LeFantome @ LeFantome @programming.dev

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2 yr. ago

I have been using Arch, EndouvourOS, and Chimera Linux now for years.

I never do this.

As I have been a Linux user since the early 90’s, I don’t think Windows is really the right fall-back for me.

I doubt the forum style is really the issue.

EndeacourOS, one of my favourite distros, uses the same packages (the real Arch ones). So everything he says here applies.

From the video “websites are still websites. Videos are still videos”. The problem of course is that this is not true.

The problem is that technology is still our servant. What are we asking it to do?

First, this video itself. If this same story was being told 20 years ago, it would be a blog post, mostly plain text, maybe one image. It would not be a 1080p or 4K YouTube video. That, in a nutshell is the real problem. The OP, by posting this video, has already chosen a side in that fight. But let’s compare apples to apples.

20 years ago, a web page was made up up a few dozen kb of HTML, a dozen kb of CSS, and a few 100 kb of JavaScript. Images were few, low resolution, and low bit depth. The fonts used were probably bitmaps and installed locally. The “computing power” was on the server. It was all sent as clear text. The networks were too slow to send much more. Today, a website sends me megabytes, maybe dozens of megabytes, of JavaScript. And I am probably downloading a bucket of vector fonts too. Not only is the “web application” much, much fancier but now all the “computing power” is expected to be in my browser (on my computer). And all the “assets” like images and video have to be local too. Instead of small 8 bit GIFs, I have huge high-resolution 24 bit AVIF and PNG files. I am rendering SVG and font vector files at high resolutions on my local CPU / GPU. Maybe there is an animated background. To cap things off, everything is encrypted with 2048 bit or 4096 bit keys. It is not that my local computer or my local operating system has become less efficient (like the video implies). It is that the websites have become 100 times more difficult to render. Browse some of those old websites (if you can find them). They are blazing fast and take very little RAM.

And what were videos? YouTube was probably 360p with a video codec designed to be easy to decompress on an underpowered client. Now, YouTube is 4K or at least 1080p and in a codec that is much more computationally intensive to render. It has to be to support storage of these otherwise immense files. A 4K file is literally 40 times the number of pixels in 360p. This is before we consider that the color space probably went from 16 bits to 24 or 32 as well. So, back to 100 times harder like above.

And the premise that “20 years ago” you were running your web browser and an agile manager and a command line all while editing a video on your laptop is nonsense. You had a 1280x800 screen. If you were editing a video, it was probably the only thing you had running. And again, what resolution and color depth were these videos you were making? Were you even editing video? Be honest. How many “content creators” were there then. The multimedia we were editing was probably audio only. The video work we did was more transcribing (maybe cutting out ads) than it was “video editing” like today.

If this same message was being told 20 years ago, it would be a blog post, mostly plain text, maybe one image.

And you know what, my 10 year old computer can still do the modern stuff and it absolutely blazes though the old stuff.

If this were a blog post, I could have a hundred similar tabs open on that 2 GB of RAM he talks about.

So, it is not that computers and software are built wastefully. It is that users expect things they did not expect before. If you are willing to watch 360p YouTube, read mostly text blog posts with the ads tuned off, make simply edited videos in the same 360p resolution, and run a simple Wayland compositor or X11 Window Manager, a totally up-to-date Linux distro will run just as well on your old hardware as you remember. At least, pretty close.

The only really truly wasteful step has been the move to 64 bit instead of 32 bit. We could save at least a third of the RAM used for any modern task if it were 32 bit. But, 32 bit only gives us 4 GB of RAM, which means I could get a 32 bit computer that performs like 6 or 7 GB 64 bit system today. But of course that is not nearly enough. As the YouTube author states, they need 16 GB for the huge videos he is editing. So, 64 bit is not wasted either I guess.

And, of course, on a Windows machine, a third of my RAM and 20% of my CPU is dedicated to running a bunch of crap that ships with my OS to serve the goals of the OS provider, not me the user. But that is an entirely different problem (or, this is his point, I concede this point to him).

An additional message in this video is about “freedom” and “exponential complexity” and “commercial masters”. Of course, there is some truth there. But again, step back.

This video starts with the OP editing a video in KDENLIVE on Linux. What video editing software and OS was he using 20 or 30 years ago as he says. Be honest. We have more freedom and more non-commercial choice than ever before. It is not even remotely arguable.

And complexity. If I install a distro today with say XFCE as a desktop environment, what is the complexity compared to the early 2000s or late 90s? Try to configure your video card and monitor and get back to me. Explain how to configure your WiFi in 1999. If anything, a Linux distro is less complex and daunting now than before.

A RISC-V chip dozens of times more powerful than the Apollo computer can be found for under $5.

True. :(

At least for the last 10 years.

M1 works decently with Linux these days but anything newer than that barely works.

I was thinking Intel era given the price-point.

Horrible cooling is the last couple of years of Intel MacBooks. Nothing to do with Linux.

If you run them with a “balanced profil” in Linux, they run a bit slower but the fan stays quiet. It is probably what macOS does.

Before 2019 or so, they run awesome. I mean, the newer ones are faster so they run great too even in balanced. I guess it depends what you pay for them.

The older ones are crazy cheap these days and, in my view, great value.

I have six MacBook Pro / MacBook Air computers. They all run flawlessly. Everything works. Everything, including all the social keys (screen, volume, etc). I do not have any of the problems described.

I daily drive more than one of them.

The best OS, in my view, for these machines is EndeavourOS, especially if you have one new enough to have a T2 chip. That said, I also have a 2020 MacBook Air running EndeavourOS. Absolutely everything works and it is quite fast but the fan will get quite loud (unlike any of my other machines). I have been meaning to replace the thermal paste in the hopes that it helps. I tend to use the older ones more as they do not have this issue.

My recommendation would be to go for machines before 2020. The MacBook Air 2013 - 2017 is the absolute best bang for buck.

I picked up a 2013 for $50 two years ago for a backpacking trip hoping I could use it for email and not caring if it was lost or stolen. I used it for 4 hours yesterday including for a Microsoft Teams meeting.

US sanctions massively setback RISC-V.

We would have had the Milk-V OASIS last year , something better by now, and the answer to “as good as ARM” would be yes.

But Sophgo, the company making the SoC was accused of helping Huawei get access to restricted technology. So TSMC refused to make their chips. And the Milk-V OASIS was cancelled.

Massive blow to RISC-V.

People are going to say Thinkpad but I am going to say 2013 to 2017 MacBook Air. Inexpensive. Light. Good looking. A joy to use. Faster than you think. And well supported under Linux (I use EndeavourOS on them myself).

Negotiations behind the scenes are probably tough. Canada is not letting the US push them around.

So, Trump acts tough and applies pressure publicly.

1 - maybe it works and Canada caves

2 - if Canada does not cave, he can sign whatever and simply announce that it is the best deal ever (like he did with NAFTA / USMCA). He has already shown his supporters how hard he fought.

3 - if anybody makes a big deal that he got a bad deal, he can always break the agreement (like he did with USMCA)

This seems to be positioning Ubuntu as a data center OS. There are several RVA23 chips due out but they are all for the data center (tenstorrent, Alibaba, ventana, etc).

There is the SiFive P870 but I do not think anybody has licensed that so it may never get made.

I have also heard rumours of Expressif chips but I do not know the details.

Agree on the Linux. You do not need the GNU though.

Chimera Linux is based in Spain. Maybe use that.

When I switched my mother, her only complaint was that the scroll bars were not as wide in Facebook.

My mother, 80 years old, uses Linux Mint.

It is a myth that Windows is easier to use than Windows. It is just what you know and it came with your computer.

I will believe it when I see it for China. They will probably just keep pirating Windows.

India is at something like 15% Linux though and probably going up.

I only watch US media with Canadian actors. So, I guess most of it.

As one practical example, a malicious program may monitor your key presses to extract your passwords (in web browsers or sudo).

Or it could be taking screenshots behind the scenes and sending that data remotely or to a local AI.

Or turning on your mic and….

The digital dependence on the US is much like the energy dependence on Russia.

Europe is ditching Russian energy. They may ditch US tech.

“It’s more like gnu”

You are correct. GNU has the bad habit of only working with itself as well. Systemd only works with Glibc so it fits in well.

The reality is that GNU is just a subset of the Red Hat Linux platform these days. Systemd is another part. GNOME is the other big chunk. They are all designed to work with each other and do not care if they work with anything else.