Another Linux lie: we support Bluetooth

Truth: you do not.

Bluetooth was introduced in 1998. That's the time of RedHat 5.1 or 5.2, Slackware 3.5 or 3.6, etc. It's been a long time since. Fast forward into 2023.

I have a bunch of Linuxae in my lab. From some obsolete of 2015 vintage to the bleeding edge 2023 latest versions. None of them work with BT on my Android smartphone.

Fedora 26 is not able to turn its BT on or off. It is stuck at 'On'. It does discover the smartphone, pairs, but does not receive any files. The file transfer from the phone to Linux fails instantly. Then Linux disconnects all by itself and cannot reconnect until a cold reboot.

Fedora 36 is not able to turn the BT on. It appears to be on but the device name field remains disabled and pre-filled with 'Turn on bluetooth to edit'.

So, 25 years after the introduction of BT, Linux is still not capable of using it despite pretending to do so. Pathetic!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 03:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Lame attempt to make it right

Having not looked in the general direction of Gnome 3 after its abysmal debut, I recently learned about Gnome Flashback, supposedly an attempt to keep the UI same as Gnome 2's but using Gnome 3 technology.

Splendid, said I, and installed brand-spanking-new Debian 12 with that desktop option. What did I get? Your guess is right! I got a black screen. Pure pitch-black. No text console, no XOrg. Nothing.

I am not easy to confuse, so I switched to tty2 and got a text login. We are making progress! Type startx, hit Enter and voila, we got XOrg running, and it does even look like Gnome 2. There the joy ends.

I have no idea what the creators of Flashback mean by it being same as Gnome 2. It is not. It only appears the same to an eye, at the first glance. The user interaction (experience) is totally different. The main menu design is different. Right-click does not work on the panel or anywhere for that matter. This is enough to wipe the VM out and forget about the whole thing, for another 10 years or so.

When you, genius FOSS developers, make a claim that something WORKS THE SAME as something you have to live by your claim, not just throw it up. You failed.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 11:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky are pathological liars

The official motto, policy or whatever of Stack Exchange is that voting applies to the merits of the question/answer and not to the one who asks/answers it. Take a note.

Now, let's review. A user JohnDoe asks a question which is good or bad, we do not care which. SE regulars converge on the question and up/downvote it. According to Jeff and Joel, the voting must apply to the question. But it does not! It applies to JohnDoe. It is JohnDoe's reputation that changes as a result of everyone voting on his/her question.

Caught you lying, beotches!

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Fucking geniuses

Long ago, I'd coined this term: fucking geniuses. I do not care who else used it because I assign my own meaning to it: genius degenerates who know lots and have tons of energy to write FOSS software that breaks at the first serious use.

They are all genius, no kidding! I kid you not: they are immensely genius, overwhelmingly smart, overpowering masterminds of fabulous software projects that I could have never accomplished. Who am I? A mere mortal. Who are they? Immortal and omnipotent software gods.

But then enter libmateweather.1.6.9.so. These same geniuses hardcoded the path to the weather service in that shared library. I kid you not! They did it. They wrote something along the lines of https://aviationweather.com/... in the shared object. It did not occur to them that the owner of that domain might restructure, reshuffle, reorganize their web site. And it did happen: they moved the weather web service to a different URL. And MATE project scrambled to... patch the binary file. Genius, aren't they?

And once those geniuses were done patching the binary and uploading the patch script to their web site, the web service owner screwed them over, all over again. Yes, I kid you not! They immediately discontinued the old PHP endpoint and transitioned to a RESTful web service. MATE users are royally screwed, all over again.

Why am I telling you all that? Because when next time someone will be praising FOSS developers for their genius products, remember to duck and back off because it is going to explode into your face, right when you least expect, because the developers are geniuses.

We are SOL.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What do you expect when you press F1?

I feel like a dinosaur because when I press F1 I expect to get context help. And now I feel like an idiot because when I press F1 on a Visual Studio error in the Error List pane, it takes me to their generic home page that offers me Surface for $750. Insulting intelligence should be an indictable offense punishable by a life sentence.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 11:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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