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0 pointshs861mo ago0 comments

In the past few years, I’ve started to develop a form of “upgrade dread” when it comes to OS upgrades. What are they going to enshittify now? What are they going to drop support for now?

This somehow excluded Linux and its DEs, and I eagerly read any news, changelogs, and announcements in this space. They’re still not perfect in every aspect, but at least I see things improving instead of public turf wars between departments trying to improve their KPIs.

Why is there an extra URL handler for MS Edge that bypasses the default browser config? Why is the search bar this wide in the default taskbar config instead of showing a simple button? Why are local searches always sent to Bing with no easy way to switch it off or change the search provider?

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jraph1mo ago

> I’ve started to develop a form of “upgrade dread” when it comes to OS upgrades.

I've been going the other way on Linux.

I used to think it might be wise to postpone updates if you were traveling, especially using a rolling distro. Today, I would be quite confident running the updates 10 minutes before leaving.

Granted, this is also because I'm more confident than ever that I could fix most breakages, and worst case the smartphone is there, but I've also not seen big breakages for years.

kccqzy1mo ago

I have a somewhat opposite experience. I also use a rolling distro, and in the past six months, I've seen wine break, and I've also seen Citrix Workspace break due to a dependency problem (perhaps Mesa?). Granted, these two cases are somewhat unusual because Citrix Workspace is closed source and the software I'm running with wine is also closed source. I rarely experience breakages of open source software other than GNOME extensions.

microtonal1mo ago

Yep. I run NixOS unstable-small on my ThinkPad and there is rarely breakage in daily updates. If it ever happens while on the go, I can just boot into a previous generation. The immutable OSTree/bootc distros are similar, as well as openSUSE, which uses btrfs snapshots on updates.

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