[Tesk ~]$ cat blog.md █
This page is dedicated to a list of my writeups. Those writeups include documentation, guides, tips and tricks, and responses. The writeups usually take days to write, and some even weeks. I spend a lot of my time to research and ask questions to qualified people to provide the most accurate and factual information.
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Overwhelmed by the amount of blog posts? Here’s a list categorized by tags!
Blog Posts
Jun 4, 2023
Recently, the article “Developers are lazy, thus Flatpak”, by Martijn Braam, was published to criticize a few things regarding Flatpak. I want to go over the article and address some points that were raised.
May 11, 2023
Flatpak’s permissions can be confusing. Some are technical and need knowledge on how they work, and others are self-explanatory. Some are added before the app starts, known as static permissions, and some are requested when the user runs the app, known as dynamic permissions. Many may also criticize Flatpak for lacking Android-style permissions while being unaware of the existence of XDG Desktop Portals.
In this article, I’m going to explain:
- What static and dynamic permissions are
- The differences between static and dynamic permissions
- The issues with static permissions
- What XDG Desktop Portals are and how they work
- Why static permissions exist in the first place
Apr 2, 2023
GNOME’s philosophy is sophisticated and there is a lot of room for forgetting important information, as design and user experience are, in my opinion, really difficult to understand, while being really easy to misunderstand as well.
For starters, I will explain the key focus of GNOME. Then, I will be explaining and elaborating on how GNOME approaches it. I will also share my opinion on that matter.
Mar 24, 2023
Recently, GNOME added an option into GNOME Settings to adjust pointer acceleration, which was a feature that the developers and designers were originally against. One person managed to convince them, by giving one reason. Thanks to them, pointer acceleration options are now available in GNOME Settings!
Firstly, I’m going to summarize the relevant parts of the proposal and discussion behind the addition, and explain how it was accepted. Then, to build on top of that, GNOME’s philosophy and the importance of taking it into consideration. And lastly, how to propose features to GNOME and what to avoid.
Jan 5, 2023
I often see people claim that the GNOME Project is anti-collaborative because they follow the “my way or the highway” mindset. I would like to explain where this mindset comes from, why this is an aggravated claim, and what you can do if you are negatively affected by the GNOME Project’s decisions.
Dec 6, 2022
The Fedora Project is a great organization to gain experience no matter the team you are in. I am currently a part of the Fedora Websites & Apps team improving my technical writing, communication and design skills.
With all the things the Fedora Project does well, there are several places that, in my opinion, need to be improved. I’d like to go over some key areas where we could improve Fedora Linux from a user perspective without breaking the Fedora Project’s core philosophies.
Oct 10, 2022
I am writing this article on my birthday to give my thanks and appreciations to those who helped me start and continue my journey with programming. I want to return the favor by explaining how I started programming, for those who are struggling with getting started with programming, and give them some motivation to continue their journey.
Sep 30, 2022
Recently, the Fedora Project removed all patented codecs from their Mesa builds, without the rest of the community’s input. This decision was heavily criticized from the community. For that decision, some even asked the Fedora Project to remove “community driven” from its official description. I’d like to spend some time to explain why, in my opinion, this decision was completely justified, and how the Fedora Project remains community driven.
Sep 28, 2022
Whenever I browse through the web, I find many “tips and tricks” from various blog writers, YouTubers and others who recommend users to take steps that either they aren’t supposed to, or have better alternatives. In this article, I will go over some of those steps you should not be taking and explain why.
Aug 29, 2022
I repeatedly encounter users complaining about LTS and stable distributions having issues with application packages, but then claim that no such thing ever happens with bleeding-edge distributions. However, with my experience and knowledge with the technical side of packaging, I can’t emphasize enough that this is untrue.
Jul 28, 2022
I have heard a lot of misinformation surrounding GTK4 and libadwaita, mainly based on misunderstanding. I’d like to take some time to explain what GTK4 and libadwaita are, why GNOME decided to go this route and why it’s a huge step in the right direction.
May 29, 2022
Electron has one major drawback: it is up to the application developer to update (rebase) to a newer version of Electron to fix security bugs, improve stability and improve compatibility with newer technologies. The Discord client uses an Electron version that is questionably low.
May 16, 2022
Late last year, this interesting article “Flatpak Is Not the Future” was published to the public, and very quickly grabbed the Linux community’s attention. I want to go over some of the author's arguments and explain some of the misunderstanding and claims.
Mar 19, 2022
Microsoft recently posted an article and an announcement about cloud gaming on the Steam Deck. The authors promoted the Edge Flatpak application in a way that would lead people to believe that Microsoft itself is the maintainer of the Flatpak application when that isn’t the case. I am the maintainer and author of the Edge Flatpak application, re:fi.64 is the author of the Chromium base app and the person who got Chromium working inside a Flatpak container with Zypak. And many other contributors have been the ones who continued improving the Flatpak application.
Feb 9, 2022
In the previous article in this series, we looked at how to get started with Fedora Flatpaks and how to use it. This article compares and contrasts between the Fedora Flatpaks remote and the Flathub remote. Flathub is the de-facto standard Flatpak remote, whereas Fedora Flatpaks is the Fedora Project’s Flatpak remote. The things that differ between the remotes include but are not limited to their policies, their ways of distribution, and their implementation.
Dec 22, 2021
Flatpak is a distribution agnostic universal package manager leveraging bubblewrap to separate applications from the system, and OSTree to manage applications. There are multiple Flatpak repositories (remotes in Flatpak terminology), such as Flathub (the de-facto standard), GNOME Nightly, KDE and finally Fedora Flatpaks, Fedora Project’s Flatpak remote.
Dec 5, 2021
Manjaro is often considered as a good entry-level distribution for those switching from Windows. However, there are many issues regarding this recommendation — most of which lie in the areas of ethicality, technicality, and general bad practices. This post tackles the misinformation that the Manjaro team and/or the individuals within the Manjaro community often spread to attract users to use Manjaro. Many of these issues impact several aspects of Manjaro.
Oct 3, 2021
This post taps into three main arguments that users make when they are assuming that Flatpak and Snap suffer the same issues, or the problems are equally bad.
Jul 26, 2021
A guide to mirror GitLab repositories to other software development platforms.
Jul 10, 2021
Run Jekyll inside a Toolbox container on Linux.
Apr 30, 2021
Matrix (also written [matrix]) is an open source project and a communication protocol. The protocol standard is open and it is free to use or implement. Matrix is being recognized as a modern successor to the older Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol. Mozilla, KDE, FOSDEM and GNOME are among several large projects that have started using chat clients and servers that operate over the Matrix protocol. Members of the Fedora project have discussed whether or not the community should switch to using the Matrix protocol.
Apr 6, 2021
This is an opinion-based article about why I think the Linux desktop has not yet been adopted by the masses.
Mar 24, 2021
This page is about my experience with Fedora Silverblue, what I dislike about it and what I like about it.
Feb 11, 2021
A lot of flatkill.org’s statements are made to incite fear in the Linux community. Given that all Flatpak packages and application build scripts are available and able to be edited by anyone, the appropriate response is to educate on why this is a problem, and then fix it. The way that flatkill.org approached this issue says a lot.