I love the fact that these get benchmarked, but I wish that Phoronix made the difference between “lower is better” scores and “higher is better” scores much more apparent.

Maybe put a gradient on the bars so we can see which one is better at a glance.

Or change the “lower is better” layout so the bars are right aligned instead of left aligned.

zellic

Oh, I thought you meant the Trifecta Tech Foundation.

Looks like zellic do code security audits, but they also specialize in auditing crypto (at least that’s how they’re differentiating themselves from other code security auditors in their advertising).

The general work would be the same so it seems fair to pay them for an audit.

by what appears to be a blockchain web3 security company.

Huh?

What makes you think they have anything to do with crypto?

They were in the extended list

Louis Rossmann

Wait what?!

There’s three points next to his name:

• “Worked with” someone who has some links to right side politics to get funding for a right to repair non profit.
  • Unless there’s more info somewhere, I don’t see this being overly bad since he’s all about trying to change laws for the better, and just by virtue of doing that you will need to at least interact with the slimy part of politics.
• Anti-trans: which can be paraphrased as “I think transgender women are men but I’m willing to overlook it if we have common cause”
  • So identity denying. This looks more like he doesn’t have enough information than a case of far right conspiracy trans are pedos shit. Seeing how he’s changed his mind about things in the past when presented with new information, and knowing how deep he goes into rabbit holes (especially when it comes to rights) when he finds them, I see this as unfortunate, but potentially redeemable.
• Louis has been a regular poster on the hate and harassment website Kiwi Farms, posting there from 2023 to the present under the username “larossmann”.
  • I don’t have enough information on this to have a proper opinion. This looks like something that warrants further investigation…

Looks cool, but 500 nits is going to make the display hard to read in daylight.

Before:

• Gnome 2 was great
• Gnome 3 was terrible
• KDE 4 was terrible

Today: KDE.

Why not Gnome:

• It’s missing basic features.
• General new users startup is:
  • searching online to try and fix things
  • 50% chance of it working.
  • 50% chance of it not working because the fix doesn’t work on your version of gnome and having to find another fix
• Common recommendation for missing features (to use extensions) is a non-starter since the extensions break after every update, so every update you need to go back through the general new users startup steps above.

Why KDE:

• It has all the basic features by default, and a bunch of extra stuff.
• General new user process is:
  • looking through settings and changing the 2-3 they care about
  • looking through features, trying them out to see which ones you want to use, turning on/off the 2-3 you care about
  • Never needing to look through or remember the other settings, because your computer is already set up for you.

Future:

• Gnome: more of the same, likely basic features missing until specific people are removed (could be 5-10 years, then another few years of catching up).
• KDE: Will continue making updates and consolidating similar features where it makes sense.
• Cosmic: Will continue sanding off rough edges and fill in last remaining missing features. Will probably surpass Gnome for 90% of user’s needs in a year. Will probably be trading blows with KDE in 3 years and will surpass them if KDE ever makes any missteps.

Good.

If you didn’t write the code, then you didn’t think through every detail.

If you didn’t think through every detail, then you have gaps in your understanding.

If you have gaps in your understanding, then why are you submitting code and pushing the burden onto someone else to understand it for you?

What makes you think they’d want to accept that burden?

Seconding other’s comments for: Signalis and Soma

Some unorthodox / overlooked suggestions:

• Project Zomboid (PC).
  • Imagine the Sims 1, but it’s during a zombie apocalypse with a GTA sized massive map. The situation is so dire that the game outright tells when you start that your character dies, and the actual gameplay is just you finding out how your character died.
  • The survival: is needing to move to scavenge for resources and trying to build a safe place to sleep.
  • The horror: is trying to escape the literal hordes of zombies.
  • Sidenote: This is a great grindy multiplayer game.

• Metroid Fusion (GBA).
  • It’s a platforming game, but it’s legitimately terrifying.
  • The survival: revolves being trapped on a space station going around fighting and fleeing difficult enemies
  • The horror: revolves around the antagonist: [redacted for story spoiler reasons]
  • Sidenote: This is a great game to show people who haven’t yet realized that you can make horror without being an FPS.

• Frostpunk (PC).
  • It’s a city-builder game with survival resource management gameplay and with non-lovecraftian cosmic horror themes.
  • The survival: You are the last city on Earth. If you run out of resources: you die. There isn’t enough resources to save everyone and you have to make hard decisions. If the people lose hope from your decisions: you die.
  • The horror: The world’s climate dropped another 3 degrees today. There are 100 of us left. Only 5 people from yesterday’s expedition made it back with food. We need to send 20 survivors out to look for scrap metal to repair the heating system or everyone will freeze. We need to put our children to work in the coal mine, it doesn’t matter how many die, if they don’t mine, we all die. The next day: things get worse. The day after: things get worse. etc… Will you survive?
  • Sidenote: This has one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming. I’d put it up there with Halo, Skyrim, Homeworld.

Open Office

Uhh, isn’t that old, like really really old?

I’m pretty sure the only reason Open Office exists is because of Oracle’s lawyers.

Everyone shifted from Open Office to the Libre Office fork back in 2010-2011-ish.

Have you been trying to use Open Office? lol

Disappointed at linux directly? No.

Disappointed at linux indirectly? Absolutely.

• Nvidia’s linux support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
• Ubuntu
  • Unity (at least it’s gone from main installs now)
  • Snaps
• KDE
  • Version 4 (at least it’s good now)
• Fedora
  • Forcing their own broken version of OBS that didn’t work (they finally removed it)
• Wayland
  • Not supporting screenshare (fixed with portals)
  • Not supporting global shortcuts (currently being investigated)
  • Accessibility (currently being investigated)
• Gnome
  • Not supporting system trays
    • Most people don’t want their background apps (discord, teams, docker/podman, OBS, etc…) to be filling up the foreground.
  • Not supporting server side decorations
    • Literally the stupidest decision ever made
    • Not supporting it forces all other developers to spend their time integrating their own client side decorations just so users can move/close a window in someone else’s desktop environment. (example: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-408#%3A~%3Atext=Client-side+window+decorations)
    • Not supporting it means every developer has to deal with issues being reported to them that aren’t their fault.
    • Not supporting it means every developer now has less time to work on their own applications.
    • Not supporting it means that humanity has wasted a stupid amount of time reimplementing the same thing over and over again instead of just once.
    • Gnome saying that: “it’s not part of the standard”
      • Buddy, you’re the only one holding it back from being standardised.
        • Cosmic: Supported
        • Hyprland: Supported
        • KDE (Kwin): Supported
        • Unity (Mir): Supported
        • Niri: Supported
        • Sway: Supported
        • etc…: Supported
        • Gnome (Mutter, and those downstream like Muffin): Not Supported
        • It has… by all metrics… become… THE defacto standard.
      • “It’s not in the official wayland standard”
        • Buddy, wayland needs to support more than just the desktop metaphor. It also needs to support things like phones, handhelds, kiosk machines, car infotainment systems, etc… where having a window on a screen doesn’t make sense. You are a desktop environment using the desktop metaphor, you need to support the basic functionality of moving windows that pop up on the screen, and you are the only one failing, and not only failing but failing so hard you’re negatively affecting all those around you, and not only that but not being accountable to how your actions are negatively affecting others.

Don’t forget that great video that goes with those cursors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YThelfB2fvg

Bruh, just click the reader button on your browser.

It’s Phoronix, the articles are good but the comments on every article are unbearable.

It’s basically a meme at this point.

There’s a bunch of people in the forum with poor awareness and emotional control throwing tantrums, typically over any project with a code of conduct (even something as simple as “Don’t be an asshole”) because they believe it infringes on their right to be inconsiderate.

New projects want to avoid the drama and issues of projects from decades past, so naturally they add codes of conduct which causes those folks above to have hissyfits everywhere about those projects anytime they or something adjacent to them is mentioned.

Most places warn then kick those users out, and then there’s Phoronix.

It looks nice, but I don’t want to downgrade back to a 24.04 LTS release.

Currently running Kubuntu 25.10.

I ran 24.04 LTS earlier an it had terrible gpu and wayland issues which are fixed in 25.10.

Kubuntu 25.10 runs amazingly.

I’m waiting for 26.04 LTS before trying out Cosmic.

Cosmic will have sorted out the biggest new launch bugs and paper cuts by then, and I won’t have to use 24.04.

What about non-steam games or discord game invites?

It’s scanning your computer by default to check what programs are you using or what games are you playing

This is exactly why I like Discord.

If I’m online and not playing a game, I want my friends to see that I’m online so they can message me.

If I’m playing a game, I want my friends to know I am playing that game.

If it’s a multiplayer game, they can join in.

If it’s a single player campaign focused game, they know I won’t be keen to play a multiplayer game right now, but they can still message me if something big and spontaneous is happening.

If I don’t want to be contacted at all, I close discord.

Yeah, but it didn’t get any serious development until 2021.

Check for yourself: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/graphs/contributors

It depends:

The traditional DEs (KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon) already have their own screensavers.

The newer ones have coalesced around an extension to wayland called “ext-session-lock-v1”:

This protocol allows for a privileged Wayland client to lock the session and display arbitrary graphics while the session is locked.

You can see support for it here: https://wayland.app/protocols/ext-session-lock-v1#compositor-support

It’s on basically all the new ones except where it doesn’t make sense, such as:

• Gamescope (designed to keep a game fullscreen at all times)
• Cage (for kiosk machines, basically gamescope but for interactive maps in shopping malls)
• Weston (the reference wayland compositor which should have protocols that everything uses, I’m not sure how useful it would be to add screensaver support to the reference implementation then have it popping up on in-car-displays when you’re trying to follow a map while driving)

Everyone who needs it has it already.

There will probably be an ext-session-lock-v2 and get pulled into the traditional DEs at some point, but probably after a whole bunch of getting everyone around the table and in agreement on some security questions: how do we prevent malicious software setting themselves as a screensaver for a screenjacking attack?, what happens when the screensaver crashes?, that kind of stuff…

Counterpoint: X11 wasn’t designed with today’s security needs in mind, and developers were building based on the assumptions that those security holes would remain. We don’t actually want everything that X11 had, we only want the good bits.

Or to put it another way, the switch from X11 to Wayland = https://xkcd.com/1172/