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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • I literally just put Dead Cells down before opening up Lemmy. Just now I died to a javelin attack (thanks to having just opened a cursed chest) in the Fractured Shrines.

    I’m not especially good at it; I’ve only finished one run. I think that run was a Survival run using Frost Blast and the Nutcracker. That was on my phone (using a Backbone gamepad, not touch controls), oddly enough, even though I have it on my Steam Deck and on the Switch and have way more playtime and way more unlocked on both of those.

    Which Retroid do you have?


  • OnlyOffice is available on Android already.

    “any linux app” - I don’t think any nontechnical users want GParted on their Android phones, and it wouldn’t work anyway.

    Android has its own games, same as iOS. Nontechnical users are way more likely to want Windows games than Linux games anyway.

    Wine used to be developed natively for Android but they stopped a few years back. You can still download it at winehq though. I think Box64 with wine is a decent option?

    Overall the thing I’m confused about is why you think Google or any major Android phone manufacturer have a motivation to make native Linux apps more accessible. Google certainly doesn’t want to make it easier for you to use the better versions of their competitors’ apps. Google is moving further away from Linux, not closer. Providing a usable, good enough desktop experience that’s still Android underneath makes far more sense for them.

    Fortunately, like I said earlier, there are workarounds to get access to those Linux apps.

    The thing that is more likely to change is for the creators of Android apps to build apps that function better when used in a phone-as-desktop format. And even if they don’t, there are enough competent web apps out there that just being able to use your browser full screen on a monitor solves 90% of people’s actual use cases - and probably over 95% when you include the other apps that have decent desktop experiences that can be run alongside them.

    The Steam Deck approach is much closer to what you seem to want. The Steam Deck is an actually competent Linux machine that has a Valve-supported compatibility layer in Proton for running non-Linux games. It plugs into a USB-C hub connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard just fine, can install any Linux app, etc… It’s completely usable handheld as well. But it isn’t a phone, and even though it’s quite portable, it’s not “stick into your pocket” portable.

    I don’t expect a major manufacturer to make a Linux phone any time soon, and I don’t think the Linux phones that are out already have - or will have in the next 5 years - a smooth enough experience to convince any nontechnical user to switch.



  • What are the gaps in functionality for nontechnical people? And “apps that exist on Linux but not Android” doesn’t count, because such people are unlikely to have ever even used a Linux desktop in the first place. The improvement that matters won’t be Linux apps; it’ll be Android apps that are more usable in desktop mode.

    That said, what are the issues with the apps that are currently available?

    If a user installed Chrome, an office suite (whether that be Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, the Microsoft equivalent, or something else), an email client, and other commonly available apps, what tasks would they be unable to complete, if any?

    Are these, or other commonly used apps, substantially less usable than on desktop? If so, how so?





  • I think the best way to handle this would be to just encode everything and upload all files. If I wanted some amount of history, I’d use some file system with automatic snapshots, like ZFS.

    If I wanted to do what you’ve outlined, I would probably use rclone with filtering for the extension types or something along those lines.

    If I wanted to do this with Git specifically, though, this is what I would try first:

    First, add lossless extensions (*.flac, *.wav) to my repo’s .gitignore

    Second, schedule a job on my local machine that:

    1. Watches for changes to the local file system (e.g., with inotifywait or fswatch)
    2. For any new lossless files, if there isn’t already an accompanying lossy files (i.e., identified by being collocated, having the exact same filename, sans extension, with an accepted extension, e.g., .mp3, .ogg - possibly also with a confirmation that the codec is up to my standards with a call to ffprobe, avprobe, mediainfo, exiftool, or something similar), it encodes the file to your preferred lossy format.
    3. Use git status --porcelain to if there have been any changes.
    4. If so, run git add --all && git commit --message "Automatic commit" && git push
    5. Optionally, automatically craft a better commit message by checking which files have been changed, generating text like Added album: "Satin Panthers - EP" by Hudson Mohawke or Removed album: "Brat" by Charli XCX; Added album "Brat and it's the same but there's three more songs so it's not" by Charli XCX

    Third, schedule a job on my remote machine server that runs git pull at regular intervals.

    One issue with this approach is that if you delete a file (as opposed to moving it), the space is not recovered on your local or your server. If space on your server is a concern, you could work around that by running something like the answer here (adjusting the depth to an appropriate amount for your use case):

    git fetch --depth=1
    git reflog expire --expire-unreachable=now --all
    git gc --aggressive --prune=all
    

    Another potential issue is that what I described above involves having an intermediary git to push to and pull from, e.g., running on a hosted Git forge, like GitHub, Codeberg, etc… This could result in getting copyright complaints or something along those lines, though.

    Alternatively, you could use your server as the git server (or check out forgejo if you want a Git forge as well), but then you can’t use the above trick to prune file history and save space from deleted files (on the server, at least - you could on your local, I think). If you then check out your working copy in a way such that Git can use hard links, you should at least be able to avoid needing to store two copies on your server.

    The other thing to check out, if you take this approach, is git lfs. EDIT: Actually, I take that back - you probably don’t want to use Git LFS.









  • If they do the form correctly, then it’s just an extra step for you to confirm. One flow I’ve seen that would accomplish this is:

    1. You enter your address into a form that can be auto-filled
    2. You submit the address
    3. If the address validates, the site saves the form and shows you the address in a more readable format. You can click Edit to make changes.
    4. If the address doesn’t validate, the site displays a modal asking you to confirm the address. If another address they were able to look up looks similar, it suggests you use that instead. It’s one click to continue editing, to use the suggested address, or to use what you originally entered.

    That said, if you’re regularly seeing the wrong address pop up it may be worth submitting a request to get your address added to the database they use. That process will differ depending on your location and the address verification service(s) used by the sites that are causing issues. If you’re in the US, a first step is to confirm that the USPS database has your address listed correctly, as their database is used by some downstream address verification services like “Melissa.” I believe that requires a visit to your local post office, but you may be able to fix it by calling your region’s USPS Address Management System office.