Not really. Along most major roads, if trees are close enough to even potentially be a problem, they will be trimmed by road crews.
It’s not because they get hit by trucks, it’s because they’re deliberately trimmed back to keep the road clear.
Really hard to build an empire without it.
Because to have an empire, you have to rule over a lot of people. Many of those people would rather not be ruled by you. If you want to force them to accept it anyway, you’re going to need some of that genocide, slavery, and especially bloodshed.
Though, I suppose, maybe 2/3 of those aren’t really necessary.
Genocide probably isn’t absolutely necessary to empire-building. Definitely still have to kill lots of people, but there’s no particular reason you need to do so on the basis of race or ethnicity. (Though if you count cultural genocide as well, that may very well be necessary to build an empire. Difficult to bring diverse peoples under one banner without suppressing their cultural differences.)
Slavery is a big probably. It certainly does help – after all, your growing empire will need lots of labor, and it’s unlikely you can afford to pay the going market rate for it. Plus, if you don’t use slavery, you’ll probably be out-competed by other potential empires that are using slavery and/or slavery-adjacent labor practices. But I suppose it’s not technically absolutely necessary. Theoretically, at least, you could build an empire without slavery.
Just because it has a different workflow that big players implanted in people, Linux needs to match that?
For newbies? Yes. SO MUCH YES.
I don’t care if you want to use Gnome on a distro for people who want weird and different. But for any mainstream distro targeted toward newbies, Gnome should not be the default DE. Precisely because it requires a lot of additional learning to use the DE, in addition to learning to use Linux.
Well, for me, each virtual desktop is dedicated to a different ongoing project. When I want to switch from one project to another, I just switch virtual desktops. Each project can have all kinds of windows open on multiple monitors, and none of them are relevant to the other projects.
It’s not the AI we need to be scared of, it’s the data.
That said, imagine an actual AGI (ASI) AI gets developed and (of course) escapes to the internet because the idiots who built it gave it unrestricted internet access.
If such an AI wanted to take control of the world in order to further whatever goals it has, all this collected information will be an incredible treasure trove for it. Like you said, many people can be manipulated an controlled with threats of blackmail. The few who can’t can then be more directly threatened by those acting under blackmail threats.
Set a window rule to have those particular windows be on all desktops. Then the others can switch while those stay the same.
it is innovative
Nah, it’s just weird. And doing a lot of things to be different for the sake of being different. Which steepens the learning curve for newbies. (And, worse, may make newbies think all Linux is weird and difficult to learn.)
Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s better.
newby friendly (Windows and Mac are both more complex)
‘Simplicity’ does not necessarily mean it’s user friendly. Especially when you’re telling them to go download and install more things just so their desktop can do things that EVERY other desktop in the entire world does. I really really wish this paradigm of “removing options = user friendly” would just die already.
(It’s not really user friendly, it’s developer-friendly. Because there’s less for them to build and maintain.)
It has efficient keyboard navigation by default
Every DE does this. Name a single Linux DE that doesn’t have efficient keyboard navigation.
And it has pleasant, modern UI by default.
It has a blobby, plastic-looking, overstyled UI by default. But that’s just a matter of taste.
(And if you don’t like their default UI … well, you’re screwed, because they really don’t want you to change it.)
I’ll make a deal:
You stop including Gnome as the default DE on mainstream, newbie-friendly distros, and I’ll stop talking shit about it.
Which features are unnecessary?
Well, depends how you’re using it. In my case, for example, I don’t have a printer, so I could turn off the entire print manager system/service and save a bit of unnecessary RAM. And if you’re trying to be economical about RAM usage, things like fancy window decorations, window animations, and other purely aesthetic stuff like that can of course go. But, really, what features are necessary versus unnecessary will depend on you and what you’re using your computer for.
Or did you just mean what features does KDE have?
In that case, the answer is basically, all the features. Like, KDE is the quintessential ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ desktop. You name it, they have it … or it can quickly and easily be added. Any feature you can think of from any other OS or desktop, chances are KDE already has it or at least can do it with just a little tweaking.
For an example, I think my favorite feature would be the ability to set custom window rules for each application or even each sub-window within an application. Setting rules that dictate the size and placement of that app’s windows, their transparency, which virtual desktop they open in, whether they show up in the taskbar or not, whether other windows can cover them up or not, etc. I use those rules extensively in my workflow to make sure each app always goes exactly where I want it on my multiple monitors, stays there, and behaves just how I want it to. (For example, I want my system monitor to be 80% translucent in a certain corner of the screen. I want my timer app to always stay on top, and in a particular location on a particular screen, I want my time tracking spreadsheet open on all desktops, but always in the background so it never covers any other window, and not cluttering up the taskbar. I want the terminal to always open maximized on my left monitor, and for it to be 100% visible when active, but 80% translucent when not active. With window rules, I can make all of that happen.)
Why? Just… why?
Any time you ask the Gnome devs this, you can expect the answer to be “elegance”. And then they block you.
Making KDE look like a Mac is an entire genre of easily downloaded and installed themes:
https://store.kde.org/p/1400409
https://store.kde.org/p/1305006
Crimping a push fit terminal of some sort on the end would make a handy static wrist strap hookup too I’d imagine.
Plus, you’d get to see the horrified looks on your friend’s faces when they see you plugging your wrist strap into a wall outlet!
For the sake of completeness I assume I plug in the plug and it’s just using the house’s earth?
Yes! Heh, I guess I forgot that part. I should add it in, just in case.
What do you even do with independent virtual desktops per monitor?
I’ve got 8 virtual desktops and 6 monitors, but I want the content of all 6 monitors to change when I switch virtual desktops. Having to do each monitor independently sounds like a huge pain.
(And, of course, there are a couple things I want on every virtual desktop. But it’s easy to set certain windows to be on all desktops.)
What shortcuts does Windows have that KDE doesn’t?
And KDE can be even more efficient if you go into the settings and tweak things a bit, turning off some unnecessary features that are on by default.
Also I don’t think KDE even uses more RAM than other DEs that are designed to be lightweight. Last time I compared, it used the same or less memory as LXDE.
Yep. KDE is feature-rich, but it’s also highly optimized these days, and the RAM usage is actually competitive with the best of them.
You can get RAM usage lower on a very stripped down, barebones system, but if you want a full ‘normal computer’ desktop experience that has all the things you’d expect a computer to have, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that uses significantly less RAM than KDE. (Yes, there are some that get lower … but not a lot lower. And unless you’re running on some extremely limited hardware, are those extra 20MB of RAM really going to make a difference in your everyday life?)
Including examples really helps make it clear what these notations mean.
but for God’s sake just introduce basic usages first
And include practical examples!
Much easier to figure out the correct formatting of some command by just seeing the formatting used properly!
It’s also a great place to sneakily introduce the most common and useful ways to use the command, by including those as the examples! (Are you documenting, say, a command to compress images and documents, and even though most people never use it for video, you want people to know that it works with some video formats as well? Then include compressing .mp4 file as one of your example commands!)
Literally any other DE. Throw a dart at a bunch of DE logos pasted to the wall, and you’ll hit one that’s better for newbies than Gnome.
(And no, Gnome is not intuitive. You said yourself that using Gnome requires you “just learn to do things differently”. If it was intuitive, you wouldn’t need to learn it, and it wouldn’t feel ‘different’.)
Since all your examples of how intuitive Gnome is involve the same settings menu in the top right corner … is that settings menu in the top right corner labeled at all? Or is intuition the ONLY way to know it’s the settings menu? You know, maybe I’m starting to understand the disconnect here. When I say something is intuitive, I mean it’s where you’d naturally expect it and does what you expect it to do. But when Gnome people call something “intuitive”, I’m starting to suspect they say that because using intuition is the only way to figure out the interface. You just have to guess what that vague icon does…