On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 09:19:42 +0200
Paulo Pinto <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:

> Am 14.09.2013 08:14, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:
> >
> > Heh, I'm sort of the opposite. I've been using Windows from 3.11 through 7, and from Vista onward I've started to really hate Windows more and more (If I wanted to be running a Mac, I'd have gotten a Mac, not two versions of "New Windows: Apple-Envy Edition" followed by "Microsoft UI-Of-The-Month Club").
> >
> > Meanwhile, I've been using Linux more and more for testing and servers, and I'm looking at switching my main OS over to...probably Debian 7, with wine and VirtualBox for the occasional things that don't come in Linux flavor. I just wish I could get a Linux file manager I liked.
> >
> 
> The main problem with Linux distributions, is that even in 2013, it won't work properly in laptops.
> 
> Wireless chipsets, battery use and graphic cards (specially hybrid
> like optimus) are still a problem.
> 

Really? That's all rather discouraging. As of last year, my primary system is now a laptop, and my concern about laptop-related issues was the main reason I ended up sticking with the factory-installed Win7 instead of upgrading back to XP.

> laptops sold with Linux support.

Those exist?

I've long heard stories about such things, but they seem to be like unicorns or mermaids or bigfoot...fantasy creatures you only ever hear tales "through the grapevine" about. Not so much real evidence or first-hand accounts.

> As an example, last April, an Ubuntu update borked my wireless driver, because of religious FOSS. Ubuntu developers changed the binary broadcom driver, working flawlessly, for the open source one, which was still half done.
> 
> There is a discussion about it on their forums, if you want a link for it.
> 

Well, I don't use Ubuntu anymore for my Linux boxes. Migrated upstream to Debian. Any idea if one of the less religious distros (like Mint) would be decent for a laptop, or are non-OSS drivers merely one issue?

On Sep 14, 2013 7:21 AM, "Nick Sabalausky" < SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 06:37:49 +0200
> "dusr" <dusr@d.usr> wrote:
>
> > > Like I said, I've been a Linux user for a long time, and that's by choice! But I still envy a lot of what Windows gets right and still long for the good old days of DOS where it was just you, the hardware, and a little tiny helper library that was there if you needed it.
> >
> > I've used debian from woody to squeeze, then I moved back to
> > windows7.
> > Windows is better.
>
> Heh, I'm sort of the opposite. I've been using Windows from 3.11 through 7, and from Vista onward I've started to really hate Windows more and more (If I wanted to be running a Mac, I'd have gotten a Mac, not two versions of "New Windows: Apple-Envy Edition" followed by "Microsoft UI-Of-The-Month Club").
>
> Meanwhile, I've been using Linux more and more for testing and servers, and I'm looking at switching my main OS over to...probably Debian 7, with wine and VirtualBox for the occasional things that don't come in Linux flavor. I just wish I could get a Linux file manager I liked.
>

It's not as if window's file manager is any good. :o)

Regards
-- 
Iain Buclaw

*(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';

I assume the question is about D only, then I use Eclipse + DDT or CodeBlocks depending on my mood.

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 04:23:35AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Sep 2013 19:56:14 -0400
> "Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg@gmx.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I guess that it's a matter of perspective. Personally, I find the Windows/DOS shell to be completely unusable and use git-bash when I'm forced to use Windows. Windows definitely has some things going for it (e.g. its graphics engine creams the horror that is X.org IMHO), but on the whole, I find that Linux is just way better for a power user like myself. Windows doesn't even come close to cutting it.
> > 
> 
> While I definitely prefer bash to the windows prompt overall, there are some places where I think windows makes the linux cmdline look bad.  Like launching a GUI program instead of a CLI:
> 
> Windows (nice):
> % program-cli file.txt
> % program-gui file.txt
> 
> Linux (wtf?!):
> % program-cli file.txt
> % program-gui file.txt >/dev/null 2>%1 &

That's only if you don't care about the output of the GUI program, which is usually an indication of errors.

Well, unless the GUI program uses one of those stupid chatty toolkits that like to spew EVERYTHING to stdout/stderr, no matter how inane. It violates the rule that programs should be silent by default, and verbose only when asked to be or when an error condition is important enough to warrant soliciting the user's attention.

But even then, I usually don't care about these random spews. They can be useful if the GUI program segfaults (which GUI programs are somehow very likely to, for some reason), then you at least have a possibly useful error message. Sending everything into /dev/null by default is a bit counterproductive.

One situation where they can be annoying is when you're switching between vim (of course) and the gui program, and the random spewage messes up vim's TUI, then the solution is to hit ctrl-L, which *most* properly-written TUI programs understand as "something threw up all over your terminal, please repaint" (I believe ncurses has a default handler for this, which is nice since all ncurses-based TUIs will respond to ctrl-L in this way).

But badly-behaved GUI programs like this I usually just start from a different terminal instead of the one I'm working on, so that the spewage doesn't bother me (and is still there for me to look at if the GUI program crashes, as they're all prone to, and I feel like looking into why they did). Ratpoison is really useful for this, since it's just two keystrokes to open a new terminal or switch to an existing dedicated spewage terminal, then start the GUI app, then two keystrokes to go back to your "main" terminal. Done this way, you don't even need to put the & at the end of the command (though I still do just out of habit).

And if I need to start multiple GUI apps from the same spewage terminal, I just ctrl-Z to suspend the first one, 'bg' to background it (the afterthought equivalent of &), then start the second app. Or better yet, with ratpoison, since it's just two keystrokes to open a new terminal, I'd just open a new terminal, start the gui app with just a single &, then *kill* that terminal (also just 2 keystrokes in ratpoison) so that the OS sends all output to /dev/null for me without me ever needing to name /dev/null manually. :) That's 4 keystrokes compared to that idiotic verbose bash syntax for redirecting stdin/stderr to /dev/null (which I'm no fan of, just for the record), that takes ... let's see... 15+ keystrokes. Ratpoison FTW. :)


> But that's not always right - sometimes you need this instead: % gksudo program-gui file.txt >/dev/null 2>%1 &

GUI programs that need sudo privileges are Teh Evil. I avoid them like the plague. Unless they're the system package manager, but in that case I'd use the CLI equivalents anyway, so this baroque dance is never necessary for me. :-P


> But that's not always right either. On some systems it's:
> % kdesudo program-gui file.txt >/dev/null 2>%1 &

I have an intense hatred of anything GUI that asks for root privileges. GUI apps are just too fragile, too fat, too crash-prone, to entrust with root privileges. I have no confidence they will not also have nasty bugs that destroys or overwrites system files (a pet peeve of mine is gui programs that insist on creating stuff in $HOME that isn't their own app-specific dotfile or under their own dedicated dotdirectory -- some of them are quite insistent at recreating this detritus even after I manually delete them -- how am I to know if they won't do this to system files too?). So I never, ever, use gksudo or kdesudo. For me, root == strictly CLI-only.


> Of course, Linux *also* provides many ways to do it *wrong*, which are naturally more convenient:
> 
> # Hangs your terminal until you close the gui app,
> # which is so very useful an enormous 0% of the time:
> % program-gui file.txt >/dev/null 2>%1
> 
> # Seems to work, but various warnings will be randomly
> # spewed into your terminal while you're trying to use it.
> % program-gui file.txt >/dev/null &
> 
> # Same as previous, but with more random spewings.
> % program-gui file.txt &
[...]

None of this are an issue if you've a fast way to starting up / switching to a specific terminal dedicated for containing spewage. :)

(Of course, the fact the majority of gui programs love spewing like this is a sign of a fundamental pathology common to such programs, but that belongs in another rant. :-P It's one of the many reasons I have an aversion to all things GUI. In fact, in *my* book, a proper GUI program should automatically detach itself from the terminal at startup -- there are well-known, standard ways of doing this, but alas, most GUI developers don't care enough to do it.)


T

-- 
Designer clothes: how to cover less by paying more.

On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 09:22:16 +0200
"deadalnix" <deadalnix@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Because virus nowaday aren't there to destroy your computer, but to make it participate in botnet. Being as discrete as possible is the goal.
> 

Well, either that or Ransom-ware which is the exact opposite: "Buy
our antivirus program and we promise we'll let you use your computer
again." That's the crap I've had to clear off other people's computers.

> And probably also because you use trusted sources + a bit of luck.

Plus I seem to be the only Windows user in history who has never said "Uhh, ok" to a "Super-helpful web browser toolbar! You'll love it! Install now!"

On Sep 14, 2013 8:21 AM, "Paulo Pinto" <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:
>
> Am 14.09.2013 08:14, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:
>
>> On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 06:37:49 +0200
>> "dusr" <dusr@d.usr> wrote:
>>
>>>> Like I said, I've been a Linux user for a long time, and that's by choice! But I still envy a lot of what Windows gets right and still long for the good old days of DOS where it was just you, the hardware, and a little tiny helper library that was there if you needed it.
>>>
>>>
>>> I've used debian from woody to squeeze, then I moved back to
>>> windows7.
>>> Windows is better.
>>
>>
>> Heh, I'm sort of the opposite. I've been using Windows from 3.11 through 7, and from Vista onward I've started to really hate Windows more and more (If I wanted to be running a Mac, I'd have gotten a Mac, not two versions of "New Windows: Apple-Envy Edition" followed by "Microsoft UI-Of-The-Month Club").
>>
>> Meanwhile, I've been using Linux more and more for testing and servers, and I'm looking at switching my main OS over to...probably Debian 7, with wine and VirtualBox for the occasional things that don't come in Linux flavor. I just wish I could get a Linux file manager I liked.
>>
>
> The main problem with Linux distributions, is that even in 2013, it won't
work properly in laptops.
>
> Wireless chipsets, battery use and graphic cards (specially hybrid like
optimus) are still a problem.
>
> Personally I only use Linux on servers, VMs, or laptops sold with Linux
support.
>
> As an example, last April, an Ubuntu update borked my wireless driver,
because of religious FOSS. Ubuntu developers changed the binary broadcom driver, working flawlessly, for the open source one, which was still half done.
>
> There is a discussion about it on their forums, if you want a link for it.
>
> So nowadays I rather use systems for work, that value my up time.
>

If I was to install Windows or OSX on my laptop I'd probably have similar issues with wireless, display not working, etc...

There are plenty of places to check hardware compatibility of a laptop/computer you are thinking about purchasing (e.g. http://h-node.org ) - there are even some things that I boycott because of ethical feelings towards the manufacturer or technology (e.g. UEFI).

If you don't want the hassle of checking that each component works with your favourite OS, then you can simply go down the pre installed route. https://www.system76.com

As for your wireless driver woes, I'm sure you still had the choice to go for the proprietary drivers, which would mean you have to also blacklist the OSS one (done this plenty in the past, except for resolving conflicts with OSS drivers that think they can talk to the same device, but one gives me 1m wireless AP scanning range, and the other 30m :)

Regards
-- 
Iain Buclaw

*(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 05:58:51AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 09:19:42 +0200
> Paulo Pinto <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:
[...]
> > laptops sold with Linux support.
> 
> Those exist?
> 
> I've long heard stories about such things, but they seem to be like unicorns or mermaids or bigfoot...fantasy creatures you only ever hear tales "through the grapevine" about. Not so much real evidence or first-hand accounts.

I used to own one of them. It came preinstalled with Debian, so I'd like to say to all the accusations of FOSS zealotry: so there! ;-)

It does have some binary blobs for a few device drivers, though, but that didn't pose a problem 'cos they were custom-installed by the manufacturers, so apt-get upgrade left them alone for the most part.

It worked pretty well as a laptop -- I of course nuked the default GUI configuration and installed my own (at the time I was still into vtwm -- this was before my ratpoison days -- so it wasn't *too* foreign from the preinstalled setup). But then the warranty expired, and so did the PSU. I took it in for repair once, which was extremely expensive, but it didn't last very long after. That was when I acquired a strong distaste for laptops -- I learned that they have basically *no* user-serviceable parts, and even something as simple as installing a different hard drive (simple on a desktop, anyway) required custom tools that only laptop manufacturers or repair shops have access to. Besides, even if you could find the tools, laptop parts generally aren't sold in the consumer market anyway, and they are also very model-specific, so there's no such thing as going out to buy a replacement for a failing part. It's take it in to the repair shop and pay an arm and a leg for the repair which exceeds the cost of buying a new laptop. Sigh...


> > As an example, last April, an Ubuntu update borked my wireless driver, because of religious FOSS. Ubuntu developers changed the binary broadcom driver, working flawlessly, for the open source one, which was still half done.
> > 
> > There is a discussion about it on their forums, if you want a link for it.
> > 
> 
> Well, I don't use Ubuntu anymore for my Linux boxes. Migrated upstream to Debian. Any idea if one of the less religious distros (like Mint) would be decent for a laptop, or are non-OSS drivers merely one issue?

I'd advise caution and very *very* thorough research before purchasing a laptop. Some laptops have hardware with no known Linux drivers (not even binary blobs), so no matter which distro you choose, it wouldn't work. One approach might be to look up a laptop model known to have been used by a Linux-preinstalled manufacturer -- then you know there are drivers for it out there somewhere. Suitable googling should be able to get you downloadable blobs and installation instructions. Sadly, hardware support for Linux is still spotty esp. for newly-released hardware, as most manufacturers tend to prefer working with proprietary-backed OSes first (esp. if some new features are developed in tandem between them).

(Caveat: I swore off laptops since 6-7 years ago, so my information may
be outdated.)


T

-- 
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

On Sep 14, 2013 11:25 AM, "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 05:58:51AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 09:19:42 +0200
> > Paulo Pinto <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:
> [...]
> > > laptops sold with Linux support.
> >
> > Those exist?
> >
> > I've long heard stories about such things, but they seem to be like unicorns or mermaids or bigfoot...fantasy creatures you only ever hear tales "through the grapevine" about. Not so much real evidence or first-hand accounts.
>
> I used to own one of them. It came preinstalled with Debian, so I'd like to say to all the accusations of FOSS zealotry: so there! ;-)
>
> It does have some binary blobs for a few device drivers, though, but that didn't pose a problem 'cos they were custom-installed by the manufacturers, so apt-get upgrade left them alone for the most part.
>
> It worked pretty well as a laptop -- I of course nuked the default GUI configuration and installed my own (at the time I was still into vtwm -- this was before my ratpoison days -- so it wasn't *too* foreign from the preinstalled setup). But then the warranty expired, and so did the PSU. I took it in for repair once, which was extremely expensive, but it didn't last very long after. That was when I acquired a strong distaste for laptops -- I learned that they have basically *no* user-serviceable parts, and even something as simple as installing a different hard drive (simple on a desktop, anyway) required custom tools that only laptop manufacturers or repair shops have access to. Besides, even if you could find the tools, laptop parts generally aren't sold in the consumer market anyway, and they are also very model-specific, so there's no such thing as going out to buy a replacement for a failing part. It's take it in to the repair shop and pay an arm and a leg for the repair which exceeds the cost of buying a new laptop. Sigh...
>
>
> > > As an example, last April, an Ubuntu update borked my wireless driver, because of religious FOSS. Ubuntu developers changed the binary broadcom driver, working flawlessly, for the open source one, which was still half done.
> > >
> > > There is a discussion about it on their forums, if you want a link for it.
> > >
> >
> > Well, I don't use Ubuntu anymore for my Linux boxes. Migrated upstream to Debian. Any idea if one of the less religious distros (like Mint) would be decent for a laptop, or are non-OSS drivers merely one issue?
>
> I'd advise caution and very *very* thorough research before purchasing a laptop. Some laptops have hardware with no known Linux drivers (not even binary blobs), so no matter which distro you choose, it wouldn't work.

Some manufacturers even actively work against Linux at the hardware level.

http://linuxologist.com/02hardware/even-more-incriminating-evidence-in-the-foxconn-debacle/

Regards
-- 
Iain Buclaw

*(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';

On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:34:07 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> When I custom-install stuff, I usually put it in /usr/local/*, or even give it a dedicated home in /home (though usually just /usr/src/$pkgname/install or some such), away from the package manager managed stuff.  It tends to work far better that way.  Fighting with the package manager never ends well, as does installing external files into directories managed by the package manager.

My understanding (purely from the link below) was that /usr/local/* was *specifically* for non-package-managered stuff, whereas /usr/* was *specifically* for package-managered things:

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/8656/usr-bin-vs-usr-local-bin-on-linux

> If I have to install libraries not in the apt repository (or multiple conflicting versions of the same library), I tend to put it either under an entirely different PREFIX, preferably under a dedicated subtree for the app I'm trying to build

I had no idea you could do that! That's fantastic: despite my migration towards Linux, I had been worrying about the day I'd inevitable have to deal with multiple versions of the same thing.


> > Hence my first comment: I prefer to just grab the Windows version and run it in wine. That usually just works.
> 
> I dunno, wine doesn't seem to like my GUI configuration (or lack thereof :-P). It just falters in its steps and gasps every now and then, that I don't trust that whatever program it's running is actually doing what it should be doing. I still rather build from source.
> 

I find GUI apps to be butt-ugly under wine ;) But often usable
otherwise (not that I've used it much so far).

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 04:59:16AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Sep 2013 23:55:55 -0700
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> >
> > But I dunno, IME, when Windows 3.1 came along, it had so many gratuitous limitations that I said to myself, this sucks! So now I can't have direct access to hardware in the name of "protection", and what do I get in return? Nothing but being straitjacketed into a system that can't even do what I want.
> 
> OMG, iOS and Android == Win 3.1! Why did I never notice that before!

lol...

I do find Android at least 100 times more usable than iOS, though. There's actually a file manager app that lets me *manage my own files*, for crying out loud. And I can mount the thing as a USB drive and, y'know, transfer files without going through the horror of bad GUI design known as iTunes. And I can change the wallpaper without jailbreaking the contraption, install an alternate keyboard, choose from browsers that don't have to fear retribution from Apple for being too similar to Safari, etc.. Not to mention being able to do something so basic as using an arbitrary mp3 as a ringtone (seriously, *why* does the iPhone require a completely separate subsystem and gratuitously obscure file format just for ringtones? it's not as though in this day and age we don't have generic sound-playing libraries that can handle multiple file formats... and don't get me started on the fact that an i*Pod* refuses to receive a custom ringtone, 'cos it's not a phone, in spite of the fact that the built-in clock chooses from the ringtone catalogue for alarm sounds -- the whole thing is straitjacketed beyond belief).

Of course, Android isn't *completely* free of annoyances. A recent one is the inability to completely remove preinstalled apps that I don't use and don't intend to use, because they're "system" apps. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of Facebook being a "system" app... Sigh.


T

-- 
Life is too short to run proprietary software. -- Bdale Garbee