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A website for debloated open source alternatives

debloat.dev

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Re: A website for debloated open source alternatives

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the particular choice of coding standards is low value, but I think the consistency they bring has a lot of value, at least potentially. As a father of two boys myself, I know exactly where you're coming from. Like some adults, they'll argue over pointless details and miss the entire thrust of the discussion.

No, to repeat what I said, I think "consistency" to a programmer is like "fairness" to a child: it's not what you think it is and it probably doesn't apply to whatever situation it's being invoked.

Oh, interesting.

> No, to repeat what I said, I think "consistency" to a programmer is like "fairness" to a child

I tend to pride myself on my ability to read and comprehend things, and I feel like I never saw you say this. I see now it was an edit to an earlier comment that I didn't catch the meaning of. It seems to say that you think consistency is childish, maybe because it's a naive ideal of some kind? I value it highly, so your perspective is interesting (in the vein of "Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept. Seek it everywhere.")

That aside, you're advocating for projects that have wildly different coding styles from file to file and function to function?

I guess I've never really worked on a project like that. I can imagine it would feel very messy and would make manual refactors difficult but might not be such a problem for AI?

Re: A website for debloated open source alternatives

#43
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that difficult to be honest. VLC / ffmpeg can do most of the heavy lifting. And there’s no shortage of libraries for rendering in a UI. There used to be dozens of options to choose from. Multiple different XBMC forks. Multiples different Subsonic forks. Multiple different DNLA servers. Multitudes of web-based servers. CLI MP3 servers. Independent media centres for a variety of different consoles. Maybe that’…

I would love to see an Open Source media center that supports streaming services. I wouldn't care if the services say "we only support 1080p for browsers / open source, anything more needs a locked-down device". (Perhaps the project could have some add-on you can buy that's a physical hardware dongle for doing 4k HDR and emitting HDCPed HDMI.) I already live with that for watching on my laptop. Just having watchable…

If streaming through a browser/open source / not the locked down app supported 1080p I would be a lot happier. My understanding from the last time i looked is that it actually only supports 720p

Re: A website for debloated open source alternatives

#45
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re underestimating how opinionated developers are. The fact that we are disagreeing on this point is great evidence that there isn’t an easy to define, proverbial line in the sand.

I know very well how opinionated other developers are. I'm explicitly saying it's a waste of energy to be that picky about code style. There is an easy to define line: there is no line. It's not a boundary where "over here is good code" and "over there, not" we just don't have a good idea of where the line is. No. There is absolutely no line.

> I know very well how opinionated other developers are. I'm explicitly saying it's a waste of energy to be that picky about code style.

To be honest, I completely agree with you.

The point I make is that not everyone would. And that disagreement alone results in a blurry line as to what some would consider important and what others would not.

But personally, I honestly do wish more people had the same opinion as you.

Re: A website for debloated open source alternatives

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define "AI generated slop"? There's also an implicit judgment in your question. Is well-designed, well-tested AI-generated code worse than poorly written, but hand-typed code?

Here we go: as soon as you ask for any kind of definition or rigor around AI development, people will work hard to shut you up. You're asking an extremely reasonable question, IMHO, especially given these are projects with limited resources going up against generally larger, better-resourced projects. AI is an obvious point of leverage in such a situation, and so there is a lot of potential to reverse engineer using…

> Here we go: as soon as you ask for any kind of definition or rigor around AI development, people will work hard to shut you up.

Heh. I was essentially run out of lobsters for repeatedly asking that question. Not even kidding. At some point I became the second most flagged user in the entire forum. The site itself invited me to delete my account.

After a while I simply asked Claude to define "slop" and posted the answer. To this day it's still the only coherent definition of "slop" in the entire site.

Re: A website for debloated open source alternatives

#48
post #12
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just a pretty consolidated space? Kind of like ebook management, which was dominated by Calibre for so many years (this changed recently). But unlike ebooks, media centre management is a fair bit more complex since it involves supporting many different media formats and many forms of acceleration or transcoding. So the big projects - Kodi for local media and Jellyfin for streaming - have a lot of inertia…

It’s not that difficult to be honest. VLC / ffmpeg can do most of the heavy lifting. And there’s no shortage of libraries for rendering in a UI. There used to be dozens of options to choose from. Multiple different XBMC forks. Multiples different Subsonic forks. Multiple different DNLA servers. Multitudes of web-based servers. CLI MP3 servers. Independent media centres for a variety of different consoles. Maybe that’…

> It’s not that difficult to be honest.

Sounds easy if all you have to do is write a short comment about it. People who actually did it, like the recently retired lead of the Jellyfin project, didn't make it sound like it's "not that difficult" [1].

If you want ot vibe code a project for yourself it's probably reasonable amount of effort. But if you want to build a product, something with polish, something not held together by spit and scotch tape, something reliable, it won't be easy.

[1] https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-project-leadership-changes

Re: A website for debloated open source alternatives

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see an Open Source media center that supports streaming services. I wouldn't care if the services say "we only support 1080p for browsers / open source, anything more needs a locked-down device". (Perhaps the project could have some add-on you can buy that's a physical hardware dongle for doing 4k HDR and emitting HDCPed HDMI.) I already live with that for watching on my laptop. Just having watchable…

If streaming through a browser/open source / not the locked down app supported 1080p I would be a lot happier. My understanding from the last time i looked is that it actually only supports 720p

Would still live with that, to have a single system that's no worse than my laptop.
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