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I Miss BSD/Linux

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Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#131

Post by [deleted] »

zamalek wrote: post #100
sedatk wrote: post #9

(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article) As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak. The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cu…

I spent an actual month fixing the container story on MacOS where I work, as the first employee with an M1 (eventually wrote a facade for colima). Over the following 6 months I kept a tracker of time lost to MacOS nonsense in an effort to convince my employer to allow us to use Linux. I have objective data showing that MacOS wastes huge amounts of time. MacOS is an objectively incompetent development OS, if you only…

[deleted]

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#132

Post by Wytwwww »

tmtvl wrote: post #111
int_19h wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Air (ARM) is fanless even.

I had an ASUS laptop die to overheating, so fanless sounds terrible. Does that thing just shut down when it starts getting hot or something?

It's basically an iPad (hardware wise) with a bigger screen and a keyboard attached. Why would that be an issue?

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#133

Post by Wytwwww »

tracker1 wrote: post #128
justin66 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand why people like the Framework laptop, but this is like comparing the space shuttle to the pickup truck Lamont used to drive in Sanford and Sons. It doesn't compare favorably to a Macbook.

Having used Macbook laptops for a couple decades, and Linux as my primary desktop for a few years (off and on for decades before that), I'm not sure your comparison holds up all that well at all. Most of the tools I use in Mac are cross platform and otherwise available in Linux. Many aren't completely UI/UX integrated even (VS Code, Brave Browser, etc). Many others are command line tools that are the same or easier w…

A non plasticky chassis, great touchpad and generally much better build quality and hardware (compared to the Framework) as long as you don't care about upgradeability and modularity it's on a whole other level.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#134

Post by doubled112 »

dmz73 wrote: post #71
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly. Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.

Unfortunately, Debian is like Linux on desktop, always 80% there. You just cannot trust that plain Debian will get it right, even if it works that one time you install it. Two most recent issues that made me change to something else: 1) VLC in Debian is modified so it cannot play RTSP streams so you cannot watch video from your security camera. Windows VLC wroks. Flatpak VLC works. 2) Debian kernel update in point re…

I've run Debian stable + Flatpaks for a while now because new software matters, and it is a good experience if your hardware isn't brand new.

Been playing around with Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite though, and watching bugs get fixed instead of working around them is surprisingly refreshing.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#135

Post by lycopodiopsida »

As an ex-Linux and BSD user I share the feeling. But if I am honest to myself, I have to admit that I do not miss them, but my youth, friends, lack of responsibility and time to mess around with such things. Messing around with a new fancy distro for a day or two? Why not!

macOS is fine, I use it for 10 years, know it well enough and have no windows/linux muscle memory anymore anyway. And if I would switch back, I would still stare at the same Alacritty with tmux and neovim.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#136

Post by wormius »

thrownawayjests wrote: post #53

After running Linux (plain, crappy boring Ubuntu) as my daily driver for the last few years, I'm convinced that we're at the point where the only real barrier to wider adoption is software, and this is less and less of an issue the more we work in the browser. For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new up…

Yeah, I've got friends who are open to the idea (even though they still think the driver situation is the same as 20 years ago - I won't promise there aren't problems, but I think overall it's much better than it used to be).

The main complaint is: I need my Adobe. I need my Ableton. I need my Office.

Some people actually need the official Office products, but I think for most users it's not necessary, though they get really uptight if you suggest it's not.

Adobe is honestly one of the biggest problems I think, and the most likely to continue to cause an issue with adoption.

Ableton can sorta work, but it's not perfect, but I can see them starting to pour resources into it to get it working better or even a proper port, but I could be wrong.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#137

Post by wormius »

jwells89 wrote: post #94
mattpallissard wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W. But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.

Power/battery tuning differing between manufacturers, models, and even specific SKUs within models is perhaps the greatest hurdle to be overcome. It makes baking those settings into distros by default impractical and means there isn’t an easy string of commands that anybody can run to improve battery life on their Linux laptop.

I'm not a laptop user so I alas never consider these things in my needs, but I imagine "Year of the Desktop" will be followed up with "Year of the Laptop"

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#138

Post by ginko »

pjmlp wrote: post #84
jmclnx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Around Windows 7 timeframe, I came to peace with FOSS UNIX clones never going to be as mature as proprietary OSes on laptops What does mature mean ? Unless you mean an entertainment or gaming device, I find for real computing, Linux/BSD is 100x better than Windows or MACs. For entertainment a TV, Cell Phone, tablet is a better choice.

It means that any normie can get a perfectly working GNU/Linux laptop from a random shopping mall and everything works out of the box without any constraints.

Normies use smartphones these days.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#139

Post by int_19h »

tmtvl wrote: post #111
int_19h wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Air (ARM) is fanless even.

I had an ASUS laptop die to overheating, so fanless sounds terrible. Does that thing just shut down when it starts getting hot or something?

It just doesn't get hot. If I remember correctly, there's a massive heatsink there that distributes it all, and having an aluminum body probably helps as well. Either way it's the most comfortable laptop I've ever used for this exact reason (well, and the humongous haptic trackpad).

Yet it's still fast enough to do development on it, never mind more mundane stuff like web browsing or watching movies. I'm not at all an Apple fan, but when people say that M* silicon is almost magic, they're not wrong.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#140

Post by int_19h »

mattpallissard wrote: post #88
int_19h wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware support can be a problem as well. There are many combinations that "just work" - definitely more so than 20 or even 10 years ago - but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example. And graphics is still kind of a mess, enough so that all major browsers are still either using whitelists to enable hardware acceleration on supported hardware (like Firefox), or straight up disable it by default o…

> reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W. But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.

Just to be clear, I meant the default browser settings specifically (i.e. whitelisted / no hardware acceleration). I didn't do anything special to try to optimize the OS as a whole.

OTOH I was pleasantly surprised that all hardware generally worked, including even stuff like the fingerprint reader (so now I can use that to sudo in the terminal!). Although that did require spending some time in the console to enable it in PAM. I'd say that Linux runs great on that laptop overall, aside from battery life, which is not a big deal if you mostly use your laptop plugged in.

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