wischi @ wischi @programming.dev

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302

Joined

2 yr. ago

Which one?

As far as I can remember Windows 11 only shows the time on default installations and there are GUI options to change the shown format on the taskbar.

"Some things are going to be different" basically means that they would have to learn to deal with manual config changes and command line stuff.

I personally don't expect the "end-user readyness" of Linux Distros to ever be a serious competition to OSes developed by huge teams driven by trillion dollar companies like Apple and Microsoft. Basically all Linux Distributions I'd consider "end-user ready" and polished are themselves developed by huge companies - like Android, ChromeOS, SteamOS.

I think the biggest issue Linux has on the desktop is the sheer amount of choice for practically everything. The ecosystem is so fractured.

So the choice is actually not between Windows, Mac and Linux, but between Windows, Mac and about thirty Linix distributions where not even experienced Linux Desktop users can agree on which they should suggest to the general public.

Which distro should I suggest to my neighbor? And are you sure other "Linux experts" would agree with your answer?

You know that, and I know that, but explain that to the person that asked that question.

Once I figured out it was Ubuntu with gnome I had to tell them to open the freaking terminal and spell them some commands over the phone. Not an environment I'd call "ready" for regular people.

The entire post in general is a bit weird, because it calls "Linux" "ready" as if Linux was something an end-user could install and use.

A question I got last week over the phone: "How do I show the day of the week next to the date in the desktop on Linux?" - what would you tell them?

Have you ever opened a word document that's more than just a single unformated paragraph on libre office. I know it's not a "Linux" issue, but people don't care. Of over 80% of the world uses Windows and Microsoft Office and the Word document somebody sent me looks completely messed up an the inlined table is all over the place or the line break happens on a different row than on the original document it's not ready. And don't say "pdf". People don't care. Karen could open it on her PC with a double click on her machine and on your machine it's completely broken, why should I sent you a pdf. I just sent the same document to Karen and it worked perfectly.

My point is that Linux Desktop is far from "ready" for regular people.

Ok here is a question someone recently asked me: "How to show the day of the week next to the date on my Desktop". Try to answer that for "Linux" and help that person on the phone.

Linux is a kernel and not an operating system. My phone is runs Android, two of my root servers run debian bookworm, my living room media center runs Ubuntu, so I guess I have used Linux at least a little bit. But no distro I've seen (tried even more on some VMs) is really enough for me to suggest it to anybody that isn't a "computer-person".

It might be nonsense to you, but that's the first thing people see. No matter how amazing you business is, if your business card is a handwritten phone number on a piece of toilet paper, nobody will call.

A what compositor - try to explain to people, that just want to open a freaking word document, what you just said. Explain to them why libre office completely messes up the formating. "Via gamescope", "Wayland", "wine" whatever. Doesn't sound ready to me.

"Linux is ready" - which distro? Fractional (sometimes even non-fractional) scaling is a mess. Most things that go beyond changing the wallpaper image need some command line stuff. Linux Desktop is for nerds and definitely not ready.

Yes it works fine if you know what you are doing but most people don't. There is often not one thing of doing stuff, but hundreds. It already starts with the selection of a distro how would a "non-computer-person" decide on a distro. Just try them out? Install twenty different distros because reasons?

Unless resources are pooled into a single distro to polish it and make a defacto standard for ordinary people, homes and offices, Linux is not ready. If I need the freaking terminal because I want to see the day of the week next to the date it's not ready.

Don't use floats when you need to get accurate stuff

Floats are accurate. Could you name a situation (except money) where you think floats are not accurate enough to handle it?

Sure, just asign them a random Greek letter and call it a day 🤣

Why?

Not only for audio, but everything that doesn't have to be an exact base 10 representation (like money). Anything that represents something "analog" or "measured" is perfectly fine to store in a float. Temperature, humidity, windspeed, car velocity, rocket acceleration, etc. Calculations with floats are perfectly accurate and given the same bit length are as accurate as decimal types. The only thing they can't do is exactly(!) represent base 10 decimals but for a very large amount of applications that doesn't matter.

That's not really true and it depends on what you mean. If your decimal datatype has the same number of bits it's not more accurate than base 2 floats. This is often hidden because many decimal implementations aren't 64 bit but 128 bit or more. But what it can do is exactly represent base 10 numbers which is not a requirement for a lot of applications.

You can use floats everywhere where you don't need numbers to be base 10. With base 2 floats the operations couldn't be more accurate given the limit of 64 bits. But if you write f64 x = 0.1; and one assumes that the computer somehow stored 0.1 inside x they already made a wrong assumption. 0.1 can't be converted into a float because it's a periodic in base 2. A very very pedantic compiler wouldn't even let you compile that and force you to pick a value that actually can be represented.

Down the rabbit hole: https://zeta.one/floats-are-not-inaccurate/

But that's not because floats are inaccurate. A very very pedantic compiler wouldn't even let you write f64 x = 0.1; because 0.1 (and also 0.2 and 0.3) can't be converted to a float exactly (note that 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, etc. can be stored exactly!)

The moment you write f64 x = 0.1; and expect the computer to store that inside a float you already made a wrong assumption. What the computer actually stores is the float value that is as close as possible to 0.1. But not because floats are inaccurate, but because floats are base 2. Note that floating point types in general don't have to be base 2 - they can be any base (for example decimal types are base 10) but IEEE754 floats are base 2, because it allows for simpler hardware implementations.

An even more pedantic compiler would only let you write floating point in binary like 10.10110001b and let you do the conversation, because it would make it blatantly obvious that most base 10 decimals can't even be converted without information loss. So the "inaccuracy" is not(!) because float calculations are inaccurate but because many people wrongly assume that the base 10 literal they wrote can be stored inside a float.

Floats are actually really accurate (ignoring some Intel FPU hardware bugs). I skipped a lot of details which you can find here: https://zeta.one/floats-are-not-inaccurate/

Equipped with that knowledge your calculation 0.1+0.2 != 0.3 can simply be translated into: "The closest float to 0.1" + "The closest float to 0.2" is not equal to "The closest float to 0.3". Keep in mind that the addition itself is perfectly accurate and without any error/rounding(!) on every EEE754 conforming implementation.

Floating point numbers and arithmetic is not inaccurate. They are actually very accurate but a lot of developers have inaccurate assumptions about them. They can't exactly represent base 10 decimals. That's the only inaccuracy. If you have two floating point numbers and you let's say add or multiply them the result is always the closest floating point representation of the real result.

The list of misconceptions wouldn't reasonably fit in a comment, but if you are really interested and have a few minutes you could give that a read: https://zeta.one/floats-are-not-inaccurate/

Selling your data would be stupid, because they make money with the fact that they have data about you nobody else has. Selling it would completely break their business model.

I don't think that's how it works. If it exactly looks like something protected by laws like copyright or whatever your country uses, I highly doubt that any court would say that it's fine just because it was created by AI.

We don't even have gates. Most people just pay for their tickets. Sometimes there are ticket inspections - if you get caught you'll be fined. Way cheaper than enormous infrastructure for every entrance that just slows you down if you have an annual ticket for example. https://youtu.be/kq-X25pH1XQ