data1701d (He/Him)

“Life forms. You precious little lifeforms. You tiny little lifeforms. Where are you?”

- Lt. Cmdr Data, Star Trek: Generations

  • 92 Posts
  • 668 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: March 7th, 2024

help-circle
  • Oh, yeh! In the CD pregap that’s really hard to rip and didn’t make streaming!

    It was supposed to be on a compilation, but it got scrapped after he left Prophet Records for Pah Wraith Entertainment, unfortunately.

    Jaresh-Inyo, Sylvia Ront, Cardassian Union, Vic Fontaine
    Gamma Quadrant, Jake Sisko, Buck Bokai
    Norah Satie, Benny Maxwell, Miranda class, Holoprograms
    The Maquis, the Federation, Deanna Troi
    
    T’Pel, Photons, Chakotay, Deep Space Nine
    Kullnark, “Frame of Mind”, and “Something for Breakfast”
    Chancellor Gowron, Voyager, Bajor’s got a new Kai
    Ben Sisko, Sonny Clemmons, Sarek of Vulcan, goodbye
    
    We didn't start the fire
    It was always burning, like the Bajoran Fire Caves
    We didn't start the fire
    No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
    



  • You’re right in some ways; Windows is closer to a microkernel than Linux, though it doesn’t perfectly adhere to the philosophy of - there’s supposedly weird things like drawing calls in the Windows kernel that should be in microservice, I’ve heard

    However, I wouldn’t necessarily call microkernels a detriment; in fact, Linux is a bit of an odd duck for going monolithic - modern Apple operating systems also run on a microkernel. Monolithic is an older architecture, and there are worries about the separation between components and system resilience e.g the webcam driver can’t crash the whole kernel.

    In practice, it’s less of an issue, and there really aren’t any open source microkernel operating systems that are practical for production desktop and server use, which has a microkernel though there are certainly solutions for embedded systems.

    QubesOS is built on Xen hypervisor, which uses a microkernel design, but Linux is then run in multiple VMs on top of it, which makes it more of a technicality in my eyes. RedoxOS also runs on a microkernel and is certainly intended as a desktop operating system, but its hardware support is limited; GNU Hurd is even more limited in that respect and not really usable.




  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websitetoLinux@lemmy.mlDebian Trixie
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    4 days ago

    Maybe it’s because I only use stable on my laptop with Flatpaks, but honestly, Bookworm never got that crusty to me until recently - it feels like new software versions didn’t introduce a lot of must have features in the past two years. Only hiccup was I had to install the backports kernel to get Wi-Fi working.



  • As a completely new user who’s self-described as “not very tech savvy”, Arch is probably a terrible idea, and you should switch distros.

    I really like Debian, but something like Linux Mint or Fedora might be wiser for you; all three hold your hand more, which would be very important in your case. Fedora and Debian specifically are designed to work well with KDE, although Fedora will have newer versions.

    You certainly seem willing to learn (you got through the Arch install process), and I think you still have a great opportunity to enjoy Linux, but considering you’re calling the terminal emulator “Konsole”, your self-description is probably apt. FYI Konsole is just one application to access the terminal, kind of like how Firefox and Chrome are both web browsers, but you don’t use “Chrome” to refer to web browsers.




  • Who the heck came up with “Fek’lhr”?! Like, it’s clearly it intended to be a Klingon word and not an Anglicization, but they failed miserably to actually follow the rules of the language.

    • “F” is not used for that sound in any major Klingon Romanization system (“f” corresponds to “ng” in xifan hol mapping); “v” is the closest thing.
    • “k” is also not used; that should be a “q”.
    • The apostrophe usually only comes after vowels, as it denotes a glottal stop.
    • “h” is not pronounced silently like it is here; it’s a weird consonant kind of like a soft g.

    It’s so bad it looks like Okrand had to fix it in one of his Klingon audio tapes - the official Klingon word is “veqlargh”, leaving the TNG onscreen versiob as a very weird Anglicization with a pointless apostrophe.




  • Yes and no. I think connotation is important here; “stable” means different things in different contexts even within computing, and they both denote different but important things - kind of like free of cost verses freedom.

    In the distro case, people need/want a distribution where they know a new version won’t come and break their config when they update at 2 AM and miss it in the changelog, and “stable” has been agreed upon as the term in that context. Of course, that can change, as all language does, but that’s just the current convention.

    Also, Debian tends to make sure software is not unusable before stable is shipped (the Nvidia thing is an anomaly I’ll explain below); while they sometimes fail, as you’ve hinted, I find it quite rare that it actually happens. Also, the “static” of Debian isn’t absolute; if something really has a breaking bug or a security vulnerability that affects overall system usability (basically something that can’t be fixed by installing a Flatpak), they will put out a fix, like with the Linux kernel or a web browser (via the security repo, included by default in all installs).

    Additionally, looking at this changelog, while the Nvidia situation is objectively a bit embarrassing, it looks like they were working on getting them updated, but just didn’t have much luck - I’m guessing a breaking change in the software that made it harder to package. Also, it’s in the non-free repo, which is on the back burner compared to the rest of the distro - something in the main repo will usually only be at most a few months behind at time of distro release.

    https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nvidia-graphics-drivers


  • I mean, I think static is stable.

    I feel like stability in some contexts means more than just the software not crashing often (although that is the big part); it means being able to expect the behavior to stay the same until you’re ready to upgrade to the next release and confront the new behavior all at once, sort of like upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7.

    There’s certainly a place for rolling release - I use Debian Testing on my desktop - but I certainly appreciate being able to go a month without opening my laptop without getting a daunting notification like “There are 1578 updates available “ (on my Debian 12 Thinkpad, it’s usually only double digit, very minor updates).





  • I’ve never run an installfest, but I’ve been to my university’s Linux Users Group installfests, and here’s what they did:

    • Brought USBs with Fedora and OpenSUSE, which are their standard noob recommendations. Personally, I’ve used Debian for a long time, but I can get why Debian might not be something they want to recommend for noobs.
    • Be there to help them
    • If they’re a bit squeemish about it, have them install in a VM software like VirtualBox on Windows or something like UTM on macOS.

    Also, I’d recommend you bring extra USB peripherals in case the internal devices need a little bit of work; bring some extra mice, keyboards, and ethernet adapters. You hopefully won’t need any of them, but they’ll certainly make life easier if you do.

    As for time, I’d imagine doing the basic install and ironing out some (not all) of the kinks probably takes less than it takes for a group to stat D & D characters, if that’s a helpful comparison for you.