Andrew @andrew907@librem.one

6/6 It would really be nice if Ubuntu Touch could run a broader swath of GNOME apps. Purism had the right idea there. (And it would be nice if the vast majority of developers didn’t assume that everyone has iOS or Android and didn’t lock up their software as proprietary.) For now, I can do on the Ubuntu phone what it can do and my Ubuntu desktop setup (on yes, obsolete x86 hardware) is there to fall back on.

5/6 The most important thing to me is that Ubuntu and GNOME-like GNU/Linux generally works and thinks the way I do. I don’t have to fight with it. Both the phone and laptop are strong and there’s a lot of overlap in functionality, whereas iPhones are crippled (and Android is less coherently designed but not much more functional). Crippled as in lacking utter basics: no bash, no text editor, no browsing for local webpages.

4/6 Maybe Microsoft has something going with the Your Phone app—I haven’t tried it out—and having some Android apps run on PC is helpful, but probably most people just use Google services in Chrome to get the PC and Android to speak to each other. Or maybe some people use Microsoft’s Android apps for the same result. Or maybe most people live fragmented lives among their laptop, tablet, phone, smartwatch, and so on and they don’t care.

3/6 I’m going to rate the Ubuntu pair next, as a pair—they pretty much can’t work together at all, but they at least work strongly analogously to each other and that eases cognitive load. The design language is not as strikingly close as the two Apple devices because my Ubuntu desktop is GNOME-based and my Ubuntu phone is Unity-based, but clearly they’re siblings unlike the PC-Android pair.

2/6 A pair can be the best because the individual parts are so good, or because they work best together. Frankly, probably Mac and iPhone work best together because they exchange files easily and you can hand off apps and browser tabs between them.

1/6 Clearly the best thing is to have one computer that does it all. Pocket size, of course, maybe with a keyboard accessory for fast typing. But while I wait for that legendary Librem 5, now’s the time to ask, which is the best pair: Chromebook or PC/Android, Mac/iPhone, or Ubuntu phone/Ubuntu laptop like I have now. I’ve daily driven all these pairs besides using a Chromebook.

Had spiraling VM problems when trying to reinstall software to get it working again, and then I couldn't get a new VM spun up. I'm sure I could have with more patience. I understand that ARM is the present and x86 the past and I'm waiting for my convergent Librem 5 to come, but for now I'm tired of fighting. I picked up a cheap used x86 PC and put Ubuntu on it right away. As grateful as I am for virtual machines it feels so good to be running GNU/Linux on bare metal again!

Much ink has been spilled, understandably, about issues with iOS and Android. Let's start with the most basic issues: out of the box, no bash, no text editor, and you can't browse the file system with the web browser or read local html. Yes, with Android you can get some of this functionality back. If you dig for it, always going against the grain. More people would realize how important this functionality is if anyone explained the power rather 'go to the app store and buy useless toys'.

CBC sends a heatstroke warning for Beaufort Delta and Sahtú, projected to reach 29°. And several other communities in the region.

To the west in Alaska, we are not far behind. In Fairbanks highs are hovering around 30° this weekend and in the mid to upper 20s in Anchorage. Stay safe, the sun is not funny!

At least Wrigley is getting rain to help with their wildfire?

We and our neighborlands are suffering from these fires. Though thankfully I have not been personally impacted besides smoky skies. Angry fires both on this continent and in Siberia to the west. And from distant centers of power like Washington, Ottawa and Moscow, no news of empathy let alone proportionate action to reverse climate change.

As bitterly as I just complained about the thin UBPorts app ecosystem, it is actually surprisingly good. In fact, I could probably make it work pretty comfortably if I didn't need GNOME apps to make music, and so probably could the average person unless they needed something like proprietary banking apps. Or, horror, proprietary data-sucking social media. And I hear for such purposes Waydroid support is improving, though I haven't tried it myself in a while.

Time to *stop* using megabits or kilobits per second as a unit of connection speed and start using mebibytes or kibibytes. I want to know in layperson's terms how long it is going to take to transfer data. Megabits and kilobits are most helpful for misleading ads at this point. Which greedy for-profit business wouldn't be delighted to find a way to inflate their numbers by a factor of 8.192 (or 8.388608 in the case of megabits) while still being technically correct?

By UBPorts does what it does well, I mean the biggest missing feature is the outstanding GNOME ecosystem. A few dozen brave Clickable adventurers cannot reinvent the GNOME app ecosystem. Now if I could get Libertine to work, I may yet be brought around to viewing UBPorts as a match for PureOS. It's no doubt a close second. Maybe the only other viable free operating system besides Mobian + Phosh which doesn't seem meaningfully different from PureOS. Purism still built the user-friendly front-end.

I've gotta admit Macs are well-designed. And iPhones would be too except that they're so artificially crippled that they're basically a toy. Except that it seems 99% of developers assume that everyone has either iPhone or Android. But since when did for-profit businesses prioritize consumer welfare?

It is not something to take for granted on a Mac where the software ecosystem is still lackluster (unless perhaps you cave in and install Rosetta). Being able to run GNU/Linux at least in a VM on a Mac means I don't need to invest in one of those legacy machines with chips made by Intel. Remember Intel? (Oh yes, every machine at work is built around Intel just like it runs exclusively Windows and has USB-A ports. Sigh.)

Still, I am thankful that one even can set up a Linux VM on a Mac. For those of us whose quality of life depends heavily on GNU/Linux but who don't have the luxury of open hardware yet. I hear Purism is getting closer to keeping up with the demand.

Having problems displaying off the beaten path Unicode characters in the browser on Linux? Try installing fonts-noto-core. I dislike Google as heartily as the next person, but not everything they do is evil. Noto has a more open license than full proprietary and it's working.

It's a bittersweet experience listening to the latest two episodes of UBPorts Q&A. UBPorts does what it does well but does less than PureOS (if I can judge PureOS from my time with Mobian + Phosh). UBPorts has some slick design features that I'm going to miss with PureOS (especially gestures and the keyboard). I wish Purism's phone orders weren't so backed up so I could switch to Librem 5 for everything instead of using Ubuntu on a Mac VM to fill in Ubuntu Touch gaps. Again, bittersweet.

Alaska Public Media reports: as of June 30, over 6475 km² burned in Alaska this year.

Ah! Long awaited bliss on the horizon.