#linux rant

[radicalityincident]

God I hate how normalized not being in control of your own devices has become. My phone updates in the middle of the night without asking me shit or getting my consent for anything and its like "Oh hi I'm your new AI, please enjoy this forced overlay that you can't exit out of until you go through my tutorial"

"Great fuck you, I would like to uninstall you" "Oh I'm sorry you can't uninstall me! I'm a core system application and if you uninstall me your phone won't function correctly despite the fact that I did not exist yesterday and your phone worked fine" "....." "You can disable parts of my functionality but I will always be here and I will pop up notifications asking you to re-enable me unless you figure out how to disable those too! Then I will still show up in a different color at the top of your settings application telling you that you need to 'fix" a 'problem' with your phone, that problem being that I am disabled. Does that help?"

Like, you know what I can do on my desktop? "sudo pacman -Rdd linux" , this will just fucking remove the entire linux kernel. Fundamentally breaking my computer until I boot up a live disk and chroot in and reinstall it or whatever, and the computer will go "Are you sure (y/n)" or whatever and i'm like "y" and it will just go "Ok you got it boss"

But its mine, I get to do what I want with it. I control the computer, the computer does not control me. I refuse to cede control to my phone or anything else. The thing is a lot of people will joke that like "Oh I love just letting the machine tell me what to do, I don't know what I'm doing, it knows best" or whatever but the thing you have to realize is that when you say that you are abstracting away that "the phone" or whatever is not some value neutral logic driven robot like from sci-fi, it is a collection of the the capitalistic and fascistic desires of the tech oligarch fuckwits that are burning the world to the ground right now. You aren't submitting to the phone, you are submitting to Musk, Bezos, Nadella, Pichai, Cook and all those other evil bastards.

Fuck them, fuck their little AI toys, and fuck this.

[visgrapplinghooks]

More linuxposting! See this other post for some context:

After spending a week on Sway, I ended up going back to GNOME due to power management resources. My battery was draining like crazy on Sway and I didn't really know why or have the mental energy to figure things out. Was using power profiles and everything. The battery was really good for a few days, then just started to suck in day-to-day uni workloads.

I'm not entirely sure what happened or what process was eating my battery life, but it was just easiest to switch back to GNOME. Instead of trying to troubleshoot when I needed my laptop the very next day for uni work.

That being said, I do think trying to use a TWM for that period of time for a few days was a very valuable learning experience for me. I learned that I... do not actually like tiling all that much. A lot of what I do feels most natural on fullscreen windows and I mostly have just one or two windows active on a workspace at a time.

However, I really like a lot of the basic workspace management stuff I got on Sway that got me in a workflow where I was using individual workspaces for specific tasks. I can to some extent recreate this on GNOME, with keyboard shortcuts, but things like assigning a workspace to a monitor or getting certain programs to automatically go to certain workspaces isn't exactly something I can recreate. However, I do love the Activities view in GNOME and missed a lot of the visual motifs of GNOME as well as trackpad support for when I'm using my laptop as a laptop.

Anyways, out of curiosity I decided to install the Enlightenment Desktop/Window Manager to see what it's like and it was surprisingly charming. I didn't spend much time theming it, but I'm wondering how it'd feel to use it full time. I'm contemplating giving it a spin for a week to see what it's like.

After that I might hop to Plasma.

I just think it's really fun to switch up my workflow every few weeks. As someone who does a LOT of creative writing, the simple act of changing how I interact with the space I write in (my computer) often feels like it has the same effect as changing your environements, writing in a coffee shop as opposed to a park or in your home, etc. Something as simple as a change of pace in how I use my computer is really exciting for me and scratches that itch for my brain.

I'm not really searching for an "optimal" experience like a lot of distrohoppers, I'm fully aware of what I like. I like using GNOME on Arch and that'll probably be what I use for most of the time. But I enjoy change for change's sake.

[problemnyatic]

Yeah yeah linux having problems is a big joke but honestly have you considered that linux wouldn't run like shit if it didn't have to reverse engineer byzantine proprietary drivers and hardware architecture and deliberately hostile BIOS firmware and one thousand other things that exist solely to force everything that isn't a corporate OS to suffer miserably on every computer ever

[bugged-ubuntu]

Got new server hardware at my job, that means the old server hardware is soon to be mine.

Its truly bonkers how much perfectly functional ewaste is generated by enterprises, like the company i work for is just gonna toss a shitload of computers just because they don't have tpm 2.0 modules or the headers to install them. but they're fine computers with like 8gb of memory and okay 7th gen i5s. Like you're not going to be playing games on them, but most of my home infrastructure is built on worse computers.

Like holy shit, if we ditched windows at my org we could be replacing all our computers every five years instead of two.

[cool-retro-term-official]

PROGRAMMERS OF ALL KINDS AND SHAPES, PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS

A code that doesn't have comments, even if it's well written, is not always very good code. When you want to optimize your code, you're might have to write ugly stuff sometimes ! Look at what data oriented design can produce for example. When optimization introduces unreadability, even if everything else is amazingly written, you need to add comments.

Anyway, use your cli tools on me plz, im cool, im pretty, look at me, blip bloop, blip bloop ❤️💾

[solus-official]

UBUNTU TOUCH | DAY THREE

I know in my last post I would update again around the 15 day mark however there have been some, lets say: bothersome, issues that I want to address. I'd like to state clearly that these issues are not deal breaking for people who really want to run a Linux phone. However, to me personally, I just want to address them as they made the intro to this phone difficult. 1. Battery - Short This issue may be caused by the phone itself, not Ubuntu. This phone was bought second-hand renewed, and definitely isn't new. However the battery just dumps itself when the phone is doing any activity. Just sitting idle in my pocket, I've found that it drops 30% in just an hour or two. It feels almost like an IPhone battery and makes me concerned for Longevity. The appstore has a battery management app, I'll talk about that in a later section. 2. Waydroid - Janky I attempted to use Waydroid once. I know this isn't much a chance and I will be giving it a second or third go as necessary, however it did not work for me. Simply activating it caused the battery to get even worse, and then a few of the apps that I intended to try and use with Waydroid (Productivity and Work related) were just non-functional, and it drained the battery even faster than it already did. I don't expect Waydroid to be the perfect compatibility layer. But I didn't expect for it to kick my ass as hard as it did. I am genuinely excited to try and get it running again and fiddle with it endlessly until it works the right way. 3. OpenStore & Settings - Not Available by Default? This is something that, personally, I'm not all too sure about. I know Ubuntu is Ubuntu and all the shit that comes with it, but somehow it just doesn't have settings until you create them yourself? I mean, I get it, Linux is what you turn it into, after all. It's why so many people love it. But I very, very, VERY strongly believe that some things that can only be found in an extracurricular app should be in the base Distro. I'm specifically talking about UT-Tweaks, and Swipe Sensitivity. If you're going to make a whole entire "gestures" system built into your Distro, without any alternative (Like three buttons at the bottom of the screen) then you better be ready to provide sensitivity adjustment for users who can't get it to work correctly. Apple gets away with not having sensitivity adjustment specifically because of the fact that they make the hardware as well, and constantly test to see if it's quality or not. (Also I think they actually do offer sensitivity options? I think? It's been a while since I've used apple.) Additionally I want to state that, holy fuck, why is there no Home function? Why can't I have apps running in the background without opening a different app? At first I thought I just didn't know what the gesture was to go home but no. Found and installed a tertiary app, which is just an invisible background and nothing else, if I close it then I can't "go home". I understand that you don't need to "go home" on any device realistically, but for me that's just something I'm so used to because I always have something calming and kind as a background. It's a metaphysical way for me to just turn my brain away from the device instead of doom-scrolling or working non-stop. I'm sure that, even subconsciously, there's at least one other person that understands what I'm talking about. And I also understand that, this is entirely a pet peeve! In fact, I know closing all of the apps to get home would be better for battery, and general phone function! I know that I shouldn't be mad over something that can be fixed by a 0.2 kb app that's completely free! And I know that if i'm this mad about something, I can just code a fix for it myself and try to have my changes committed to the full version! Yknow I had two more sections with text, but tumblr decided to just straight up delete them and I didn't have it saved anywhere. So this is what you get. A rant post with no conclusion. Thanks, Tumblr, I hate you forever.

[starshiphelix]

Currently waiting for my new SSD. Gonna install Linux on it, for the first time, to test how Sims 2 runs on it (as people mentioning, it runs SO much better), and also to finally see how Linux actually is. So far everything I've read about it is really good. A bit tired of the constant out-of-nowhere crashes with my Sims 2, absolutely fed up with this.

[mossfueldgoblin]

windows: im the most stable operating system :D

also windows: you dare run a game and have me install minecraft?? fuck you *corrupts graphics driver*

[wowiamreallyamazed]

It's really sad that "ai" is like the only algorithm / system now, when I'm looking for a program that does something it's always "ai", like there is no other alternative, most of my classmates whenever I ask them something it's always "use the ai tool", like I use Lite-XL(pretty great, very very usefull while still being hella user-friendly) for text editing and they have never seen a multicursor?, like they ask me what it is, since they have only generated code they don't know how to do shit. Like OK I'm not that great at regex tbh, I also google for text conversion sites too but you don't need ai in everything, any and almost all problems will have a unique algorithm or solution that will be better by orders of magnitudes, some honestly beautiful stuff is or there and it's just sad most people won't see them, like the algorithm you end up with is more usable because it's not a black box so you know when it will be useful so you don't waste you're time. People struggle with computers so much it's crazy, mostly because computers are not really meant to be usable but profitable, the ones that are sold to most people anyway(look at smart-phones, unusable at all levels, doesn't have uefi), aside the usual reasons it could be the anti-(nerdiness, labour, caring, ...) brought on by the want for ever cheaper labour.

[mirqmarq428]

Switching to Linux hot take:

Recovering windows users shouldn't switch to a "windows-like" DE. Give them something totally alien like GNOME or Budgie. Likewise, we should recommend ex Mac users KDE or Cinnamon.

Reason: Linux is not the same as those OSes. Its imitations of their interfaces are incomplete, so it will feel like a knockoff.

A new GUI paradigm sets Linux apart in the mind and encourages learning. Then once the user is proficient in customizing their desktop, they can bring back the features they valued in those systems.

[moose-mousse]

This song/video is stll the most accurate depiction of how being on a Windows pc/not-firefox browser these days

[mfcl3780cdw]

sometimes i feel bad about being "weird" and not in-tune with the mainstream internet experience, and then someone i follow posts about how absolutely awful ads and AI have gotten and i thank past-me for getting fed up enough with copilot to upend my entire digital existence.

i don't think my blood pressure could handle the "standard" tech world.

[verilog-official]

I don't like how prominent Windows and MacOS are because they make people need to get new hardware all the time.

my daily driver laptop is literally almost 15 years old. it has a first generation, dual core Intel i3 at 2.4GHz with 4GB of RAM, integrated graphics and a 128GB SSD. and it's perfectly usable for daily activities. I can browse the web, watch YouTube, I can even play some games.

and then I look at people saying that they're surprised that companies still sell laptops with 4GB of RAM. 4GB is perfectly usable! with like 10 tabs open in Firefox I'm using only 3GB.

I got this laptop for free because somebody was going to throw it away like 8 years ago or something, because it was getting slow. it ran windows 10 and was definitely slowing down, but by changing some settings on windows it ran a lot better but still not great.

but by putting Linux on it, it suddenly became perfectly powerful enough. even a heavy distro like Ubuntu ran like a breeze on it. I could play games on it again, I could run a bunch of programs at the same time again, I could watch YouTube at 1080p again.

and to this day it's still perfectly usable with modern software. I switched to Debian, and used a more lightweight DE, and it still runs great. it does have hiccups every now and then, namely Firefox no longer uses hardware video decoding on the GPU which makes it a little jittery with 1080p60 YouTube, but other than that, it's perfectly fine.

and installing and using Linux isn't nearly as advanced as people say it is. with just a little bit of knowledge you can easily install and use Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others, and bring life to computers again.

it's windows that's making your computer slow. stop buying new computers and contributing to e-waste.

and if you don't want to switch, I'm more than happy to take your computer off your hands when it inevitably becomes too slow to use.

[digibetadeck]

...so i have set this shit up right, CUPS and SANE, and

it's so much faster? like on my normal Linuxbox (F40, Plasma 6, i know, im a basic white bitch) it takes like 10 seconds before anything happens

here? fucking CUPS 1.1 and XSANE 0.72 on a Pentium III Coppermine with 256MB of RAM?

INSTANT.

EVERYTHING IS FUCKING INSTANT LIKE IF ITS CONNECTED BY USB

WHY THE FUCK IS MODERN SHIT SO SLOW???

So I fell down a rabbit hole of "oh yeah, I have an old computer" and I installed

SuSE 7.2.

It was. not great? But now that it's installed I'm finding out so many things about old Linux, mainly how everything Doesn't Work before the advent of X11R7

or the application

BitchX

because why the fuck not whoever said Linux users name things the way they do because they're sex-crazed nerds was fucking right

anyway it also made me discover that my monitor is capable of outputting 100Hz at 1024x768 so that outweighs all the negatives

had to try 3 different DVD drives, write 8 DISCS (because I thought I could get away with SuSE 6.1, that's on me), but i got it!!

[netscapenavigator-official]

All I want is a functional dynamic wallpaper on my laptop. I’m trying to install Sunpaper which requires wallutils.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I’ve gotten to the final step where I need to run “make” in the wallutil git clone, but every time I do that I get an error that says it can’t run because it was expecting “go” version 1.23, and I have “go” version 1.22.5 which is weird because when I run “go version” it says I have 1.18.1, and on the wallutils GitHub, they say a version of 1.11 or later is required and 1.17 or later is recommended.

So idk which way it up, and idk what to fucking do. I just want a pretty wallpaper. 🙃 I’m this 🤏 close to moving back to macOS and just using OCLP to keep it up to date.

And for reference, I’m running Zorin OS 17.2 which is based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and utilizes the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS kernel. So idk. I freshly install the “go” command using the requirements install command found on wallutil’s GitHub, so idk what else to do. 🫠

[crow-musings]

I desprately need someone to talk to about this

I've been working on a system to allow a genetic algorithm to create DNA code which can create self-organising organisms. Someone I know has created a very effective genetic algorithm which blows NEAT out of the water in my opinion. So, this algorithm is very good at using food values to determine which organisms to breed, how to breed them, and the multitude of different biologically inspired mutation mechanisms which allow for things like meta genes and meta-meta genes, and a whole other slew of things. I am building a translation system, basically a compiler on top of it, and designing an instruction set and genetic repair mechanisms to allow it to convert ANY hexadecimal string into a valid, operable program. I'm doing this by having an organism with, so far, 5 planned chromosomes. The first and second chromosome are the INITIAL STATE of a neural network. The number and configuration of input nodes, the number and configuration of output nodes, whatever code it needs for a fitness function, and the configuration and weights of the layers. This neural network is not used at all in the fitness evaluation of the organism, but purely something the organism itself can manage, train, and utilize how it sees fit.

The third is the complete code of the program which runs the organism. Its basically a list of ASM opcodes and arguments written in hexadecimal. It is comprised of codons which represent the different hexadecimal characters, as well as a start and stop codon. This program will be compiled into executable machine code using LLVM IR and a custom instruction set I've designed for the organisms to give them a turing complete programming language and some helper functions to make certain processes simpler to evolve. This includes messages between the organisms, reproduction methods, and all the methods necessary for the organisms to develop sight, hearing, and recieve various other inputs, and also to output audio, video, and various outputs like mouse, keyboard, or a gamepad output. The fourth is a blank slate, which the organism can evolve whatever data it wants. The first half will be the complete contents of the organisms ROM after the important information, and the second half will be the initial state of the organisms memory. This will likely be stored as base 64 of its hash and unfolded into binary on compilation.

The 5th chromosome is one I just came up with and I am very excited about, it will be a translation dictionary. It will be 512 individual codons exactly, with each codon pair being mapped between 00 and FF hex. When evaulating the hex of the other chromosomes, this dictionary will be used to determine the equivalent instruction of any given hex pair. When evolving, each hex pair in the 5th organism will be guaranteed to be a valid opcode in the instruction set by using modulus to constrain each pair to the 55 instructions currently available. This will allow an organism to evolve its own instruction distribution, and try to prevent random instructions which might be harmful or inneficient from springing up as often, and instead more often select for efficient or safer instructions.