AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss (The Everything App part 2)
As managers continue to outsource data-gathering and decision-making to LLMs, the person above you on the org chart is transforming into a chatbot's clerk – and leaving product teams with the consequences.Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss (The Everything App part 2)
As managers continue to outsource data-gathering and decision-making to LLMs, the person above you on the org chart is transforming into a chatbot's clerk – and leaving product teams with the consequences.Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss (The Everything App part 2)
As managers continue to outsource data-gathering and decision-making to LLMs, the person above you on the org chart is transforming into a chatbot's clerk – and leaving product teams with the consequences.Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss
AI is not an assistant – it's your new boss (The Everything App part 2)
As managers continue to outsource data-gathering and decision-making to LLMs, the person above you on the org chart is transforming into a chatbot's clerk – and leaving product teams with the consequences.Pavel Samsonov (The Product Picnic)
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Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy
Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy
: Minister insists 'modest' bill is not an assault on privacy-preserving techConnor Jones (The Register)
Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy
Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy
: Minister insists 'modest' bill is not an assault on privacy-preserving techConnor Jones (The Register)
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Meta tolerates rampant ad fraud from China to safeguard billions in revenue
Last year, Meta had to reckon with an ugly conclusion about its Chinese advertising customers: They were defrauding Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users worldwide.Though China’s authoritarian government bans use of Meta social media by its citizens, Beijing lets Chinese companies advertise to foreign consumers on the globe-spanning platforms. As a result, Meta’s advertising business was thriving in China, ultimately reaching over $18 billion in annual sales in 2024, more than a tenth of the company’s global revenue.
But Meta calculated that about 19% of that money – more than $3 billion – was coming from ads for scams, illegal gambling, pornography and other banned content, according to internal Meta documents reviewed by Reuters.
Watch: Second Bondi hero helps disarm gunmen, only for police to shoot at him
An asylum seeker intervened in the Bondi Beach terror attack but was shot at by police and attacked by members of the public.
New video footage from the scene shows the man climbing the stairs to the bridge where the two gunmen lay injured after being shot by police marksmen.
The member of the public is seen kicking a weapon away from the terrorists – but police continue firing at the bridge, causing the man to duck for cover.
As police close in on the injured gunmen, the refugee is then challenged by members of the public, who mistake him for a terrorist.
Watch: Second Bondi hero helps disarm gunmen, only for police to shoot at him
Refugee who kicks weapon away from attackers mistaken for a terroristLily Shanagher (The Telegraph)
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One must understand that if they're going to take on a shooting perp that they are putting their life at risk, not just from the perpetrator but from the cops that will be responding or any witnesses will be there.
It is built into the process. You will risk your life. You may get shot for being a good Samaritan. By the police.
It happens.
It is. But it's not what I'm talking about. Multiple people in the US who were "good guy with a gun" have been killed by cops. Off the top of my head I can think of a black and a white guy. The cops don't care. If you have a gun out during an active shooter event and you are not clearly visible as law enforcement you will be shot. Race or religion will not be a factor.
Now if you get mobbed by civilians could very much depend on one's ethnic or religious presentation. But in America we don't tend to do the mobbing thing because despite all our brave words even the cops will sit outside for 45 minutes to make sure it's safe to go in.
It happens.
With a much, much lower likelihood of it happening if the guy was white, I bet.
He got shot because he "looked" like a terrorist in the police/public's eyes, despite being the one fighting the terrorists.
So why did the public mob the guy then? They saw him literally fighting the gunman and still assumed he's one of them? If it was a pale skinned blond guy they 100% would have believed him when he said he's trying to help, but because he's Middle Eastern they refused to see past the "terrorist" stereotype.
And if they didn't see him fighting the terrorist, that's worse. They attacked a random Middle Eastern guy assuming all of them are terrorists. Why didn't they go after any of the white people on the beach in the same way?
How else are people supposed to fight terrorists? Say please and thank you?
kicking the gun
Because someone intent on helping them shoot people definitely does that.
with his hands up
Oh so they could clearly see he wasn't holding a weapon.
In America the rate is pretty distributed. But it's a very small sample size because most people don't get involved.
The number one thing that makes you look like a terrorist in a situation like this is holding a gun.
the refugee is then challenged by members of the public, who mistake him for a terrorist
Ooh I wonder that ethicity he was and what ethnicities the "members of the public" were.
What's the real race war? Making random snarky comments on Lemmy or literally attacking a guy trying to save you because he fits the collective description of a "terrorist," or defending those attacks as an "inevitable" part of saving people when it's clearly been shown it's many times more likely to happen to ethnicities perceived to be more likely to be terrorists?
Are all the large scale studies showing that police/the public in white majority countries are much more likely to assume a non-white person is a perpetrator whenever any attack on the public happens also pushing race war shit? You can't imagine how this could have possibly played out differently if the guy wasn't Middle Eastern "like the terrorist who shot at us?"
The "us vs them" perspective you're pushing so hard here is the root cause of racial conflict. What happened to this guy was both tragic and unfair. You are not helping.
Lesson learned for all the non-whites: if you see white people in danger, walk away because they're not going to let silly things like "literally saving their lives" get in the way of assuming you're the bad guy.
If this is genuine, please touch grass. If not, please fuck off. Either way it's poison I'm not going to engage with further
Lesson learned for all the non-whites: if you see white people in danger, walk away because they’re not going to let silly things like “literally saving their lives” get in the way of assuming you’re the bad guy.If this is genuine, please touch grass. If not, please fuck off.
Again, the "assuming you're the bad guy based on your ethnicity regardless of what you did" part has been shown to actually happen to non-white people much more frequently than white people in white majority countries. And by "lesson learned" I was referring to the fact that this is something many people will inevitably think after seeing a story like this even if they don't say it, though I should have made that more clear.
I admit I was too snarky/aggressive/us-vs-them with my wording, I see your point there and deleted that comment as I no longer wish to say those exact words. But, is the fact that THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENS not a bigger problem that plagues society than how politely people articulate it? How about we work on not having this happen or at least not having it be more likely to happen to certain ethnicities than others so no one makes those comments again instead of dismissing it as the person who points it out needing to fuck off? Do the people responsible for causing this racial injustice not also have the responsibility to contribute to mitigating it in the future?
Fortsatt god nivå för fiske av havskräfta. För ett antal andra arter går kvoterna ner. Det gäller bland annat för torsk, makrill och sill. EU:s fiskeministrar har beslutat om kvoterna för Västerhavet under 2026.
fiske.zaramis.se/2025/12/16/fi…
Fiskekvoter i Västerhavet 2026 - Svenssons Nyheter - Njord
Fiskekvoter i Västerhavet 2026.Anders Svensson (Svenssons Nyheter - Njord)
UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones
“The UK government wants technology companies to block explicit images on phones and computers by default to protect children, with adults having to verify their age to create and access such content,” the FT report said. “Ministers want the likes of Apple and Google to incorporate nudity-detection algorithms into their device operating systems to prevent users taking photos or sharing images of genitalia unless they are verified as adults.”
UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones
Government seeks “nudity-detection algorithms” in iOS and Android, report says.Jon Brodkin (Ars Technica)
UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/55094518
“The UK government wants technology companies to block explicit images on phones and computers by default to protect children, with adults having to verify their age to create and access such content,” the FT report said. “Ministers want the likes of Apple and Google to incorporate nudity-detection algorithms into their device operating systems to prevent users taking photos or sharing images of genitalia unless they are verified as adults.”
UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones
“The UK government wants technology companies to block explicit images on phones and computers by default to protect children, with adults having to verify their age to create and access such content,” the FT report said. “Ministers want the likes of Apple and Google to incorporate nudity-detection algorithms into their device operating systems to prevent users taking photos or sharing images of genitalia unless they are verified as adults.”
UK to “encourage” Apple and Google to put nudity-blocking systems on phones
Government seeks “nudity-detection algorithms” in iOS and Android, report says.Jon Brodkin (Ars Technica)
Linux is awesome at home, but aren't y'all forced to use Windows at work?
I'm liking the recent posts about switching to Linux. Some of my home machines run Linux, and I ran it on my main laptop for years (currently on Win10, preparing to return to Linux again).
That's all fine and dandy but at work I am forced to use Windows, Office, Teams, and all that. Not just because of corpo policies but also because of the apps we need to use.
Even if it weren't for those applications, or those policies, or if Wine was a serious option, I would still need to work with hundreds of other people in a Windows world, live-sharing Excel and so on.
I'm guessing that most people here just accept it. We use what we want at home, and use what the bossman wants at work. Or we're lucky to work in a shop that allows Linux. Right?
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Thinkpads running Linux for the staff.
We use open-source. Our own on-prem servers running Linux. A lot of our software is also open source. Our git, our office suite, our video and chat... All open source.
We just got rid of our Google Cloud connections a few months ago, but we're still reliant on aws, cloudflare, etc.
Why would the "Windows license" get affected by whatever it on the disk?
Also how your sysadmins keeping the uefi unlocked?
I'll be the black sheep and say I actually quite like using windows at work. Not really enjoyment per say, but the software suites and accessibility is different in the business world, which is primarily built around Microsoft.
Not that you can't do most of it with Linux and that Linux would do some things better, but I don't really have an issue with most of it.
Would I choose it for my home use? Definitely not. But I'd think that fitting a Linux cog in a Microsoft machine would create more negatives than positives.
This is all subjective of course, and depending on you job, company, industry this could wildly not apply.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft. But their ecosystem isn't all bad.
Oh sorry, just realized we are talking app servers.
Yeah, Google apps, and linux hosted apps. Havent had a company that ran windows or MS anything in 14 years.
I mean this happens. Traditionally it was companies with lots of digital artists for improved software compatibility, but these days it's really more done for developers and anyone else just as an employee perk to put them on their preferred platform.
Honestly, for administration purposes having a proper native Unix shell running standard utilities is extremely handy, especially when you need to manipulate files, such as working with disk/VM images for example
FreeIPA covers most scenarios. Kerberos, Dynamic DNS/DNS, LDAP.
GPO equivalency would need some config management tool. Ansible is what RH would suggest, but something with an agent would probably be better.
"Do the least amount of work for the most amount of pay you can"
Windows is a win for the proletariat at work. Linux was made for the proletariat for the revolution.
I use Windows at work and it reminds me of how much I love Linux.
I think it's certainly possible for us to move away from Windows and Mac, but convincing people isn't easy. The end users would be easiest to convince because most of them are just using the limited array of applications required for the business and don't much care what's under the hood. The people who really need convincing are the reat of local IT support and maybe vendors.
I think the path to broader business adoption of Linux runs through IT support.
I'm constantly looking for a way to convert the entire office. At the moment, it's 'how to replace Revit' and I found Bonsai but the 2d drawing elements are still being developed. If anyone has any suggestions on BIM software that can use IFC files, I would be most thankful.
Other than that, I'll bet our IT company will advise against using Linux because they won't know how to use it.
Lol what kind of engineering? Because it probably isn't mechanical, electronics, or civil because most of those programs don't work in Linux 😂
I have dreams of KiCAD and FreeCAD becoming good enough to be used a lot in industry and kiCAD is nearly there, but missing tons of productivity and collaboration features, but altium is still pretty ubiquitous, spaghetti code garbage that it can be.
So not an industrial automation engineer. Nothing but windows software.
Ignition for scada works on Linux, but nothing else does.
Yes you are right, usually linux users that are not in IT have no choice but using bad microsoft computers (or Apple for designers/upper upper management) when they are employees.
But if you are general manager, or an independant contractor, you do whatever you want, and I have been on Debian, Void since 3 years now and it is just great.
People complain that "your files are not compatible" (i.e.: their excel version can not open a moderately complex xlsx file), and you use stupidly dumb webapp for Outlook and Teams, but otherwise if you don't need to commit for a specific software (built for windows or mac, like Adobe suite, 2D or 3D CAD softwares, some kind of old school ERP or CRM), you are all good. Basically everything done by management staff can be done using LibreOffice.
The "cloud revolution" at least has given us this good result : you can have basic business utilities solved through a webclient, hence GNU/Linux OS is ok to work with.
My main computer at work is Linux, I do have a Windows build box where I compile code for Windows, and to make my life easier I usually develop it there as well. But outside of platform specific code, or code related to a product that's Windows only, I don't have any issues.
As for other software Teams, slack, zoom, Google meeting and docs work well enough that I can use them daily without issues.
At a previous job for some reason they wanted me to use Windows, which was absurd since I worked on the backend of a site which would only be deployed to Linux, didn't last long in that job after that was made official.
In short, as long as my main machine is Linux, I don't mind having to have a Windows machine to do Windows stuff. But I get annoyed out of my mind if I'm either forced to use Windows as my main OS (it's just not ergonomic for me), especially if there's no reason for it.
I've been lucky, at two of my previous jobs, I was permitted to use a Linux laptop instead of the default Windows ones, it was wonderful.
Sadly you're right though, at least in the US, even in the IT world, unless you're working specifically at a Linux company, you're almost certainly using Windows.
My current job is all Windows, even though my team spends a significant amount of time maintaining Linux systems. I just open up WSL and try to pretend It's running on bare metal. 😞
We're a Linux shop at my work. We do have a windows PC due to corporate policies...but everything we do on our windows PCs we could do from Linux.
Outlook? Website. Excel? Website. Jira? Website. Teams? Website. Nearly everything we do front end wise is all web based. Which, I know electron sucks, but from a "Linux as a main desktop environment"...I'm pretty damn happy with everything being web based nowadays. It's all OS agnostic.
Was macos at work, now Linux dev machine. Its a big up.
To be honest, all those are web apps now shrug. Zoom, slack, teams, docs, sheets, , all open in the browser. So IDC what the OS is for them. Linux Zero-Touch deployments are still in progress IMHO so I get why they arent here yet for a lot offices, but we are closer now than ever (thanks atomic OSs!).
Yes, and I'm forced to bring Win11 home if I need to work remotely because they allegedly would need to install drivers (?) on and reconfigure their firewall for me to use the Linux Cisco VPN client? So it's too much work.
I have a small homelab and I've never had to install drivers to support another operating system connecting. I also don't have to pay a subscription for access points and can reconfigure them myself so maybe it's a Cisco thing.
I am the "IT guy" for a medium sized industrial company and i am currently using Bluefin on my work computer, preparing to roll it out for the rest of the company if tests go well... my boss is quiet open for the change and if our ERP system is further behaving well in its virtualized environment the big switch will perhaps happen somewhere in the middle of the next year.
I still have to figure out what to do about DATEV, but in the worst case our accounting department will be the only ones using Windows in the long run.
No idea how good whatever "Bluefin" is, but if their front page makes my computer lag much worse than actual videogames, it's really not a good first impression.
Also, it seems to come with Gnome which is a bit further away in terms of user experience from Windows than the other choices like Plasma and Enlightenment, so I am not sure if whoever sits in them cubicles will get used to the lack of tray icons for example. Well, assuming they know what a tray icon is, but even if they don't, they are gonna get a bigger "something's off/missing" feeling than otherwise. And I am assuming nobody is using Windows 8 specifically, so it will take some time for people to get used to the excuse of a start menu Gnome has. Have to always be pessimistic about user's intelligence and will to adapt.
We use the ThinkCentre M715q ( Ryzen 5 PRO 2400GE / 16 GB RAM) throughout the company (with only two exceptions) and on this hardware it is quiet nimble, even with a ton of rather heavy opened programs.
Regarding the acceptance... well, i think the difference in user interface of Gnome compared to Windows is rather a bonus, it is different enough to be recognized as something that has to be learned rather than invoking some "uncanny valley" effects. But we will see...
I'm a MLOps engineer.
Rules at my current company is that you need Windows or MacOS. According to the IT department it won't work if you use Linux.
So I installed Linux anyway and everything is working perfectly. My manager don't care that I use Linux but the IT department is not happy.
So much.
- Window Management, especially fullscreen
- Alt Tabbing Behaviour
- Default Keyboard Layout
- The Dock with its forced defaults (Finder leftmost, Trash rightmost etc)
- No volume control over HDMI
- Power Management (no manual hibernate, closing lid always sleeps)
- File System Support
- The reactions that auto trigger on webcam
- The Global Menu
- Unchangable limit to virtual desktops
- Default apps being hard to change in some cases (mailto: links for example)
- The weird software installation process with dragging icons to a special folder
- That I can't temporarily disable a system management profile
- The way the BSD tools are slightly different than the GNU ones, with grep slower for certain patterns
- No Package Manager by default (unless you count the App store with forced accounts)
- Weird filesystem setup, far from FHS
I have installed various pieces of third party software to fix some of them, but still, those are things I dislike about macOS.
Professor here facing the same problem. I am bounded by administrative procedures with grandma school administrators.
I use Linux at home, of course. Debloated my Win11 machine at work but hope to use Linux instead everyday.
We can choose what we want to run at work. I work as with Solution Architecture and Platform Engineering mainly with Azure, PaaS and dotnet solutions. It’s atypical I suppose but surprisingly seamless.
Doing this in Linux is pretty straightforward and my choice of distro is Ubuntu since last year. I have modified Gnome getting it sorta close to Omakub (the precursor to Omarchy).
The stack, including Dotnet, C#, PowerShell, Bicep, Terraform and Azure CLI works well. I’m midway in my setup of Neovim and have it working with PowerShell and Bicep as well as an assortment of other LSP’s. Additional tools such as JetBrains Rider, Draw.io and Obsidian with Excalidraw are native and so is LibreOffice. For the few workloads I can’t run natively (basically Visual Studio and Office) I have a VM.
The major issue I have found in a lot of workplaces with Windows since forever, disregarding the increasing mess in Windows 11, has been group policy lockdowns. IT tend to look at everyone including devs as office workers (assuming Office is the most advanced tools needed), meaning no admin access and blocked apps.
The software support on some of our equipment is dubious at best and some of the instructors need to use it and most things are windows here. I would give it a shot if I was the lab supervisor but I'm not.
We have some gel cameras with an Olympus camera module. The last driver update for that brought Windows 7 support. We can get it running on 11 without too much issue.
I've used Linux Desktop both personal and at work since 2003, I guess I got lucky with where I worked, they always allowed it as long as I could do everything that needed to be done.
Then again, I was either the owner or CTO level for the last decade or so, and just made those decisions myself.
Now I'm trying to push my current company to switch completely to Linux, and it ain't easy. Not because of Linux, that part is fine and whatever easy, but because Microsoft worked hard to ensure you can't escape their fucking clutches.
Moving away from teams, for example, will be a tough one, because most of our customers and government have complety relented to Microsoft, and you MUST use teams to talk to them.
So then what? Use different messengers internally and externally? I'm still not sure how to get rid of that part, but for the rest, we are going off the microshit soon
It's a backdoor to get you into their trap and get more and more of your data tied up and expensive to migrate.
Huh, I've never encountered this obstacle. On the rare occasion I've had to use Outlook, I've just used OWA.
I'm sorry for the challenges you're facing.
So then what? Use different messengers internally and externally?
I do usually end up asking my team to do this.
The external one is usually Slack or Teams.
I figure it's worth it for the faster turn around of communication with key clients.
Thankfully, both have web interfaces that work fine on Linux.
If you have an AMD GPU and don't care about playing games that require kernel-level access for anticheat (ew), then Linux might just work better for you than Windows, for most games.
Like, getting Minecraft installed and working with mods in CachyOS just required installing Prism Launcher from the CachyOS repos (1 easy step) then launching it. I didn't even need to open a web browser to download an installer.
Heroic Launcher is amaze balls, too. It pulls all the free games I get on GOG, Epic, and Amazon (iirc?) into one library that looks and works like Steam's (amazing) library. So slick. (I think it's preinstalled in CachyOS, too.)
Yeah, I think I’m mostly done with my current set of games, so maybe a good time to make the switch.
I think photography workflow might have some issues, but it’s probably manageable.
My job involves maintaining Linux servers so there are no problems with Linux as my desktop.
Currently Arch Linux as the desktop OS.
Mac at work. Yabai+sketchybar is no i3wm replacement, but it works ok.
My .zshrc is basically the same as I use on my personal computers, and aside from a few coreutils differences it...kinda just works. I have apt aliased to brew so I can feel more at home.
Stock terminal works fine---I use xterm on Linux, so I'm used to relying on tmux for nice features anyway.
Basically, I miss the window manager, but practically speaking that's a about it. (I obviously have xscreensaver installed!)
sure am
and it fucking sucks
just today I ran into a new issue - when you try to close an Excel document without saving, it asks if you want to merge your changes with the server.
I do not, I want to close without saving, so I choose no.
then it asks if I want to save the document.
I do not, I want to close without saving, so I choose don't save
The document finally closes.
I reopen the document, and guess what's there? my unsaved changes. if I try to close the document, the cycle repeats.
Microsoft fucking removed the ability to close a document without saving
I tried this on Windows 10 on one computer and Windows 11 on another computer with the exact same behavior
Yes -- And it sucks balls.
Some people in a different department of the company do work with Linux. And some get Macs.
I'm a Linux sysadmin. I was issued a Windows laptop. But I have been allowed to add a second NVME drive to it that has Debian 12 installed. So Debian 12 has been my main working environment.
I also have a desktop in my cube running Windows.
I rarely boot my laptop to windows. But if I need to do something with modifying Windows smb shares or active directory I just remote into my Windows Desktop. I'm also running a ssh server on my windows desktop so about half of my windows active directory work is done via powershell over ssh.
We in engineering are allowed to use whatever the heck we want so long as IT agrees that it is useful and safe and costs less than other options.
So we run a bunch of open source stuff. But the biggest one is Python. We connect arduinos and rpies to run complex machines. Meanwhile CAD runs on windows unfortunately along with all the bullshit spreadsheet, word and PowerPoint.
Linux is awesome and I see Windows day's numbered. So long piece of shit obsolescence software! One day you will be no more.
Linux has more and better ways to produce nice PDFs than Windows does
Go on...
But I do get to manage around 100 RHEL systems. So I still get plenty of linux time at work.
Windows Sysadmin. My job is to enjoy the eternal arms race against Cortana every update via GPO and registry hacks. We are running on malware, it's a joke.
And before you ask, I am a peon and "Have we considered Linux?" was an office meme years before I arrived.
We are an MSP for small business. We have been a strict linux server environment for 10+ years.
On the desktop side, we have a few clients running Linux mint desktops and laptops now. Mostly for 2nd line personel, or roles where only browsers are required. We run microsoft Edge Browser on those devices for Office 365 usage and because firefox based browsers are so hit and miss with business web apps these days. We have our RMM tool to manage configurations and run our own Rustdesk instance for remote support.
The main impediment for larger adoption we see is still 3rd party app support. Desktop Excel being the primary one. Online Excel and LibreOffice is still not quite there in terms of some features for intermediate users. Whatsapp desktop app for voice calls with clients are also a major one in our country. Its a windows store app, which I have not been able to find a way to get connected to wine.
What we need is a proton like project for business applications. Proton has likely already done half the work. Once Office and windows store apps installs work as smoothly as games under steam, adoption can start at a larger scale.
The question is which company is going to make that investment. Canonical is too close to Microsoft and wont want to upset that relationship. And Red Hat always seems to be stuck in their own world. Other teams with the insight to tackle such a project, are probably too small, or do not have the financial backing or incentive for it.
For us its the lack of proper multi-monitor support in the hardware. We have triple 27inch monitor setups on our desks with thunderbolt docks.
Plug a windows or Linux laptop into them no problem, single cable solution and 4 distinct displays. Plug a Mac into it and the best you get is two displays with the 3 external displays all showing the same image. Stupid arbitrary Apple limits.
Plus the Apple hardware is so fragile and difficult to repair. We mostly stick to Dell Latitudes, HP Elitebooks and Lenovo T series because of the better hardware.
Most people dont need more than 10 hours battery life. If you do, you are probably one of those people who always forget to charge their phones anyway.
My university forces us to use Microsoft products and I hate it.
The only good thing is that most MS products are available through web browser nowadays, but they have random quirks that make me bash my head against the desk.
Fair enough!
Conversion
First, I haven't yet encountered a pre-existing document on Linux that didn't turn into a nice PDF when fed into "Print - Save as PDF", which I have found to be present by default on Gnome and KDE (the two most popular desktop environments). So for the majority of distros, Print to PDF is pre-installed and available.
For advanced use cases, there's Pandoc. Pandoc can convert most document formats to many other formats, and gives fine grained control over every step.
Authoring PDFs
For authoring a quick PDF, there's LibreOffice and OpenOffice.
And of course there's GnuImp, Krita, and so many more options for editing some images to add in.
Most distros ship with LibreOfffice or OpenOffice, and at least one image editor.
But I do recommend investigating some free and open image editors. There's many use cases and twice as many options. If the default isn't for you, what you need may be one (free) Software search away.
But can I just use plain text? (Yes)
For control freaks like me, there's also a whole ecosystem of tools that work well with Markdown, ASCIIDoc, LaTex, and ReStructuredText.
For the curious, start by trying VSCodium with a Markdown extension.
You can tune your extensions here, but I think I recall "Markdown All-In-One" getting me all the way from raw text to nice enough looking PDFs in one command. Maybe it was two, using the built in "Print to PDF" dialog.
Once again, PanDoc is the powerhouse of this use case, and many excellent tools are available.
Allt fler som är utsatta för människohandel och exploatering styrs via call-centers baserade utomlands. Oftast har den utsatta aldrig träffat den som ligger bakom människohandeln.
Denmark wants to ban VPNs to unlock foreign, illegal streams – and experts are worried
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/55094411
Denmark wants to ban VPNs to unlock foreign, illegal streams – and experts are worried
Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won
Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won
Verizon changed policy after he bought the phone, wouldn’t unlock it despite FCC rule.Jon Brodkin (Ars Technica)
Tre personer har dömts för insiderbrottslighet, medan en person frikänts helt. Bland de dömda finns en tidigare anställd vid Stockholmsbörsen (Nasdaq Stockholm).
blog.zaramis.se/2025/12/16/dom…
ToxicWaste
in reply to anton2492 • • •Age Verification and Age Gating: Resource Hub
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ScoffingLizard
in reply to ToxicWaste • • •Digit
in reply to anton2492 • • •Heh. Just noticed on this lemmy instance I'm on,
Without people pushing back on such things as this criminalisation of VPNs, how long before people wouldn't even be able to post about it?
Daunting bubble of censorship making a malignant cancer of ignorance.
like this
dcpDarkMatter and yessikg like this.