Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 666 posts

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#631

Post by bryondowd »

blakeyrat wrote: post #627
bryondowd wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never got my head around using Vim rather than an IDE, but I can say I genuinely enjoy git. It's very easy to get a lot of value out of it without needing to learn the esoteric details by just keeping to a simple workflow planned out by someone who understands it better. Of course, it was the first version tracking system I'd worked with, so I have nothing to compare it to. It just made me incredibly happy after wo…

I guess different strokes. For me, Git is the worst software I've been compelled to use since Lotus Notes. I think it's terrible. I would never use it if I didn't absolutely have to as a condition of employment.

Interesting. I wonder if it's a usage difference. A hammer can be a terrible tool if you try to put in screws with it. It works best when the workflow is designed around it and the user only needs to remember a handful of commands to do specific tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#632

Post by acoard »

majewsky wrote: post #515
sssilver wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vim departs from the reliability camp once you start adding a bunch of plugins. But as a raw editor, yes -- it's solid.

Then you're using the wrong plugins. I have about 12 here and can't recall any stability problems.

Reliability != stability (in this context).

I can reliably ssh into pretty much any server and use default vim. I cannot rely on a given plugin to be installed on the server. The more you customize vim, the less universal your knowledge of vim becomes. It's not a big deal to learn some plugins, but it is worth bringing up if people are talking about the ubiquity of it.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#634

Post by milcron »

dandelion_lover wrote: post #535
milcron wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer OpenBSD to Qubes. Over the past couple years, my approach has changed from blacklisting what’s broken, to whitelisting what’s safe. NoScript in the browser, and I’m working on installing OpenBSD on my Libreboot laptop (tricky because UEFI support is so new). OpenBSD has my favorite approach. Continual auditing of the codebase, and they’re always implementing new 'seatbelts', such as ASLR, W^X, and now pledge…

Thank you for a comprehensive answer. I do not think that one vulnerability in 8+ years proofs insecurity of QubesOS (by the way, it was found by their developers). OpenBSD is not free from kernel vulnerabilities on such a long time scale. Security through correctness never works, because people are not ideal. (Xen developers are also trying to decrease the code base and make sure the code is as correct as possible.)…

Great links, thanks!

Defense in depth is a good strategy, and it's definitely good to see QubesOS doing their thing. I'm glad to see activity in the secure computing space regardless of which OS is the most secure.

Since the focus of the thread is reliability, I'd like to point out one common criticism of OpenBSD (such as in your link [1]), which is that they aren't actually focused on security as they are on writing correct, quality code.

...Is that actually a downside? I like correct, quality code. And if that approach happened to get them 90% of the way to a secure system, that's just a cherry on top. What I like most about OpenBSD is how starkly simple it is. Yes, technologies lag behind somewhat - they just got support for EFI and 802.11n - but in OpenBSD something either works or it doesn't. Nothing in the base system is obviously busted.

A native OpenBSD hypervisor[0] is finally in the works, so in the future it might be possible to build a Qubes-like thing on top.

[0] "OpenBSD vmm/vmd Update" http://bhyvecon.org/bhyvecon2016-Mike.pdf

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#635

Post by juped »

threeseed wrote: post #388
juped wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the documentation is good too! (And that means that it's good, not like most software with "good documentation" where "good" means that it has reasonable feature coverage.)

I actually find the documentation to be awful. Take the installation guide: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/tutorial-install.... https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/installation/ PostgreSQL tells you "If you are installing a pre-packaged distribution, such as an RPM or Debian package, ignore this chapter and read the packager's instructions instead" whereas MongoDB actually lists specific instructions for each…

I don't feel those links serve your point. They illustrate the difference between good and "good", in the sense I meant in my comment, to me.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#636

Post by nereus »

antisthenes wrote: post #369
rsync wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Doesn't matter what filetype it is...it just runs them all, instantly, like magic." Does it play DVD ISO files ? Can you use the menus, etc. ? Just curious ... XBMC back in 2004 could do this (navigate and use DVD menus in a DVD ISO) but then that feature actually went away in the following years, never to return ...

> Does it play DVD ISO files ? Can you use the menus, etc. ? Those are semi-loaded questions. It can and does play .vob files, which is enough if you actually just want to watch the video, which is VLC's primary use case. It is not a full media manager with additional functionality.

It does play DVD ISO files. Just drag and drop them in, hit play.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#637

Post by nereus »

themodelplumber wrote: post #438
aerovistae wrote: post #322

VLC. There have been so many times I thought "man it would be great if there were this crazy hypothetical feature in my media player" only to find out it's like a stable long-established feature that's a keypress away from activation after a quick google search or glance at a dropdown menu.

I like having VLC around but as a day-to-day music player I find it uncomfortable. I have been looking for iTunes alternatives for normal mp3 listening and so far I really like the simplicity and purpose-built nature of qmmp and a bunch of playlist files.

Why would you use it as a music player? It can play the files but it's not a meant to be a music player.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#638

Post by syphilis2 »

vaibhavsagar wrote: post #546
syphilis2 wrote: post #465

These are software I love to use. I don't assume they're the best, and if you have any similar suggestions I'd love to hear them. There's a heavy Windows OS slant to this list. SunVox - Sequencer and tracker. The user interface is a big evolution from more traditional trackers because of how visual it is. This reduces the barrier to getting started, but it also make using the program simply more enjoyable. http://www…

I'd recommend Sumatra PDF and WinCDEmu over Foxit and Daemon Tools.

I tried out both of these today and I agree.

Sumatra feels snappier than Foxit. It doesn't have as many buttons to interface with, but there are common keyboard shortcuts for the things I use. I dislike that the Advanced Options do not have a GUI interface, they're edited by modifying a text file. WinCDEmu is exactly what I wanted. I also appreciate that both programs are portable.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#639

Post by ymse »

mwpmaybe wrote: post #503
ymse wrote: post #445

From the systems/operations side of things.. Ganeti: rock solid clustered virtualization suite. OpenBSD: no fuzz server/router distro. Ceph: clustered network storage without tears. Varnish: covers any HTTP needs. Add haproxy or nginx for HTTPS. Corosync/Pacemaker: Designed for reliability. Leave VRRP where it belongs (I'm looking at you keepalived). xCAT: Little-known but widely used datacenter lifecycle management…

> Corosync/Pacemaker: Designed for reliability. Leave VRRP where it belongs (I'm looking at you keepalived). I just set up a floating IP address for the first time today and went with keepalived. Why would you recommend Corosync/Pacemaker over keepalived?

If you need just the floating IP address, keepalived is fine.

I'm mostly bitter from spending days tracking down a race condition stemming from its notification scripts, which wasn't really keepaliveds fault per se. But if you need to start/move/constraint/notify anything along with the IP, or require sub-second failover, Corosync/Pacemaker is a far better choice.

However due to their complexity, for just a floating IP address, keepalived is unfortunately the best option for Linux (I usually have OpenBSD in that spot).

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#640

Post by mwpmaybe »

ymse wrote: post #639
mwpmaybe wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corosync/Pacemaker: Designed for reliability. Leave VRRP where it belongs (I'm looking at you keepalived). I just set up a floating IP address for the first time today and went with keepalived. Why would you recommend Corosync/Pacemaker over keepalived?

If you need just the floating IP address, keepalived is fine. I'm mostly bitter from spending days tracking down a race condition stemming from its notification scripts, which wasn't really keepaliveds fault per se. But if you need to start/move/constraint/notify anything along with the IP, or require sub-second failover, Corosync/Pacemaker is a far better choice. However due to their complexity, for just a floating…

Thanks for the explanation. Out of sheer curiosity (and because I run BSD-based pfSense and FreeNAS at home), how do you handle floating IPs and that sort of thing on OpenBSD?
Post reply on HN