The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Baraka Obama]

If you attempted Linux anywhere between 2006-2012, your assumptions about Linux would be 100% correct. The mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s were not a good time for Linux whatsoever. It was that weird middle ground of "better than in the 90s where you were doing 24 3.5" floppy disk installs on hardware that would shit itself with a graphical environment regardless" but still a far cry from being pleasant to use. You really lucked out by jumping now.

I dunno if it's really better. My most recent Linux install I ran into the hell of some critical features only working properly in Wayland and some only working properly in X11.

I mean yeah back then you were better off running an nvidia card and being careful each kernel upgrade and you needed a 2nd partition for games, but I feel like a lot of this was a lot simpler than today if just for there being less unnecessary alternate standards. And hey if you just didn't want to update stuff ever to keep things stable the threat environment wasn't as insane as it is today, and just running Linux meant you were obscure enough to never worry about it.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Phoronix: D7VK 1.1 Released With An Experimental Direct3D 6 Frontend (archive)

Between the DXVK and VKD3D(-Proton) projects there is good support for Direct3D 8 through Direct3D 12 implementations atop the Vulkan API for Linux gaming usage. For those preferring more retro classic gaming, D7VK came about more recently for Direct3D 7 as a DXVK fork. Out today is D7VK 1.1 and besides delivering fixes for its D3D7 implementation has also now tacked on an experimental D3D6 front-end.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

I'm literally gonna ride out my free Ubuntu Pro subscription all the way to 2034. If and when uutils gets inflicted upon me by that point, I'm gonna go full-on headless Slackware. Or who knows? Maybe Shuttleworth and Canonical by extension will settle for inflicting uutils on the desktop segment and leave their bread and butter server market intact. I doubt it'll happen like that, but one can dream.

why not just use debian or another derivative like devuan if you want non-systemd? seems like it would make your life easier than going slackware.

Tbh I was mostly worried about linux being too complicated as I am, in fact, a massive retard who's never even used a terminal outside of the deepest late-night pits of shit not working, and really have no in-depth experience with computers beyond "ooga booga me click .exe and magic box make lights happen ".

Really most of the time linux is pretty easy. Especially if you stick with mint, and do fairly simple things. And are willing, or able to let go of some of the proprietary software in favor of FOSS versions. It's not always perfect running linux especially for people using certain gpus, or in some other circumstances. But hopefully you can avoid any real issues. Now days especially you don't need to touch the terminal for the most part. Although I do still encourage people to mess around with the terminal a bit to get comfortable enough to move around the filesystem, install packages, and do things like moving and deleting files. You probably won't need to know how to, but it's good to do it. And definitely won't hurt.

Which I think might be how some people see Linux, how people in the 90s used to use computers. As if Linux is this ancient piece of software from yonder years ago; Only massive retarded autists use that, I want to use my computer as if I'm a normal human being. -- As if Microsoft DOS hasn't migrated and evolved to a GUI experience.

Thinking back to what I thought about the terminal when I was a windows user, and I had absolutely no idea what any of that was. I think part of what made it seem so daunting was my experience with it was mostly from seeing people use the windows command line or maybe powershell, and not having any clue what was going on.

When I moved to linux, then started to make myself use the terminal the bourne shell seemed really intuitive to me, at least after I learned how things worked initially. Even scripting, especially when you realize after knowing how to use the cli, that a script is basically an automatic version of what you already on in the terminal.

 

[Dread First]

why not just use debian or another derivative like devuan if you want non-systemd? seems like it would make your life easier than going slackware.

Debian's introducing a forced Rust dependency into apt that'll go live in the next release after Trixie. Not taking my chances there.

 

[Baguette Child]

Debian's introducing a forced Rust dependency into apt that'll go live in the next release after Trixie. Not taking my chances there.

I've used Debian for more than two thirds of my life now. It's always been dependable for my needs and boringly usable.


But when I hear about changes like this, it fills me with despair because even with it changing in ways I fucking hate I have no idea what else to use. The tranny bullshit is so endemic to Linux that nowhere seems spared.

 

[teriyakiburns]

But when I hear about changes like this, it fills me with despair because even with it changing in ways I fucking hate I have no idea what else to use. The tranny bullshit is so endemic to Linux that nowhere seems spared.

It's the high-handed way of announcing it that gets me, and the casual rejection of legacy ports that have relied on debian to keep useful hardware working. Ive also used debian derivatives for most of the last 20 years (MX currently), so I'm not exactly up to speed with alternatives. I might just give Gentoo another try.

Hopefully, someone pushes back on this with enough force to make them reconsider. Though, after the systemd coup, I don't have a huge amount of hope left.

 

[Betonhaus]

Debian's introducing a forced Rust dependency into apt that'll go live in the next release after Trixie. Not taking my chances there.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Mint-APT-Captain-Aptkit

Good thing Linux Mint forked apt tools.

 

[Taser Confetti]

Debian's introducing a forced Rust dependency into apt that'll go live in the next release after Trixie. Not taking my chances there.

How many times has Debian been forked due to ideological in-fighting at this point?

 

[cigint]

Terminals are not something that you spend programming. Thats my advice to other people, its just another way to interact with the computer.
Alot of new users think that in the terminal they write CODE like programmers in order to interface with things but in reality your typing in the names of written programs and just putting down options

Exactly. When you're programming, you're writing in a programming language to give the machine sequential instructions such as remembering values, evaluating conditional statements, controlling execution flow and directing execution to various subroutines with your specified arguments.

This is not to be confused with when you're interacting with the shell, in which you're writing in a shell language to give the machine sequential instructions such as remembering values, evaluating conditional statements, controlling execution flow and directing execution to various subroutines with your specified arguments. You call that a program? At most it's a... instruccionella.

 

[Dread First]

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Mint-APT-Captain-Aptkit

Good thing Linux Mint forked apt tools.

CLEM, I LOVE YOU, YA GLORIOUS FRENCH BASTARD. Seriously, the unsung heroes of Debian variants everywhere.

 

[August Levasseur]

Exactly. When you're programming, you're writing in a programming language to give the machine sequential instructions such as remembering values, evaluating conditional statements, controlling execution flow and directing execution to various subroutines with your specified arguments.

This is not to be confused with when you're interacting with the shell, in which you're writing in a shell language to give the machine sequential instructions such as remembering values, evaluating conditional statements, controlling execution flow and directing execution to various subroutines with your specified arguments. You call that a program? At most it's a... instruccionella.

Using a repl is a lot easier than writing a program. The former just requires you to know the basics of the commands available to you, the latter requires that you actually know how to program.

I once encountered a Basic interpreter that let you write out full programs on the command line rather than using a repl. Iirc (and I may not) it let you switch between using a repl and writing full programs. It was cool as hell.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Debian's introducing a forced Rust dependency into apt that'll go live in the next release after Trixie. Not taking my chances there.

I agree that it's a dumb decision because it will overall hurt more than it helps. But if you are just using x86_64 realistically that isn't really going to make that big of a difference. There's nothing wrong with rust in itself.

Even so, with debian you don't even need to use apt, there are other package managers. I believe the actual low level package manager is dpkg. You could always just use that instead of apt. I think apt uses dpkg in it's backend. Even if it doesn't, and I'm wrong about that, you can still use dpkg. Or you could use one of the other package managers that do the same thing on debian. Apt is still probably going to work just like it normally did after the rust integration though. It's not like the uutils where it's being replaced with something completely new.

I'm not in favor of the way rust is creeping in all over the place, I'm just being honest about it. Rust the language itself is fine, and avoiding programs just because they have some ammount of rust code seems a bit rediculous. I hope people aren't falling for the meme with rust, which is mostly to make rust cultists seeth.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

All you can do at this point is minimize contact with Rust since it's already in modern kernels anyways.

EDIT:

Since yt-dlp now recommends deno as a java runtime for processing YouTube videos, your bare minimum has grown at least one utility. Fuck.

 

[cigint]

Using a repl is a lot easier than writing a program.

But using a repl that interprets a programming language is writing a program. I mean to say that a program doesn't only become a program by virtue of a delay in between the writing and executing of it.

I once encountered a Basic interpreter that let you write out full programs on the command line rather than using a repl

Yes, this is how all the proprietary Basics worked on the 8-bit home computers. But you seem to be saying that writing the exact same Basic program would not be programming if the interpreter were executing each line after you typed it, rather than only starting when you gave the RUN command, and that is not at all in the definition of programming, nor would it make any sense to change the definition to that.

 

[Max Weber]

java runtime

Hate to be that guy, but it's JavaScript.
Also, from what I understand, Deno is recommended because it has configurable permissions, so they can invoke it to run scripts without it getting access to any other resources, like filesystem of network. They support node and bun just fine.

Personally, I have less problems with Rust or even Rust programs than with Rust evangelists that push for its inclusion in every codebase ever. Oh, look, a stable project in pure C99, let's add Rust here! Maybe there are legitimate reasons for it. Maybe there are cases where it would be preferable. But a lot of times inclusion of Rust seems like a goal in and of itself (because it likely is).

 

[innocent jogger]

If you attempted Linux anywhere between 2006-2012, your assumptions about Linux would be 100% correct. The mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s were not a good time for Linux whatsoever. I

You left out the nightmare of printers/scanners back then too.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

Hate to be that guy, but it's JavaScript.
Also, from what I understand, Deno is recommended because it has configurable permissions, so they can invoke it to run scripts without it getting access to any other resources, like filesystem of network. They support node and bun just fine.

Personally, I have less problems with Rust or even Rust programs than with Rust evangelists that push for its inclusion in every codebase ever. Oh, look, a stable project in pure C99, let's add Rust here! Maybe there are legitimate reasons for it. Maybe there are cases where it would be preferable. But a lot of times inclusion of Rust seems like a goal in and of itself (because it likely is).

Fuck YouTube man, fuck them for making us have to update one binary utility to optimally maintain the other.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

Fuck YouTube man, fuck them for making us have to update one binary utility to optimally maintain the other.

Since yt-dlp now recommends deno as a java runtime for processing YouTube videos, your bare minimum has grown at least one utility. Fuck.

Yeah I was going to say you can thank google for that.

A little off topic, just slightly. It's funny to me no one directly points out the conflict of interest of google owning youtube the largest video sharing platform, and basically entirely controlling the web browser market. There are so many decisions they make that are transparently because of these conflicts of interest. They never relfect what the users of their products want, and a lot of the time it's the exact opposite of what their users want. But they have the incentive to do them, because the users aren't their customers.

It's the business model for almost the entirety of big tech right now. And it's so bleak. The governement isn't incentivized to do anything about it. It seems like any competition doesn't stand much of a chance to actually compete. Google, and the others like it have slowly destroyed the internet. They've also forced people to go online slowly, so now normies are online, and it's harder than ever to actually avoid it. It's easier to feed people propaganda than ever, it's easier to spy on people than ever, and every day it just looks like things will continue to get worse.

Spoiler: Me being a doomer

There are maybe like 1 or 2 politicians that care even a little about some of it. The rest are perfectly willing to sell out everyone, and will lie like they give a fuck about us. Voting republican won't help, and the Democrats sure as hell won't either. Idk. Sometimes I feel like the best thing I can do is not think about any of this because there is nothing I can do. The only tiny sliver of hope I have is it seems like finally I've seen normies saying some of the stuff I've been watching and worried about over the last few years. But that doesn't mean anythings going to be done about it.

Anyway I hate the anticonsumer business model that everything has taken over the last 15 or 20 years. This is the kind shit that happens when you have capitalism but you let the government get in the way of actually having a free market. If the government is going to interfere at all it at least needs to do so in an attempt to promote competition, instead of taking the side of the mega corporations.

 

[Vyse Inglebard]

This is the kind shit that happens when you have capitalism but you let the government get in the way of actually having a free market. If the government is going to interfere at all it at least needs to do so in an attempt to promote competition, instead of taking the side of the mega corporations.

 

[The ATF Disliked That]

I switched to mint after using windows my whole life recently, and I feel like I've just left an abusive relationship.

How the fuck anyone is willing to live with literal ads infesting their OS is beyond me.

Spoiler: Off Topic

(Keeping this under spoiler to not visually shit up thread)

Anyway I hate the anticonsumer business model that everything has taken over the last 15 or 20 years. This is the kind shit that happens when you have capitalism but you let the government get in the way of actually having a free market. If the government is going to interfere at all it at least needs to do so in an attempt to promote competition, instead of taking the side of the mega corporations.

This is why I would love to build a new political party that is focused on consumer rights and bringing back what I would call "Old America." It doesn't have to kill off the technological advances we've made, but much of it needs to be reigned in since there are virtually no repercussions or regulations here for it. Ban on Data Brokers, Minimal data collection, forbid digital IDs, ban on bulk billing, data protection standards, forcing businesses to accept cash and check again (especially for paying rent), requiring opt ins instead of opt outs. Banning forced arbitration. The list goes on. I'll need to write this list down and post it somewhere and get others' thoughts.

Edit: Also, I cannot get yt-dlp to work anymore for getting mp3 files for my Rythmbox, is there an alternative?