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Linux 5.19

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Re: Linux 5.19

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it irritating when people quote semver like it’s some kind of law. It’s a random protocol someone came up with that some other people decided to follow. It’s nowhere near a de facto standard for version numbers: plenty of software has non-semver version numbers (in fact, this applies to all software I have worked on so far in my career!)

I think it's pretty clear semver doesn't really have a place in modern software. Except for Microsoft, no one cares about backwards compatibility, which semver is all about. All software is continually developed, every release contains both new features and bug fixes, which violates semver. The vast majority of software has a meaningless "1." or "0." tacked to the front to try to satisfy semver, until the project get…

> one cares about backwards compatibility, which semver is all about.

Interesting. I'd characterise it more as 'responsibly breaking backwards compatibility'. Just a tool to communicate the nature of changes, a really (really) brief summarising changelog - what's included, breaking changes, non-breaking new features, or just misc. fixes?

I quite like it, but I tried to phrase my top-level comment not to be about it specifically. It would have surprised me to learn that Linux used 'semver' - that doesn't mean there's no semantic meaning to the version numbers it uses though.

Re: Linux 5.19

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing (or agreeing) with you about that, but as a coda I would note that I find it somewhat absurd that laptops have become the typical platform for developers. It implies something about what drives people's choices for working environment that I find strange. I do have a laptop, and I appreciate it being portable and thus being able to do work away from my (home) office. But most of the time I work on "de…

Many (most?) people don't have the luxury of two development machines. If I could have two, I'd probably get a laptop and a desktop too. But if I can only have one, then I'll take the laptop.

I have that luxury but the next round I’ll just get one powerful laptop and a great screen instead.

It’s way too much work syncing workspaces, repos, configuration, installed software, etc.

Re: Linux 5.19

#183
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we can conclude, that the the big star of open source is not enforcing the child of open source :( Ref SemVer: https://semver.org/

The unofficial motto of the Linux kernel is "Don't break userspace" so semver wouldn't be useful.

There's value, albeit less in the minor vs patch distinction I think. So you could imagine a world in which SemVer came first, Linux uses it, and we're on 1.5.19 but usually drop the 1. because we've agreed there'll never be a v2.

Re: Linux 5.19

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish other laptop hardware was on par with Apple. One can’t deny their attention to detail, fit and finish.

I just bought a Thinkpad because my home's other Windows machine died. The laptop is ok in general , and I love the mate screen, but the black plastic body is just horrible. It feels as if it's going to break just by opening the screen. Does apple have some kind of patent for the aluminium body?

> black plastic body is just horrible

It might not "feel" premium or durable but it's way more durable than aluminum... Also doesn't heat up as much on your lap.

Re: Linux 5.19

#185
post #68
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take a regular Lenovo laptop, everything likely works out of the box with an upstream kernel. This quite not the case yet with Asahi Linux which does not support power management, no USB, no sound. There was a time where Apple laptops came with very good Linux support. It was the time were every bit of hardware support was present in Darwin (a 12" iBook G3 was working flawlessly with Linux for example). I thin…

I used an iBook G3/G4 for years as a primary development laptop running Linux, and I think your recollection here is a bit off. The state of it was that: - There were numerous laptops with near-full Linux support, the Apple hardware wasn't categorically better when it came to that. - The power usage of x86 CPUs was atrocious at the time compared to PPC. Now history is repeating with Apple's M[12] line. Therefore peop…

> The Linux support for software suspend/hibernation was really flaky at the time, but it worked perfectly on Apple hardware, because all Linux had to do was to tell the hardware "do the suspend thing now" (IIRC by tweaking a file in /proc).

That's interesting to read, because I ran Linux on a Macbook Pro for a few years around 2012 and the only thing on that machine that _never_ worked right was suspend and resume.

Re: Linux 5.19

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have literally no idea – but since it hasn't happened and isn't likely to happen… who cares?

I care. It's kind of strange if you're against undocumented software but still run on undocumented hardware. I'm hoping the providers of the tools I use can see this too.

Hardware doesn't change. The Linux kernel and related userspace move fast. Proprietary kernel drivers are painful for users and developers alike. Nvidia has held back the entire desktop and been a massive PITA for laptops.

Re: Linux 5.19

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried that in 3 different applications: Finder (search bar), Notes, and Slack (just in case it was an Electron specific behaviour). I couldn't get those readline/emacs bindings to work on either. This is a brand new MacBook Pro with all the defaults for the UK region so it's definitely not something I've (knowingly) disabled. Is this something that needs to be enabled? Or is it dependant on something else to w…

Weird! https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 lists them under "document shortcuts." Well, not c-u although I swear that one worked too. Maybe they removed them and this document is out of date? I haven't used a mac in a long time, so it's possible. Damn shame if they did, I always liked that feature. [edit] A friend checked on his Montery machine and said they work as expected in system text boxes.

Ahh c-u was the one I tried so that explains why it didn't work.

Thanks for the link, that will come in handy!

Re: Linux 5.19

#189
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly. That’s what I’ve been doing my entire professional career. Modern laptops are not materially different from SoCs, everything is soldered to the board and the CPU does basically everything memory related. I guess you think that Intel designs are an open standard? At the very least they’re extremely patent incumbered; with AMD and Intel having a sort of patent truce between them.

Intel and AMD have developers working on Linux support and drivers and support running Linux on their hardware.

Intel and AMD don't make the whole widget. They want people to buy the components, so publicly 'supporting' multiple OSs makes sense. Apple on the other hand want people to buy and use Macs and macOS...

Re: Linux 5.19

#190
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long-time Thinkpad user, it usually helps to not go for the latest/greatest, but even so, the time between release and 99% working linux is in the region of months with Thinkpads, whereas it can be years-never with Mac. I had some issues with my AMD X13 when getting it new - but they weren't show-stopping, just annoying, and they got ironed out over the next 6 months.

> whereas it can be years-never with Mac Notably the Asahi project got M2 laptops up to parity with the M1 family in ~48 hours of dev work. No doubt this won't always be the case (there's bound to be major hardware revisions at some point) but at the moment this is quite promising looking towards the future.

Yes, I think the difference this time is motivation (because M1!) and some money going this way.
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