.7z seems to be good and I do recommend it to people saying that it’s better than regular zip. Have recently started using opus n webm files more.
I’ve also heard about jxl recently. Would be very nice to see it become popular, as it could reduce the size of my memes n screenshots folders. Faster webpage loading too.
Are there any other file formats that’ll be useful to people, but isn’t getting enough attention?
In the case of apps, Trebleshot seems to be good for android file sharing. I like it’s web sharing option having an upload form. Helps me where I don’t have to ask others to install an app to send me a file locally. Not sure about it’s encryption n security aspects, but I only have used it for local file sharing.
And what about other stuff similar to that, other than file formats or apps?
Recently have started exercising my neck. Not neck bridges and loaded things tho. Only safe n simple movements. Seems to be good, especially after using a monitor for some time. I think it’s not much talked about, maybe because of the fear that people will overdo it?
The .opus audio format. People need to stop ripping everything to MP3, it’s inefficient and a flawed compression format. Opus is better than it and AAC.
Good luck with JXL. It won’t take off on the web because Google killed it as I recall. But it might be nice for your local collection. 👍
They can still change idea. Also because Apple and Mozilla have already added support in their browsers, Microsoft is adding it to Windows soon… There is still hope.
It’s available as a technical preview in Safari, and Mozilla in nightly builds only, according to what I could find. Support in Chrome/-ium was removed December 2022 with no news of any change as far as I could see, so Chromium-based browsers won’t have support, from what I understand. You could use an extension for Chrome to add support, but, as a content provider/site owner, you can’t rely on users and visitors installing that to view your site properly, of course.
I’m not telling you to lose hope. I still have hope too. But don’t invest time and effort into JXL if you want to serve images online. Not until promises of widespread support from all major parties. At least not on the web. If you plan on sending files to people, then sure.
All the best to you!
Kind of a moot point these days, but I always wished OGG pushed MP3s out of the way. It generally has better audio quality, lower file size, and is an open source format. MP3s had their patent die (I think) and file storage has become less of an issue, but damnit OGG was perfect for the 00s. My plex server is still full of OGGs (I can’t hear the difference with uncompressed, but my hearing is bad).
Isn’t opus getting popular nowadays, because it’s used by youtube?
Open source file formats in general. I’ve personally known friends who have lost access to their old works because it was using some proprietary file format that only one abandoned proprietary software they don’t have access to anymore can read.
Indeed. Any specific file formats that you would recommend?
If the list would be too long, maybe only the ones that are commonly overlooked?
Oh that brings back memories. I used to burn all my HDD backups onto CDs using PAR2 to prevent degredation.
I’m still generating par files to accompany my static backups. It’s not a bad bit of extra insurance.
Markdown (.md) could and should be used for simple, somewhat structured text files. It’s easy enough to learn, and WYSIWYG editors are abundant as well.
I made a little markdown users community if anyone wants to talk markdown. Not much there at the moment!
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !markdown@lemmy.ml
Sorry Mr robot.
I learnt so much about markdown from using Obsidian and I must say for fairly straight forward note taking its amazing, I even love the idea of how images are included into a document. It really does make me question why we believe we need all the extra BS that’s comes in MS word.
Windows PowerToys :)
Mouse without borders is better than every physical kvm I’ve ever used, it’s magic.
compact.exe, it’s a built-in tool in windows for compressing executables. there’s an open source GUI too, very useful for compressing games and the compression is “transparent” so you can still play the games after compressing. there’s more info on the page I linked
Have not heard about it before. Very cool.
Is it like Opensuse’s btrfs?
Thank you.I don’t really know the details but afaik it uses new algorithms introduced in windows 10 and there is virtually no overhead.
I just think Microsoft Word is actively making the entire world less efficient. It’s not made to produce documents that are easy to read. Don’t have an obvious contender though. LibreOffice Writer just tries to be the same shitty product but free, LaTeX is way too technical and has horrible error handling. Markdown usability and quality breaks down if you make any serious use of tables and figures.
Since I’m not a US citizen I also think it’s a threat to our country that our entire administration and every company is dependent on storing documents in an effectively proprietary format controlled by a US company, on cloud servers controlled by a US company. If compelled by the US government, Microsoft could put all of EU to a halt with the flick of a switch. National security calls for formats as central as this to be open standards supported by multiple competing products.
Markdown accomplishes 90% of non technical writing needs imo.
I keep taking about wanting to use markdown files for contacts and policies at work, stored in reports repos for change tracking. The problem is always “the legal team isn’t going to use Git”. What I’d love to see is a front end for Git that allows direct markdown editing and emulates the Track Changes feature in Word.
What about hedgedoc?
That looks interesting, thanks! I’ll check it out too see if it might be suitable.
i agree. and for the rest, roff and latex do great
Couldn’t agree more. Tried OnlyOffice? Lovely suite . Markdown is amazing, I am writing a web book & PDF version with the same source. Did LaTeX, but it was just so cumbersome.
Onlyoffice works with microsoft ooxml standards by default, in other words, promoting them and encouraging its use. OOXML is everything but efficient. OpenDocument, instead, which is used by LibreOffice by default, is the open and efficient standard.
Give LyX a try. It’s like writing TeX in a much more friendly way.
Sorry, I can see from the first screenshot on their web site that OnlyOffice is not conducive to legibility. A user interface that promotes direct control of the typeface (instead of styling rules based on semantic tags) is going to produce inconsistent documents.
User interfaces should be designed to make it easy to do things right, and difficult to do things wrong. This UI encourages people to produce crap.
Their other screenshots further show that they do not care about things like appropriate margin size or inter-word spacing, leaving me with little trust in the product.
Agreed. This UI is very much inherited from ancient word processing applications. The shift that Microsoft made in the Vista era to the tabbed menu buttons only added extra mouse clicks to get to the same set of functions. Word and LibreOffice both allow you to do the kind of thing you’re talking about, but those features are nestled way down into menus and trays that are ugly and hard to use and promote the use of the wrong tool since the wrong tool is made more accessible.
Kind of the opposite of what you’re asking for, but I hate pdf and wish it would go away. It’s an awful file type to have to work with
What format would you recommend instead?
As far as I’m concerned, rtf docs can accomplish everything pdf’s set out to do. I don’t see why basic documents need to be rendered in vectors
Plain text. It’s the most readable of files. It’s the only thing I use for true record keeping.
Markdown 😙👌
.txt is an amazing format that can be opened by an enormous number of file readers and editors. It’s cross-platform and cross-decades.
Next time you’re distributing something in .docx, consider including a txt file so that people can read it next month too!
Csv is pretty good as well.
Yeah,if,like,you really,like,commas
.tar.zst
People should stop using .tar.gz or .zip
They both are not horribly bad, but .tar.zst is just the best option we have, as zstandard is pareto optimal
https://insanity.industries/post/pareto-optimal-compression/
Linux
I use arch btw
GrapheneOS
GrapheneOS is the best android custom ROM by far. It is more secure, it gets updated very often and security patches land on my phone faster than I hear about them. It is way more performant than the default ROM that ships with Pixel Phones, my battery lasts for days if I don’t use the phone.
At first I was very sceptical, as I want to be sure I can rely on my phone. But it is super stable, way better than the Samsung ROM I had before.
zst
Been hearing about this. Peazip seems to support it.
Is zstd better than lzma in compressed size or is the optimality weighing in both compression time and compressed size?
Will try it out. Thank youArch Linux
Opensuse Leap, because I have a nvidia laptop. Thinking about switching to Pop OS, as ubuntu gets more packages and simple online tutorials on them.
Graphene OS
I’m on a random Chinese android. It’s cheap and decent, but I don’t know if it would handle flashing a new rom. Graphene aims at support for Pixel, right?
At its highest compression setting (
zstd -T0 -19 --long), it’s about the same as lzma in compression ratio (varies a bit from file to file though), but slightly faster to compress, and much much faster to decompress. Decompression speed is not significantly affected by the compression setting (though compression speed is) and is usually at least a few hundred MiB/s to 1G+Yes GrapheneOS only supports pixel devices, as these are the only phones that have a high enough security standard.
I have Arch with an Nvidia card. Granted not a laptop but, it works. Even with Wayland (Hyprland).
Is it easy/non-cumbersome to install and maintain?
Have never tried arch.It’s as easy as you make it, honestly. If you have patience to read the wiki before trying different things then it’s for you, especially if you want a lean, clean system with only the stuff you choose and want in it, and the latest versions of those things.
You can install GNOME or KDE and be done forever, or you could be like me, continuously tweaking my custom UI written in eww widgets, constantly optimizing my scripts, my key bindings… Experimenting with different window managers…
I make it neverending because I choose to, not because it’s Arch.
I hope you join the family some day. We’re enjoying ourselves.
Isn’t Arch a rolling release model? Would not be there be issues in maintenance?
The Arch wiki is very cool. It’s useful for learning about things and troubleshooting.
The Arch wiki is my god. ❤️
And yes, it’s a rolling release model. I’ve not had issues with maintenance. I just install updates and go on with life. Sometimes the news page will have some notes about manual intervention that needs to happen but they are few and far between. Sometimes things that don’t even apply to me due to not having the packages installed that have breaking changes.
I have two small kids and a full time job, I don’t stress over maintenance one bit. I use it at work and at home, for leisure and gaming, as well as work from home and productivity, streaming, what have you. Just a normal OS, the only difference is the installation procedure, mostly. Now there’s even a script that installs it for you, if your setup isn’t too complicated.
Aah. Will try it out(probably on a VM first, or when I distrohop)
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GrapheneOS is still just for pixel phones right?
Yup. Apparently it has done security features they are not willing to go without by supporting other phones
Yes phones need to have at least these requirements to fullfill GrapheneOS standards:
Why doesn’t anyone specify that Graphene OS can only be installed on Pixel?
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I think if someone made a highly efficient cryptocurrency that was pegged to a specific value and the owners of said crypto kept their hands out of the cookie jar, then it’d potentially be very useful.
I used to be very, very anti-crypto, but with banks and companies like MasterCard and Visa banning websites from being able to host NSFW content, I’ve started to shift towards “maybe crypto is good for some things”. It sucks, I don’t like crypto, I think it’s generally extremely inefficient. However, if someone could come up with a cryptocurrency that was relatively secure, power efficient, had a stable value and had a morally stable team behind it, then I’d be tempted to support it.
The problem that payment processors have with NSFW content is the chargeback rate. Purchases in that category have a disproportionately high rate of people going to their card provider to get charges reversed.
The only reason crypto solves this is because charge reversals are basically impossible.
Why don’t they just disallow chargebacks for NSFW content then?
AV1 for video. Just running my video files through it gets the same quality at 1/10th the size. Thought I was having a stroke.
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Cool. How much time does it take for encoding?
Which container do you generally prefer? mp4 or webm? Is there any remarkable benefit in choosing one over the other?It depends if you have modern enough hardware to contain an AV1 hardware encoder (pretty much just current enthusiast stuff).
AV1 typically ends up in an MKV or WebM container (btw WebM is just a kind of MKV with less features intended for web use).
1/10??? I need to look into this ASAP!
Ratios that extreme would probably only be seen in cases where the source video was really poorly compressed anyway, which is what the commenter probably experienced. I’ve had that happen before too. Expect more like half the size compared to H264, which is still pretty good
Some examples of poor compression: cameras, dashcams, security cameras, basically anything that just dumps an image into a stream.
