jabjoe @ jabjoe @feddit.uk

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2

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880

Joined

2 yr. ago

They can't fix Windows either, so that's not an argument.

Least if it's a Linux system, they don't need to buy any software to sort it out. It's free and out in the open.

Android makes RMS's GNU/Linux language make sense. It is a Linux, but not a GNU/Linux.

Google's attempt to fork Linux failed and now is mainlined so they can maintain as small a set of patches as they can. Once binder was merged, there is no fork anymore.

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/drivers/android?h=v6.10

Android is basically a build config now.

TVs that aren't Android are probably GNU/Linux. Smart white goods are often Linux. Linux even get used in cars. Some of it under Automotive Grade Linux, but not all. If some random thing has a user interface, find licenses and you can normally see what FOSS went in.

You can do so much with so little, at no cost of licencing or access. Why wouldn't you?

You use things like Yocto and Buildroot to build a image that has nothing but what you need, how you need it.

Except lots of IoT things, router, etc. Also Cromebooks and Steamdecks. And us GNU/Linux people. Android is Linux, just not GNU/Linux. Really isn't just servers.

The is no single Linux. It's not a monoculture like that. There are many distros with different build options, different configurations and different components.

Also culture is different. Very few Linux admins would be happy putting in a closed blob kernel driver for anything. In Windows world that's the norm, but not Linux.

What's just happened to Windows world would be harder in Linux world. At worse, one distros rolls out a killer update. Some distros would just reboot to the previous kernel.

Mmm depends. I have some automatic updates on my servers: https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades

Few things, in rough order:

• Smaller = less attack surface. You can strip a Linux OS down to only what is needed.
• Open source, so it's can be peered review. There are Unix distros like OpenBSD, that share lot of user space component options, where auditing is a big thing. The whole sunlight and oxygen stops things festering as much. As abosed to things locked in a box in another box down in a cellar.
• Open source transparency forces corporates to be better. We can see what they are and aren't doing.
• Diversity. The is no "Linux", it's a ecosystem of Linux distros all built and configured differently, using different components. Think of Linux as just a type of base board in a sea of Unix Lego bits. There are plenty of big deployments on BSD bases that share a lot with some Linux deployments.
• Unix security is simplier than Windows security, so easer to not mess up.

Yes and no. Linux is inherently more diverse. All the different distros doing things in different ways, sometimes with different components. It's not as much of a monoculture as Windows. There isn't a Linux that 90% is.

If this cheaper that offcuts humans won't eat, that is extremely promising.

This should be way better for the environment, way cheaper and free a lot of land.

So wasteful to grow a whole animal for few cuts of it's muscle.

Certainly not the way we lunch right now. The energy used, that focused, in that short a time, is insane.

Electric is far more efficient too, thus cheaper. Electricity you can transit over distance over wire and generate however you like. We've done it a long time, far and wide.

Turning electricity into hydrogen, distributing it, and then turning it back into electricity to move a vehicle, is so wasteful/expensive.

Just use a big battery.

So teens learn about Tor & VPNs. This stuff doesn't work. The higher you put the skills to get access, the more they will learn. Nothing motivates teens more than access to adult stuff. Maybe this is really a tech literacy policy.

Someone got to say it....

There is no Debian if everything was a pile of Snaps/Flatpack/Docker/etc. Debian is the packaging and process that packaging is put through. Plus their FOSS guidelines.

So sure, if it's something new and dev'y, it should isolate the dependencies mess. But when it's mature, sort out the dependencies and get it into Debian, and thus all downstream of it.

I don't want to go back to app-folders. They end up with a missmash of duplicate old or whacky lib. It's bloaty, insecure and messy. Gift wrapping the mess in containers and VM, mitigates some of security issues, but brings more bloat and other issues.

I love FOSS package management. All the dependencies, in a database, with source and build dependencies. All building so there is one copy of a lib. All updating together. It's like an OS ecosystem utopia. It doesn't get the appreciation it should.

I don't think so.

Only now are Nazis getting a foot hold again, at the same time they are getting a foot hold across the world. It is the after effects of the 2008 crash and Putin putting his thumb on scales where he can (troll farms and corruption).

The fact Germany doesn't stick out as more Nazi that France, or the US, or others, means the original denazification worked.

There was a process : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification

Yep, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Key players in Right To Repair in the US. With good history of "fighting for the user".

I can see a lot of comments against copyright here, but has anyone considered the implications of changes to copyright on copyleft?

I argue copyleft is demonstrably socially useful in locking things open. I do wonder if we'll end up the two being different legally....

Can it run problem bank apps? I need a bank auth app for work as the bank stopped fobs and it just would not run on LineageOS. It refused to run because "the phone is insecure". I tried Magisk hiding stuff and MicroG, and a number of way of tricking methods. That's why I ended up on GrapheneOS, as a compromise without feeling too compromised. Everything seams to think it's on a normal Android phone, but I've sandboxed the Google tentacles. But it would be better if mandating OS wasn't allowed. If I want to run a "insecure" phone, that's my "problem".

I can only speak of on Linux. If you know the disk is bad, clone it, with ddrescue, and fix the clone. But in future RAID and backup remotely. Also, next gen filesystems like ZFS and Btrfs for check sums and self healing and subvolumes with send/receive deltas between them.

Just because no one else has said, Adam has been involved in EFF for a long time. EEF Podcast episode with him in it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/podcast-episode-making-hope-adam-savage

Which delights me as he's more mainstream and so wakes people up to things like the Right To Repair movement.

But super important and not done enough! Disproving something can save humanity such time.