Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run? • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by saagarjha » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #187

danpalmer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at your comment history I fear this may not be the community for you. Constructive criticism is valued, but negativity and sarcasm bordering on racism are not. Please try to enhance the community rather than detract from it.

The fact that I don't consider building a Linux system from scratch neither useful nor pleasant is somehow negative or sarcastic bordering on racism? Should I explain why I don't consider it useful or pleasant?

> Looking at your comment history

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

#212

Post by carapace » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

lcall wrote: post #169

This is a very cool idea. I have thought similarly, but for a "create current civilization from scratch" game (edit: this is a real-life challenge, not on a computer, and maybe not even as a competition): Start in an empty open area, with nothing but nature and the low-tech clothing you wear and means of communication with outside. The only things you can exchange with outside are: any information at all (so, maybe u…

Lindsay Books reincarnated as Your Old Time Bookstore

https://www.youroldtimebookstore.com/

> We've done our best to keep Lindsay "alive" by including his original catalog descriptions. Due to the large image size, they are featured on the individual product page. (If viewing a list, simply click the title link or "more info" link for full details...)

> Whether you're a former Lindsay customer or new to these rare publications, Your Old Time Bookstore promises fascinating and educational material for your enjoyment!

Anyway, that's were you get the manuals to rebuild your tech stack from stone age on up.

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

#213

Post by carapace » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

s3arch wrote: post #35

anthk wrote: 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?

yeah, it's the last bastion against Eternal September.

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

#214

Post by Legogris » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #200

This is basically what early Gentoo releases were like... A hilariously minimal tool chain and a txt guide to compiling and configuring every piece between basically nothing and a functioning web browser. A typical speed run took a day because compilation times were long. And if you realized late that you'd made a fatal mistake, starting over took a loooong time. #pepperidgefarmremembers

I remember spending a lot of time with that as a teenager. A stage0 (or was it stage1?) installation took about a weekend, I recall. I was a bit surprised recently realizing that there's still a significant Gentoo community, with influx of new users. Didn't really occur to me that the installation experience is completely different these days, but that makes sense.

Might give it a try again.

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

#215

Post by NikolaeVarius » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

Kaze404 wrote: post #177

zitterbewegung wrote: post #96

To avoid memorizing certain things to win speed running Linux could be broken down into categories so that it can be a fair comparison. An example would be no memorization or no networking . The current speeedrin community does this already.

How do you stop someone from memorizing the run? Better yet, how do you stop yourself from doing so?

A large brick wrapped in a slice of lemon

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

#216

Post by non-entity » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #90

>" So here's the pitch: Linux speedruns. By that, I don't mean "speedrunning a game on a Linux box" (like emulation, or something). Nope. I mean speedrunning the Linux situation itself. Start with a minimal system and get yourself to the point where you can do something meaningful (like reading cat pictures on Reddit). " I'd rather do something useful or at least pleasant. I don't have an infinite amount of time and…

Tbh I think its something that's fun once and can be educating, but after doing it once it's mostly just annoying

In fact, I pretty much exclusively use Ubuntu or Ubuntu flavors because in lazy and things mostly work out of the box and if I want, it's still customizable

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

#217

Post by harha » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: 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?

Minimal Linux Live has a nice small script where you see what is being set up. It does include Busybox though, which might already have too many tools.

https://github.com/ivandavidov/minimal-linux-script

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

#218

Post by rodelrod » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #152

rodelrod wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use the Unifying receiver, that's what I've been doing for 10 years with multiple devices. It costs like 15 bucks, it's tiny and works flawlessly for any OS/device combo I throw at it, including the Ubuntu 16 + MX Master 2S + K800 that I'm using right now. There's an app called [Solaar]( https://github.com/pwr-Solaar/Solaar ) that helps with the pairing and such but I don't think it's strictly necessary (can't rememb…

The MX Master 2S comes with a Unifying receiver, so he should already have own. It's just annoying having a USB port permanently occupied.

Yes I can imagine it to be annoying for some use cases. My Carbon has, among others, 2 USB-A ports, 2 USB-C ports plus a trackpoint and a pretty good trackpad. My older Thinkpads have more USB-A ports than I'll ever need. So the unifying receivers are only used when sitting at a desk, where they're permanently plugged to USB-C hubs.

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

#219

Post by Legogris » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

ProZsolt wrote: post #196

CM30 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, speedrunning communities (for games and other things) already bar tricks and strats that require setup on an external file/system. For instance, you can't carry hearts/stamina from one file to another in a Breath of the Wild speedrun, or use wrong warping to instantly go to a location saved on an alternate save file. There are exceptions in certain scenes (in speedruns for Banjo-Kazooie, a glitch is used o…

You can "airgap" a gaming system so you can't use any external resources. It is very clear what you can use and what you can't. Here you have a network connection and you should use it. It's part of the challenge. What counts as an external setup?

Network, not necessarily internet.

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

#220

Post by Legogris » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #156

tiborsaas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how I learned web development in the 2000s. I downloaded stuff at school on floppy disks and took them home to inspect them. I had cool gifs, midi files, html files and I had Home Site 4.0 which had a great documentation about HTML and some basic JS.

Sadly, for me in the late 90s, it was learning the ins and outs of how to modify Win95 UI. Turns out a whole lot of those skills were total dead-ends. But I can help you make your Win95 look and feel however you like! Need your cursor to be animated but change animations depending on what you're doing? You got it! Find that editing .ini files lacks a certain flair? No problem! Prefer a fuchsia screen of death, or a "…

I recall that custom animated bootup screen was something that had a different variation of the quirky hack in different subversions through 95-98.

Also made a point of reskinning every last pixel. I still get a similar feeling tweaking my Linux environment (albeit stronger focus on productivity these days). Some inspiration in /r/unixporn, maybe you can relive that again ;)