LeFantome

@LeFantome@programming.dev

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LeFantome, (edited )

Stupidest and most immature person on the Internet talks shit about how dumb and infantile people are. Stunning.

LeFantome,

Since you seem like a much more reasonable human…

For many kinds of content, I also prefer text over video for exactly the reason you say—it takes less time to read. In particular, if a company can choose a medium, I wish they close text more often. So, there is a kernel of a reasonable point here.

All that said…

Beyond just the totally unacceptable tone, even the reasonable part of the comment is misplaced here.

This is not a company, it is a single guy. Projecting onto his videos your thoughts on the motivations of the “marketing” dept seems a bit silly.

Most importantly, this guy is a YouTube content creator. His job is to create videos for YouTube. People ( regular people ) ask him to do that. Insulting a YouTube content creator for creating content on YouTube is….well…I do not not want to start the name calling but let’s just say the insults hurled above apply more to the person making those comments than they do to the guy who made this video.

As for the bigger picture, there is room in the world for both text and video. Have you ever watched television? Do you constantly rant that everything on TV should have been a book or an article? What was more popular: Game of Thrones or a Song of Ice and Fire?

Despite your preference, video has more reach. This has been true since there has been video.

There is a lot of demand for YouTube videos. There is enough that regular people are able to make a small business for themselves out of creating YouTube content. That is what is happening here. Telling somebody to stop creating content that their fans enjoy and that funds the life that they want is pretty hostile and not very smart.

YouTube is entertainment. This is not content you have to consume. It is not about efficiency. It is not content that would have been produced some other way. If you do not like it, don’t consume it. Please though, do not waste everybody’s time complaining that it exists.

LeFantome,

Again, you seem reasonable.

I do think an option to suppress video content would be useful for people that really do not want to encounter it.

That said, this was not shared by the original content creator. This is not an advertisement. This is a Lemmy user sharing what they found to be interesting content with the rest of us. I really cannot be bothered by that.

I look to Lemmy to curate good content and let me know that it exists. How much time I have to dedicate to it is on my end. There are plenty of articles that I open and decide I do not have time for as well. Sometimes, I get value just from the comments.

If somebody else watches the video and leaves a useful comment about it, or starts an interesting discussion, that can be valuable and that can be read. So, I am not sure that getting rid of all video content would be a net positive for me even I never watch them.

At the very least, the comments here can be a gauge of what video content is most worth watching.

LeFantome,

We save so much productivity finding better distros that we have 50% more time to distro hop. /s

LeFantome,

It matters a lot if it is Apple silicon or Intel. If Apple, you want Asahi Linux for sure.

On Intel, you have a tonne of options. Pick the desktop environment you like and pick the distro after that. GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon are your realistic DE choices.

COSMIC is looking really great but it is not quite ready.

I would personally stay away from both Ubuntu and Manjaro but most other choices are fine based on your preferences. Linux Mint is probably the best choice if you like Cinnamon.

I like EndeavourOS myself.

LeFantome,

It seems a fairly explicit goal of systemd to redefine Linux as a unified platform rather than as a kernel that can run any one of many implementations of many different services. I assume this is not just the systemd lead but also a goal of Red Hat.

Personally, while I am ok with systemd defining itself as a single source for all this functionality, I hate that they are taking away ( or making it hard at least ) to have independent implementations of these services.

What Chinera is doing with dinit and turnstile is really interesting. It would be nice to have feature comparable approaches to the systemd monolith that distributions could choose from.

LeFantome,

I mostly agree with your write-up here. That said, I do think that systemd does want to eliminate SUID. I also think they want to absorb most of the low level system plumbing.

LeFantome,

Their new COSMIC desktop is generating a tonne of buzz. It may spill over to the distro in general.

I am not a PopOS user but, watching the evolution of COSMIC, System76 seems very user focussed and makes sensible decisions. That bodes well for the overall OS.

LeFantome,

I cannot answer your question obviously but there are several “primary” distros.

Debian, Fedora, Arch, Void, Alpine, Chimera, RHEL, SUSE, Gentoo, and others are all built from scratch. You do not have to use SystemV. The closest to that is probably Slackware I guess.

PopOS is based on Ubuntu which is itself based on Debian.

I just finished setting up Linux Mint for an old buddy of mine on his old dog of a laptop, rendering it useful once again! (i.imgur.com)

Edit 2: to everyone suggesting an SDD: i know. Look, if this guy had enough $$$ for an SSD, he could buy a used lappy less than half the age of this one that has an ssd and 2-3x the memory....

LeFantome, (edited )

Definitely bias against XFCE.

EndeavourOS switched their default desktop from XFCE to KDE and I think it looks worse. They switched for toolkit reasons, not UX. The XFCE desktop look is heavily themed, very modern, and I think quite beautiful ( though a little purple for some tastes ).

I have another XFCE box that is practically pixel for pixel themed to look like Windows XP. This is just novelty value of course. Even if you do not like XP, it is hard to argue that it was a UI that normal people hated.

I agree that the “default” XFCE look is not great.

Here is the EOS XFCE desktop: github.com/…/endeavouros-xfce4-theming

Here are a few more themes including clones of both macOS and Windows 10: itsfoss.com/best-xfce-themes/

LeFantome,

As a die-hard Linux user, I understand that most of their devs probably used Macs. Sadly, they are likely not an outlier which means many ( most ) of their target customers are Mac users too.

Overall, I applaud their focus and platform native approach. Let’s hope we get a decent Linux editor out of it at some point.

LeFantome,

Well, given the current state of the Open Source driver, I think it is a bad idea.

Although, I guess if you can tolerate closed source….

www.paragon-software.com/business/apfs-linux/

LeFantome, (edited )

Most .NET development is arguably superior on Linux than on Windows. I would certainly say this for console, web or cloud, especially if you are using containers. Mobile dev is a bit more of a mixed bag. Obviously if you are building desktop Windows apps explicitly then that is better on Windows. However, if you are building cross-platform .NET apps ( eg. Avalonia or Uno ), you are back to Linux being better.

If you like a full IDE like Visual Studio then you want Rider on Linux ( which is better than VS even on Windows IMHO ). If you are a Visual Studio Code person, you can use that on Linux natively. Of course, if you are a neovim or Emacs user, we are back to Linux being better.

Many distros ship .NET in their repos these days. One issue with that is that you may want to update .NET more often than your distro does. While you can do that, I think it is best not to do that. For this reason, I think choosing a distro that stays up-to-date is best for .NET dev. My recommendation would be an Arch derivative like EndeavourOS. EOS includes .NET in the repos and provides very timely updates.

LeFantome,

Does that stop the ads in the Windows UI? I would not have thought so.

LeFantome,

Microsoft Edge works great on Linux. It is my second browser after Firefox.

LeFantome,

I will not debate your thoughts on Arch though I personally have more problems on other distros. What I will say is that the EndeavourOS forums are pretty friendly. EOS is Arch for non-elitists.

LeFantome,

I agree with most of what you are saying though.

One point though, many people think that the reason for an increase in morning accidents after the clock jumps back is due to people the night before having an extra hour to drink ( alcohol ).

LeFantome,

I really applaud that Alma rose above all the Red Hat drama and that they now have a true community distribution. Instead of creating a bunch of dishonest noise, they improved their project. Bravo.

They still state that they are binary compatible with RHEL. They still say they target exactly the same behaviour as RHEL and that any deviation will be considered a bug. They are proving you do not have to be a parasite to be a competitor or even a drop-in replacement. Again, bravo.

They also have the freedom now to fix their own bugs if they choose. I would certainly trust their expertise over somebody that only knows how to compile SRPMS.

I really hope that “the community” sees the differentiation Alma now offers from something like Rocky and that Alma will be rewarded with commercial success. They deserve it.

LeFantome,

Well, there is actually. You just have to be knowledgable enough to use it. What I am unclear on is why so many die hard “no non-free firmware” advocates have hardware that requires non-free firmware.

I am assuming the problem is that people have hardware that will cause non-free firmware to be downloaded and installed against their wishes. Because, if they do not own such hardware, no non-free firmware will be installed and therefore I do not see a problem. Unless of course what bothers people is that others are able to easily install a working system. I would not want to accuse anybody of such bad behaviour.

Insisting on worse experiences on others to further your own politics is not politics I personally support.

You know what probably pisses other people off? Finally deciding to install Debian and then finding that it does not run on their hardware.

LeFantome,

Not sure why the downvotes. The good news is that we should be very close to the end of that with GIMP 3 out very soon.

Earlier in the year they announced that it was expected in July or so. I hold out hope that they at least get it out this year. Once it is out, all will be forgieven. Let’s hope that we do not see as long of a delay next time.

LeFantome,

There is also Ladybird :

ladybird.dev

Ladybird is the only browser engine not financially dependent on Google.

It is early days but already becoming usable. I use it to browse sites like OSnews, Hacker News, and LWN.net and it already works pretty well for those.

LeFantome,

Regardless of your thoughts on capitalism, supply and demand works. The issue is that both supply and demand are high but there is a disagreement on pricing. So, transactions decrease until both sides accept what the demand curve looks like. There is high demand but only at lower prices. There is high supply but ( for the moment ) only at higher prices. Real estate is not like a factory. Sellers do not HAVE to sell, at least not at first. It is a game of chicken.

What we need to worry about is that supply and demand works. Builders are responding to the situation by cutting supply ( building less ).

So, we will probably see the price start to fall at some point. We may not get to enjoy it long though if demand continues ( likely ) and supply is being reduced ( reported ). Low building starts and high immigration means higher prices.

TL:DR - expect a short term pricing stalemate, medium term price drops, and long term price escalation.

LeFantome,

System76, makers of Pop!_OS, are making an entirely new desktop environment called COSMIC. The new DE will come with a number of its own apps to replace the GNOME ones, including the App Store.

The new App Store just got an update which apparently addresses your speed concern: blog.system76.com/post/your-monthly-cosmic-fix

LeFantome, (edited )

How is keeping Arch up-to-date hard? Because there are a lot of updates?

I found Arch to be easier to maintain than any other distro I use. Everything is managed by the package manager ( no snaps, no flatpaks, no PPAs ). Updates are frequent but small and manageable. There are really no update “events” to navigate. And everything is current enough that I never find myself working around missing features or incompatibilities. I found it to “just work”.

I am not sure how your first point relates to SElinux. SELinux is part of the Red Hat ecosystem which is why Fedora uses it. It is not new ( SElinux may pre-date Arch Linux ). Whether you have it installed or not has nothing to do with how hard the system is to maintain. Default Debian installs do not use it either. Most Linux distros don’t. Ubuntu and SUSE use AppArmor instead.

I do not use SElinux on desktop but it makes sense for a server. The Arch kernel includes SElinux support so all you have to do is install the package if you want it. Generally, Arch gives you a newer version than Fedora does.

LeFantome,

I think they have done something wrong but what is going on with this logic?

This is like saying that you are going to drown somebody to see if they are a witch, burning them if they survive, and telling them “if you’ve done nothing wrong, then nothing bad should happen to you”. If they have done nothing wrong, you are still going to murder them. Seems bad.

How is starving their business and trashing their reputation not “bad” for Loblaws regardless of how deserving they are? Again, I think they probably deserve it but the confusion of ideas in this comment makes my head spin.

LeFantome,

Because that model has never sustainably resulted in lower prices and higher quality anywhere in the world?

LeFantome,

The linked article does nothing to characterize the “myth” you imply.

The article simply states that corporations have to represent the “best interests” of shareholders, that “shareholder value” is a common proxy, and that “value” can be many things because different shareholders have different values.

So, shareholders can tell companies to have a different mandate. Sure. That does not eliminate the default which is that the mandate is to make money. About the only default caveat is that it needs to be “sustainable” value which gives management flexibility to act with a longer term view when thinking about brand, reputation, supply-chain stability, employee relations, regulatory risks, legal risks, the environment, and other things that may not directly make money or even cost money in the short term.

All that said, if a company decides ( without direction from shareholders ) to reduce profits voluntarily, they should expect shareholder action in the form of non-confidence ( getting voted out of management ) or even legal action.

If shareholders have not communicated other “best interests”, their best interest is maximizing the value of the shares. That is almost always going to translate to maximizing profit.

I am not taking a moral position or preference on any of the above. Let’s just not be dishonest by suggesting that management obligations to maximize shareholder value is a “myth”. It is not.

LeFantome,

You were on your way to reinventing Gentoo

LeFantome,

I am pretty sure I compiled the kernel once a month back when I had a Pentium 133. Looking back, compiling the kernel must have been a huge chunk of what that machine accomplished.

LeFantome,

I have never done Linux From Scratch but I have been using Linux long enough that I remember that is how things were. Compiling the kernel was pretty routine. Getting XFree86 up and running could be true black magic though. You were literally controlling how the electron beam moved across the screen.

One of my systems is running Red Hat 5.2 ( not RHEL - the pre-Fedora Red Hat ). I think it has GCC 2.7.2 on it.

For some reason, I want to get a recent kernel and X11 running on the Red Hat 5.2 box. It would be cool to get Distrobox running on it while leaving everything else vintage. I had been thinking that LFS might be the right resource to consult. This article will hopefully kick me into gear.

LeFantome,

I have been playing around a bit with both Antix and Damn Small Linux 2 that is based on it. I have been quite impressed.

First, it is really just Debian curated to be light-weight. You have full access to all the Debian repositories.

The 32 bit versions also work great. I booted to a fully working desktop on a 32 bit system and only 84 MB of RAM was being used. On top of that I ran Firefox, LibreOffice, Scribis, GIMP, and I think other things and was still around 900 MB. It would be amazing on ancient hardware.

LeFantome,

Haiku is getting pretty nice actually. With the Falkon browser, it may be getting pretty close to daily drivable for a lot of people.

I agree that it is a cool little system. I think the 32 bit version is still compatible with BeOS though I have not tried that in a while.

Hardware support is a bigger impediment than functionality at this point.

LeFantome,

I have defended Red Hat a fair bit over the past year. Their level of contribution to the community is a big reason why.

It is clear though that their prominence comes with a downside in the paternal and authoritative way that their employees present themselves. Design choices and priorities are made with an emphasis on what works for and what is required for Red Hat and the software they are going to ship. The impact on the wider community is not always considered and too often actively dismissed.

Even some of the Linux centrism perceived in Open Source may really be more about Red Hat. For example, GNOME insists on Systemd. Both projects are dominated by Red Hat. There have been problems with their stewardship of other projects.

To me, this is a much bigger problem than all the license hand-waving we saw before.

LeFantome,

Implementing old standards does not magically result in unstable software. I can create software today that implements decades old standards using whatever whiz-bang tech is in vogue.

I do lot accept that “old bases” have to succumb to any of the things you suggest either. Refactoring is a thing. You can remove dead code, you can adopt new patterns, you make code modular, you can even extend using new tech if you want.

Linux is 30 years old ( the basic design is decades older ). Should we throw it out? I vote no but allowing Rust into the kernel seems like a good idea. How old is GCC? How old is Microsoft Office? How old is Firefox? This is software you may use every day. Trust me, your life relies on software that is much, much older. How often do you think they rewrite air traffic control systems or core financial software to to make it more “stable” as you suggest?

I mostly hear your argument when devs want to try new tech and cannot justify it any other way. Most often the result is something that is far buggier and missing many features. By the time the features return, the new code is at least as bloated as the original. Around then, somebody usually suggests a total rewrite.

Old architectures are a different story. Sometimes things are not worth fixing in place. In my experience though, this is fairly rare. Even then, in-place migration to something else often makes more sense.

In my view, if you cannot modernize an old code base, it is a skills issue.

LeFantome,

I imagine most readers will assume that response indicates that you have no argument.

That is totally fine. I doubt anybody wants to fight. I am glad we were able establish the value you had to add.

LeFantome,

Linus Torvalds is author and maintainer of one of the most successful pieces of software ever written ( software that is decades old and still growing in popularity ).

What does Linus says about your philosophy that “Sometimes you do need major changes that break stuff to upgrade the base”? I think his first sentence explains where he stands but he expands on his initial point.

lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

LeFantome,

You could argue that Cinnamon is not really a “fork” per se. It is more of an alternative interpretation.

MATE is a true fork. When GNOME abandoned GNOME 2 for GNOME3 3, MATE picked up the GNOME 2 code and continued.

Cinnamon took GNOME 3 and built a different desktop experience on top of it. Specifically, they rejected the controversial GNOME Shell to present a more traditional desktop. The earliest attempts at Cinnamon tried to provide a traditional desktop in GNOME Shell itself. By the time Cinnamon 2 came out, GNOME Shell was completely gone.

Cinnamon also provides X-apps which is a suite of GNOME applications adapted to work with Cinnamon ( but also MATE and XFCE ). These really are forks.

LeFantome,

“Snap Store, the app store for Linux”

Barf

LeFantome,

There is some good stuff in there

LeFantome,

It is called “Your Independent Grocer”. So, pretty much.

LeFantome,

Pretty sure vim is available on Windows. Visual Studio Code allows vim actions.

Can you run in a VM? Use WSL?

Why YOU should write a Wayland compositor – Victoria Brekenfeld – HiP22 Berlin (www.youtube.com)

Victoria Brekenfeld: “Hi! My name is Victoria and I have worked on a Wayland compositor library called “smithay” for the past 5 years. Right now I am working for system76 on their new desktop environment, I am member of wayland-protocols and have been contributing to the wider ecosystem. So if you even wanted to learn...

LeFantome,

If you want to tweak something that works out of the box, maybe check-out Louvre:

github.com/CuarzoSoftware/Louvre

It is C++ which some will love and some will not.

Getting to a few fully working Wayland compositors has been a long and painful journey. Once we get there though, I am pretty excited to see the innovation it enables.

The talk mentions that there was effectively only one implementation of X due to the complexity. There are already quite a few independent implementations of Wayland. That still kind of sucks for the moment but at some point it is going to be awesome.

LeFantome,

The older millennials are not really all that old. Early 40s?

GRUB on 32-bit UEFI (Nextbook 2-in-1)

The only distro I can find that successfully configures a functioning bootable GRUB on this (bastard) machine is Nobara, which looks very cool but is way too heavy! Some things are glitchy; attempting tab completion seems to freeze Konsole for ~5 seconds and does not complete the command as expected. We’re working with an...

LeFantome,

Came here to recommend Antix or DSL 32 bit. Others have done that already.

Another option that Lemmy introduced me to just recently is Q4OS and the 32 bit Trinity Desktop version.

These are all Debian based ( DSL is basically Antix+ now ).

LeFantome,

I was responding to “they both lack the support of a larger company”.

LeFantome,

I am not going to say that you are wrong. Make your own choices.

For words to be useful though, they have to mean the same thing for the person sharing them and the person receiving them. Definitions matter.

In the Linux community, “stable” means not changing. It is not a statement about quality or reliability. The others words you used, “buggy” and “broken”, are better quality references.

Again, you do you. But expect “the community” to reinforce their definitions because common understanding is essential if something like Lemmy is going to work.

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