ToBeFree

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Tech News: 2024-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• On Wikisource there is a special page listing pages of works without corresponding scan images. Now you can use the new magic word __EXPECTWITHOUTSCANS__ to exclude certain pages (list of editions or translations of works) from that list. [1]
• If you use the user-preference "Show preview without reloading the page", then the template-page feature "Preview page with this template (what's this?)" will now also work without reloading the page. [2]
• Kartographer maps can now specify an alternative text via the alt= attribute. This is identical in usage to the alt= attribute in the image and gallery syntax. An exception for this feature is wikis like Wikivoyage where the miniature maps are interactive. [3]
• The old Guided Tour for the "New Filters for Edit Review" feature has been removed. It was created in 2017 to show people with older accounts how the interface had changed, and has now been seen by most of the intended people. [4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 May. It will be on all wikis from 16 May (calendar). [5][6]
• The Special:Search results page will now use CSS flex attributes, for better accessibility, instead of a table. If you have a gadget or script that adjusts search results, you should update your script to the new HTML structure. [7]

Future changes

• In the Vector 2022 skin, main pages will be displayed at full width (like special pages). The goal is to keep the number of characters per line large enough. This is related to the coming changes to typography in Vector 2022. Learn more. [8]
• Two columns of the pagelinks database table (pl_namespace and pl_title) are being dropped soon. Users must use two columns of the new linktarget table instead (lt_namespace and lt_title). In your existing SQL queries:
  1. Replace JOIN pagelinks with JOIN linktarget and pl_ with lt_ in the ON statement
  2. Below that add JOIN pagelinks ON lt_id = pl_target_id
  • See phab:T222224 for technical reasoning. [9][10]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 23:56, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Linux question

Hi ToBeFree!

I just wanted to ask you this question since you seem to be a Linux user, what distro do you use at home and what's your favourite?

Currently I'm on Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 22H2; however, I am growing frustrated and tired of modern-day Microsoft Windows and am looking to learn and switch to Linux as my main OS some time in the near distant future. I hope to start contributing to Wikipedia from there one day.

Note, this is not a request for help or anything, just wondering what distro you use, that's all! I'm probably going to start with using Linux Mint and go from there. — AP 499D25 (talk) 14:04, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi AP 499D25, thanks for asking!

I assume Windows 11 is not an option and/or the desire to switch is because of Windows 11? I like my Kubuntu for being Windows-like and could normally recommend it to new Linux users for the same reason, but if you'd like to try something different, a regular Ubuntu installation may be interesting. I haven't tried Linux Mint, but the main reason for its existence, to my knowledge, is how different Ubuntu's (Gnome's) default design became from Windows. People unhappy about the design changes created a new environment named Cinnamon that, as far as I understand, remains more Windows-like by design.

All of these (Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Linux Mint) run from an USB stick without installation and can be tried before choosing. And if there's software bundled with one distribution that you would like to use on another, you can simply install the same package using apt on the command line or using synaptic as a universal graphical tool that works on all Debian-based distributions.

Best regards,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:26, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I see. Well, I kind of dislike present-day Windows 10 for a number of reasons (e.g. nagware popups, lack of control over updates), but as for Windows 11 I have never actually used it besides just a little bit on other PCs. Though I've heard about some pretty bad things about it such as bugs, slowdowns and apparently they are adding advertisements to the start menu. It's also not just that I don't like Windows but also that I am interested in and willing to learn another family of operating systems now after numerous years of having used various Windows as well as Mac OS X releases. I want to learn something new.

Though the main reason why I was looking into Linux as of late, was because my desktop's had a bit of a major slowdown issue with web browser programs; it was hurting my productivity quite a lot, with webpages taking several minutes to load instead of the seconds they would normally take. I couldn't easily determine what it was, as there weren't any unusual high resource usages when it happened. But funny enough, it seems to have resolved itself now after a windows update and restart.

Either way, I'm probably gonna move to Linux around when Windows 10 support ends. I do know about live boot and have actually tried out Linux Mint on live boot USB and in virtual machines many years ago before, it's pretty cool you can try it out before installing.

Much appreciated!

Kind regards, — AP 499D25 (talk) 10:42, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I think Windows 11 is worth a try, at least next to Linux on the same machine, before throwing Windows away. To me, Microsoft's operating system became an actual option with Windows 10's beta release, which was my first Windows since XP which ran on all my school's computers. I never had Vista, 7 or 8 on an own machine. When Windows 10 was opened to testing, it was free (at least as in free beer), I wanted to play Elite Dangerous after years of fun in Oolite and I am happy with the experience. I also like Windows 11's design and some new features such as native .tar archive access in the Explorer and LF line ending support in Notepad.

But the desire to try something new, intentionally something that requires a few habit changes, is strong in me too! In that case, my recommendation is really the default Ubuntu. It's the least Windows-like Linux I've used so far. It feels more like a smartphone with a huge screen and proper input methods to me.

The Windows slowdown, if truly gone away with an update and depending on its duration, may have been the update process itself, especially if you have classical hard disk drives instead of SSDs. But that's just blind guessing.

Ventoy may be interesting for your live tests! I didn't try it yet, though. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Back when I actually used a desktop I ran mint with mate. I installed it on my wife's computer and she immediately understood how to use it at near the proficiency she has in windows. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:53, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi ScottishFinnishRadish, that's cool! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:55, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

What I was getting at was that they should leap in and try it. With USB booting it's pretty much risk free. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:56, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

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