• Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
      0·
      5 months ago

      This is the problem, making the fork known to the userbase of the original software. When the Atom text editor was killed by Microsoft we decided to fork it as Pulsar but it was an uphill struggle to really get the word out. We got a massive boost when the youtuber Distrotube featured us in an episode and again with an itsfoss article but we still routinely find people who have been using Atom without knowing we even exist.

      • lad@programming.dev
        0·
        5 months ago

        You found some more by commenting about it now.

        But if the fork is on GitHub there are some ways to search for the most maintained forks, albeit not with the GitHub tools which is unfortunate

        • Hexarei@programming.dev
          1·
          5 months ago

          There’s always the fork network graph, but it’s not exactly easy to spot which forks are good, just the ones with the most recent commits

          • lad@programming.dev
            0·
            5 months ago

            Yeah, it’s just that I have recently tried to find an active fork, ao experienced this

        • flatlined@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          5 months ago

          What tools would you recommend to fund good forks. I’ve had a Firefox extension or two but they’ve either creased working or weren’t fantastic to begin with. Currently just using the network graph, limitations and all.

  • dan@upvote.au
    2·
    5 months ago

    Keep in mind that software doesn’t have an expiry date. If a piece of software is unmaintained and doesn’t have an active fork but it still fulfills your use case and doesn’t have any major issues, there’s no need to replace it. Some of the software I use hasn’t seen any updates in five years but I still use it because it still works.

    • lad@programming.dev
      3·
      5 months ago

      I’d say that problems mostly come from the need to update dependencies in case of vulnerabilities being discovered. But not every software needs elevated privileges or can become a vector of attack, I guess

      • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
        0·
        5 months ago

        If a software is compromised to allow remote code execution, then the situation is pretty dire even without elevated privileges.

        Basically your entire userspace will be compromised, and in terms of personal computing that is pretty much all you can lose.

      • jcg@halubilo.social
        1·
        5 months ago

        I use windirstat almost monthly and have never heard of WizTree. Keeping this in mind for next time I use it.

        Though at this point, maybe I should just commit honestly

      • dan@upvote.au
        0·
        5 months ago

        It is. I was just using WinDirStat as an example of an old app that people still use. The 1.1.2 release from 2005 is still downloaded 60,000 times per week according to the stats on the Sourceforge download page.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
      0·
      5 months ago

      Desktop - Linux - Yes, likely. If not, here’s a flatpak
      Desktop - Windows - Maybe it still runs in a compatibility mode?
      Desktop - iMac - Here’s an emulator, good luck.

      Mobile - PostMarketOS - Yes, likely. If not, here’s a flatpak
      Mobile - Android - Maybe? Try it and see if you get permission denial
      Mobile - iPhone - Fuck you, no.

      • dan@upvote.au
        0·
        5 months ago

        Windows is pretty good with backwards compatibility, probably the best out of anything. I can run Visual Basic apps I wrote in the early 2000s on Windows 11 and they still run fine. Some old 32-bit games work fine too. You can even run some 16-bit apps on 32-bit Windows 10 if you manually install NTVDM through the Windows features (it was never ported to 64-bit though)

        Linux is okay for backcompat but I’m not sure an app I compiled 20 years ago would still run today.

          • dan@upvote.au
            0·
            5 months ago

            The fact that a compat mode exists means that Microsoft put effort into backwards compatibility. Windows even emulates some old bugs for old popular apps that depended on them.

            • toastal@lemmy.ml
              0·
              5 months ago

              I don’t like Microsoft Windows at all, but you are absolutely right about doing a good job with backwards compatibility.

              Linux isn’t so backwards compatible, but with much of it having open source code, you can often compile it again yourself—tho having been written in a language that offers good backwards compatibility also helps.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
    1·
    5 months ago

    yo but tbh this gets old.

    i just want my stuff to update without me having to find out a year later its unmantained and had a fork all along.

    or having to watch the repositories of stuff i use for signs it might be unmantained.

    libforknotifier when (or even how)?

    • irotsoma@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      Yeah, it would be nice if it was easier for devs to just turn over the project to an “official” fork. Unfortunately, I’m sure that would get abused by scammers taking over projects forcefully and adding in malware before anyone notices.

      • lud@lemm.ee
        0·
        5 months ago

        I am pretty sure you can transfer ownership of a repo on GitHub.

      • 9point6@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        You’re spot on with the latter, I’ve come across a few projects over the years where the ownership is transferred and it’s then loaded up with malware or even just instantly abandoned again because the new owner just wants it on their GitHub to get a job or something.

        • Gestrid@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          I’ve come across a few projects over the years where the ownership is transferred and it’s then loaded up with malware

          See: The Great Suspender

          The original developer sold the repo to a new, anonymous maintainer. The new maintainer abandoned the repo but continued updating the Chrome Web Store version of the addon. That version eventually got delisted by Google for including malware.

    • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
      0·
      5 months ago

      I’ve kept away from some projects because it’s just a single dev doing 99.9% of the contributions.

        • greencactus@lemmy.world
          0·
          5 months ago

          Sorry, that’s now how I meant my original post - I just thought that I really like SPD already and was interested in what PD makes better/ what features SPD missed. I in no way wanted to say that PD was bad, just was excited to know what PD made better :)

          • beetus@lemmy.world
            1·
            5 months ago

            I think you are misinterpreting the arrows. Pixel dungeon is the original game with SPD being the preferred fork

            The arrows aren’t PD > (greater than) SPD

            But rather PD -> (turned into) SPD

        • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          Sun Microsystems bought Star Division, the original creators of StarOffice, which was proprietary. Sun open sourced OpenOffice, with StarOffice still available with proprietary add-ons. When Oracle bought up Sun, they first reduced resources to OpenOffice and then shut it down altogether when LibreOffice came along, with trademarks and such assigned to the Apache project.

      • deus@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 months ago

        The original OpenOffice is no longer in development. LibreOffice is an active fork of that.

    • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      5 months ago

      Although I’d love to agree superslicer has sadly nowhere near the development power of prusa behind them - and feature parity is rarely given, basically any release of the two has “oh I want both of those!” (don’t know if it’s spelled correctly but arachnid mode for example was hyped to a point I checked back with prusa after a few months).

      I just want to point it out in case people expect a “prusaslicer” but better in every regard :)

        • Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          5 months ago

          I can’t answer that and it’s a valid question in my opinion. If I had to guess I’d speculate about disagreements in code style, build pipeline or similar.

          • DacoTaco@lemmy.world
            0·
            5 months ago

            Thats usually how it goes. Imo, and to be clear im a major foss person, they are contributing so they should accept the prusaslicer guidelines but maybe have an open discussion about.

            I havent seen the prusaslicer code yet so i have no how bad either project is though :p

      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Oh yeah, I find that it’s easier to get fine control of the outcome in SuperSlicer because it’s less refined. User-friendly features are nice when you’re getting started but a hindrance when you have more experience. I tried to use Cura awhile back and it felt like the Fisher-Price version of a slicer. SuperSlicer is probably less accessible overall, but it doesn’t hide controls from me.

    • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      vim, or better yet, neovim

      come to the 21st century, we have lua

      and plugins, and syntax highlighting, and multi buffer/multi window support, and LSP support so you can Go to Definition like in an IDE, and wAY more normal mode commands than anyone could ever hope to memorize. also when you do cw it deletes the word immediately instead of putting a dollar sign at the end before purring you in insert mode, and regex substitutions highlights text in the buffer as you type so you can see what you’re about to replace. it’s really quite cool. if you’re new to programming and/or feel like committing heresy you can even skin it to look and work like VS Code. people like to joke that we’re slowly but surely becoming emacs and they’re not entirely wrong.

      but the important thing is the lua.

      • theherk@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 months ago

        Used vim since the mid 90’s, but switched to emacs at some point. It was wonderful for many years, but neovim has come so far that I switched back a few years ago. Could not be happier. The tools available for programmers these days are superb and neovim chief among them.

      • nayminlwin@lemmy.ml
        0·
        5 months ago

        It’s probably because of Lua that the plugin ecosystem exploded in the recent years.

        I’m glad I adopted neovim early.

      • Arnaught@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        5 months ago

        I mean, most of those things can be done in regular vim too. I’m probably going to switch eventually, but I haven’t really had any issues with vim that would motivate me to switch, and I haven’t really encountered anything super useful that nvim has that vim can’t also do. Though, I’ll admit lua is tempting, and better defaults are certainly a plus!

        For search highlighting, the relevant options are :set hlsearch and :set incsearch. nvim just has those enabled by default. nvim also has a binding Ctrl+L to clear the search highlight. This isn’t in vim by default, but the vim-sensible plugin also adds it.

        What do you mean by cw putting a dollar sign? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered that.

        Edit: the vim syntax for Ctrl+L got eaten by markdown.

        • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          Vim and Neovim are pretty similar at this point honestly apart from the Lua. The only difference I’ve really noticed is that in Neovim, when you :term, it opens the terminal in the active pane, putting the buffer you were working on in background. In Vim, it splits the screen and puts the terminal there. Vim also prompts you to confirm a :e if you haven’t saved the current buffer, even though it doesn’t close it, just puts it in the background (iirc?)

          In the original vi, when you cw it doesn’t delete the word right away, only changing the last character of it to a $ so you can see where it ends, to save screen refresh. (This was actually a concern on the 1970s modems on which vi was developed.) When you type, it looks like you’re overtyping the word, but when you go back to normal mode it redraws the line and shows the rest of the line shifted over appropriately, so you replaced the whole word. Vim and Neovim redraw the line with every keystroke, which is not a problem even on today’s shoddiest internet connections, and is much more intuitive. vi only starts to do that once the word you’re typing becomes longer than the word it’s replacing.