So you’re starting a new website, and you open the first CSS file. What style do you use? Well, you hate indenting with spaces passionately. You know tabs are right because they’re literally made for this, and they’re only one byte, and these god damn spaces people with their bloody spacebars…Shut u...

Congratulations to Jente Hidskes on the first release of Cage! Cage is a Wayland compositor designed for kiosks - though, as you’ll shortly find out, is useful in many unexpected ways. It launches a single application, in fullscreen, and exits the compositor when that application exits. This lets yo...

Congratulations to Jente Hidskes on the first release of Cage! Cage is a Wayland compositor designed for kiosks - though, as you’ll shortly find out, is useful in many unexpected ways. It launches a single application, in fullscreen, and exits the compositor when that application exits. This lets yo...

There’s a disturbing trend in the past year or so of various VPN companies advertising to the general, non-technical public. It’s great that the general public is starting to become more aware of their privacy online, but I’m not a fan of these companies exploiting public paranoia to peddle their wa...

There’s a disturbing trend in the past year or so of various VPN companies advertising to the general, non-technical public. It’s great that the general public is starting to become more aware of their privacy online, but I’m not a fan of these companies exploiting public paranoia to peddle their wa...

I’m pleased to announce that the final pieces have fallen into place for Mercurial support on SourceHut, which is now on-par with our git offering. Special thanks are owed to SourceHut contributor Ludovic Chabant, who has been instrumental in adding Mercurial support to SourceHut. You may have heard...

Spring is here, and I’m already miserable in the heat. Crazy weather here in Philadelphia - I was woken up at 3 AM by my phone buzzing, telling me to take immediate shelter from a tornado. But with my A/C cranked up and the tornado safely passed, I’ve been able to get a lot of work done. The project...

Spring is here, and I’m already miserable in the heat. Crazy weather here in Philadelphia - I was woken up at 3 AM by my phone buzzing, telling me to take immediate shelter from a tornado. But with my A/C cranked up and the tornado safely passed, I’ve been able to get a lot of work done.The project ...

I’m pleased to announce that the final pieces have fallen into place for Mercurial support on SourceHut, which is now on-par with our git offering. Special thanks are owed to SourceHut contributor Ludovic Chabant, who has been instrumental in adding Mercurial support to SourceHut. You may have heard...

NewPipe is a free and open-source Android application for browsing & watching YouTube. In my opinion, NewPipe is a perfect case-study in why free & open source software is great and how our values differ from proprietary software in important ways. There’s one simple reason: it’s better than the pro...

NewPipe is a free and open-source Android application for browsing & watching YouTube. In my opinion, NewPipe is a perfect case-study in why free & open source software is great and how our values differ from proprietary software in important ways. There’s one simple reason: it’s better than the pro...

I have a saying that summarizes my opinion of Rust compared to Go: “Go is the result of C programmers designing a new programming language, and Rust is the result of C++ programmers designing a new programming language”. This isn’t just a metaphor - Go was designed by plan9 alumni, an operating syst...

I have a saying that summarizes my opinion of Rust compared to Go: “Go is the result of C programmers designing a new programming language, and Rust is the result of C++ programmers designing a new programming language”. This isn’t just a metaphor - Go was designed by plan9 alumni, an operating syst...

My todo list is getting completed at a pace it’s never seen before, and growing at a new pace, too. This full-time FOSS gig is really killing it! As the good weather finally starts to roll in, it’s time for March’s status update. Note: I posted updates on Patreon before, but will start posting here ...

My todo list is getting completed at a pace it’s never seen before, and growing at a new pace, too. This full-time FOSS gig is really killing it! As the good weather finally starts to roll in, it’s time for March’s status update. Note: I posted updates on Patreon before, but will start posting here ...

1,315 days after I started the sway project, it’s finally time for sway 1.0! I had no idea at the time how much work I was in for, or how many talented people would join and support the project with me. In order to complete this project, we have had to rewrite the entire Linux desktop nearly from sc...

1,315 days after I started the sway project, it’s finally time for sway 1.0! I had no idea at the time how much work I was in for, or how many talented people would join and support the project with me. In order to complete this project, we have had to rewrite the entire Linux desktop nearly from sc...

Sourcehut is known for its brutalist design, with its mostly shades-of-gray appearance, conservative color usage, and minimal distractions throughout. This article aims to share some insights into the philosophy that guides this design, both for the curious reader and for the new contributor to the ...

Sourcehut is known for its brutalist design, with its mostly shades-of-gray appearance, conservative color usage, and minimal distractions throughout. This article aims to share some insights into the philosophy that guides this design, both for the curious reader and for the new contributor to the ...

Basic git usage involves typing a few stock commands to “sync everyone up”. Many people who are frustrated with git become so because they never progress beyond this surface-level understanding of how it works. However, mastering git is easily worth your time. How much of your day is spent using git...

Basic git usage involves typing a few stock commands to “sync everyone up”. Many people who are frustrated with git become so because they never progress beyond this surface-level understanding of how it works. However, mastering git is easily worth your time. How much of your day is spent using git...

In the distance, a gradual roar begins to grow in volume. A dust cloud is visible over the horizon. As it nears, the shouts of the oncoming angry mob can be heard. Suddenly, it stops, and a brief silence ensues. Then the air is filled with the clackings of hundreds of keyboards, angrily typing the o...

In the distance, a gradual roar begins to grow in volume. A dust cloud is visible over the horizon. As it nears, the shouts of the oncoming angry mob can be heard. Suddenly, it stops, and a brief silence ensues. Then the air is filled with the clackings of hundreds of keyboards, angrily typing the o...

This article has been on my backburner for a while, but it seems Wayland FUD is making the news again recently, so I’ve bumped up the priority a bit. For those new to my blog, I am the maintainer of wlroots, a library which implements much of the functionality required of a Wayland compositor and is...

This article has been on my backburner for a while, but it seems Wayland FUD is making the news again recently, so I’ve bumped up the priority a bit. For those new to my blog, I am the maintainer of wlroots, a library which implements much of the functionality required of a Wayland compositor and is...

Currently in a plane on my way home from FOSDEM and, as seems to be a recurring pattern when I fly long distances home after attending a conference, a recap is readily flowing from my fingertips. This was my first year at FOSDEM, and I’m glad that I came. I’m already excited for next year! It was al...

Currently in a plane on my way home from FOSDEM and, as seems to be a recurring pattern when I fly long distances home after attending a conference, a recap is readily flowing from my fingertips. This was my first year at FOSDEM, and I’m glad that I came. I’m already excited for next year! It was al...

sr.ht is a large, production-scale suite of web applications (I call them “mini-services”, as they strike a balance between microservices and monolithic applications) which are built in Python with Flask. David Lord, one of the maintainers of Flask, reached out to me when he heard about sr.ht and sa...

sr.ht is a large, production-scale suite of web applications (I call them “mini-services”, as they strike a balance between microservices and monolithic applications) which are built in Python with Flask. David Lord, one of the maintainers of Flask, reached out to me when he heard about sr.ht and sa...

Recently I was making sure my main laptop is ready for travel1, which mostly just entails syncing up the latest version of my music collection. This laptop is a Thinkpad X200, which turns 11 years old in July and is my main workstation away from home (though I bring a second monitor and an external ...