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A Linux Evening

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: A Linux Evening

#221

Post by harywilke »

dm319 wrote: post #137
nicoco wrote: post #33

> I spent several hours fixing a problem and I learned next to nothing in the process. This is probably true for this specific case here, but my experience with fixing stuff in Linux is actually the opposite. I learnt a lot doing so, and learnt stuff that turned out to be later useful in very unexpected spots. Back when I was a teen and using Windows, I've spent countless hours fiddling in stuff in regedit and other…

Yes, I remember, even up until very recently, having to google help on Windows. You'd get webpages full of adverts with a heading '12 ways to fix Win10 freezing during upgrade bug!'. And the first two would be something like 'switch it off and on again', 'try again', 'reconnect to your wifi'. I always felt I could dive deeper with linux problems _if I wanted to_, and that weirdly gives me some confidence that I can f…

And after you scroll past the obvious solutions, "Install our Fix-O-Matic software for $29.99!" because the page is actually an advertisement cloaked as a help page.

Re: A Linux Evening

#222

Post by fragmede »

nebulous1 wrote: post #103
nicoco wrote: post #33

> I spent several hours fixing a problem and I learned next to nothing in the process. This is probably true for this specific case here, but my experience with fixing stuff in Linux is actually the opposite. I learnt a lot doing so, and learnt stuff that turned out to be later useful in very unexpected spots. Back when I was a teen and using Windows, I've spent countless hours fiddling in stuff in regedit and other…

I think the issue is that frequently the problem is with a small part of a complex subsystem that you don't understand (or perhaps didn't even know existed) before something went wrong. This sort of problem is extremely time consuming to debug via "properly" learning about the system, so you end up (much like Fabien) taking a fix from somewhere without fully understanding it. There's also a timing issue. Often when s…

Part of it is the binary config nature of Regedit though. I can't, from first or second principles, reason about which binary key to flip in order to change the behavior I'm looking for. Was it HKLM/ffebdcaaf, or HKLM/afbedccfh? Meanwhile if, eg dns got broken on my Linux box, there's a series of config files and daemons to check in order to figure out what's broken and then to get it working again. There's no way to learn anything with Regedit other than knowing you can just Google for the name of the key to set by looking up the problem.

Re: A Linux Evening

#223

Post by Agingcoder »

I started using linux in 1996. I've had a mac since 2010 - it just works, while my sound card would randomly stop working (pulse audio, whatever, I don't care anymore), and I even had to manually patch the alsa drivers manually (and write the patch) . I wish I could use Linux reliably for anything else than a terminal (and I do use it everyday at the office in a terminal ) , but it's just never worked well for me, in spite of my wanting it to work.

I'm a bit sad about Mthe whole thing : I want it to work, but it doesn't. I don't have the time to waste yet another linux evening, yet I can't resent the people who work on it for free, and understand very well that it works for some people.

Re: A Linux Evening

#224

Post by ZekeSulastin »

swayvil wrote: post #111

In my experience Linux is easy. Easy to install. Easy to upgrade. Never breaks. Never gets "infected". Fast. The absence of commercial bullshit is extremely nice too. (I like Debian) (Is it just me or is there a lot of FUD in this thread?)

I kind of feel like there’s more replies that can be distilled down to “If you prefer anything over Linux for any reason you’re just dumb”, honestly.

Re: A Linux Evening

#225

Post by buserror »

Not entirely sure we are going the right way tho. In the last 3 months or so (aka 2 major kernel versions), I had to add stuff to my command line to make my perfectly working workstation work again. X99 motherboard, worked for years.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="mitigations=off acpi_enforce_resources=lax pci=noaer intel_iommu=off"

All of them due to various problems I had to 'google and cut paste bits and see if it works'. I'm considered a bit of an expert, and I only understand fully one of the added parameter, and why it's needed.

Re: A Linux Evening

#226

Post by runjake »

arghwhat wrote: post #185
jodrellblank wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are free to comment on the question raised, instead of a dismissive empty ad-hom.

While tongue in cheek, the answer is accurate: open source does not mean "free service contract", it means that you can take the code and modify yourself (and preferably upstream the fix). Patches come both from vendors and users experiencing an issue. Vendors take care of most things, but for esoteric problems you might only have a handful of people experiencing it. The vendor is unlikely to care, so if you do not w…

What it sounds like you’re saying is “If you don’t know how to code, GTFO” because in all likelihood the parent made this comment because they’re not capable.

Re: A Linux Evening

#227

Post by riskable »

alexpotato wrote: post #158
alkonaut wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the approach used by OSes that "just work" for things like this? Is this due to the more monolithic kernel of Linux making more things required to be known up front than e.g. in Windows?

I always like this story about MacOs. - Most OSes do a full dhcp look up when they connect to a network even if they have connected to the network before. Wifi saved networks is a good example of a network where you have some historical information on the connection - MacOs however keeps track of the IP addresses that it saw for each of the networks it has connected to recently. If it sees a network it's been on befo…

...and the network intrusion detection system throws up all sorts of alarm bells about IPs being spoofed and duplicate IPs in use.

I assume MacOS actually only re-uses IPs if it sees the lease hasn't already expired but it might be dumber than that.

Re: A Linux Evening

#228

Post by Sugimot0 »

Been using arch as my first and only *nix for about 4 years now, most of the pain points have been smoothed out, usually you can find answers by searching whatever errors you see or checking dmesg. If you're a CS person, it really isn't hard to solve most issues and reason about, it's just normal debugging / docs / forums. In the event that you're doing something weird and niche, or you really cant find your info, you might reach out to the community and it's likely some linux wizard will solve your issue, like this post.

I was much more frustrated on windows when i ran into issues and your best bet was some incompetent support, and watching blue screens til you come to the conclusion that your system is scrapped, who knows why, and you need to reinstall and start over from scratch.

On arch you can save your dotfiles, make snapshots, chroot to fix things, and so on, there's tons of safeguards you can put in place, and tons of options for remediation. You really just need to RTM.

On top of that if you have a gripe about some software not working how you think it should, you can usually hack it or replace it. If you have an idea for some new functionality you want you can usually find/install some existing software for your needs in like 2 seconds, or you can find the repo of your software and submit an issue or PR.

Alternatively you can also just string together existing tools in a script in order to fulfill your needs. I did this recently to create an OCR screenshot to clipboard tool using tesseract and flameshot, something I wouldn't have even considered possible on windows.

Re: A Linux Evening

#229

Post by markus_zhang »

bombcar wrote: post #149
markus_zhang wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think unless one uses Linux on daily basis it's really difficult to sink in the knowledge. I decided to install an Archlinux VM and see what happens. I'm kinda disappointed to myself as I found out I didn't like too much trouble so I'll probably never be a good/great programmer.

Installing Arch is much closer to system administration than programming - they may be related somewhat and attractive to similar people; but you can be a quite successful programmer and barely be able to install Ubuntu. I know people who have written kernel-level Linux drivers who have difficulty upgrading macOS. They're separate skillsets.

Thanks for sharing. I'm a bit surprised about the second paragraph but then I realize it is indeed two skillsets.

I think I'm split between career growth and hobby. My career is much closer to a sys admin/devops than a low level programmer, but my hobby probably is closer to the later. Of course it could be just my fancy about low level programming that fascinates me as after all I have never done any low level programming except some entry level MCU programming.

Re: A Linux Evening

#230

Post by jeffbee »

bombcar wrote: post #151
jeffbee wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 machines don’t have bridgeOS at all, right?

If it can panic apparently they do have it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BridgeOS says it runs the Touch Bar.

The M1 lacks the T-series coprocessor altogether and all its functions are inside the main SoC. Whether that means that bridgeOS still runs on non-architectural cores inside the SoC, or its responsibilities have been rolled into macOS, I have no idea. I do know that only my T2-having MacBook suffers from these panics.
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