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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • dkc@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    In 2025, the package manager and frequency of updates are the only real differences between most distributions. I’ve been enjoying Flatpak for years now and hope it continues to build momentum. It offers the possibility of shared effort between distributions who depend on legions of volunteers constantly updating debs/rpms/whatever.

    It feels like one of the last hurdles to eliminate so much of the duplicated effort associated with all these distributions.


  • dkc@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlWhat was Linux like in the 90s
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    2 months ago

    I started using Linux right in the late 90’s. The small things I recall that might be amusing.

    1. The installation process was easier than installing Arch (before Arch got an installer)
    2. I don’t recall doing any regular updates after things were working except for when a new major release came out.
    3. You needed to buy a modem to get online since none of the “winmodems” ever worked.
    4. Dependency hell was real. When you were trying to install an RPM from Fresh Meat and then it would fail with all the missing libraries.
    5. GNOME and KDE felt sincerely bloated. They seemed to always run painfully slow on modern computers. Moving a lot of people to Window Managers.
    6. it was hard to have a good web browser. Before Firefox came out you struggled along with Netscape. I recall having to use a statically compiled ancient (even for the time) version of Netscape as that was the only thing available at the time for OpenBSD.
    7. Configuring XFree86 (pre-cursor to X.org) was excruciating. I think I still have an old book that cautioned if you configured your refresh rates and monitor settings incorrectly your monitor could catch on fire.
    8. As a follow on to the last statement. I once went about 6 months without any sort of GUI because I couldn’t get X working correctly.
    9. Before PulseAudio you’d have to go into every application that used sound and pick from a giant drop down list of your current sound card drivers (ALSA and OSS) combined with whatever mixer you were using. You’d hope the combo you were using was supported.
    10. Everyone cheered when you no longer had to fight to get flash working to get a decent web browsing experience.

  • dkc@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlFedora Linux 42 released
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    2 months ago

    I really don’t agree with choosing to release with the UEFI bug they found. They describe it as cosmetic but those entries can last the lifetime of your computer, even if you wipe your hard drive. It’s bound to cause some confusion for years to come for Linux tinkerers.



  • dkc@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.mlApple TV Privacy over Roku?
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    4 months ago

    I used to have a Shield. I donated it to GoodWill when Nvidia updated their UI to start showing ads on the Home Screen. I switched to Apple TV and not only does it not force me to watch ads, it’s actually just been a better overall. I haven’t had a single issue streaming anything from Plex to my Apple TV, where sometimes the Shield would struggle with high fidelity audio tracks.



  • dkc@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlA noticeable difference in kernels?
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    5 months ago

    From what I recall the completely fair scheduler (CFS) used by default on most Linux systems has a lower average latency than the RT kernel. The RT kernel just gives you more consistency, hence the CFS having lower latency “on average”

    So honestly for opening Firefox it’ll probably depends more on your SSD data rate, but in theory it’ll open faster on a “regular” distribution most of the time.

    Real time is good for things like audio processing where having better guarantees that a process will get its share of the CPU is a benefit.


  • Hey man, I don’t want to discourage you, but this is one of those things where if you have to ask how to do something you’re probably not experienced enough to do it. That being said, as a learning opportunity even if you don’t make it far you’ll still learn a lot about how GPUs work.

    I’d start by looking at any existing drivers you can find and see if you can document or find documentation for the commands fed to the GPU. From there you can look at the Mesa project for examples of converting Vulkan to instructions for specific processors and see if you can get it to all fit together for your project.




  • I don’t think you really do anymore. I’d consider myself an experienced Linux user. I’ve been using it as a my desktop OS for over 20 years. I’ve also used Linux heavily through my career and am completely comfortable with the command line.

    With recent installs of Fedora the only thing I use the command line for is the initial setup of the multimedia codecs. After that I haven’t been required to touch it.

    I used to consider a terminal required to keep your desktop Linux system running. Now I look at is as an optional install for programmers.


  • That was a good read. I’d not really been sure of the differences between libadawaita and GTK were. It sounds like this frees up GTK to focus on being a cross platform GUI library, perhaps competing more directly with Qt. Meanwhile, libadawaita allows GNOME developers to keep leveraging GTK and tune it to their design guidelines.

    I’ve only seen positive things come out of recent GNOME apps, but I wonder if the downside of GTK no longer embedding GNOME’s design language would be apps choosing to use GTK directly instead of libadawaita for better cross platform support. Will we end up with a less cohesive GNOME environment in the future?


  • When you’re in school you’re often stuck with the software they require. No harm in that. Once you’re finished with school you can reevaluate. If you want to be more privacy focused you could make sure you’re only using Gmail for in a Firefox container tab for instance or look into sandboxing it other ways.

    For the same reasons don’t worry about keeping Windows on your computer for classes. It’ll get easier when you’re out of college, any job will give you work equipment with the software and tools they make you use and you can keep all personal information out of those. You’ll be able to use what you want on your personal items.

    Privacy is important, but not important as passing your classes.

    You’re doing great!



  • dkc@lemmy.worldtoAntiwork@lemmy.mlStart a bonus rumor?
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    1 year ago

    If you’re at a mid to large size company your direct managers likely don’t have any authority to give a bonus. There’s simply no budget they have access that go directly into paychecks.

    I like the idea of trying to help your coworkers but I worry that rumor would be more disappointing to them vs any positive outcome.


  • I recently purchased a laptop from System76. I’ve been very happy with it. You can get many of their models with coreboot used as the system firmware which is unique. I have been disappointed that they usually recommend installing open source, but not in-tree modules for getting things like keyboard backlight working. It feels a bit like they’re not a Linux laptop company but instead that they’re a Pop!_ OS laptop company.


  • Linux distributions have definitely standardized over the years. You get a kernel, systemd, network manager, Firefox, etc from basically every distro targeting desktops. Most will have different spins for the popular desktop environments as well.

    From a purely technical perspective the main difference of distributions today is the package manager. Are you using pacman, apt, dnf, or something else? We know as users that while some of these different package managers have advantages and disadvantages they are all doing the same thing. You can get basically all the equivalent packages on each major distribution. I sometimes feel sad thinking about all the volunteer effort working in parallel, but not together to package the same software using different package managers. In many ways it’s duplicate effort that I wish could be spent in better ways.

    Even package managers are beginning to converge. Flatpack is becoming extremely popular and is my current preferred way to add software to my system.

    Leaving technicals behind the only major difference I see between distro today is their philosophy on how frequently to update and what to exclude. Does every package get a new update immediately when it’s rolled out upstream like Arch? Are we going to stick to older packages and only apply security/bug fix updates like Debian, or do something in between? Do we want to bend over backwards to make it easy to install Nvidia drivers or tell users we don’t support closed source software? Do we want to make it as easy as possible to install codecs or leave it to the wider community to figure that out on their own?

    I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer. Use what you enjoy!