LeFantome @ LeFantome @programming.dev

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2 yr. ago

Europe yes. China even to a more limited extent ( at least for a while ).

Russia? You must be freaking kidding me. That is before even considering that Russia and the US are on the path to becoming close allies.

Let me just say that hierarchies are for breaking ties.

The normal process is that Linus prefers we all work through maintainers to cut down on the noise that comes to him. In this case, the maintainer is the reason the noise is coming to Linus. So, it will be up to him to settle it.

Perhaps. That is not my read. I hear Linus saying that he trusts the process and that sticking with it is the solution to working through the problem. He does not say that a maintainer blocking a technically sound patch is a problem. He does not say that he would reject the patch. He does say that the approach taken by Hector ( who is not the one that submitted the patch ) is the wrong one. If Linus had said that the technical approach or the code quality was a problem, I would agree with you. He did not object to either of those things. What he said is that social media is not the solution.

The problem with your timeline is that it completely leaves out the event(s) that Linus is objecting to. I am hoping that is unintentional on your part.

I will know what Linus thinks when he either accepts or rejects the submission from the R4L team.

Really seems like we are agreeing. I get that the limited package set is a feature. I also get that it is both too small and too enterprise to satisfy most people you would describe as a “SO” precisely because they are probably normal people.

You gave the excellent example of Spotify and suggested a Flatpak for that. Honestly, I am not sure where we are in disagreement. Especially since I started by “mostly agreeing” myself. We even agree on that. :)

The release notes refer to the “few remaining issues”.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/milestones/3#tab-issues

There seem to be 115 issues on there which is more than “a few”. However, only 3 are listed as blockers. But a dozen of them are crashes.

How many of these need to be fixed before the 3.0 release? Does anybody know?

In the era of Flatpak, I kind of agree with you.

The primary drawback is the complete lack of packages. A home user is going to want something not included and then things fall apart. Flatpaks and Distrobox have made that a lot better.

If you could get away with a RHEL core and Flatpak for apps, you would have a pretty solid setup for a “normal” person.

Yes. And historically, what is the right response to a country that is doing that?

I have a lot of sympathy. I feel awful for them. Unfortunately, it is the kind of sympathy I would feel for an enemy soldier that I think is maybe fighting against their will. I feel bad for them but there is no way I am putting my gun down while they are around. They are still the enemy and “they” are still trying to kill me. We are not going to be friends.

The project has said it is a goal to move to a dual language model. So, no, it is not reasonable.

What would be reasonable would be technical arguments or pragmatic logistical concerns with the goal of finding solutions. What would be reasonable would be asking for and accepting help.

None of the reasonable stuff is happening. So, it not reasonable.

I doubt you care but others may want to know that you just hit the nail on the head. Just not the way you think.

All the Rust folks want is for “technically superior” solutions to be accepted on their merits. The exact problem is that some influential Linux folks have decided that “technically superior” is not the benchmark.

Take the exact case that has led to the current debate. The maintainer said explicitly that he will NEVER accept Rust. It was NOT a technical argument. It was a purely political one.

In the Ted Tso debacle. a high profile Rust contributor quite Linux with the explicit explanation that the best technical solutions were being rejected and that the C folks were only interested in political arguments instead of technical ones.

If it was true that “technically superior” solutions were being accepted, the R4L team would be busy building those instead of arguing.

Fair point. I do think burn out is a problem for the process in general. I guess Linux has always benefited from the long line of people looking to contribute. As long as progress is being made, I expect that to continue here.

What code has he not merged? Was his argument technical or political?

I see lots of R4L code being merged in each of the last few releases.

I also do not see the email where Linus supported Christoph. I see the one where he chewed out Hector for “social media brigading”. That is not the same thing as supporting the maintainer. Hector is not even the one submitting the Rust code in question. He just piled on in the LKML later.

Love those two recs

The core packages, including the desktop environment are much more up-to-date than Debian. This addresses one of the core short-comings of Debian while maintaining most of its strengths. LMDE comes with Xapps as well, the core user applications.

It is pretty hard to find software not available in Arch / AUR.

On non-Arch distros, installing an Arch Distrobox is my favourite way to install software not found in the native repos.

If you need a replacement for full fledged Visual Studio, JetBrains has you covered. Clion for C/C++ and Rider for C#.

Visual Studio Code works great on Linux.

Honestly a lot of it is just momentum and familiarity although I also think US vs Europe is a factor. Linux was popular in North America first and Red Hat was one of the most successful distros early on. The fact that SUSE uses the Red Hat package manager reflects this. Fedora is backed by Red Hat, the de facto standard Enterprise Linux.

Both have their fans though and trying to argue that one is better than the other would be a war of preferences. Many people believe that Tumbleweed is the best rolling distro.

If you do not want your distro to force changes down your throat like Microsoft, maybe avoid Ubuntu.

“Stability” on Linux means two things. “Stable” distros like Debian or RHEL change their software infrequently. This is indeed stable. However, you will likely be unhappy with the old software and want to install newer stuff. Many of the ways this is done will cause actual instability (bugs and crashes). Also, old software may be missing features or hardware support. If you are a gamer for example, this could be a big deal—especially if you use NVIDIA.

Things are a bit better than they used to be with tech like Distrobox and Flatpak.

The frequently updated distros can actually be “more stable” for the same reasons as above. However, every once in a while some package is going to have a bug that may hit you before it is found. Arch or EOS are examples of such distros. They have massive software repositories that probably contain everything you will ever need. If you use one of these, check out the AUR (user contributed software repo).

Distros that fall in the middle, like Mint or Fedora, are what I would recommend for a new user. Compared to Windows, you will find them very tinker friendly and tweakable. Fedora is more Wayland ready (see below).

HDR is very, very new and is part of a change in core graphics tech from something called X11 to something called Wayland. From this point forward, Wayland is the better bet but, today, the quality of your experience is going to be very dependent of the “age of your software” issue above. For NVIDIA on Wayland, you want very up-to-date versions.

KDE Plasma is the most mature Wayland environment today, in my assessment. Others are coming along quickly. That does not yet help you now though.

Photoshop is going to be a problem for you. The most often recommended replacement for PS is GIMP. Unfortunately, GIMP has been on the verge of a major update for years. GIMP 3 has not shipped yet and most distros ship a far older version (2.10). Version 3 is a massive upgrade. However, you may still find it an unsatisfactory PS replacement. Some people use Photopea online.

Gaming on Linux works really well now. However, multi-player anti-cheat systems are Windows kernel only and so these games are going to be a problem. So, your experience will depend on what you play.

The other stuff on your list will work well. Linux of course has a lot more to offer, especially if you are a dev.

Good luck!

Distros matter. Maybe less than you think.

For the most part, they all run the same software, including the desktop environment (user experience).

So, in many ways, choosing your distro is mostly choosing how it comes out of the box and how much work it will be to configure it how you want after the fact. Some distros will be closer to what you want out of the box. But you can basically turn any distro into any other distro with a little effort.

That said, some choices do run a bit deeper and are a lot harder to change. Package manager, init system, C library, and others are pretty baked in.

Time for Republicans to admit that Trump was a DEI hire.