[OT] Granny-friendly Linux Distros?

Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) SeeWebsiteToContactMe at semitwist.com
Tue May 7 22:00:04 UTC 2019


On 5/7/19 1:05 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> 
> I've been looking for a keyboard-driven, no-frills but functional
> browser for a while now. I used to be an Opera fan, until they made that
> horrible decision to throw away the Presto engine and go chrome (ugh).
> So I switched to Firefox instead.  But these days firefox is just such a
> bloated piece of memory-leaking, resource-hogging junk that I threw it
> out as well.

I'd been a looong time fan^H^H^Huser of Firefox, but I'd been getting 
fed up with it too. Aside from the constant stream of UI and 
feature-killing blunders, it would frequently render my ENTIRE DESKTOP 
unresponsive (even the mouse would lag and then just stop). I'd have to 
Ctrl-Alt-F2 to text terminal, htop, and kill FF's helper process. But 
imagine how fun it was BEFORE I figured out the problem was Firefox!!

On top of that, Mozilla pretty much forced me to pin my installed FF 
version (which became fun when my system upgraded one of its 
dependencies, breaking it).

Finally, I discovered Pale Moon just a few weeks ago. Managed to find 
(better!) alternatives to the add-ons that weren't compatible. It's been 
SOOOOO much better. Memory usage is still gigantic, but frankly I blame 
the web itself for that, and at least it doesn't go berzerk or pull any 
of the other anti-user crap Mozilla's been big on for the past decade.

Don't know whether it would meet your keyboard-driven requirements though.

> 
> I have fundamental ideological problems with the concept of forced
> updates.  The computer should be a tool, to be used at the *user's*
> convenience, not a loud-mouthed, demanding, temperamental spoiled brat
> that will NOT shut up until it gets what it wants.

Amen to that.

> That's why I can't
> stand things like Adobe Reader, that regularly pops up notices at the
> most inconvenient of times demanding to install this update or that
> patch, or worse, advertising some Adobe product IN THE MIDDLE OF AN
> IMPORTANT PRESENTATION.  The whole notifications system esp. on Windows
> is utterly atrocious for this.  You're in the middle of an important
> conference at a moment that really should *not* be interrupted, and
> suddenly there's that annoying *ding* and an annoying popup that needs
> to be dismissed.

I pretty much hate notification systems period (at least on 
desktop/laptop). I'm a KDE user and the biggest thing I hate about 
modern KDE vs KDE3, even moreso than bloat, is how it tries to use its 
smartphone-envy notification system for everything until you find the 
right hoops to jump through to turn that garbage off (especially for 
file copying). And...those hoops you have to jump through *keep 
changing*!!! Meh, but at least KDE *lets* you change things without 
needing poorly-maintained third party hacks...


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