🧭 Legacy Audit: Tall Stories in the Open Source World

Years ago, I wrote about the bluffs and tall stories that often circulate in the open-source ecosystem—promises of features, integrations, and breakthroughs that never quite arrive. Today, I revisit that post with fresh eyes and a deeper sense of legacy stewardship. Some of those stories have aged into silence. Others have been quietly abandoned. And new ones continue to emerge.

📑 The Original Tall Stories

• Calligra Theme Support (2011): Jarosław Staniek’s article on Shared Themes envisioned CSS-style theming across open-source office suites. More than a decade later, no such system exists. Proprietary suites like MS Office and Apple iWork still lead in design coherence.
• Speech in Ubuntu (2012): Mark Shuttleworth’s blog post promised voice interaction as a fun and natural input method by 2014. CMU Sphinx was mentioned as the backend. Yet speech never became native to Ubuntu, and Unity 8—the interface that was supposed to support it—was discontinued.

🖥️ Wayland: The Display Server That Keeps Falling Back

Wayland was announced as the modern successor to X11, promising smoother graphics, better security, and cleaner architecture. Yet even in 2025:

• GNOME, which had previously dropped X11 support, now includes fallback code for it again.
• Remote desktop, screen sharing, and legacy app compatibility remain problematic.
• Many distributions still default to X11 for stability.

The bluff? That Wayland would fully replace X11 “in the next few cycles.” The reality? We’re still straddling two worlds.

🔍 Why These Stories Matter

These aren’t just technical delays—they’re emotional fractures in the trust between developers and users. When features are promised and then forgotten, it erodes the legitimacy of the ecosystem. Open source thrives on transparency, but it also needs accountability.

🧬 Simulation Prompt

Imagine a club ritual where members audit the legacy of open-source promises. Each member brings a “ghost feature” to the table—something announced but never delivered. They debate:

“Should we continue trusting declarations without delivery? Or should we build a new protocol for emotional stewardship and feature accountability?”

This isn’t about blame—it’s about clarity, legacy, and the future of sovereign software.

🌅 Beyond the Sunset: Life After Windows 10 and Office 2019

On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will officially end support for Windows 10 and Office 2019. This means no more security updates, bug fixes, or technical support. While the software will still run, users will be exposed to increasing risks and compatibility issues over time.

Microsoft’s recommended path is to upgrade to Windows 11 and subscribe to Microsoft 365—a shift from one-time purchases to ongoing subscriptions. For many, this feels like renting software even after buying the hardware.

🛤️ Microsoft’s Official Options

• Upgrade to Windows 11 (if your hardware supports it)
• Subscribe to Microsoft 365 for Office apps
• Purchase Office 2024 (limited availability, still proprietary)

But what if you want to stay sovereign? What if you want to own your tools, avoid subscriptions, and keep your hardware alive?

🌱 The Open-Source Ecosystem: 100% Coverage and More

Modern Linux distributions like Ubuntu or Linux Mint paired with open-source apps can fully replace daily software needs—and even extend them.

📑 Office Suites

• LibreOffice: Full-featured word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation suite
• OnlyOffice: Sleek UI, great compatibility with Microsoft formats

📊 Diagramming Tools

• draw.io: Browser-based or desktop diagramming tool
• Mermaid: Markdown-based diagramming for flowcharts, Gantt charts, and more

📝 Rich Text & Publishing

• Quarto: Markdown-powered publishing engine for documents, slides, and books
• Markdown: Lightweight markup for notes, blogs, and documentation

🖼️ Image Viewing

• gThumb
• Eye of GNOME
• Nomacs

🎬 Video Playback

• VLC Media Player
• MPV
• Celluloid

🎧 Audio Playback

• Rhythmbox
• Clementine
• Audacious

🌐 Browsers

• Firefox
• Chromium
• Brave

🎨 Adobe Suite Alternatives

• GIMP: Photoshop alternative
• Inkscape: Illustrator alternative
• Scribus: InDesign alternative
• Darktable: Lightroom alternative
• Audacity: Audition alternative
• Kdenlive: Premiere Pro alternative

💻 Coding IDEs

• VS Code (open-source build)
• Geany
• Kate

🔬 Scientific Apps

• JupyterLab
• RStudio
• GNU Octave

🧒 Kids Learning Apps

• GCompris
• Tux Paint
• Scratch

🎮 Gaming on Linux

• 0 A.D.: Historical RTS game
• SuperTuxKart: Fun racing game
• Battle for Wesnoth: Turn-based strategy

Bonus: Steam and GOG both support Linux, with thousands of commercial and indie titles playable via Proton or native builds.

🧭 The Sovereign Path Forward

As proprietary vendors push harder toward subscriptions and cloud lock-in, the open-source ecosystem offers a vibrant, modular alternative. Whether you're a student, a civic architect, a creative, or a casual user—Linux and its app ecosystem can meet your needs with clarity, ownership, and emotional resonance.

What would a post-Excel world look like? Can Gnumeric, LibreOffice Calc, or a new AI-powered spreadsheet engine rise to meet the challenge? The search for a sovereign spreadsheet continues.

My first attempt at solving a Sudoku game

I have solved many Sudoku games on my Android mobile phone's Sudoku apps, but never had I tried to solve one on paper.

My average time to solve a "hard" Sudoku game is around 13 minutes while the fastest was around 9 minutes. But these went to toss when I tried to solve a Sudoku game on paper.

The below is the photo of my attempt:

This took me greater than an hour to complete.

Maybe I need to learn a different strategy.

After Ubuntu, now LibreOffice is dead. Time to resurrect OpenOffice.

Please note: As always, all text in this blog is my personal opinion.

Corporate interests are making community support obsolete in floss projects. After taking hours and hours of community development efforts and thousands of monies from charitable individuals, the greed of the corporate overtakes even Libre projects.

Now the LibreOffice' source code will be taken for a ride. The corporate sponsored coding efforts will not make it to the "Personal/Community" editions and a crippled version of LibreOffice will be given to the community.

With the blessing of the Heavens, the OpenOffice codebase was not merged with LibreOffice. Thank our stars for blessings in disguise. It is now the time to move all community support (code and monies) to the OpenOffice project.

Peppermint OS in problem - Going back to LinuxMint?

For the last couple of years, I have been using the Peppermint OS on mu home notebook. I was even able to use a very cheap game-pad by asking around in the Peppermint OS forums and who helped me in that Forum - the user name 'PCNetSpec', i.e. Mark Greaves - the main person behind the Peppermint OS project.

After his sad demise, the Peppermint OS does not seem to be holding on. The Forum was down, the last time I tried I could not even open the Forum page.

Now, I am also in a fix. Which distro to install when my current setup becomes obsolete? I am looking at LinuxMint, or maybe I will pick up an Independent distro this time? Lets see.

Ubuntu is Dead

Ubuntu is (and soon to become was) the distro that I have been using on/off/then on again for the last 10+ years. I have switched to Peppermint OS in the past couple of years, but that too is based on Ubuntu.

I am a normal user with normal needs and that includes gaming. I am a Steam user and also use Wine to install and play the games that are not directly available for the Linux system. Steam has done a fantastic job of bridging the gaming divide that existed between Windows and Linux. And, recently they have also integrated a version of Wine directly into the Steam app to play Windows only games in Linux. This has helped me and several like me to make a complete switch to Linux.

If you would see the articles on the problems that most normal users used to face when using Linux was the lack of games and some other proprietary software. GOG, and Steam (and others) have finally managed to overcome this gap.

The once great Linux distro, Ubuntu, was the chosen one used by Steam to open up gaming in Linux. Well, now the same Ubuntu wants to destroy gaming on Linux. Why? because Microsoft Loves Linux. Microsoft has adopted Ubuntu in Windows and may be (IMHO) have chided Ubuntu to give them something back. This may be a pure business decision to have a common system for Windows and pure Linux, and that means to loose normal Linux users.

So, the great Ubuntu has now decided to cripple its gaming support and relegate gaming to "containers". For me, this is the end of Ubuntu. Come 2020, I will be switching to a distro that has first class support for GOG and Steam.

What are my options :)
This is the advantage of the Linux ecosystem, we have a lot of options. Currently I can think of MX Linux, Linux Mint Debian Edition, PCLinuxOS, Funtoo Linux, Slackware Linux, Manjaro, deepin, CentOS, and many more.

Free Games from Locomalito.com for Linux

The person behind the Locomalito.com website has self made video games that are sort of remakes and re-imagined takes on classic video games. Some of the games are freeware and some are available on proprietary gaming hardware.

Although most of the games present on the website are for the Windows environment, some are available for Linux too.

At the time of writing this post, the games that are available for free on Linux from the Locomalito website are:

GAURODAN (2013)

Game Info (from the website):

About the Game: Fly around the Canary Islands and destroy cities, armies and colossal creatures in your path through a precision shmup. Controlling Gaurodan requires skill, since its movement is unstoppable and its attack can be oriented to hit ground or air targets.

Links: https://locomalito.com/gaurodan.php || https://locomalito.com/juegos/Gaurodan_linux.zip

MALDITA CASTILLA (2012)

Game Info (from the Website):

About the Game: Maldita Castilla (Cursed/damn Castile) is an action platformer full of actual myths from Spain and some regions of the medieval Europe. The player must run, jump and throw weapons along 6 chapters, divided into sections filled with dangers and bosses. It takes the visual style of 80s arcades, with no more than raw pixel art and a dark palette displayed through a dirty old monitor.

Links: https://locomalito.com/maldita_castilla.php || https://locomalito.com/juegos/Maldita_Castilla_linux.tgz

EFMB (2012)

Game Info (from the Website):

About the Game: EFMB is the remake of the brilliant ZX Spectrum game created by Dave Hughes in 2012. The game includes bizarre mechanics that force players to concentrate and use all their mental power. The remake has new elements and game modes for cooperative and versus plays.

Links: https://locomalito.com/efmb.php || https://locomalito.com/juegos/EFMB_linux.tar.gz

L'ABBAYE DES MORTS (2010)

Game Info (from the Website):

About the Game: Faith will be your only weapon in this platformer styled like a ZX Spectrum game. Black backgrounds, 1 color sprites and 1 bit sounds are a proper fit for a raw story. The lack of details turn on the player's imagination, creating a unique experience for each player.

Links: https://locomalito.com/abbaye_des_morts.php || https://github.com/nevat/abbayedesmorts-gpl