Dark Arc @ Dark_Arc @social.packetloss.gg

Hiker, software engineer (primarily C++, Java, and Python), Minecraft modde

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2 yr. ago

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Yeah, who the hell is out there SSHing into their web server "to update their blog" but needs to be talked down like a toddler to convince them to try out Linux? This is a mythical beast of an user that does not exist.

People that do these sorts of remote work via GUIs exist. But yes, the switch is likely pretty obvious to them. I for one used to do it with Minecraft server stuff, I had FileZilla; Dolphin pretty much replaced that instantly for me. MUCH later, scripts replaced Dolphin.

This is a massive dealbreaker for a whole bunch of people, for understandable reasons.

Is it though? They'd face the same issues switching to MacOS. There's no point in lying that some of their favorite programs may not work. I still miss Paint.net though GIMP has grown on me a lot.

This is simultaneoulsy an over and understatement. You can very likely access your old Windows drives from Linux, but it's janky enough that this piece of advice makes sense.

Nobody is going to leave their old Windows files on their OS drive AND install Linux unless their goal is to dual boot (and that's clearly not who this is for).

The entire file system needs to be replaced in the process of installing Linux, so there's no "somebody should find a better solution to this." The only way to do it would be to relocate and resize partitions as files are copied ... and that's incredibly dangerous. Not to mention attempting to guess what files are important to the Windows user has a high probability to fail.

This advice is good. You should regularly copy stuff you care about to an external hard drive and ideally use a backup program anyways. SSDs don't fail as fast as HDDs did, but it will happen someday (or very well could).

However, every single tutorial and guide you read will tell you to update all right at the top with the compulsive zeal of a puppy who has just smelled a hidden treat.

Yeah, I've never liked this as an argument for Linux. People should update software (at least when there's a security related issue) ... for the exact same reason they should ditch Windows 10. However, as you said "Having to explain to people that their perfectly working computer is actually not working despite all available evidence is a bit of an issue."

Many people prefer to roll the dice with those issues.

Yeah, I think that's probably for the best honestly.

Ahhh so leapp will simply become less relevant because a better upgrade mechanism will take over

Huh, thanks for the history and I missed that last part so thanks for that too!

It sounds like the original edit program might have been (at least partially) hand coded assembly or something (maybe some unportable C that made a variety of bad assumptions) if they were never able to port it to anything but 32-bit x86.

Maybe the new edit will gain any missing functionality eventually.

Interesting ... yeah it looks like Leapp can do some upgrades for Alma and possibly others as well (TIL). I'm not sure how well that upgrade process would compare / be supported vs Debian though.

What's the image mode and ostree stuff? Is that required for RHEL and/or Alma going forward?

I think your issue should be with Reddit moderators not Ars.

ProPublica happily allows Ars to republish their stories by disclosing the source:

https://www.propublica.org/nerds/happy-birthday-creative-commons

Ars discloses the source compliantly:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/doge-used-flawed-ai-tool-to-munch-veterans-affairs-contracts/

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-veterans-affairs-ai-contracts-health-care

ProPublica literally thanks Ars above for spreading their stories.

The Ars headline (with its subheading) also says a lot more. So it's just ... going to get more upvotes, it's better bait.

As for the second article getting squashed... Again Reddit moderators.

This looks like a nonsensical conspiracy theory ... ProPublica was not suppressed or harmed. Ars literally spread their exact story. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if more people read the story because they see "ArsTechnica" and assume good content (because Ars has a super nice website and regularly has really good journalism on it).

No that's canonical

There are pros and cons to verbosity and to using many files vs one.

Cron needs a special tool to edit it because you can break a bunch of stuff trying to edit another, very easily, and by accident.

The commands themselves when I was first learning I found easier to remember than things like dmesg or /var/log/ ... they all follow similar conventions and aren't so chopped up short that you can't guess what they do by looking at them.

Similar to how most people don't prefer 3 letter variables in code ... I'm glad we've largely moved on from 3 letter commands. Granted, if you use them a lot you should definitely make your own three letter aliases in your preferred shell scripting language.

I think systemd has moved desktop and server Linux towards being more BSD-like ... and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

Maybe we'll end up needing an X11 -> Wayland sort of transition where there are protocols instead of "an implementation."

However, I've yet to see systemd be meaningfully detrimental. Are distros a little less different? Yeah. Has it made my life easier when I need to go between distros? Also, yeah.

I think on some level, we're just getting to a more mature Linux desktop and server ... and as a result consolidating on stuff that really doesn't have strong reasoning to be different.

TIL; though I moved my servers to Debian ... having the ability to sanely upgrade without a reinstall is a major plus.

There's research into non-oil based polymers in Akron funded by the Biden administration (don't tell Trump) and Goodyear IIRC. So ... if that goes somewhere, maybe not.

Yeah, I think I'm going to stick to my energizers ... pretty much everything I use AA batteries for these days is a low draw device (door lock, smoke detector) or something like an emergency flash light, rechargeable batteries don't make sense for either use case.

I have some old school nice rechargeable batteries as well with an external charger. Those were nice back in 2016 when my bose headphones I was using at the time used AAA batteries, but it's been a long time since I've used those with any frequency.

That's interesting; I find the git CLI pretty intuitive especially for basic use cases most people would need, but I've also used git for 15 years now.

git is genuinely one of the best tools ever created. It is an extremely simple idea with crazy effectiveness and a reasonable UX that is a bit off putting at first but makes a lot of sense later on.

That said, I'd genuinely be curious what you think jj has improved upon git.

I hate that rentable but not self-hostable gaming servers have become a thing.

I'm skeptical that enough games run on arm to make that work.

"Unused road" is ridiculous except in extremes. Unless people merge well over a mile back, 1 lane of traffic will make no difference. The only way "unused road" matters is for the people that haven't entered the traffic jam yet who are getting off before they reach it.

Very few people (from what I've seen) merge more than 30 car lengths out. 30 cars is not going to make a difference.

What does make a difference is the fact that we can't do a merge at speed because some people want to "zipper late." It's the zipper behavior that matters, the "at the very end" part never should've been added to that recommendation.

Looking at an actual research paper about this, the zipper merge demonstrated is not at the last possible point. A merge point forms ahead of that point and that's what should be used. The pictures from their study show the zipper occurring over a wide area with many of the zipped cars driving in the middle.

https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/35694

I don't know how studies like this have become the recommendations we have. They seem to me to miss critical bits.

Edit: based on my quick read, it's worth noting the study finds only minimal support for the zipper merge and only in contexts not involving trucks largely based on visual analysis from their video feed as the quantitative data was not statistically significant. We need better transparency on recommendations like this frankly and the research supporting them. We should be able to have an honest debate on the merits of the papers.

I really like the idea of peertube, but until it finds a way to pay creators I'm not sure it will ever be able to replace YouTube.

YouTube is as good as it is because people get paid.

The old school YouTubers just did it for fun, but YouTube was a lot different back then ... and as much as I hate how aggressively Google is monetizing YouTube these days, it's honestly a lot higher quality than it was years ago.

The problem with zipper merges as this person describes them is a zipper merge is SUPPOSED TO get traffic back up to speed. However, when your take on the zipper merge is "up there where the wreck is at the last possible spot I can merge" there's no time for a human to safely merge at speed. So everything has to continue at a crawl.

So the people jumping out of their lane and "zipper merging" at the last second instead of 50 feet out or so end up making things worse for everyone.

The zipper does not and should not be at the point of the physical problem on the road. Just like you should not just drive to the end of the on ramp and at the last possible second merge into the lane on your left without paying attention.

I really can't more strongly disagree with this take.

Zipper merging is to interleave two lanes of traffic when there's one lane of traffic available ahead.

It DOES NOT matter if it's done with 3 feet to merge or 300 feet to merge. There's no efficiency gain.

What does matter is some assholes trying to merge at speed at the last possible second.

The zipper point should not be the point where there's NO ROOM to merge SAFELY without EVERYONE going 3 miles per hour.

The handful of times I've seen a zipper merge actually start to work, someone rushes down to the end of the line where the problem is, nearly causes a second accident trying to get over, and then everything starts moving at a crawl again.

You don't need to zipper merge at the "physical barrier" causing the zipper merge to be necessary.