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I Love Coding on Linux

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Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#31

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cycloptic wrote: post #29
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'd be nice if Windows had as nice of a filesystem organization story as any linux distro. ...are you serious? There's a lot of words to describe the Linux filesystem organization and 'nice' is definitely not one of them. Windows file hierarchy has some problems to be sure, but at least it doesn't scatter every application's files all over the hierarchy and require a specialized tool and database to track which on…

It's popular for Linux distributions to have a scattered hierarchy with a package manager, but it certainly isn't a requirement. Take a look at AppImages.

AppImages are pretty great, when they actually exist for your applications. It is exceptionally disingenuous, however, to suggest that the existence of some AppImages invalidates the file hierarchy organization problems of any distro.

You might have been better to point out the existence of GoboLinux, but that is but one not very popular distro among many.

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#32

Post by oli5679 »

pmontra wrote: post #4
oli5679 wrote: post #3

I bought a laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled and had an amazing experience for the first month. Then one day the computer would no longer boot. I had to manually tinker to revert to older version and it booted again, but now 50% time microphone didn't work. Then one day I installed mysql, and had to do some crazy brute force experimentation to be able to run a local copy of our db. I accept it's possible the hardware v…

Who's the manufacturer?

Dell

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#33

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

pizza234 wrote: post #30
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'd be nice if Windows had as nice of a filesystem organization story as any linux distro. ...are you serious? There's a lot of words to describe the Linux filesystem organization and 'nice' is definitely not one of them. Windows file hierarchy has some problems to be sure, but at least it doesn't scatter every application's files all over the hierarchy and require a specialized tool and database to track which on…

What do you refer, specifically? Based on "application's files all over the hierarchy" it seems you talk about configuration files (data files can be spread all over, in any operating system; binaries in Linux reside in a few directories (/opt and /usr)). If you refer to gconf/dconf, AFAIK they require a specialized tool but they're not scattered (you interact through the tool, after all, so they're centralized). Pos…

I mean literally the application and its files. A package for something like KeePassXC[0] places its assets, "shared" libraries, and binaries in disparate directories mixed with other applications binaries, assets, and libraries.

[0] https://packages.ubuntu.com/groovy/amd64/keepassxc/filelist

Configuration files are a whole 'nother garbage fire mess, but that's true in Windows too so whatever.

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#34

Post by jcelerier »

pizza234 wrote: post #30
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'd be nice if Windows had as nice of a filesystem organization story as any linux distro. ...are you serious? There's a lot of words to describe the Linux filesystem organization and 'nice' is definitely not one of them. Windows file hierarchy has some problems to be sure, but at least it doesn't scatter every application's files all over the hierarchy and require a specialized tool and database to track which on…

What do you refer, specifically? Based on "application's files all over the hierarchy" it seems you talk about configuration files (data files can be spread all over, in any operating system; binaries in Linux reside in a few directories (/opt and /usr)). If you refer to gconf/dconf, AFAIK they require a specialized tool but they're not scattered (you interact through the tool, after all, so they're centralized). Pos…

> binaries in Linux reside in a few directories (/opt and /usr)).

and .local/bin and $HOME/bin and $that_path_where_python_and_ruby_put_stuff and let's not forget that one executable which is in /usr/lib/name_of_the_app for some reason...

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#35

Post by cycloptic »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #31
cycloptic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's popular for Linux distributions to have a scattered hierarchy with a package manager, but it certainly isn't a requirement. Take a look at AppImages.

AppImages are pretty great, when they actually exist for your applications. It is exceptionally disingenuous, however, to suggest that the existence of some AppImages invalidates the file hierarchy organization problems of any distro. You might have been better to point out the existence of GoboLinux, but that is but one not very popular distro among many.

Please do not baselessly accuse me of being "disingenuous," I'm trying to help you. If you won't use GoboLinux or ask packagers to make AppImages for the apps you want then I don't know what to say, those are solutions to your problem. If you're saying you want all other distributions to be like GoboLinux, I doubt that would happen because that comes with its own set of other problems. Edit: You can do some pretty interesting things here with Nix/Guix too although that still requires a package manager. The reason I said AppImages is because that's currently the best method that doesn't require any package manager at all.

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#36

Post by ofrzeta »

That article is really weak as are most articles on opensource.com (some kind of content marketing site of Red Hat). I recount the following points as someone who has worked with Linux for many years and is using it on the Desktop as well as on servers at work but (or thus) has not lost his sense for reality:

- the point of "automation" applies to all Unix-like systems. You probably could do the same with Powershell and pdftk for Windows.

- Code connections: I don't even know what this is about.

- Existing code: same same, but I guess there's indeed more open source / free software for Linux/Unix systems than Windows.

- Direct access to peripherals: You might have access to /dev/video0 but that doesn't relieve you from the intricacies in working with that device. Take a look at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.9/media/uapi/v4l/capture.... to see if that's such a nice API. Also take a look at this to see if the API on macOS is so much worse: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/camer...

- Abstraction layers: the "conveniences" in Qt and Java obviously are not very Linux-specific. "Whole stacks" like Pipewire are work in progress while the multiverse of Jack, Pulseaudio and Alsa makes every programmer wonder what's the proper framework to use.

EDIT: I think Linux is a great platform for programming internet services in a modern Unix (containers, userspace networking, epoll, sendfile, AIO, async_tx, ...) way but that's not in the article.

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#37

Post by asdff »

oli5679 wrote: post #3

I bought a laptop with Ubuntu preinstalled and had an amazing experience for the first month. Then one day the computer would no longer boot. I had to manually tinker to revert to older version and it booted again, but now 50% time microphone didn't work. Then one day I installed mysql, and had to do some crazy brute force experimentation to be able to run a local copy of our db. I accept it's possible the hardware v…

Honestly building some command line tools on OSX is such a headache that I feel like I'd break three keyboards a year if I was a linux user and had to go through that cryptic and poorly documented experience all the more often.

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#38

Post by [deleted] »

grifball wrote: post #21
krisdol wrote: post #2

So I like coding in linux too. I absolutely prefer it over anything else; but, lately my ubuntu distro has not been able to wake up from suspend so I force a reboot when I get back to my computer after a prolonged break. And I was pretty intentional about not futzing around with X11 and third-party graphics with this distribution specifically to avoid this kind of thing happening and have a long-term Linux OS. I also…

What laptop do you have? You may know this, but for anyone who doesn't: with Linux, you really have to choose the laptop model from a list. Here's a good list for Ubuntu: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop I've got two thinkpads that I've never had any real problems with. One is a 2-in-1 and the tablet mode is amazing with xournalpp (I've never owned an iPad so I can't compare). Bluetooth is always a little tes…

[deleted]

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#39

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cycloptic wrote: post #35
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppImages are pretty great, when they actually exist for your applications. It is exceptionally disingenuous, however, to suggest that the existence of some AppImages invalidates the file hierarchy organization problems of any distro. You might have been better to point out the existence of GoboLinux, but that is but one not very popular distro among many.

Please do not baselessly accuse me of being "disingenuous," I'm trying to help you. If you won't use GoboLinux or ask packagers to make AppImages for the apps you want then I don't know what to say, those are solutions to your problem. If you're saying you want all other distributions to be like GoboLinux, I doubt that would happen because that comes with its own set of other problems. Edit: You can do some pretty in…

> Please do not baselessly accuse me of being "disingenuous," I'm trying to help you.

Help me with what exactly? Am I in need of saving for my denial of The One True UNIX Way?

> If you won't use GoboLinux or ask packagers to make AppImages for the apps you want then I don't know what to say, those are solutions to your problem.

There are lots of reasons I don't use GoboLinux, not the least of which is that I don't think compiling applications from source is a reasonable application distribution method in 2021. As for asking application developers to make AppImages: why do you assume that I don't?

Regardless, the point is that the "Linux filesystem organization story" referred to by the parent is neither GoboLinux nor a bunch of AppImages and you are being disingenuous to pretend otherwise. It's a tired old Linux Desktop evangelism tactic roughly equivalent to "well, Linux is just a kernel...", which is to say that the argument is that what Linux Desktop (and by extension its filesystem organization) is is so ill defined that it can be whatever you want it to be -- provided you write most of it yourself, from the kernel up, like Android.

However there is a clear "way things are done" for the vast, vast majority of Linux distros and that is obviously what's being talked about here.

Re: I Love Coding on Linux

#40

Post by cbpowell »

chr wrote: post #25
GuB-42 wrote: post #7

I also love coding on Linux, but there are shortcomings. Not enough to make me prefer Windows, but enough to make me wish for something better. Generally, Windows has better GUI-based tools. The big one being debuggers, I really miss debugging in Visual Studio (C++). But more generally, Windows tends to have a better selection of IDEs, database editors, version control GUIs, etc... I love command lines and text edito…

If Windows is a good GUI, how do I reliably swap caps lock and control?

Assuming you really want to know, try SharpKeys.
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