Live data from Hacker News

Bored? How about trying a Linux speed run?

rachelbythebay.com

231–240 of 284 posts

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

#231

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 those days. Learned a lot by doing stage 0 gentoo installs.

I did stage 0 installs a few times. While it took a long time, there was fairly little work on my side. Most of the grunt stuff had been automated.[0] I think the only thing the user had to do was config.

[0] Which is the point of Gentoo, after all. It's what made it a lot better than LFS/BFS. You get everything from source with little effort. 17 years later, I'm still using Gentoo. Nothing like it.

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

#232
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is unclear to me whether the C libs include TCP. The exercise states that you have a Linux kernel and there is a network connection. If the kernel does not have TCP, but only offers a raw socket, well, then you have to write down a very simple TCP stack. But if the kernel does have TCP, the exercise boils down to writing a very simple HTTP client, a very simple DNS resolver and a bare bones XZ decompressor and t…

Or just get a static tar and xz static build, they must be somewhere. Better: busybox build. It already has tar, xz and wget. You just need to compile a simple HTTP client, or better: find a gopher mirror. Bare netcat would work against that. gopher://ftp.icm.edu.pl:70/1/vol/rzm6/busybox/binaries With NetCat: echo vol/rzm6/busybox/binaries/1.21.1/ | nc ftp.icm.edu.pl 70 echp vol/rzm6/busybox/binaries/1.21.1/busybox-i…

> Or just get a static tar and xz static build, they must be somewhere.

That is, that you can find them in an uncompressed form. If you fees adventurous you can probably coax the compressed data somehow through the bootloader decompressor, or the xz or deflate implementation found in the Linux kernel. Unfortunately these days modules tend to be compressed as well, but it should be possible to convice libdl to open a .ko file. If not you can always mmap it PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC and follow the symbols entries through the TLD yourself.

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

#233

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

Isn't Slackware still like that?

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

#235

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

Isn't Slackware still like that?

Nah, Slackware install was pretty fast. Although it did install a ton of packages and removing the extra cruft is a pain in the ass without a decent package manager that handles dependencies.

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple sells desktop versions of the touchpad IMO the best way to control Apple devices is KB + mouse + magic trackpad. Mouse is of course superior for precise movement such as highlighting text, but the trackpad itself is worth it just for the gestures.

Frankly I'm so used to Apple touchpads that I could never even imagine using a mouse with a Mac.

I have a mouse and keyboard attached to my 2015 MBP....and I still reach for that track pad. I really need to replace my mouse with their Magic Trackpad. It's just that good.

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

#237
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

s/artist/adjust/

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I’m not sure why there’s such a massive contingent that admit to having never owned an Apple product (some snarky comment about the Apple tax) and dismiss the hordes of serious engineers who use these products. Can you get 90% of the way there with your favorite flavor of Linux? Yup. Are there some things that Linux does far better? Definitely (looking at you containers). But it’s that 10% sugar that make most…

Because closed source software is worse for everyone. Regardless of any other feature, being closed source makes Apple products a non-starter for a sizeable subset of the population.

"sizeable subset of the population" is a bit of an overstatement. Most people are fine with running Windows or macOS. There's just a vocal minority that wants open source stuff.

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

#239

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 had this same thought. I had to print out the install guides because I had no WiFi at the time.

I failed at the chroot process at one point and ended up nuking a whole install.

I learned so much then though that has paid off in my career. Good times.

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

#240

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

Before I learned enough to understand the compile-from-source performance myth, I once put Gentoo on an old 966MHz Coppermine box I had lying around.

I didn't have cross-compiling set up yet, and I unwisely decided to install X. And Gnome. And Open Office.

It compiled for days.

Post reply on HN