Fascists, Racists, Transphobes, Terfs, Homophobes can fuck off.

  • 5 Posts
  • 105 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: February 22nd, 2022

help-circle


  • Given a long enough time frame, the vast majority of an immortal life would be spent buried beneath something or floating in the void of space. Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don’t die…nothing to do but float in space.

    You might counter that with, "well yeah, but eventually I’d find other sentient life forms and/or people again.” And sure, maybe, but that wouldn’t last as long as you…and then you’re just alone floating in space again, for the vast majority of your life. The only thing to look forward to, since you will outlast everything, is the end of time itself.



  • I use Thunder currently. My first Android Lemmy client was Jerboa, which was fine.

    I’ve tried Voyager, and I can’t remember right now why I didn’t stick with it, but I ended up just gravitating towards Thunder. It’s UI strikes the right balance between feature full and minimal imho.



  • It’s a lot of work. I’m in a similar boat. I’ve been self teaching myself how to program in various languages and working as a Fullstack developer at a very small startup.

    While I’ve learned alot, there’s always more to learn and finding direction is a challenge you’ll hit many times over if you stick with it.

    Right now I’m reviewing various Open Source Projects I could contribute to as I know ultimately this will make me a much better developer. There are so many CLI and web development tools I use that I’d like to expand on but will require a marginal jump in my skills. Here are a few examples:

    • Add a feature to the rTorrent client that would allow it to torrent over i2p
    • Expand the amount of tools available within the SolidJS framework ecosystem to be competitive with React’s ecosystem.
    • Create a HTTP server in Rust that has feature parity with Golang’s Caddy
    • Add a feature to AntennaPod akin to YouTube Sponsor block that would allow for user contributed timestamps to facilitate auto skipping of ad mentions in podcast episodes.

    I also am slowly working out plans to learn enough about Rust and browsers to recreate the terminal based browser Links in Rust.

    But these are all just me spitballing. In truth, my skills aren’t quite there yet and the amount of time to get there for each one of these is a lot. So I have to choose wisely and dive in deep on the project’s codebase, probably for at least a year or more to make headway. But this is the mindset I think might help you. Look into the software you use a lot or like the concept of. Figure out how you’d like to improve it or add to it. Reach out to the developers of said software however you can, either make your case for the improvements you want to make or just help out on something they want to do with the software. Learn, listen. Rinse and repeat.

    Hope this helps a bit.






  • Damn…this looks really good actually. I’m sad to day I never heard of cohost until now. But I’ll admit I just identify with the founder’s sentiments around the tech industry, and their strict adherence to moral values around how a platform like that should interact with their users. I wish their developers all the best in looking for new work.




  • I have about 25 or so shell scripts I use somewhat regularly and well over 300 aliases. I actually specifically don’t wrap package manager related scripts for no reason in particular, but many often do.

    My rule for an alias is if the amount of custom flags gets lengthy, and I use it often, yeah it gets an alias. Here’s an example of using yt-dlp:

    alias ytdl='yt-dlp --sponsorblock-remove all --write-auto-sub -f "bestvideo\*+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best" -f mp4'
    

    For shell scripts, my rule goes that it should probably have multiple features related around a single idea, that way you can use getopts to create custom flags. For example, I have a script that wraps very basic, but commonly used, git commands, chaining the classic add, commit -m, and push behind a series of read prompts, it has -h flags for help -l for a minimal log output, -i to initialize a new repository (even using github api token to remotely create the repo if you want to use github), and -r to revert back changes to a specified commit.

    Generally speaking aliases will get you what you need most of the time in a pinch, but shell scripting is more powerful, versatile, but potentially more time consuming.

    Others have rightly pointed out that these abstractions can sometimes negatively impact muscle memory, but IMHO this only really applies if you work as devops or sysadmin, where you are often responsible for running many different Linux servers, but usually this isn’t an issue if you have access to the internet and can see your saved aliases and/or scripts (but yeah, instant recall of native commands trumps notes every time).

    Additionally, another mentioned using git to keep track of your aliases, which I totally agree with. Whatever you do, back up your aliases and shell scripts, ideally with a git repo of some kind. This not only allows you to take your new scripts/aliases with you wherever you go, but also reference them later in case it’s not possible to use them on not your machine.

    Hope this helps. Bash can be crazy powerful if you take the time to learn it, and aliases are a great entry point to recognizing that potential. Here’s one of my favorites that combines mkdir with cd:

    alias mkcd='{ IFS= read -r d && mkdir "$d" && cd "$d"; } <<<' 
    

    Good luck, and have fun.


  • I’m an astoundingly selfish person, and unapologetic about it. Makes for having relationships, romantic or otherwise, pretty much impossible.

    I’m middle aged, dated, had relationships in the past, etc., and honestly just don’t have the drive to make relationships work. I do the bare minimum to keep my professional relationships in tact, which honestly is exhausting enough, and otherwise just keep to myself. It’s so much easier than when I was trying so hard to pretend I was interested in where another person was coming from or what they were going through. Now at least that effort ends after I clock out for the day, and there’s less socializing where I work, so there’s less of those kinds of social expectations overall.


  • I use the AUR all the time, the only thing I have to do is look for systemd as a dependency and avoid that.

    The Artix team generally provides init scripts for commonly used packages that rely on init. So for example, if you want to install openvpn, you’d have to install it alongside its script so:

    sudo pacman -S openvpn openvpn-runit
    

    Installs the runit init script. It does let you know that (for runit) to initialize it you have to create a soft link to the service directory so after installation:

    sudo ln -s /etc/runit/sv/openvpn /run/runit/service/
    

    And then initialize using runit’s service manager, sv:

    sudo sv start openvpn
    

    Anyways, that’s just one instance. I have only had one issue where I had to heavily troubleshoot for an obscure piece of software that relied on systemd as a dependency and there wasn’t any alternative…so I simply modified the source code, recompiled the binary and did it myself. But I’ve been using Artix for nearly 5 years and that is one out of thousands of packages.


  • Artix Linux. Basically Arch without systemd. It has four options for alternative init systems, so you get to see how it compared to systemd (ultimately it shows how a more minimal init approach is all you need in place of systemd, and where systemd has stepped outside of init into what should be part of the OS space, like elogind, etc.)

    The Artix team have done an amazing job of writing various init scripts to keep the distro comparable with Arch, have written alternatives to systemd modules, like replacing elogind with their own implementation, seatd, and IMHO is the defacto standard for how you implement a non systemd distro.

    Working without systemd, even if you like it from a sys admin standpoint, teaches you what you lose without systemd, which for the average user isn’t much. I game, code, administer web servers, etc., all without missing a beat on Artix Linux, and it honestly has taught me so much about Linux after I switched from Arch.

    I would consider jumping to Gentoo or Void out of curiosity, but Artix is where I’ll be staying for the foreseeable future.


  • Yeah, I generally agree with all sentiments. TS is handy at times, but working with poorly written .d.ts types from 3rd party libs is Hell.

    The MS acquisition of Github is sad imho. Using alternatives is nice. I’ll eventually get around to self hosting a Gitea or cgit instance.

    Ubuntu, Mint, and PopOS are probably the closest to a mainstream Linux Desktop from what I’ve seen, and perhaps one day one of those really will take the mantle and push the Linux Desktop forward into the mainstream, but I just don’t see it. I do hope I’m wrong though.



  • There’s more than a few reasons why Linux can’t make the jump to holding a dominant position in the desktop market.

    One is simply preinstallation. For companies (and therefore the general public) to adopt the Desktop Linux, they’d need it simply to be installed for them, with a Desktop Environment like Gnome or KDE.

    Secondly is updates. As much as Linux users tout the control they have over when and how updates take place, and how much Windows users will always complain about having to update their systems, until system updates on Linux are made automatic (or at least given the option to be made automatic), there cannot be a mainstream Linux Desktop. This means updates that happen very much like Windows, no administrator/sudo password, just happens on reboot regularly.

    The reason for this is mainly that the average user would never update unless forced, and then when something inevitably breaks, they are left, as always, frustrated that their computer just didn’t work as expected forever without any upkeep, understanding, or updates.

    Lastly is support. And this is multifaceted. By support I mean software support by companies like Adobe. I also mean a much farther reaching swath of random devices that literally plug and play like on Windows.

    As an aside, I’ll also say that since there is a move towards Wayland, there also needs to be a No Configuration Necessary way of running Nvidia on Wayland. This is less a Linux issue, and more a Nvidia one, but until pretty much any and all hardware works on Linux the way it just works on Windows, this sadly affects Linux Desktop adoption as more and more of the Linux Desktop ecosystem moves towards forcing Wayland adoption.

    Finally I’ll say that the Microsoft corporation at large obviously relies mainly on Corporate Adoption of its products and services, and that the Windows Desktop is simply one part of that greater whole. Their approach to competing with Apple and their walled garden ecosystem has been to slowly but surely create their own, its just so much larger you forget there are walls. They have done this by absorbing more and more of the tech ecosystem either by acquisition, invention, or otherwise. Examples ot this include Bing and All Search Engines that Use it, the pushing of TypeScript into JavaScript Development, the predominance and proliferation of VSStudio/VSCode in modern software development, their heavy involvement with OpenAI and aggressive pushing of AI products/services, their acquisition of Github and subsequent further expansion of influence over software development and distribution, and much much more.

    Despite the privacy invasion, enshittefication of the user experience, and their various other ways they have mistreated their users specifically via the direction they’ve taken Windows, Microsoft has established itself as THE Desktop, as THE Workstation, and as THE company that comes to mind when the average person mentions “computer”, and the majority of people associate computer related productivity and play with Windows.

    For all the advances made to Desktop Linux, especially in recent years, it is unlikely that Linux Desktop adoption will ever proliferate to the kinds of mainstream adoption that its accolades desire. Until Linux (or at least a Linux distribution) can demonstrate what I’ve mentioned above (preinstallation, automatic/automated updates, and wide spread software/hardware support from various 3rd party vendors) along with demonstrating a work flow/user experience that is somehow both familiar to the user and also better than the experience on Windows, then the day of the Linux Desktop will never come.

    This aforementioned demonstration, btw, would have to become obscenely apparent to the average every day computer user who just wants to get their work done, play a Video Game, and watch Netflix, all without having to ever even know what a terminal emulator is.

    I love Linux, and I think the Linux Desktop is not only a superior user experience, but is just better in general than Windows. But the average user I’ve encountered generally hates their Computer if it doesn’t work as expected 110% of the time. Linux, and honestly computers, will never be able to do that, but the closer the Desktop (and user facing GUIs more broadly) get to creating that illusion of “it all just works all the time”, the more adoption you’ll see.