pmk

@pmk@lemmy.sdf.org

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pmk,

If you don’t want to touch anything, you could boot from a live USB image and try it?

pmk,

I wonder how much work would be needed to make a “FreeDesktop Linux” complete OS, with the runtime + whatever it needs beyond that. Then when you install a flatpak, it’s just like installing, uh, I didn’t think this through tbh.

pmk,

There’s a difference between stability and reliability. Stable means that functionality is the same over a period of time, no major changes to how it works. Reliable means that it doesn’t crash all the time. If something crashes the same way for the same reason, it’s stable but not reliable. If something changes a lot but doesn’t crash, it’s reliable but not stable.
In practice what it comes down to is a choice if you want outdated but known bugs or new surprise bugs.

pmk,

Which features are you looking for beyond what can be done on Debian?

pmk,

Maybe Debian with a wm? I like cwm, but there are many to choose from. You can add pretty much any cool feature on top.

pmk,

Ubuntu (2007) >> Arch (2009) >> Debian (2014) >> Fedora (2024)
Plus now and then installing OpenBSD for fun for a couple of months at a time.

pmk,

I have come to appreciate Palatino more and more over the years. Especially at display sizes.

pmk,

You are more than welcome to remove the need for any passwords at all on the linux systems you admin. Good thing about free software is that you decide how you want it, hack up or put up.

pmk,

On my laptop with nvidia (msi, debian 12), if I unplug the charger the screen orientation goes from landscape to portrait, everything is tilted 90 degrees. I hate this laptop, so I rarely use it.

pmk,

Hm, not that I remember. My memory isn’t the best though.

Folders and files sorted skipping preceding underscores?

I’m in the process of switching my machines to Linux Mint from Windows and on my network drive I have a bunch of folders that are sorted with the help of preceding underscores (like this “__folder1” “___folder2”)) so that folders appear in a specific order....

pmk,

Are you using Caja file manager? If there’s no setting, it could be that the authors of that file manager just wanted it that way. You can try other file managers like thunar and see if they are different?

pmk,

Ah, I see. It seems like you’re not the only one wanting this behavior, there is a workaround that might work: github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/2085#issuecommen…

pmk,

If you ever do write with pen and paper, it takes little effort to focus on just one improvement. A first step could be to try to get a consistent height of letters. When I’m in a hurry my “o” and “i” become way smaller than, say, “e”. Just a quick look when you’re done writing and a reflection like “next time I’ll try to make this letter as tall as that letter when I write”. When all lower case letter are as tall, focus on something else, like ascender height or baseline. Maybe your “l” tilts more than your “t”, then that’s a good thing to fix. One small step at a time.

pmk,

Frequency Modulation?

pmk,

2×6 is more like 15 for very large values of 2. If things never changed, we wouldn’t need calculus even.

pmk,

The second part of the Tractatus.

pmk,

I bet some of those people use neovim instead of the more unix philosophy ed.

pmk,

New users found it hard to download the right installer if they needed non-free firmware. Experienced users know they can add firmware=never in the installer to disable firmware lookup if they want. If they want to decide on a firmware by firmware basis, that’s an option too. If the hardware doesn’t need non-free firmware it’s not installed.

pmk,

The current method is to set a boot parameter to opt out of non-free firmware, it’s documented in the installer manual.

pmk,

I bet they considered the options. It could simply be that no one has had time to change the installer. It could also be that the people who care about free software to the degree that they want to avoid non-free firmware usually figure out how to do it, and that too many options confuse new users. I don’t know. A feature request discussion in the appropriate mailing list could be a good idea if you want change.

pmk,

I was very upset when they released gnome 3. Suddenly things were different, and there were rough edges. I used XFCE for many years after that. But… I have come to appreciate it now. I like that the devs had their vision and didn’t give in to all the demands to make it work differently. It’s their project, and I can use it if I want, or not. I respect it the same way I respect OpenBSD doing their thing. Can you imagine demanding that the OpenBSD devs changed their vision due to popular opinions? “We want closed source nvidia drivers and bluetooth support!” They just tell people to use another OS then. But from that stubbornness something beautiful is created.

pmk,

This is paraphrasing a swedish politician called Annie Lööf. She has been made fun of and ridiculed for that phrase for a long time.
However, that’s not what she said. The context was simplifying rules and regulations for companies, and she was asked if fewer rules would make it easier for companies to do illegal things. Her answer was: “In Sweden it has since long been illegal to run a business with criminal intent, and that will continue.” This “criminal intent” is the difficult part. If I buy and sell antiques that’s one thing, if I buy and sell stolen goods, that’s another. The difference is criminal intent.

pmk,

In the summer, those stacks of wooden boxes beekeepers use can contain around 60k bees. It’s a quite normal amount of bees in a bee hive. When it gets colder and the season ends it goes down to maybe 20k bees. At least that’s what a bee keeper told me once. We were looking at returning bees who were not let in by the guard bees because they were not needed anymore.

pmk,

If you dip the nib directly into the ink, there will be too much ink at the tip of the nib, which makes it hard to do hairlines or thin strokes. The trick is to fill the reservoir or nib further up with a small brush.

pmk,

I’m genuinely worried sometimes that a Ken hack has been introduced. I don’t know by who, but possibly some government agency. Then again, we also have a Minix system built into the CPU doing god knows what and we just accept that.

pmk,

itsfoss.com/fact-intel-minix-case/

pmk,

Fin tax

What're some of the dumbest things you've done to yourself in Linux?

I’m working on a some materials for a class wherein I’ll be teaching some young, wide-eyed Windows nerds about Linux and we’re including a section we’re calling “foot guns”. Basically it’s ways you might shoot yourself in the foot while meddling with your newfound Linux powers....

pmk,

I wanted to try inserting and removing kernel modules, so I looked around and thought “well, I don’t have a USB stick in right now so I can safely try removing the usb kernel module.” So I did that, and after pressing enter I realized my keyboard is connected with USB.

pmk,

I use the Gnome document viewer, and every time I recompile it automatically refreshes and keeps position etc. I compile with $ luatex <myfile.tex>, not sure if that matters.

pmk,

I don’t know about flicker, since I only recompile once in a while.

pmk,

Oh yes, same for me if I’m positioning an image or making a table, I compile to double check every little edit to the code :) I just mostly have plain old text so no surprises.

pmk,

I started with LaTeX back in the day, but it was too hacky and complex, so I went to ConTeXt, which felt more consistent and planned out. Then I did OpTeX for a while and eventually I picked up the TeXbook by Knuth and it all just started to make sense to me. So now I use plain TeX with my own macro file to fill the gaps in functionality, I implemented colour support and picture support and small macros that I needed. I am very much into grid typesetting, so I need to know where all the vertical material comes from. There are areas that still scare me, like modifying the output routine or several \expandafter in a row, but usually that’s not needed. With plain TeX I can know every detail of the code down to the primitives. Of course this is possible in LaTeX too, but, there’s just a lot of code, layer upon layer, and I’m not smart enough to keep all that in my head.

pmk,

Honest question, since it’s been 12 years since I last used Arch: what can you configure in Arch that you can’t configure in other distros? For example starting with a minimal Debian and building from that.

pmk,

I see. Easier in what way? They all have fdisk and the same basic tools? Does Arch have other tools beyond that which are unique to Arch? Is there a difference how you configure a window manager on Arch and Debian?

pmk,

Those are good points, thank you for explaining further.

pmk,

Stable means unchanging, so probably never. If it’s just cosmetic with no new functionality, maybe, but usually not.

pmk,

There’s always Nethack.

pmk,

That’s a GPL point of view. Most BSD users I’ve talked to prefer a more permissive license. Theo said: “GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope – the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time. But once the code is GPL’d, we cannot get it back. Ironic.”

pmk,

Which is fine with for example OpenBSD, they write “ISC or Berkeley style licences are preferred, the GPL is not acceptable when adding new code, NDAs are never acceptable. We want to make available source code that anyone can use for ANY PURPOSE, with no restrictions. We strive to make our software robust and secure, and encourage companies to use whichever pieces they want to.”

pmk,

Doing better in what way? Number of installs or being robust and secure? If we go by numbers one could argue that Windows is doing best on the desktop, and that proprietary code therefore is something to strive for. Either way it’s a tangent of the original statement, that the BSD license is a “pushover” license, which I oppose, because the BSD devs are deliberately allowing their code to be used by anyone for any reason.

pmk,

There are options to start at any level you feel comfortable with. In the far end of not installing anything is Linux From Scratch. As the name implies, you start from nothing. I don’t recommend this unless you have specific reasons. If you want a small command line only system to start from there’s plenty of those, many distros offer this choice. Arch, Debian, etc.

pmk,

It’s unusual to see the rounded r (ꝛ) after an a.

pmk,

What does a Secure Web of Trust mean in practice?

pmk,

The story begins with a man doing the things described in the picture. He is puzzled and becomes interested in finding out more about it. His wife is not very happy about it. It’s easy to get lost in a new hobby. Other people have written their opinions on the strange house, and those are included.

pmk,

laptop så that

Sneaky swedes :)

pmk,

I know what you mean, I remember when debians website was like this: web.archive.org/web/…/www.debian.org/

Is it just a generation thing, or is it objectively easiler to navigate?

pmk,

I think text based interfaces is a strength of unix-like systems, valuable tools to be used when the situation calls for it. It might be a lot to ask of new users to be familiar with terminals before they have even installed the system though. If Mint can get the same result with a GUI, I see no reason why Debian can’t offer that option too, and let users discover bash and TUI when they have a working system.

pmk,

I agree that there is beauty in simplicity. In my opinion, OpenBSD has the best website.
It’s not about using fancy effects, it’s about the sprawling logical layout and making it hard to navigate. It used to be better around 2005, when it had the left navigation index. I remember people said it was ugly then, but imho they changed the wrong aspects of it, removing the structure without adding simplicity.
For example, a new user reading this page l10n.debian.org will be confused. It only makes sense to me since I’ve already translated a bunch of debconf-po-files. These are my opinions, but you are welcome to disagree. Also, please don’t hit people with rolled up newspapers, it’s rude.

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