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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • I genuinely don’t understand why people here are taking it so hard that I wish the Immich devs were using semver.

    Because you didn’t say that; you said “Breaking changes in a point release? Not cool” and later “I’m basing this off the guidelines at semver.org.”

    I’m paraphrasing your comments from memory, to be clear, so apologies if I misquoted you.

    It certainly felt to me like you were assuming that this project was using semver and was not following it well, not that you wouldn’t want to use a project that receives this many breaking changes / that doesn’t follow semver. Those complaints both make a lot more sense to me - and I’ve seen many people say similar things about Immich in the past. In fact, it’s a big part of why I haven’t migrated from Photoprism to Immich myself - in this regard they’re complete opposites.


  • I don’t think there’s any room to argue that announcing a 1.x with a change the developers say is a breaking change, which is what Immich have done, fits within the semver.org guidelines.

    That wasn’t the argument.

    Following semver is optional. If a project doesn’t explicitly state it is following semver, it shouldn’t be assumed that it is. With regard to Immich in particular, a cursory review of their documentation makes it clear that they are not following semver. Literally, go to https://immich.app/ and read the text at the very top of the page:

    ⚠️ The project is under very active development. Expect bugs and changes.

    Go to the repo and you’ll see the README, which states at the very top:

    • ⚠️ The project is under very activedevelopment.
    • ⚠️ Expect bugs and breaking changes.

    If you can read that, see that they’re on major version 1 with a minor version over 100, and you still think they’re using semver, then that’s on you.

    The devs have stated they won’t be using semver until they consider Immich production ready, and that moving to a 1.x version from 0.x was a mistake made some time ago. If you want to think about it as though it is semver, consider the major version to still be 0. See https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/5086#discussioncomment-7593227 for example.

    As this project is clearly not following semver, the semver guidelines aren’t applicable and haven’t been violated.

    I don’t think there’s any room to argue

    Even if semver were applicable, in this case, I would still disagree. The text from semver.org states:

    8. Major version X (X.y.z | X > 0) MUST be incremented if any backward incompatible changes are introduced to the public API.

    It doesn’t state that any backward incompatible changes, period, require a major version increase, only changes to the public API. I would personally argue that the deployment configuration is part of the public API, but not all project owners agree with me. Even if they do agree, they might say that this was not a documented deployment configuration and thus not part of the public API, and that it therefore doesn’t necessitate an increase to the major version, but as they knew that people were using that configuration, anyway, they included a note about a potentially breaking change as a courtesy to those users.




  • There have been so many places in front end web dev that used the abbreviation “a11y” without defining it (or explaining the 11) that for years I assumed it was just the name of a particular library that had gotten Kleenexed.

    (To be clear, I’m using “Kleenexed” as a verb here to mean “genericized explosively, as if a sneeze.”)

    It didn’t help to look at the code, either. “Okay cool, so all this does is add a bunch of random extra tags to the DOM? Doesn’t seem super useful but okay, I guess there’s probably some tool out there that depends on them but we probably don’t use it.”











  • Depends on your e-reader! If you have a Kindle, Kobo, or Nook, yes, that’s true. However:

    Boox has e-readers that run Android and you can install Hoopla. The Palma 2 is phone sized which is great. The Page, Leaf2, and Go 7 are all in the 7” form factor, plus they have 6” versions. And they have tablet sizes, too. They have both traditional black&white and color e-ink displays.

    I have the Boox Air 3C and the original Palma and both are great. I’ll likely get a Boox as my next standard sized e-reader, too (whenever I replace my Kindle Oasis). Though unless the technology drastically improves before then, it’ll be one with a black and white screen. (The color is nice in the tablet sizes, though, especially for comics from Hoopla.)

    Some other options that I’m less familiar with include:

    • Bigme has Android 7” color e-readers, as well as tablets and e-ink smartphones.
    • Meebook has e-readers that run Android (and Android e-ink tablets)
    • The MuSnap Aura C is a 10” Android e-ink tablet
    • XPPen has an 11” Android e-ink tablet


  • But do nontechnical users care about the “missing” features? A lot of nontechnical users prefer simpler apps.

    There is a version of Blender that was made for Android. It’s quite old, though. But if you’re competent enough with Blender that you’ve memorized all its keyboard shortcuts and workflows, you’re likely technical enough to get it working via Termux. But if not, Nomad Sculpt (on both iOS and Android), SpaceDraw (Android only), and several other apps can serve the same purposes.

    Not sure why you listed video editing software and two different specific video editors, but Android and iOS both have Lumafusion. I’m sure there are other decent editors but I haven’t used them because Lumafusion is great. iPads do have DaVinci Resolve, though, for what that’s worth. If you care about using a FOSS video editor then you should care enough to install it via Termux. But let’s be real, most nontechnical users are probably happy using CapCut.

    DJ software - Cross DJ is free. There are other alternatives. And there are web based DJ software apps like YouDJ.




  • OnlyOffice is available on Android already.

    “any linux app” - I don’t think any nontechnical users want GParted on their Android phones, and it wouldn’t work anyway.

    Android has its own games, same as iOS. Nontechnical users are way more likely to want Windows games than Linux games anyway.

    Wine used to be developed natively for Android but they stopped a few years back. You can still download it at winehq though. I think Box64 with wine is a decent option?

    Overall the thing I’m confused about is why you think Google or any major Android phone manufacturer have a motivation to make native Linux apps more accessible. Google certainly doesn’t want to make it easier for you to use the better versions of their competitors’ apps. Google is moving further away from Linux, not closer. Providing a usable, good enough desktop experience that’s still Android underneath makes far more sense for them.

    Fortunately, like I said earlier, there are workarounds to get access to those Linux apps.

    The thing that is more likely to change is for the creators of Android apps to build apps that function better when used in a phone-as-desktop format. And even if they don’t, there are enough competent web apps out there that just being able to use your browser full screen on a monitor solves 90% of people’s actual use cases - and probably over 95% when you include the other apps that have decent desktop experiences that can be run alongside them.

    The Steam Deck approach is much closer to what you seem to want. The Steam Deck is an actually competent Linux machine that has a Valve-supported compatibility layer in Proton for running non-Linux games. It plugs into a USB-C hub connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard just fine, can install any Linux app, etc… It’s completely usable handheld as well. But it isn’t a phone, and even though it’s quite portable, it’s not “stick into your pocket” portable.

    I don’t expect a major manufacturer to make a Linux phone any time soon, and I don’t think the Linux phones that are out already have - or will have in the next 5 years - a smooth enough experience to convince any nontechnical user to switch.