Ideologically-Driven Tech Choices

Posted on by Robin

Most of my readers know how ideologically-driven I am, even down to my choices of software, operating systems, every. Little. Thing.

  • Mozilla – makers of the most popular web browser in the history of ever – went “woke” to the point of firing their CEO for daring to express an opinion (personally, not as a representative of the company) that wasn’t “politically correct” and conflicted with the toxic “wokeism” that has infected the country. When they did this (and a bunch of other stupid things they’ve done to Firefox since then), I dumped Firefox and switched to Brave browser.
  • Goya food brands was raked over the coals for daring to support Israel against the terrorists who have always sought to destroy them. When the media did that, I dumped a favorite (and ideologically left-leaning) food brand and switched to Goya.
  • Fox News – previously a reliable source of unbiased news – decided to compromise their own credibility and neutrality and start appealing to the far left. When Fox News did that, I switched to Newsmax.

I have a long and distinguished history of making choices based almost entirely on ideology as of first importance. I won’t settle for or do business with unethical companies like Google or Microshit. Not when there are viable alternatives! And if and when there are no viable alternatives, I’d rather do without than pay anything to an unethical business. Is that weird? Excessive? Obsessive? Maybe so, but I don’t care.

Now I’m talking about more than just some little bit of software, like a single web browser among hundreds to choose from. This time it’s an entire ecosystem which is supposed to a free, open-source, globally cooperative effort to produce and maintain the Linux kernel itself. It, too, has now sold out, gone woke, and abandoned the ideals that made it great. Right down to the very core – the Linux kernel itself – it’s ideologically unsupportable for me. Here is why:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/russian-coders-removed-from-linux-maintainers-list-due-to-sanction-concerns/

Linux kicked out all of it’s Russian maintainers – because they’re Russians. How dare they! And since that wasn’t enough,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sf0epTxkTE

They have changed the Code of Conduct to preclude “politically incorrect” contributors from working on the Linux kernel.

It’s official, folks: Linux has gone woke.

I’ve been a ‘nixer for years and years! Can I actually walk away from my beloved Linux family after all these years over “mere” ideology? You bet your booty I can. There are still alternatives to choose from. And I’ve already made the switch! More about that in my next post.

Social Media

Posted on by Robin

When we decided to get back into doing Living History again after all these years, it seems like almost every organization from the huge regional ones to the company-level units no longer bother with their own web sites or even email listservs anymore – they’re all on Facebook!

Why host on Facebook?

No expense and trouble with having their own domain name (dot com, dot org, dot whatever).
No need for running your own server
No big fuss over page designs and links
A place to host files, pictures, videos, stories, news, and events.

But at what cost?

Ads. Lots and lots of ads.
Loss of rights to your own content.
Loss of privacy for you and your visitors.
Getting inexplicably restricted for whatever “community standards” Facebook chooses.

Why lock yourself, your organization, and your site visitors into a single vendor who insists that all your visitors create an account on their platform to access it or contribute to it? Why ask your “customers,” members, and contributors to give up their privacy and intellectual property rights in order to participate? That’s not only unethical, it’s downright stupid. You give up so much and depend for everything on someone else’ terms of service! Remember how Amazon destroyed so many businesses who depended on their servers when Amazon decided those companies weren’t “woke” enough? It wasn’t that long ago, y’know.

Obviously hosting your own domain on your own server is the best solution as far as retaining your rights and respecting your users’ and contributors’ privacy and dignity. A small number of the reenacting groups I found do this, at least partially. But most just rely on Facebook in the same way Parler relied on Amazon. Not very smart.

There are perfectly sane and sensible alternatives to Facebook for cry’n out loud! 

How about any one of the platforms offered in the Fediverse? These are all free (as in beer), but also free (as in freedom!) Rights respected, privacy preserved, open-source software-driven, maintained by volunteers who may solicit donations to defray their expenses. Anyone can host their own, the software is free if you want to run your own instance of one or more of the federated – or distributed – networks: Mastodon (microblogging, like Twitter), for example, or Friendica (very busy social network with a steep learning curve), or the simple, intuitive Diaspora network – the oldest and probably still the largest of the macro-blogging social networks (like facebook, only easier).

Centralized networks like MeWe do what Facebook and some others do, but again – you’re locked into a single vendor and hosted on a single megaserver and you don’t retain control of your own data.

In my next post, I’ll describe the one federated network that is in my opinion the easiest to learn and to use. Here’s a hint: diaspora*

Converting LibreOffice Writer Documents to Microsoft Format

Posted on by Robin

NEWrotating

Until today I’ve always been frustrated by the fact that LibreOffice wouldn’t properly save my schoolwork in Microsoft format as my school requires. But now once again technology has rescued me from having to spend a bunch of money on a stupid Microsoft computer and that expensive proprietary office suite of theirs. I’ve found a way to perfectly, flawlessly preserve my schoolwork created in LibreOffice in Microsoft’s .doc format as well as pdf format. Even that complicated stuff like the headers, page numbers, and properly-formatted reference pages required by MLA and APA remain perfectly intact using this method!

Oh, those of you who are militant FOSS purists aren’t going to like this solution, though. It requires those non-free Microsoft Core Fonts, for one thing. In Ubuntu and derivatives like the one I use, however, installing those non-free bits is as easy as opening Synaptic Package Manager and installing the appropriate restricted-extras package (ubuntu-restricted-extras, xubuntu-restricted-extras, etc) from the Ubuntu repositories. That’s the first step. Get those Microsoft Core fonts. If you use a non-Microsoft font, then when your professor opens it on his or her Windows computer, Microsoft Office will choose a font to display it in – and there goes your formatting! Sorry, FOSS purists.

The second step is to choose Times New Roman font (or whatever font your professor insists on) and compose your paper entirely in that font. Do not set up LibreOffice to auto-save in .doc or .docx format, and do not save it except as a regular .odt file until it is completely finished, proofread, and edited to perfection. Make the entire thing in .odt format, NOT Microsoft format until it is absolutely totally permanently and forever finished being created and edited to completion.

NOW, after it’s all done, you save it in .doc format, not in .docx format! Doc is older and much less prone to goofs than that fancy new .docx format is. If you have it auto-save in .doc format during the creation of your document, every instance of saving adds a layer of stuff that is prone to error. The trick is to save the conversion to the very laaaaaaaast thing you do, other than uploading it to your Microsoft-bound professor in his or her proprietary prison.

The paper I did today, 8 pages long in APA format (y’know, with that stupid running head and page number fields and stuff), didn’t even give me that stupid warning I used to always get when saving in any format other than .odt! I e-mailed it to myself in .doc format and retrieved it on a borrowed Windows machine to see how it looked when opened in Microsoft Word, and YESSSSS! Perfect in every detail. It’s never happened before, that I didn’t have to edit my schoolwork in Word on a borrowed Windows computer.

Well, I hope this helps some other starving college student from “the wrong side of the Digital Divide” who just can’t go spend an entire parental paycheck on a stupid Microsoft Windows box that’ll be obsolete in a couple of years. Keep your old hand-me-down computer, load it with MX-Linux, and use good ol’ awesome LibreOffice Writer without worry!