Has it been a while since you used it? I know the nonfree firmware thing used to trip people up if they weren't already aware of it, but that's a nonissue now. Debian isn't any harder to install than any other graphical distro.

Lemme just fully quote the Arpaci-Dusseaus OSTEP real quick

I'd do Atomic but it's a bipolar source of truth, which violates iso27002.

Good with either enterprise or fedora, thanks!

It's magic

Flatpak is toxic to iso27002 and SLSA, though.

libmagic is just one tiny part of the linux ecosystem

I've been on Arch full time for 6 years, I still get frustrated, sometimes I get stumped, but I NEVER want to go back to windows

Lean-uggs

Lin-ix

a newt?

Also I believe the whole "violates unix principles" thing. the one in question:

Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new "features".

systemd just acquires more and more features. But then that was written in the 1970s. Things have changed, we have so much more going on in our computers, it's easier to delegate a bunch of housekeeping work to a single, more centralized tool.

Using OpenRC or another init system instead means you get more fine grained control, but it also means you need to choose a bunch of utilities, whereas systemd just has a lot of them out of the box. And at the end of the day that's just for power users to worry about, I suspect many end users will never be able to tell the difference between an OpenRC distro and a systemd distro given that both configure everything they need to use it.

It was a shitty, yes. I probably would have said "it's like asking how food works" if I had been eating when I wrote it

I understood that reference!

Nah, the installer is much more tame than it used to be. I just like to poke fun at ye olden times.

I did make a huge recent mistake by using an NVIDIA GPU on Debian. Every time it updated was playing Russian roulette with "is this gonna break my system and send me into six hours of troubleshooting?" Til I finally said fuck it and swapped it with my brother for his AMD card. And I haven't had a single issue since.

I like Debian, but NVIDIA drivers just refused to play nice for any extended period of time.

The more you know about computers the more you realize its just magic rocks, and that magic, rocks.

Me who started working on my own OS from scatch 2 months ago.

Now know more about what I don't know. For sure I have no clue how Linux works.

It's like owning a car for 20 years. Even if you don't want to, you'll eventually understand more and more.

Let me save you a hundred hours, the book ends with "and that is why we don't understand how Linux works".

its all transistors man all transistors

my experiece is just stuff getting fixed and breaking rsndomly tbh.

It's more like the Sphere of Knowledge. The more you know about Linux (or pretty much any subject) that more you become aware of subjects you don't understand. Whereas when you don't know that much, there are fewer categories for which you are aware of your lack of understanding. Know unknowns vs unknown unknowns.

There is a kernel of truth to this.

OK but you can start a great argument by asking a group of people how many squares of toilet paper they use per wipe

Touche

So many factors at play.

The number of packages installed, the use of externally unsupported repos, the distro you use, reliability of their packaging system, how much you deviated from the baseline customization, and probably more.

Keeping track of everything off what and how much you changed may prove difficult. But it helps taking notes of how you solved the more complicated issues.

With time you learn to live with the inevitability of something breaking. You update less often, and only when you really have to. Repairing stuff becomes less overwhelmeming with time.

Compooter take symbol, compooter fuck symbol, symbol reincarnarnates as a stick, which is what is currently in my ass. Sideways, even. Symbols don't fuck around here for longer than it takes to be forthsworn, but this just a warning to warm you up, and this is how we know these compooters work.

Shared drives are a massive pain in Linux actually. If you have three SSDs installed in your PC where one contains Windows, another contains Linux, and one is a shared drive for large files, Linux simply doesn't auto-mount that shared SSD. You have to work around that and even when you configure it to auto-mount, small things like lock screen wallpapers would reset to default on every startup if the image was placed in a different drive.

Linux does not play nice either. Windows, MacOS and Linux have different file systems. And you can do whatever you want on a Windows computer, MacOS is a bit restricted/limited but the sheer power, nicer interface and amazing capabilities make up for that. To be honest, Linux is useless in my workflow because Linux simply doesn't support my use case.

However, I love how lightweight Linux is, especially the Fedora KDE Plasma. I use it just for fun and to stay in touch with Linux because I had a spare SSD lying around and extra ports in my PC baseboard. From a personal usage and work usage standpoint, Linux is of no use for my use case.

There are Linux distributions that come with auto-mount configured by default. Wallpaper issue was desktop environment dependent but hasn't been an issue in like two decades. Linux can mount natively both Windows and Mac proprietary file systems. It has been able to for decades as well.

Everything you stated as a fact is false. You're either lying or are ignoring something obvious. If you don't like Linux and want to talk smack, go ahead. But at least use criticism from this decade.

Just because you don't know how a thing works, doesn't mean that your lack of knowledge overshadows facts. Good luck!

What is that reply even supposed to mean? I'm telling you I do all those things you say Linux can't do. On a daily basis, I have for 15 years of continuous Linux use. Your facts are wrong, check yourself. The only one who doesn't seem to know how Linux works here is you.

I just say liinus. Or liinuksi.

On a client-server model turned single-user desktop, running on seven layers of abstraction. And the interface of choice is full of bugs and limitations. But we've got nothing better currently, that also works on the next computer, due to compatibility issues caused by misplaced secretivity of the vendors.

Fresh knowledge is not to be underestimated.

The Dunning Kruger-effect is a shaky concept. Recent studies seem to have disproved it in some ways.

Idk, I've tried throwing it on some machines and every time it's just not worked

That's me, who started using Linux 5 months ago. I'm like, "I use Linux btw" to everyone.

I took an operating system class in college that involved basicly creating a baby OS. Lot of fun.

I creating my Meshtastic network and was having trouble setting a node with the right settings and wanted to plug in the unit into my Lenovo laptop running Fedora installed from the factory.

I click serial connection. The web app recognized the connection. Click connect. Failed. Tried different plugs and ports. Failed. Searched online and I need to do a bunch of things in terminal to get it to work properly.

Normally I would spend a few hours figuring it out. Instead....

Pulled out my 15 year old PC running win10. Plugged in, instantly worked.

I reeeeally want this to be my primary laptop, but man. I am just struggling on some basic things.

it will never be your main mschine of you don't use it as your main machine.

If it can't do everything your main machine needs to do, it can't possibly become your main machine.

How about an operating system that respects your time?

Cause Linux aint that if I have to sift through dozens of badly documented online manuals just to get something small working the way it should.

Windows is much better in that regard.

This is the way.

Ah, permissions chicanery. Had to deal with that with connecting a Switch 2 controller with a WebUSB enabler. To be fair, once you add the right udev rules (it is a bit of a pain, yes), it should work for any other devices of the same type (I think it's any with the same USB ID so like same manufacturer and model? Don't quote me on that though). Still, I wish Chromium (since Firefox as far as I know still doesn't support WebUSB) could sort it out by itself (like just have an "allow" button rather than writing udev config files yourself) or at least be a bit more helpful in pointing you the right way with a helpful error message.

You do have to get used to weird edge cases like these throwing a spanner in the works, just like you have weird stuff on Windows (trying to get some older Android devices to communicate in fastboot mode in Windows makes me feel like Odysseus).

Asking around and screwing around usually gets you places though. Eventually you find something.

What they are talking about is an open source piece of software (Meshtastic) that's using a well-known (if specific to Chromium) standard, WebUSB. It's a genuine pain point, and stuff like this needs to work out of the box, no manually written udev rules required.

I assumed the same as you when I tried out the BSDs. I went with FreeBSD first because I assumed that was the better supported one. Wifi was absolutely horrible on it. connection would constantly drop, or was slow, etc. on OpenBSD i haven't had those issues. Also had a lot of issues setting up a VM on FreeBSD and getting certain USB devices to work correctly. neither of those issues on OpenBSD.

That's actually pretty reassuring! I was under the impression it was a huge flex haha. I'm curious how much practical speed you gain from compiling everything to your specific architecture. 🤔