5 ms·

Linux (2003)

108 points by setra 10y ago

kchauhan 10y ago
> BTW, linux is the kernel, GNU/GPL software make up the rest of the OS and apps. GNU/Linux is the way lawyers will say it in court. Good point.
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  GNU/GPL software make up the rest of the OS and apps No, they really don't. Plus those are very different things, organization membership vs choice of license.
  - kchauhan 10y ago
    You miss the point of "love of free". People (like me) who love GNU always include GPL in some or other way even if software is not on GNU packages.
- belorn 10y ago
  Maybe in 2003 when that was the most unique aspect. To many it seems to be just a synonym to which binary compatibility the system has. Today such terms seems old and less descriptive. People know if they are running Debian, android, Ubunutu, or Red hat, and the kernel/system tools are not the main distinguishable feature of the system any more. The lawyer and the person would both call an android system android.
  - kchauhan 10y ago
    When in terms of license they must have to talk about GNU GPL v2 or v3.
yongjik 10y ago
> Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. The year is 2016, and every time I upgraded my Linux distro in the past several years, I had to search down several different (and incompatible) input method packages, install them one by one, try several different command-line tools to tell the system what input system the applications should expect (which they may or may not honor, depending on whether they're linked with GNOME or QT or whatever), read several howtos and stackoverflow articles, and finally settle down with the best one that supports Korean input on at least half of the applications, sort of. I forgot when was the last time Windows didn't support acceptable Korean input out of box. Sometime in the 90s, I think. > You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?" More like, "At first it crashed fifteen times, but when I followed this great article to mine my own titanium ore and replace the fuselage with my custom built one, there was no problem at all! Oh, by the way all the screws must be left-handed, don't ask me why, but I found it works best that way."
- sirn 10y ago
  > I had to search down several different (and incompatible) input method packages, install them one by one I'm curious what input methods have you tried. Not sure about Korean, but for my English/Japanese/Thai setup, ibus (w/ mozc/kkc/libthai) has been working very reliably so far on Arch (been using since February). On the other hand, the hunt to find something that actually works wasn't exactly fun, though.
  - yongjik 10y ago
    I'm using Linux Mint with KDE. (Probably not the best tested distro out there, so maybe I reap what I sow.) At one time, ibus worked pretty well, and I was content. After one upgrade, ibus stopped working, and I couldn't make it work again. Tried skim (which I had used several years ago, but abandoned when it also stopped working for some reason): it managed to lock up X windows. Finally found uim, which almost worked the same, so I was content again. And then about a month ago I had to upgrade again (long story short: Linux magically forgot that I had a second monitor and refused to acknowledge it), and then uim stopped working in some KDE applications, including Konsole. Spent several hours trying different things. (Even tried to compile uim from source, but apparently figuring out dependencies for graphic libraries is not my strong area.) Finally just settled down for uim again. Who needs to type Korean into terminal anyway? Well, at least now I don't have to restart gvim every time after reboot, so that's the plus. See, "Why don't you report bugs" is missing the problem. For example, I had gvim running on a KDE system that somehow forgets the input method whenever I reboot the system, but when I restart gvim, it finds the input method without problem. I don't even know which application I should report this bug against. And of course I'm using distro packages that may be years old (the last release of uim was in 2013), so for all I know, the problem I have is already fixed in the most upstream version. I'm sure Windows have other problems that Linux solves quite well. I'm not arguing Linux is worse in every respect. I'm just pointing out there are a horde of problems that should have been solved for once and all fifteen years ago: there should be a metapackage, or ideally a single button that says "If you want to enable Korean/Japanese/Hindi input, press HERE," and that should be the end of story. But these problems are never properly solved, because the "bazaar" nature of Linux development means whatever solution worked today is not guaranteed to work two years later. Each solution is made of five packages developed by different teams, and maintainers drop out all the time either because they're bored or they have other life obligations. And then some other people start a new sexy project that more or less subsumes previous iterations (but in a brand new codebase), and the cycle continues. Conway's law[1] says "organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." It doesn't just apply to MS or Google: it also applies to Linux. I don't know if it can be improved, but that's the way Linux is now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law
simooooo 10y ago
Does the Linux airline have wifi that works out of the box?
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  It has for about the last decade, yes.
- sirn 10y ago
  Yes, unless you have an obscure chip with over restrictive vendor (e.g. Realtek RTL8723BS) I have tough time dealing with HDMI sound than Wi-Fi these days.
  - greenhatman 10y ago
    I have an obscure dongle that I use for wireless on my desktop PC. Since Ubuntu 14.04, it works out of the box.
    - sirn 10y ago
      Dongle usually works because the chipset shouldn't be too uncommon. What I was referring to was the Wi-Fi chipset that use SDIO interface rather than PCI/PCIe/USB (like the mentioned RTL8723BS, which is a Bluetooth + Wi-Fi combo module used in few tablet models due to its low power usage).
- iopq 10y ago
  Yes, but the GUI doesn't work because it complains that you have to be root to do that. You wonder why they didn't give you a password prompt for root and just decided not to change your wifi settings. You go back to using ifconfig to configure it.
cm2187 10y ago
Re Windows NT blowing up vs Linux being safe, this was written in 2003 before the stream of critical vulnerabilities of the last two years.
- tajen 10y ago
  Yeah, the Linux plane flies great, but they forget to mention the string of CVE-12345 "Wings detach if a bad guy looks at them from the ground".
OhSoHumble 10y ago
My Laptop screen flickers and the only thing that fixes it is to plug an HDMI cable in. This is a new bug that was introduced in kernel version 4.8.14. It was not there in previous versions. If I want to use my laptop then I have to carry around an HDMI cable. I don't know where this guy drew his "once settled... [things go great idea]..." conclusion. Relevant XKCD[1] 1. https://xkcd.com/196/ https://xkcd.com/196/
ge96 10y ago
Guy I know said/says to me "your hipster Linux" haha It's like my computer's are garbage so I use Linux to compensate for the lack of hardware but now I like using Linux as a web developer.
k__ 10y ago
I'm using Linux for 10 years now and have to admit it got rather good. But distribution upgrades are still broken. I never got a distribution upgrade working. It always destroyed the OS and I had to reinstall the whole thing. Just last weekend I tried to upgrade my Xubuntu to 16.04 (last LTS to new LTS), which didn't work out.

Linux (2003)

108 points by setra 10y ago

> BTW, linux is the kernel, GNU/GPL software make up the rest of the OS and apps. GNU/Linux is the way lawyers will say it in court. Good point.

tbrownaw 10y ago
GNU/GPL software make up the rest of the OS and apps No, they really don't. Plus those are very different things, organization membership vs choice of license.
- kchauhan 10y ago
  You miss the point of "love of free". People (like me) who love GNU always include GPL in some or other way even if software is not on GNU packages.
belorn 10y ago
Maybe in 2003 when that was the most unique aspect. To many it seems to be just a synonym to which binary compatibility the system has. Today such terms seems old and less descriptive. People know if they are running Debian, android, Ubunutu, or Red hat, and the kernel/system tools are not the main distinguishable feature of the system any more. The lawyer and the person would both call an android system android.
- kchauhan 10y ago
  When in terms of license they must have to talk about GNU GPL v2 or v3.

yongjik 10y ago

> Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. The year is 2016, and every time I upgraded my Linux distro in the past several years, I had to search down several different (and incompatible) input method packages, install them one by one, try several different command-line tools to tell the system what input system the applications should expect (which they may or may not honor, depending on whether they're linked with GNOME or QT or whatever), read several howtos and stackoverflow articles, and finally settle down with the best one that supports Korean input on at least half of the applications, sort of. I forgot when was the last time Windows didn't support acceptable Korean input out of box. Sometime in the 90s, I think. > You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?" More like, "At first it crashed fifteen times, but when I followed this great article to mine my own titanium ore and replace the fuselage with my custom built one, there was no problem at all! Oh, by the way all the screws must be left-handed, don't ask me why, but I found it works best that way."

sirn 10y ago
> I had to search down several different (and incompatible) input method packages, install them one by one I'm curious what input methods have you tried. Not sure about Korean, but for my English/Japanese/Thai setup, ibus (w/ mozc/kkc/libthai) has been working very reliably so far on Arch (been using since February). On the other hand, the hunt to find something that actually works wasn't exactly fun, though.
- yongjik 10y ago
  I'm using Linux Mint with KDE. (Probably not the best tested distro out there, so maybe I reap what I sow.) At one time, ibus worked pretty well, and I was content. After one upgrade, ibus stopped working, and I couldn't make it work again. Tried skim (which I had used several years ago, but abandoned when it also stopped working for some reason): it managed to lock up X windows. Finally found uim, which almost worked the same, so I was content again. And then about a month ago I had to upgrade again (long story short: Linux magically forgot that I had a second monitor and refused to acknowledge it), and then uim stopped working in some KDE applications, including Konsole. Spent several hours trying different things. (Even tried to compile uim from source, but apparently figuring out dependencies for graphic libraries is not my strong area.) Finally just settled down for uim again. Who needs to type Korean into terminal anyway? Well, at least now I don't have to restart gvim every time after reboot, so that's the plus. See, "Why don't you report bugs" is missing the problem. For example, I had gvim running on a KDE system that somehow forgets the input method whenever I reboot the system, but when I restart gvim, it finds the input method without problem. I don't even know which application I should report this bug against. And of course I'm using distro packages that may be years old (the last release of uim was in 2013), so for all I know, the problem I have is already fixed in the most upstream version. I'm sure Windows have other problems that Linux solves quite well. I'm not arguing Linux is worse in every respect. I'm just pointing out there are a horde of problems that should have been solved for once and all fifteen years ago: there should be a metapackage, or ideally a single button that says "If you want to enable Korean/Japanese/Hindi input, press HERE," and that should be the end of story. But these problems are never properly solved, because the "bazaar" nature of Linux development means whatever solution worked today is not guaranteed to work two years later. Each solution is made of five packages developed by different teams, and maintainers drop out all the time either because they're bored or they have other life obligations. And then some other people start a new sexy project that more or less subsumes previous iterations (but in a brand new codebase), and the cycle continues. Conway's law[1] says "organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." It doesn't just apply to MS or Google: it also applies to Linux. I don't know if it can be improved, but that's the way Linux is now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

simooooo 10y ago

Does the Linux airline have wifi that works out of the box?

JoshTriplett 10y ago
It has for about the last decade, yes.
sirn 10y ago
Yes, unless you have an obscure chip with over restrictive vendor (e.g. Realtek RTL8723BS) I have tough time dealing with HDMI sound than Wi-Fi these days.
- greenhatman 10y ago
  I have an obscure dongle that I use for wireless on my desktop PC. Since Ubuntu 14.04, it works out of the box.
  - sirn 10y ago
    Dongle usually works because the chipset shouldn't be too uncommon. What I was referring to was the Wi-Fi chipset that use SDIO interface rather than PCI/PCIe/USB (like the mentioned RTL8723BS, which is a Bluetooth + Wi-Fi combo module used in few tablet models due to its low power usage).
iopq 10y ago
Yes, but the GUI doesn't work because it complains that you have to be root to do that. You wonder why they didn't give you a password prompt for root and just decided not to change your wifi settings. You go back to using ifconfig to configure it.

cm2187 10y ago

Re Windows NT blowing up vs Linux being safe, this was written in 2003 before the stream of critical vulnerabilities of the last two years.

tajen 10y ago
Yeah, the Linux plane flies great, but they forget to mention the string of CVE-12345 "Wings detach if a bad guy looks at them from the ground".

OhSoHumble 10y ago

My Laptop screen flickers and the only thing that fixes it is to plug an HDMI cable in. This is a new bug that was introduced in kernel version 4.8.14. It was not there in previous versions. If I want to use my laptop then I have to carry around an HDMI cable. I don't know where this guy drew his "once settled... [things go great idea]..." conclusion. Relevant XKCD[1] 1. https://xkcd.com/196/ https://xkcd.com/196/

ge96 10y ago

Guy I know said/says to me "your hipster Linux" haha It's like my computer's are garbage so I use Linux to compensate for the lack of hardware but now I like using Linux as a web developer.

k__ 10y ago

I'm using Linux for 10 years now and have to admit it got rather good. But distribution upgrades are still broken. I never got a distribution upgrade working. It always destroyed the OS and I had to reinstall the whole thing. Just last weekend I tried to upgrade my Xubuntu to 16.04 (last LTS to new LTS), which didn't work out.