Fedora rejects something from systemd

date: April 1

source: Phoronix

Yeah no, good try tho. Had me hopeful for 6 seconds.

Congrats for your experience.

My use case is pretty much having a normal, usable, standard desktop environment where I can do workflows supported by features such as:

• using a screen recording program to, ya know, record the screen;
  • …without having to buy more into the so-called portals cartel (that is also adding age verification);
• opening programs with their windows being opened in the workspace, screen and at least approximate positioning where I last used then;
  • being able to drag-and-drop or relocate windows across screens, workspaces or any such entities;
• launch graphical applications as a different user and have them interact natively with the rest of the desktop (eg.: fullscreen correctly);
• have a fucking clipboard!;
  • with the Linux-classic middle-click alternate clipboard, too.
• assign a hotkey or keycombo for an application, that can be fired from anywhere else in the desktop;
• being able to manufacture input events for keyboard, mouse, joystick etc… for when there are issues;
• being able to launch the window of a program opened remotely;
• programs using the graphical theme I’ve assigned for window decoration, instead of inventing their own titlebars and min/maximize buttons;
• being able to drag-and-drop files from one window to another;
• and many others.

The last time I tried Wayland was in 2023-ish. The fucking thing could not even finish the startup for a desktop session in my machine. It’s honestly the worst vaporware I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been around since the '90s. I feel like these things will never ever be truly fixed, because from what I understand of the Wayland model, it is intrinsically about treating the user as an enemy:

“We’re treated like hostile threat actors on our own workstations” [1]

[1] https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

Which is, ultimately, worrying. Things like Pulseaudio, systemd, Wayland, …, feel like they are making Linux less for the user and more for corporations. It’s enshittification, and comes from a culture of enshittification (Potter-ing etc).

With all the crazy stuff going around in the world, “Wayland adds an actually useful feature that is basically core to a system tasked with managing windows” was not in my 2026 Bingo card. Kudos to them for finally doing it I guess.

Maybe by 2038 this thing will finally be usable, just in time to roll over the 32-bit grave.

It reduces the foothold available for AI-free projects, in particular once “big enough” projects like Firefox or Linux get infected. Since there is significant inertia to switching to, or even developing, an alternative (a web browser might have been casual dev in 1998; right now it almost requires a Corporation to coast the development). Also it normalizes the idea of having AI in development, which is in itself dangerous.

Unfortunately AI has gotten ahold of several projects so it’s not as easy to ignore. And with Linux itself being on the list, it seems the time comes for the community to migrate to Haiko or BSD.

Fedora is literally the “the first dose is free” of Linux enshittification under corporate (RedHat), plus is legally tied to US jurisdiction. They’ve never been trusworthy.

Hahahaha! Wayland sucks so much you users can’t even turn the screen on or off.

Welp, time to return to physical switches I guess!

If you don’t trust it, why use it? It’s still slop in the end, just somewhat less slopified.

Consider: either you are smarter than the tool you use, in which case it doesn’t really offer anything much, or you are dumber than the tool you use, in which case you wouldn’t be qualified to judge its results anyway.

To be fair, when it comes to both physical and digital fascism, every time the slippery slopers have been told they are sloping and exaggerating, they are actually proven right.

Unless you use xdg-desktop-portal, the field that systemd added does absolutely nothing.

Yet. it’s a foot-on-the-door to demand more stuff, and some distros have already shown they are going to merrily open up their arses and ours.

make it a snap package

It’s incredible when Artix is being more based than Debian.

However, what’s gonna happen should the attempts to age-gate the XDG portal screw over alt-init distros like Artix too?

Just join the Ageless Linux thing? My understanding is at most they will be providing a bogus interface, basically.

It’s systemd. A child pest of a Microsoftist pest. It was literally invented to contribute towards the MicrosoftizationMicroslopization of Linux.

Cash.

Congrats guys! We did it!

Thanks for joining in!

Seriously, enough was going on with the project that the AI was just the final nail (or the deepest nail) in the coffin. What’s important is that we denounce AI where we see it, as this (and not “usage”) is the only non-violent way we have to try and lead a change in how AI is developed and deployed in the first place. The problem is not simply “someone can use AI in their spare time”, it’s what even has to happen as a prerequisite for that to even be a thing in the first place (code theft, mass license violation, environmental destruction, RAM shortages, erosion of civil and digital rights, exemptions for big corpo, you name it).

We should all feel ashamed that an open source project was shuttered because of how our community acted.

Open Source means the source is open, not that you can do whatever ass-unethical thing you want. That weird impression of the world is something that techbros, cryptobros and liberals are trying to push. Don’t be fooled. We defended ourselves, and we managed a tie.

That’s precisely why they have to be resisted and/or we have to look for alternatives that Do One Thing Well. Among many other issues, the networking effect issue with EverythingApps is quite double-faceted in that, because they do everything, their “weight” not only acts as gilded cages to prevent people from leaving, but also to prevent developers, working on their spare time, from developing something that can be reasonably understood as an “alternative” (because the alternative has to also Do Everything).

It’s basically playing a loser game to lose, see eg.: Mozilla always at best playing catch-up to Google, or why we can’t seem to move from BloatedWebWithReact to something like Gopher (or even make a proper Gopher 2.0).

All that said, I feel like XMPP and Matterbridge are approaching this from the right perspective. Just implement a global communication protocol and leave to platform makers (or platform users) the task of bridging from and to whatever directions they want.

Hmmmm voice chat eh?

Well then it’s time to recommend Mumble!

I hear Snikket makes it really easy to host XMPP (aka Jabber).

Debian Sid!