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What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

eclecticlight.co

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Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#181

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

That's certainly a single piece of evidence that every machine-- including all Linux distros-- are ineffable mysteries.

Similarly, all fruits have fat content. Just off the top of my head:

1. avocados (a whopping 15% fat content!)

2. there is no legal requirement for me to list another fruit here

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system should only be a mystery in so far that you were too lazy to look up how exactly something works. Having "undocumented service" running wild should be unacceptable, even so it has become so common place. Linux isn't free of this, far too many times there is no man-page to tell you what something does, but at least you can dig into the source if you have to.

Not with 3rd party drivers. I think people fetishize the desire to have complete control, and it is a myth. I've been using Linux since 1997, and all the fighting for transparency has been a tempest in a teapot with no progress made at ALL. If people wanted to fight for it, stop using NVIDIA products, but do you see that happening? Not bloody likely. This isn't so much whataboutism as it is about trying to coerce an…

Nobody forces you to buy NVIDIA hardware. I don't.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#183

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

> Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

I’d certainly like to.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system should only be a mystery in so far that you were too lazy to look up how exactly something works. Having "undocumented service" running wild should be unacceptable, even so it has become so common place. Linux isn't free of this, far too many times there is no man-page to tell you what something does, but at least you can dig into the source if you have to.

Not with 3rd party drivers. I think people fetishize the desire to have complete control, and it is a myth. I've been using Linux since 1997, and all the fighting for transparency has been a tempest in a teapot with no progress made at ALL. If people wanted to fight for it, stop using NVIDIA products, but do you see that happening? Not bloody likely. This isn't so much whataboutism as it is about trying to coerce an…

The need isn’t to have complete control in actuality, but instead the ability to control any particular something in the system, or at least understand it.

i.e. the ability to examine and understand something weird that’s going on and that may be a potential problem.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#185
post #40
post #34

I looked at one of the files: `~/Library/Trial/Treatments/SIRI_DIALOG_ASSETS/factorPacks/6242008c0f185b3e2ef6bf8e/assets/com.apple.siri.dialog.socialconversationfl#d5b431b/dialog/SocialConversation.catfamily/dalWhoIsYourValentine.cat/en.cat.bin` the file is gzip compressed and the decompressed data reveals some strings that are probably related to the question asked in the `cat` file: tag:valentine";Only localize if…

I've also disabled Siri and my ~/Library/Trial directory is only 3.6M (with no SIRI_DIALOG_ASSETS dir - so no valentines for me). Maybe you should check that Siri is still disabled on your Mac?

I just checked and for me it's the same. Siri is disabled and the folder is only 3.6 MB.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try out Fedora! There's Fedora Rawhide if you want rolling release. I have been using Rawhide (+ mainline, non rc or git, kernel) on my work machine for the past 6 months without issue. If you have to compile a lot of kmods it can be a pain as everything is transitioning to GCC12 but the kernels are still built with GCC11. A container can take care of that though.

I really want to like Fedora - it gets so much right. But: `yum` is the worst package manager I have ever used on linux by far, and that sours the whole experience. I wish I could get "Fedora with pacman/apt instead".

dnf replaced yum I believe. dnf is certainly much nicer than pacman, it's slower but does a lot more to ensure your system actually works.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#187

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

I'm pretty sure the most common picture of Linus Torvalds is a picture of him giving NVIDIA a rather rude gesture with his finger, and the reason was because of the way they push a proprietary driver and don't work well with an open community.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#188

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

> It’s your machine, but the inner workings are this ineffable mystery. At some point, every machine's software becomes an ineffable mystery. Do you know what is going on in all your 3rd-party Linux drivers, say, from NVIDIA?

No, but I'm able to read and modify the code for all of the in-tree drivers, which are the only ones in use on my machine.

There's also a large difference between a closed driver or firmware blob, where the function is known but the workings are not, and large portions of the userspace, including system services and applications, that are entirely opaque.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system should only be a mystery in so far that you were too lazy to look up how exactly something works. Having "undocumented service" running wild should be unacceptable, even so it has become so common place. Linux isn't free of this, far too many times there is no man-page to tell you what something does, but at least you can dig into the source if you have to.

Not with 3rd party drivers. I think people fetishize the desire to have complete control, and it is a myth. I've been using Linux since 1997, and all the fighting for transparency has been a tempest in a teapot with no progress made at ALL. If people wanted to fight for it, stop using NVIDIA products, but do you see that happening? Not bloody likely. This isn't so much whataboutism as it is about trying to coerce an…

You've brought up the Nvidia blobs twice now. You are right that those drivers are distributed without source, and so remain a mystery. The key difference is that the Nvidia drivers are the exception. There are open source drivers available for most GPUs, including Nvidia. Personally, I have never felt the need to use anything other than open source drivers. In short, I'm living the dream: every software component in my computer is inspectable. There are no ineffable mysteries.

This ideal falls short in the hardware realm, where we have to contend with the Intel Management Engine and the like.

Nevertheless, the modern Linux world is vastly more open and accessible than the closed-by-design Apple world. Even if I had to use Nvidia drivers, that would be one binary blob in a sea of open source, whereas the Apple ecosystem is opaque binary blobs as far as the eye can see, without even the courtesy of documentation. It makes a difference.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#190

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

> - Apple can double speak all they want about digital privacy, but their actions tell the truth. As a paying Apple customer, you’re not deemed worthy enough to even understand how your own machines work, less even to “tamper” with their working, and who knows what data is actually being shared?

> - Personally, I say no thank you. I’ve been on Debian or a variant for almost 10 years now, and haven’t looked back. It’s only gotten easier, as software generally moves more and more to SaaS web apps and the intrinsic cross-platform nature of the browser.

Personally, all the paying Apple customers in my family have been able to understand how the systems works to make video calls and talk to their grandchildren.

10years ago we tried installing Linux on an HP laptop we paid for and could barely get a picture opened up because... (do I really need to spell this out?) of unreliable display drivers means that the screen blacks out on whim.

I find it so odd, Linux users overlooking the fact that people who don't tinker with computers all their life do not have the time to get Linux up & running.

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