an app launcher. Literally every other desktop on the planet has one, how this isn’t considered basic functionality is beyond me. Give your grandparents a vanilla GNOME computer and tell them to get to Facebook and you will see how necessary this is. Default should be dash-to-dock with intelligent autohide so you only see it when you need it. This would fulfill GNOME’s hangups about it while also improving usability, so I fail to see a downside.

GNOME does have a launcher, which works just like the launcher on Mac and Android. You can even select whether to see all your apps or only the most-used ones. I do agree that a taskbar/dock with intelligent auto-hide is a must, though (at least for my usability). That's also not to say that some folks would rather have a Windows style launcher, and there are several DEs that provide that.

I don't have an answer for you, but maybe you and your friends could get together and start your own? The beauty of the fediverse and all that.

Limiting myself to free as in freedom (no ads, not free to use because you are the product): KeePass/KeePassXC, GnuCash, Firefox, LibreOffice, digiKam, GIMP.

In my opinion, microblogging isn't really a conversational platform. It's a creator and audience platform. That format has its place, as well, but Twitter/Threads/Mastodon/etc. isn't a replacement for forums.

Login issue reportedly fixed with 0.18.2 update: Lemmy.world updated to 0.18.2

As @flloxlbox said, it will either happen organically or users will decide to merge communities, like the Android community did. It's the way federation works, it's not something that can be forced on people.

Same here. I've worn contacts for 50 years (my user name isn't a lie). A few minutes of inconvenience at the beginning and end of the day, and I don't have to think about my vision aids the rest of the time. And I can walk in the rain and still see!

GNOME. Been using Linux since before GNOME Shell was a thing and when it became a thing it just clicked for me. In my opinion, it's by far the most polished DE and provides the most elegant and intuitive launcher and workspace switcher of any DE or OS I've used. At least they did, until they fucked it up by moving from vertical to horizontal workspaces and made the workspace previews so small you can no longer see what's in them.

Which is the downside of GNOME. Sometimes their developers are their own worst enemies. Fortunately, there are usually extensions to fix the most egregious "enhancements".

This was posted yesterday, but definitely should be in this thread, as well: Facebook's Threads is so depressing

Yep. Being a part of the fediverse gives Meta a defensible argument that (1) they are not stealing Twitter's intellectual property as Mastodon already exists and (2) they are not monopolizing the Twitter-like social media environment as any of their users could move to Mastodon if they wanted to.

Kbin already federates with Mastodon. It's not a single feed, though, they're on separate tabs. Kbin currently works okay, but per the devs it's an early beta so there's more polish and features to come.

For the record, I'm not sure that combining the two platforms in one feed would be desirable for most users. It seems to me that Lemmy and Mastodon serve different purposes: Mastodon is for broadcasting your opinions to mostly-passive followers, Lemmy is oriented toward conversation.

Good, let Zuck and Musk fight. If we're lucky they'll knock each other out.