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Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

rachelbythebay.com

41–50 of 284 posts

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#41

This is how I used to live my life. Sort of. I mean early 2000s when I had left home and moved to a far away city for a job in IT. All I had was a stolen 256M RAM laptop with FreeBSD. No internet and no TV at home because I lived in a shitty apartment building. At work I had all the bandwidth and resources I could use. So I downloaded all I could during the weekdays and during evenings and weekends I'd just browse ma…

I was like that. You read a lot and get a lot less distracted.

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have a clue about _why_, but I know from using macOS and Linux on mbp that whereas the touchpad basically works in macOS, it totally doesn’t function in Linux! :( In Linux, wrists keep triggering touch events as you type. Screens start scrolling, focus goes to random things, and everyone swears. You end up having to hold your hands right over the keyboard in a very unnatural way to avoid accidental mouse inte…

Which laptop are you using? This has never been an issue to me, and I've used Linux exclusively for years. I'm on a Thinkpad T480s.

"mbp" = MacBook Pro

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#43
post #35
post #5

Writting a shell is easy, but it's already done (do'h). You could be restricted to a really basic one, with no cd having to reimplenent that yourself. A simple "cd" command taking ARGV as the path would be around 10 lines in C. Reimplementing echo would be the obvious second thing to do, and later, a barebones cat a la plan9/OpenBSD. Finally the 3rd basic tool would be an ed(1) clone without regex support. ed(1) can…

I do not use IRC at all. But still curious, do people use it?

Yes, some communities are still huge (Freenode).

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#44
post #10
post #3

> Who knows how far down the stack this could go? Seems to be like the obvious initial way to up the ante would be to get rid of the compiler. How would you go about bootstrapping your way out if all you had was the Linux kernel, glibc, and the Bourne shell?

> How would you go about bootstrapping your way out if all you had was the Linux kernel, glibc, and the Bourne shell? You're fully aware that you're describing a complete programming environment and then some, correct? Bourne's shell (assuming you mean the original, not the GNU 'remake', but GNU bash would practically make this effortless as well although for a different reason) is fantastic for almost any purpose. Y…

Well yes, I know it can be done, but the point is that it's considerably harder than the original challenge because you can't just output a simple program using the Linux kernel APIs or libc without having a compiler.

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#45
post #35
post #5

Writting a shell is easy, but it's already done (do'h). You could be restricted to a really basic one, with no cd having to reimplenent that yourself. A simple "cd" command taking ARGV as the path would be around 10 lines in C. Reimplementing echo would be the obvious second thing to do, and later, a barebones cat a la plan9/OpenBSD. Finally the 3rd basic tool would be an ed(1) clone without regex support. ed(1) can…

I do not use IRC at all. But still curious, do people use it?

It's the default method for technical channels such as programming or OS projects. Please, use IRC with TLS if you can. Also, Usenet is still good for Slackware and C users, you'll have a high level there. comp.lang.c.moderated and alt.os.linux.slackware are really good. Also, the ones for Interactive Fiction and Nethack, I can't remember the groups. rec.games.roguelike.nethack, maybe.

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who can't be bothered to pay the Apple tax, what does the Macbook trackpad do that others don't? My experience with different mouse acceleration configs (Windows, Synaptics, Linux) has only been negative.

I don’t have a clue about _why_, but I know from using macOS and Linux on mbp that whereas the touchpad basically works in macOS, it totally doesn’t function in Linux! :( In Linux, wrists keep triggering touch events as you type. Screens start scrolling, focus goes to random things, and everyone swears. You end up having to hold your hands right over the keyboard in a very unnatural way to avoid accidental mouse inte…

hear hear, i'm on dell xps 9370 with Ubuntu and I've been having the same issues since the beginning. Yes, I also learned to hover my hands further above the keyboard to compensate. It's not very ergonomic.

It's a bit better when i disable touch click, but then i have to physically click the touchpad which is harder on the fingers as well !

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#47
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the kernel provide a TCP stack? Either way, you still need to write an editor with which to write programs that utilize those syscalls.

echo "line" >> file I really don't get the need for an editor.

If you have echo and the source code having an ed clone would be very convenient as it would double as a pager. Also, it would be much faster to edit the files.

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#48

Bored? Write a touchpad driver based on libinput which gives you identical mouse acceleration between Macbook trackpads and linux trackpads.

What's wrong with the synaptics driver? It's the first thing I installed over stock Ubuntu, to make it even tolerable. Whereas with libinput, after only minutes of use, I noticed I actively avoid using the touchpad, subconsciously bracing for pain and frustration in advance. Is there a reason that libinput is so horrible? I'm not even sure if it's only gnome's/tweak tool's anemic settings dialog, or fundamental lack of kinetic scroll and sensitivity params in libinput itself. It's completely unusable for me.

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#49
post #35
post #5

Writting a shell is easy, but it's already done (do'h). You could be restricted to a really basic one, with no cd having to reimplenent that yourself. A simple "cd" command taking ARGV as the path would be around 10 lines in C. Reimplementing echo would be the obvious second thing to do, and later, a barebones cat a la plan9/OpenBSD. Finally the 3rd basic tool would be an ed(1) clone without regex support. ed(1) can…

I do not use IRC at all. But still curious, do people use it?

You're asking on Hacker News if people still use IRC? In this same discussion thread where people are talking about writing Gopher clients?

Yes, it's still in very wide use. The numbers might be declining as greybeards retire and noobs pick Slack instead, but there's still plenty of us out here.

Re: Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

#50
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to experience it to understand just how much more calibrated it is to the human experience, feels natural, like air. :) How about visiting a store that sells macbooks?

Not during lockdown I'm afraid. I guess if it's a "feel" thing it should be possible to replicate it with lots of tweaking, but I don't think many people who run Linux on laptops use the Apple trackpad much so the overlap between the people who want this and the people who care to write such drivers probably isn't big enough to come up with a Macbook style driver.

If you’re thinking tuning as in artist sensibility and acceleration then you’re quite off, the experience goes way beyond this.

For example rest two fingers and press to click, that’s a right click. But rest two fingers and click with the thumb, that’s still a right click, not a three finger click. Same for two finger scrolling. That’s a couple of simple examples but there are a lot of subtle corner cases like that all around the experience which are not just about tuning some values.

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