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A Linux Evening

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: A Linux Evening

#161

Post by bombcar »

leidenfrost wrote: post #66
dark-star wrote: post #18

I had a similar experience recently. Updated my Manjaro setup, rebooted, and was greeted with text mode. X just didn't load. 1 hour of reading logfiles and pondering about why the kernel module wouldn't load, it turns out I needed to add an obscure boot parameter (I think it was something like "ibp=off") to my kernel command line to make the nvidia module load again. Easy solution if you know how to solve it, 1 hour…

I had a similar experience with a workplace machine. It worked flawlessly. But, sometimes, I went to make myself coffee or to the bathroom, and when I was back, the system just never woke up from sleep. I try setting the machine to sleep and manually waking it up. No problem. Later, I spent some time watching a long youtube video, then I opened the terminal and then the OS crashed. Dmesg? It showed nothing But, somet…

This is one of the benefits of being "obscure in only one area at a time" - just like you shouldn't break more than one law at a time, heh.

Linux is a relatively obscure OS, but you were on popular hardware with a popular SSD which helped increase the chance that someone else had run into a similar issue.

Re: A Linux Evening

#162

Post by velox_neb »

eythian wrote: post #57
postit wrote: post #32

That’s where Linux burned all the bridges on being my main machine. Nowadays, I cannot afford to take a day off to fix obscure incompatibilities like this. The last straw to me was when I stored my closed lid xps in a bag and 3 hours later everything was smelling like burning plastic because the computer suspend suddenly stoped working. To get things worst, it happened during a long haul flight.

I seem to recall Dell saying that you should never store a suspended laptop in a laptop bag, because there are situations where it might wake up and overheat.

> I seem to recall Dell saying that you should never store a suspended laptop in a laptop bag, because there are situations where it might wake up and overheat.

Which is the stupidest thing ever. I want to see Apple use this to shame Dell in ad.

Re: A Linux Evening

#163

Post by bombcar »

_justinfunk wrote: post #44

I used to hear "Linux is only free if you don't value your time." - this article seems to validate that this is still the case. Am I getting the wrong impression?

I've had linux evenings, windows evenings, macOS evenings, hardware evenings, software evenings, house evenings.

Anything you use has a chance of failure and on the whole I feel Linux has taken less time to do what I want to do with it than other similar options.

Thought I started using macOS at home because I got tired of dealing with Linux desktop shit, so take that as you will.

> “If you’ve ever read a mystery story you know that a detective never works so hard as when he’s on vacation. He’s like the postman who goes for a long walk on his day off.”

I got tired of taking the long walks.

Re: A Linux Evening

#164

Post by lrvick »

freeplay wrote: post #147
swayvil wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This contradicts my experience. I use Linux every day and I never touch the engine. I also set up Linux for computer-illiterate old ladies. They love it.

Out of curiosity, what distro do you use and what is your distro of choice for the old ladies?

I have been setting up Ubuntu for non-technical folks for a decade. Chromebooks work great too, but I cannot justify recommending them given the proprietary Google bits included. De-Googled chromeos would probably suffice for most people though.

Re: A Linux Evening

#165

Post by diego_sandoval »

markus_zhang wrote: post #85
miloignis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't write it off just yet, at least if you want to be a good programmer! While there might be some correlation, there's plenty of fantastic programmers who don't want the hassle and want to focus on a specific problem and just use Windows/macOS and an easy to setup/low configuration editor. One particularly great TA I had in college comes to mind...

Thanks, but I actually wanted to learn low level stuffs, or I thought I wanted. Anyway I'll see what happens. So far nothing really clicks for me but if that's it then that's it.

People say "Arch makes you learn how Linux really works", but I don't think that's a good way to put it.

Arch teaches you about the most boring parts of how linux works: the specific idiosyncrasies and configuration minutiae of a ton of libraries and programs (GNU coreutils, systemd, udev, mesa, glib, X11, Xlib, xdg, dbus, etc.)

Arch will usually not teach you the really interesting "low level" things about Linux: How the kernel works, how threads are created, etc.

Re: A Linux Evening

#166

Post by lrvick »

naikrovek wrote: post #157
swayvil wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This contradicts my experience. I use Linux every day and I never touch the engine. I also set up Linux for computer-illiterate old ladies. They love it.

> I also set up Linux for computer-illiterate old ladies. They love it. I think you're trying to say that they don't have problems with the browser, and maybe an email client. If they're computer-illiterate, they don't know enough about an operating system to have an opinion at all, other than being happy about it turning on and off when they want. Don't mistake that for loving Linux, because it is not really praise…

Linux can manage a browser, and email client, and a word processor, on a early 2000s computer found for $50 at a thrift store.

Meanwhile the latest supported versions of MacOS or Windows will not work on such a machine. Those ecosystems demand you continually buy new hardware.

I think is -is- Linux they love here.

Re: A Linux Evening

#167

Post by bombcar »

Pr0ject217 wrote: post #135

I would title the article "A thunderbolt evening". I haven't had great experiences with Thunderbolt even on Windows. ^_^

Many people don't realize thunderbolt is an incredibly low-level and complex protocol/setup. It's not like USB or firewire, it's an entire additional PCI bus thing.

It's surprising it works anywhere near as well as it does.

Re: A Linux Evening

#168

Post by maherbeg »

I'm generally an Apple hardware guy + console gamer so I don't have to have linux evenings like this. I used to enjoy the tinkering, but now I have Linux days in the Cloud and don't feel the need to be a computer therapist at night.

On the other hand I just bought an Intel NUC to turn into a NAS and am planning to try out NixOS. I think I'm going to have a lot of evenings..

Re: A Linux Evening

#169

Post by lrvick »

antihero wrote: post #91
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…

Linux is like driving a car with your hands in the engine

Windows is like driving a car that is actually a city bus full of hostile randos that take a lot of effort to constantly remove.

MacOS is like driving a car by yelling at the driver from the kids seat in the back.

In the end, learning how an engine works to maintain one myself is not so bad.

Re: A Linux Evening

#170

Post by elteto »

fabiensanglard wrote: post #159
dkozel wrote: post #138

Hi folks. :) I'm so glad that my hit-and-run post has been so useful. After seeing Fabien's blog post I did a quick search and it turns out that the solution has spread fairly broadly to other forums. My choice of 0x33 was arbitrary so makes a nice canary for seeing it spread out. I'm thrilled. Sharing experiences and solutions is so essential to learning. I've benefited enormously from the generosity of open source…

The internet is amazing! The way it allows people to connect, help each other and sometimes also reconnect is heartwarming. If you have a PayPal account, I will gladly contribute to your microscope fund! Thank you again, and happy end of year!

This has got to be one of the greatest exchanges on the internet, ever! Kudos to you both! And thanks to HN for connecting all of us.
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