this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] Infiltrated_ad8271@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know I should be happy and grateful for this, but unfortunately I'm going to be the grumpy one on duty to say a resounding and exasperating: It's about time.

I've been waiting for this for over a decade full of ups and downs with few and bad options, for a while they even deliberately broke all the web translation addons without offering any alternatives.

In fact, it is only recently that there are two very good addons: TWP and linguist (which also has local translation). I hope mozilla will do more than just integrate the addon they released a year ago, because that one is inferior in everything and very pitiful.

[–] Vincent@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am sceptical that breakage was deliberate. An unfortunate side-effect of something else in a trade-off that Mozilla deemed worth it, maybe.

At that time there were some addons that worked to translate web (not just selected text), and at least one of them was even recommended by mozilla.

The problem is that to translate from google they used a remote code execution method, I'm not sure but I seem to remember that mozilla changed their policy to not allow that and didn't warn the devs (if mozilla simply didn't notice for years it would be even more worrying).
In any case someone reported them all and they were immediately banned, some of the devs tried to reason with mozilla and look for workarounds but to no avail.

Until alternatives appeared (after a couple of years?) it was necessary to install blacklisted or unsigned addons, which is a bit tedious.