OP is on OpenWRT (a router distro), and Alpine. Those distros don’t come with very much by default, and perl is not a core dependency for any of their default tools. Neither is python.

Based on the way the cosmo project has statically linked builds of python, but not perl, I’m guessing it’s more difficult to create a statically linked perl. This means that it’s more difficult to put perl on a system where it isn’t already there, and that system doesn’t have a package manager*, than python or other options.

*or the the user doesn’t want to use a package manager. OP said they just want to copy a binary around. Can you do that with perl?

Not quite a scripting language, but I highly recommend you check out cosmo for your usecase. Cosmopolitan, and/or Actually Portable Executable (APE for short) is a project to compile a single binary in such a way that is is extremely portable, and that single binary can be copied across multiple operating systems and it will still just run. It supports, windows, linux, mac, and a few BSD’s.

https://cosmo.zip/pub/cosmos/bin/ — this is where you can download precompiled binaries of certain things using cosmo.

From my testing, the APE version of python works great, and is only 34 megabytes, + 12 kilobytes for the ape elf interpreter.

In addition to python, cosmopolitan also has precompiled binaries of:

• Janet 2.5 MB
• Berry 4.0 MB
• Python 34 MB
• Php 11 MB
• Lua 2.1 MB
• Bash 5.1 MB

And a few more, like tclsh, zsh, dash or emacs (53 MB), which I’m pretty sure can be used as an emacs lisp intepreter.

And it should be noted these may require the ape elf interpeter, which is 12 kilobytes, or the ape assimilate program, which is 476 kilobytes.

EDIT: It also looks like there is an APE version of perl, and the full executable is 24 MB.

EDIT again: I found even more APE/cosmo binaries:

• quickjs (javascript) 2.5 MB
• lisp 20K

You might be able to run the latest KDE or gnome in a distrobox podman or docker container:

https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/posts/run_latest_gnome_kde_on_distrobox.md

I want to like Plasma, really I do, but even when I haven’t chosen it as a DE it overheats my laptop because Baloo File Extractor just won’t fucking quit consuming a CPU core for what seems like hours a day.

I remember having this issue. Basically, it was a bug, where baloo file manager was stuck on a file. After some time (and maybe a reinstall?), and deleting the index, baloo worked fine.

Google put an API into Chrome that sends extra system info but only to*.google.com domains. In every Chromium browser.

Only vivaldi caught this issue. Brave had this api enabled, most likely on accident.

But the problem is, that chromium is just such big and complex software, when combined with development being driven by Google, it’s just impossible for any significant changes or auditing to be done by third parties. Google is capable of exteriting control over Brave, simply by hiding changes like above, or by making massive changes like manifest v3, which are expensive for third parties to maintain.

Brave can maintain 1 big change to chromium, but for how long? What about 2, 3, etc.

My other big problem with brave is that I see them somewhat mimicking Google’s beginnings. Google started out with 3 things: an ad network, a browser, and a search engine.

Right now, Brave has those same three things. It feels very ominous to me, and I would rather not repeat the cycle of enshittification that drove me away from chrome and goolgle.

Yes

https://moonpiedumplings.github.io/blog/kde-6/#drawing-tablets/

My understanding is that gnome also has support for drawing tablets built in, and there are also other apps to customize buttons.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Graphics_tablet

The Arch Linux kernels include drivers by the linux-wacom and DIGImend projects. linuMLx-wacom supports Wacom devices, while DIGImend supports devices from other manufacturers. Both projects publish a list of supported devices: linux-wacom, DIGImend

Due to how many devices are supported, your best bet is to simply go to your nearest store that sells them and then checking if Linux supports it against those two lists, which there is an extremely high chance it does.

Then you should also check reviews, to make sure you get a good one.

I have a Wacom Intuos CTL-4100WL, and it’s served me well for math notes using Xournal++ (app for handwritten notetaking), but I truly have no idea how good it is for actual drawing related applications, as I don’t do it for that at all.

Probably not what you want, but rclone now has a simple web ui built in: https://rclone.org/gui/

This reminds me of kasmweb, but fully open source.

Why is SSPL not considered FOSS while other restrictive licenses like AGPL and GPL v3 are?

So I have an answer for this. Basically all of the entities listed that relicensed their projects to the SSPL, also relicensed their projects using the dual licensing scheme, including one proprietary license. That’s important later.

The SSPL’s intent is probably that the deployment framework used to open source this software must be open sourced. I like this intent, and I would consider it Free/Libre Software, but it should be noted that another license, the open watcom license, which requires you to open source software if you simply deploy it, is not considered Free Software by the FSF. I don’t really understand this decision. I don’t count “must share source code used” as a restriction on usage cases. It seems that the FSF only cares about user freedom, whoever is using the software, and views being forced to open source code only used privately as a restriction.

Now, IANAL… but the SSPL’s lettering is problematic. What is part of the deployment system? If I deploy software on Windows, am I forced to open source windows? If I deploy it on a server with intel management engine, am I forced to open source that? Due to the way it is worded, the SSPL is unusable.

And a dual license, one proprietary and one unusable means only one license — proprietary. There’s actually a possibility that this is intentional, and that the intent of the SSPL was never to be usable, but rather so that these companies could pretend they are still Open Source while going fully proprietary.

But, for the sake of discussion, let’s assume the SSPL’s intent was benevolent but misguided, and that it’s intent was not to be unusable, but rather to force companies to open source deployment platforms.

Of course, the OSI went and wrote an article about how the SSPL is not an open source license but that’s all BS. All you need to do is take a look at who sponsors the OSI (Amazon, Google, other big SAAS providers) to realize that the OSI is just protecting their corporate interests, who are terrified of an SSPL license that actually works, so they seek to misrepresent the intent of the SSPL license as too restrictive for Open Source — which is false. Being forced to open source your deployment platform still allows you to use the code in any way you desire — you just have to open source your deployment platform.

Is there some hypothetical lesser version of SSPL that still captures the essence of it while still being more restrictive than AGPL that would prevent exploitation by SaaS providers?

AGPL. There’s also Open Watcom, but it’s not considered a Free Software license by the FSF, meaning software written under that wouldn’t be included in any major Linux distros.

I think in theory you could make an SSPL that works. But SSPL ain’t it.

Of course, there are problems with designing an SSPL that works, of course. Like, if you make it so that you don’t have to open source proprietary code by other vendors, then what if companies split themselves up and one company makes and “sells” the proprietary programs to another.

Yeah, I read that manual but it didn’t answer my question.

The big problem is that the arch wiki describes a setup with nested subvolumes first (in a subvolume below @ or whatever your root subvolume is), but then suggests in a tip to use a subvolume directly below the top level subvolume. The limitations mentioned in that manual don’t seem to apply to either setup, as they would prevent swap from working, which is not the case. I have tested both setups and they work fine — or so it seems. I’m worried there is some hidden gotcha I’m missing.

in addition to that, some of those limitations simply don’t apply to my setup, as I only have a single device.

After Twitter went to shit, where else do customers have to go for customer support like this?

Admittedly, I didn’t read the article, but I have seen plenty of other cases woth cloudfare or other big providers where people have only been able to set things right by kicking up a fuss on social media — like that recent one with amazon aws.

Putting something on GitHub is really inconsequential if you’re making your project open source since anyone can use it for anything anyway,

Except for people in China (blocked in China) or people on ipv6 only networks, since Github hasn’t bothered to support ipv6, cutting out those in countries where ipv4 addresses are scarce.

So yes, it does matter. Both gitlab and codeberg, the two big alternatives, both support ipv6 (idk about them being blocked in china). They also support github logins, so you dob’t even need to make an account.

And it’s not a black or white. Software freedom is a spectrum, not a binary. We should strive to use more open source, decentralized software, while recognizing that many parts are going to be out of our immediate control, like the backbone of the internet or little pieces like proprietary firmware.

Ventoy. I love it so much, being able to have more than one bootable iso and storage on a usb.

Although, it is slower to boot the more folders you have, since it scans all folders, but this is configurable

I use nix-shell to get the ventoy cli for when I need to install it to a usb stick.

The python3 package should contain the entire python standard library

You are free to use a distro which does not split packages, favorite distro, Arch Linux (btw).

Or, you can install the recommended dependencies of python3. Testing in a container, the python3 package pulls:

root@a72bd55a3c1a:/# apt install python3
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  ca-certificates krb5-locales libexpat1 libgpm2 libgssapi-krb5-2 libk5crypto3
  libkeyutils1 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 libncursesw6 libnsl2
  libpython3-stdlib libpython3.11-minimal libpython3.11-stdlib libreadline8
  libsqlite3-0 libssl3 libtirpc-common libtirpc3 media-types openssl
  python3-minimal python3.11 python3.11-minimal readline-common
Suggested packages:
  gpm krb5-doc krb5-user python3-doc python3-tk python3-venv python3.11-venv
  python3.11-doc binutils binfmt-support readline-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ca-certificates krb5-locales libexpat1 libgpm2 libgssapi-krb5-2 libk5crypto3
  libkeyutils1 libkrb5-3 libkrb5support0 libncursesw6 libnsl2
  libpython3-stdlib libpython3.11-minimal libpython3.11-stdlib libreadline8
  libsqlite3-0 libssl3 libtirpc-common libtirpc3 media-types openssl python3
  python3-minimal python3.11 python3.11-minimal readline-common
0 upgraded, 26 newly installed, 0 to remove and 18 not upgraded.

python3-venv python3.11-venv

I find it odd, because debian does this by default, actually. They account for usecases like yours, and instead you have to edit a config file or use a command line flag to get it to not install recommended dependencies.

I guess someone is super happy they saved a few hundreds kilobytes of disk space though.

Yes. All the people basing docker images off if debian, and trying to get them as small as possible. The splitting up of packages, allows people to only pull in what they need.

That only applies to unstable distros. Stable distros, like debian, maintain their own versions of packages.

Debian in particular, only includes security patches and changes in their packages - no new features at all.* This means risk of breakage and incompatibilitu is very low, basically nil.

*exceot for certain packages which aren’t viable to maintain, like Firefox or other browsers.

https://forgejo.org/compare-to-gitea/

I dunno, some of these are a pretty big deal, in particular:

Gitea repeatedly makes choices that leave Gitea admins exposed to known vulnerabilities during extended periods of time. For instance Gitea spent resources to undergo a SOC2 security audit for its SaaS offering while critical vulnerabilities demanded a new release. Advance notice of security releases is for customers only.

Gitea is developed on github, whereas forgejo is developed on and by codeberg, who use it as their main forge (also mentioned on that page). Someone dogfooding gives me more confidence in the software.