings will get defunded and rot away.
Of course you can question Red Hat and Canonical for not doing enough in the space, but truth be told, the grassroot open source efforts to make everything in open source more accessible amount to afterthoughts at best. How many GUI toolkit have appeared recently? How many of them are accessible? How many terminal applications gain TrueColor support and draw fancy stuff in the terminal? How many of them are of any use to someone who can't see your efforts in repurposing Unicode symbols to draw pictures in the console?
sneak 3 hours ago [-]
Nah. Apple’s commitment to pervasive accessibility features has been around for so long and has had so much investment into it it is clear it is in their DNA.
It’s probably the nicest thing about the company, and it stands out even more in the last ten or twenty years as the company becomes more and more scummy and despicable. It’s deep down and was established back when it was run by humans with deep empathy.
AstralStorm 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, right. Do not confuse accessibility with simplicity.
So much accessibility that:
You need to use gestures to access critical functions.
Half of screen readers cannot be connected to their hardware.
You cannot easily get someone to write a driver for exotic input hardware.
There's no zoom feature in the OS.
Recently many UIs just break with big scale factors.
Keyboard support is lacking altogether in some bits of the UI.
Information is hidden and alpears at random.
Not to say Windows or Linux is free of it or better. The platforms are bad in different ways.
Ndymium 2 hours ago [-]
> There's no zoom feature in the OS.
macOS absolutely has a zoom feature. I use it regularly, it's bound to ctrl + mouse scroll for me.
The blogger wants to outsource living his life to other people, the commenter is getting hung up on pedantry too much to communicate what he actually wants to.
Then the dozens of desktop environments, each doing things differently, split between X11 and Wayland.
I feel like blind devs should get together and make a distro that, out of the box, has as many accessibility features as possible, because it seems a lost cause to wait for some other distro to pick the right combination of tools.
I feel like we should be able to strive for things to be better while also appreciating what has been done so far.
And the GNU/linuxers respond: "Then go FOSS yourself and fork it."
It already is allowing Rust...
As far as the commenter, the GNU bit is still relevant. But you should normally call the distribution its name. SteamOS is not quite as much GNU as Debian.
The demographics of programming languages choosen/picked up by new generations of foss developers.
With GNU/linuxer i meant the stereotypical stubborn people resisting change not a specific distro.
I guess there will be non-technical frictions between rust and C in the linux project for as long as the GNU/linuxers exist. And like the OP, it can be seen as a matter of accessibility.
Internalizing the plight of someone with different needs and life circumstances (and this is not just about different abilities, such as sight) is how you actually support, work on, and provide more freedom to others. Took me a while to check my own privilege, but I believe I'm a better person for it.
If requirements for being in such lucrative markets loosen up, I'm willing to bet accessibility in Apple/Microsoft offerings will get defunded and rot away.
Of course you can question Red Hat and Canonical for not doing enough in the space, but truth be told, the grassroot open source efforts to make everything in open source more accessible amount to afterthoughts at best. How many GUI toolkit have appeared recently? How many of them are accessible? How many terminal applications gain TrueColor support and draw fancy stuff in the terminal? How many of them are of any use to someone who can't see your efforts in repurposing Unicode symbols to draw pictures in the console?
It’s probably the nicest thing about the company, and it stands out even more in the last ten or twenty years as the company becomes more and more scummy and despicable. It’s deep down and was established back when it was run by humans with deep empathy.
So much accessibility that:
You need to use gestures to access critical functions.
Half of screen readers cannot be connected to their hardware.
You cannot easily get someone to write a driver for exotic input hardware.
There's no zoom feature in the OS.
Recently many UIs just break with big scale factors.
Keyboard support is lacking altogether in some bits of the UI.
Information is hidden and alpears at random.
Not to say Windows or Linux is free of it or better. The platforms are bad in different ways.
macOS absolutely has a zoom feature. I use it regularly, it's bound to ctrl + mouse scroll for me.
More: https://support.apple.com/en-il/guide/mac-help/mchl779716b8/...