iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 24/06/2026

As the maintainer of Plank Reloaded, the most common bug report I get is "this app has the wrong icon." It's almost never the dock - it's a broken StartupWMClass. thoughts.greyh.at/posts/startu...

thoughts.greyh.at

Demystifying StartupWMClass

Eventually, every Linux user opens an app and finds a generic placeholder icon staring back from their dock/panel. It looks like the dock is broken, but it almost never is - the cause is a single line...

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 14/04/2026

Checking out Brave Origin, and so far it is exactly what I expected. No AI features, no ads, and it still has all the features I love from Brave. Users being their source of revenue makes so much sense. A huge thanks to the Brave team for making this free for Linux.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 24/03/2026

Age verification, and age identification are the same thing. All these laws do is make it easier to identify children. Data breaches will magnify this problem, and the dark net will now trade information about your children. None of this is good. None of this protects children.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 26/01/2026

Plank Reloaded 0.11.160: Optimized rendering by eliminating unnecessary surface copies, fixed crashes during package installs, and cleaned up a ton of legacy code. 🚀 github.com/zquestz/plan...

github.com

Release 0.11.160 · zquestz/plank-reloaded

Fix CPUMonitorDocklet thread-safety by marshalling UI updates to main thread Fix ApplicationsDocklet crashes during package installation/removal with re-entrancy guard Optimize DockRenderer to avoi...

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 24/10/2025

Friends don't let friends use GNOME. Love the section where the author says it was fixed 12 years ago, just use Cinnamon. Or use KDE, it has gotten a lot better over the years. woltman.com/gnome-bad/

woltman.com

I Don't Care for Gnome - woltman.com

An exploration of Gnome's many failings and how to fix it.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 23/10/2025

Just added Kvantum themes to Celestial to make sure Qt apps look fantastic. github.com/zquestz/cele... Also put together a few wallpapers.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/10/2025

There are lots of people in this world that want to cut other people down. I am interested in a better world where we work together in community and keep an open mind. It is time to get back to the basics.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/10/2025

I think you use that term far too lightly, and are using it for some kind of odd social clout. I find it disgusting.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/10/2025

People can use whatever technology is useful for them. I have used Rails for decades, that does not mean I agree with his views. To be honest the people I see as negative and vindictive are the ones attacking Omarchy and doing their best to attack anyone that considers the technology interesting.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/10/2025

I was referring to the price of Framework hardware. Just to be clear.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/10/2025

Omarchy breathes new life into lots of old Mac hardware and aligns super well with sustainability and that mindset. The price is absolutely worth it and I am glad they are supporting as many open source projects as they are. They have given back in a huge way and people seem to forget that

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 19/10/2025

It is an endorsement of the technology not his politics. I have yet to see any politics go into the Omarchy product or marketing. They are completely different things. People and companies, in this case Framework, should not have to appease a crowd making mountains out of molehills.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 19/10/2025

They shouldn't have to say that at all. They were just talking about a popular new open source project, and trying to support cool new tech. At no time did they try to endorse the ideologies of the creators.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 19/10/2025

This makes a lot of sense.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 19/10/2025

Seems like an unpopular opinion here, but I am a fan of @frame.work and the work they have been doing in the space. They have excellent, repairable, upgradable hardware, and are trying to support open source in every way imaginable. Some people want to create political controversies from nothing.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 19/10/2025

They make great laptops. All they did was try to donate to open source projects. Don't give into the mob trying to lynch them for nothing.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 19/09/2025

Decided to write another GIMP Plugin. Dream Background Remover leverages the Replicate AI model 851-labs/background-remover to easily remove image backgrounds. github.com/zquestz/drea...

github.com

GitHub - zquestz/dream-background-remover: A GIMP plugin to remove image backgrounds

A GIMP plugin to remove image backgrounds. Contribute to zquestz/dream-background-remover development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 24/07/2025

Just launched my first game, Perfect Shot, on Farcaster. Its a space-themed, roguelike arcade shooter where you pilot a ship through procedurally generated space environments. Every run is different. Every shot counts. farcaster.xyz/quest/0x0fab...

farcaster.xyz

Farcaster

A decentralized social network

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 11/06/2025

Apple's new Liquid Glass UI is terrible. Not only is it ugly, but also a usability nightmare. Then on top of that they destroyed the beautiful Finder icon we all loved. It truly is a sad day. Apple designs used to be so solid, what happened?

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 30/05/2025

Had a lot of fun working on Perfect Shot, can't wait for it to finally be released to the public!

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

Been working on improving the Matcha GTK theme. They did some great work, and it has been fun tweaking it. Even extended the Plank theme to support the new theming options in Plank Reloaded. github.com/zquestz/Matc...

github.com

GitHub - zquestz/Matcha-gtk-theme: Matcha is a flat Design theme for GTK 3, GTK 2 and Gnome-Shell

Matcha is a flat Design theme for GTK 3, GTK 2 and Gnome-Shell - zquestz/Matcha-gtk-theme

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

Depends on the scope. I would argue adding more style options is dramatically simpler than offering programming features inside of CSS. Humans always want to extend their creations. So stopping new standards is not feasible. Trying to limit the scope of tools I believe is.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

Depends on who you are. I doubt the simplicity is there for devs writing renderers. For normal developers, they now will have to hunt for hidden logic within CSS, where before it was easier to grep/sift for what they were looking for. I don't argue its neat, but there are infinite neat features...

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

But like I said, I am in the minority. People want a bigger, more complex set of web tools. This is obvious by the explosion of JavaScript frameworks and protocol expansion. After building on the web for 30 years, I really wish it had developed differently.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

Sass/SCSS didn't require everyone developing a browser to support them... in fact NO browsers supported them because they transpiled into regular CSS. This kept the burden of complexity within the app that required it, not the entire web ecosystem.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

The ongoing support cost of feature creep is something most people don't think about. Adding more features comes at a cost, even if it seems cool to devs at the time. Every developers cognitive load goes up, complexity goes up, rendering becomes more complex. Simplicity is a blessing.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

Every feature that gets added to the specification needs to be implemented by anyone writing a new rendering engine. Plus these features will be used in many open source projects, so avoiding them later is not an option. We will need to deal with them in projects "forever". It is not opt-in.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 28/05/2025

I am probably in the minority here, but I still think keeping CSS simpler is the correct approach. It wasn't supposed to offer programming features... this was by design. Now we have yet another place to worry about rendering logic, rather than just style information.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 24/05/2025

It is not what it once was, that is for sure.

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Reposted by Josh Ellithorpe

Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert · 19/05/2025

Three Trail of Bits engineers audited core Go cryptography for a month and found only one low-sev security issue... in unsupported Go+BoringCrypto! 🍾 Years of efforts on testing, limiting complexity, safe APIs, and readability have paid off! ✨ Yes I am taking a victory lap. No I am not sorry. 🏆

go.dev

Go Cryptography Security Audit

Go's cryptography libraries underwent an audit by Trail of Bits. Read more about the scope and results.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 13/05/2025

I would love to be in the official repos, just not sure how to get there. FreeBSD already added us to FreshPorts, but other distros haven't added it yet. Snap isn't a good option, because it requires some dependencies that don't really support Snap/Flatpak, for example running bamfdaemon.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 13/05/2025

You can add the official PPA by following the directions in the README. github.com/zquestz/plan... The source code is at: github.com/zquestz/ppa

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 13/05/2025

There is an official ppa in the repo. I am not sure who did that launchpad but it isn't current.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 13/05/2025

For people that use Plank, they should check out Plank Reloaded. It works significantly better for MATE users. github.com/zquestz/plan...

github.com

GitHub - zquestz/plank-reloaded: Still stupidly simple.

Still stupidly simple. Contribute to zquestz/plank-reloaded development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 25/03/2025

Plank Reloaded 0.11.113 has arrived! The simplest, lightest dock for Linux now enhances all X11 desktops (Cinnamon, Xfce, MATE, & beyond) with improved stability & style. Download it at: github.com/zquestz/plan... #Linux #OpenSource #X11

github.com

GitHub - zquestz/plank-reloaded: Still stupidly simple.

Still stupidly simple. Contribute to zquestz/plank-reloaded development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 05/03/2025

Plank Reloaded now has a crowdin translation project! If you want to help us make the best Linux dock out there, we are looking for translators! crowdin.com/project/plan... A huge thanks to Marcos Sánchez and Minho Park for the Spanish and Korean translations!

crowdin.com

plank-reloaded — Translation Project on Crowdin

Help us translate plank-reloaded and bring it to the world!

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/01/2025

A bit more detail about the project can be found on my blog. thoughts.greyh.at/posts/plank-...

thoughts.greyh.at

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/01/2025

Exactly why I updated it. The base panels just aren't good enough. A dock is a requirement IMHO.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/01/2025

Yep just for X11, there is some refactoring required to get it working on Wayland.

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Josh Ellithorpe @greyh.at · 20/01/2025

Absolutely just haven't built one before. I need to do a bit more research.

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