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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Maybe it’s a different culture, or matter of car and people density, but in my country (Norway) most people cycle on the sidewalk. Including kids of course, from the age of 10 they can cycle to school instead of having to walk.

    Many footpaths here are also officially designated “cycling and walking paths”. Generally the only cyclists you see in the road are sports cyclists in racing bicycles and tight skin suits.

    The thinking here is that cyclists and pedestrians are both “soft traffic participants” so they share a space, while “hard traffic participants” like cars, trucks and motorcycles are kept separate.

    Pedestrians do have right of way over cyclists. As the heavier faster party, cyclists have the responsibility to avoid conflict, by giving right of way, and slowing down and/or chiming their bell to signal their presence before passing pedestrians.

    Personally, if I was told that tomorrow I’m only allowed to cycle on the road, I would get rid of my bike. If I’m gonna be on the road full of lorries busses and SUVs going 60kph, I’d rather just be in my car. It’s just not worth the risk and constant peril. This is in a more suburban and industrial/commercial setting, where the sidewalks have gaps to buildings, and pedestrians are far apart.

    I can however see how in a dense, crowded downtown area where the cars mostly drive slow and the sidewalks are dense with people, that cycling in the road makes more sense.

    Thinking about it the only roads with 30kph limit and a sidewalk are in the very center of the city. All other places with 30kph are basically neighbourhoods etc where there are no sidewalks and everybody shares the road. Roads here with a dedicated sidewalk also have higher speed limits that what a casual cyclist can achieve


  • People often rode them on sidewalks posing a danger to people walking.

    I’ve seen this sentiment around, but where else are you supposed to ride eScoooters and bicycles? Of course ideally they belong in the bike lane, but most places don’t have bike lines, so the alternatives are sidewalks or in the road with cars.

    If we’re gonna get people out of cars, we need to recognize that walking+transit doesn’t work for everyone a lot of people and that a bicycle/ eScooter is the solution (look at Amsterdam/ Copenhagen how well bicycles work) , but bike lanes don’t get built overnight, especially when few people cycle, if their banished from the safe sidewalk and only allowed to cycle in the dangerous road.

    (I’ve lumped bikes and eScooters together since they both solve the same problem of rapid personal transport, both having speeds of 20-30 kph which is significantly more than pedestrians but less than cars)






  • That’s very strange, which distro and GPU was this? So I don’t recommend that to anyone?

    I’m assuming the GPU in question was Nvidia, since AMD and Intel make their driver opensource and baked in to the kernel. Sadly nVidias latest kernel (535) has been troublesome, so I’m still on the previous 525. nVidia is about to release 545, which looks to be very promising.

    Luckily on Ubuntu changing driver is as easy as opening the Additional Drivers application, selecting the driver version, hit apply and reboot. PopOS, Bazzite, and a few others comes with Nvidia drivers preinstalled.

    Best of luck if you try again in the future




  • In addition to everything else said here, what has crystallized over the last year is how good it feels that Linux and other open source initiatives are Enshitification-proof

    This I believe is a big part of what give the warm and fuzzy feeling when using open source software and website. Generally everyone involved wants to make something good, without looking towards IPOs or the next quarterly revenue at the cost of the software

    (Sure controversies happen, but they are generally few and far between, and open source licensing ensure forking is a viable last resort, like with LibreOffice and Nextcloud)