I Wish Me Luck
After ten months of fierce fight with dozens of Linux monsters. After times when I thought I settled for Debian 10, ArcoLinux or Salient OS. After getting nuttier thanks to…
The Mental Retard In Linux Is Real
Friday, April 23. The day when decisions wanted to be taken, because things happened. Not much did happen, and nothing really important, but I am short-fused at times. Also, Linux…
I tried to understand GNOME, and I failed at COSMIC tiling too; could I have some MATE again?
Against any logic, and mostly out of esthetic and usability curiosity, I wanted to try GNOME. Not version 40 yet, but 3·38 in Pop!_OS, with the tiling manager Pop Shell…
Theming my Salient OS
In my previous post I was looking for more “purity” in Arch, and somehow my judgment led me to prefer Salient OS. But I won't be using it as themed…
Looking for purity in Arch Linux
In my previous installment, I decided to go for an Arch derivative, and the pseudo-scientific rating gave ArcoLinux as the winner. But is there any “purer” Arch, something with as…
The Long Road to Linux-Only (Not Excluding a Bit of WINE)
Remember the undetected headphones issue I had with many Linux distros? I was wrong to be so stubborn as to try to fix it in the current and future distros--and…
COVID-19: Winning the War, but Losing All the Battles
It's been more than two months since I wanted to write a follow-up to my previous comments on this pandemic, and I never got beyond the title. I finally decided…
Language Learning Apps, Revisited: 34 Products + Bonus Links
More than three years ago, I discussed a few apps meant to help you learn a foreign language; while I still believe the best way to learn a language is…
How to download full-size scans from Gallica.BnF.fr
Online since 1997, Gallica is the digital library of the National Library of France (Bibliothèque nationale de France) and its partners. Among the 4 million available documents, some are scanned…
The Last Sleep of the Civilization Part II
In the first part of this series, it was about COVID-19. But the symptoms of the impending death of our civilizations include another one, which was visible for quite some…
The Last Sleep of the Civilization Part I
I'm breaking the radio silence out of rage. So much stupidity while living “in the best of times” is unbearable. Given that I gave up any social media presence, here…
The Sorry State… and the Quick Fix
I was indeed wasting my time: there is a classic answer to the question “what if I want to run Linux instead of Windows on my laptop or desktop PC?”…
Modern Times, Here I (Slowly) Run Away From You
Four months ago, I said I'll switch from Windows 7 to a pure Linux machine. At some point, I said I'll install Neptune (basically Debian 10 with a few tweaks),…
Le Twitter des cons
I've given up Facebook long ago; now I have the proof that Twitter isn't any better anymore. A little social experiment proved to be "the last straw" (so to speak).…
When Italian Design rhymes with kitsch
“Italian Design” is synonymous with good taste when used as a qualifier for clothing or cars. How about Linux distros? I'm afraid the things can be very, very different in…
Don’t trust the magazines on choosing an OCR
This covidiocy is so alienating that I wasn't in the mood of writing anything. Better late than never, a few notes on the free OCR software, simply because a stupid…
73 Minutes That Define Linux on the Desktop Today—Rather Depressingly
I must be nuts to dedicate a blog post to a videocast by Bryan Lunduke, but there's a good reason for that. For the first time ever, I'm glad YouTube…
KDE and Debian aren’t exactly my cup of tea; or should they?
I'm disillusioned although not dispassionate about everything that's software; but when one sees the catastrophic crap that is Win10, whatever might be wrong in Linuxland becomes almost acceptable. Why are…
Linux Intermezzo: Buggy Indeed, But Win10 Is Worse
Some time ago I said to myself that I should definitely switch to Linux. Returning from Win7 to Win10 in the times of a pathetic 2004 (but which Windows update…
In omaggio a John Peter Sloan (1969-2020)
Sono nato inglese ma morirò italiano, said five years ago the most famous language teacher in Italy. Nobody thought though that this would happen so soon. Here's a text I…