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Xkcd - Linux, a cautionary tale
- newt0311 18y agostory of my life.
- c1sc0 18y agothat's fine, but does xkcd really belong here?
- rms 18y agoplease not this again
- eznet 18y agoAgreed. Although there has been a considerable amount of "unsuitable" material make it to the front page of HN, there has also been a lot of pointless citation of this unsuitable material - to the degree that it dominates constructive dialog taking place. HN is changing, no doubt, but as has been pointed out time and time again on HN, if it is of interest to the community at large, it belongs. The community is changing (undeniable) but, maybe it is that sometimes posts other than an amazing O(N) bubble sort are also of interest... I, for one, enjoy chuckling at XKCD - typically I just go there myself (without the aid of a social bookmark site!), but perhaps this one is just relevant enough to make it on HN... Or maybe I am wrong.
- tialys 18y agoIt seems to me though that posting something like XKCD is simply for getting Karma. It's not like the people who read it don't already check every monday,wednesday and friday morning... or is that just me?
- pchristensen 18y agoEither that or people have felt pain when installing Linux before.
- whacked_new 18y agoNot just you, but I belong in the camp that never checks xkcd on my own. Not a fan, probably never will be, but if the community thinks its interesting, might as well. This one was indeed interesting.
- silentbicycle 18y agoAnything updated periodically probably works better with RSS (subscription model), while sites like Hacker News seem better at aggregating interesting scattered content (and hosting the resulting discussion). There's certainly room for overlap (e.g. "look at the interesting post on this blog, subscribe if you like it"), but people submitting every single update as they occur will probably detract from the signal here.
- maximilian 18y agoExcept that nickb posted it, and doesn't he have like infinite karma by now anyway?
- sant0sk1 18y agoCareful analysis of this post's score will answer your question for you.
- DougBTX 18y agoThe HN aim used to be set above "popular".
- jcl 18y agoHow so? The HN front page is designed to only show the most recent, most popular articles.
- sant0sk1 18y agoThe fact that XKCD comics, when submitted, reach front page status almost every time indicates that they belong right where they are.
- pchristensen 18y agoActually, xkcd has been off the front page (or at least not high up it) for a while.
- sant0sk1 18y agoWhich is why I said "when submitted". Unless I am missing a bunch of XKCD submissions which aren't getting front paged...
- pchristensen 18y agoI've seen a few on the "New" page with 2 or 3 votes and no comments. Besides, if they're only occasionally submitted, then isn't that a good quality filter?
- sant0sk1 18y ago
- Tichy 18y agoI am beginning to think the creation of xkcd cartoons could be automated. Just place some random stick figures, and use any one of the million computer poetry generators to fill the bubbles.
- rms 18y agohttp://www.dougshaw.com/garfield.html http://www.dougshaw.com/garfield.html
- silentbicycle 18y agoCloser still: http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/ http://www.joshmillard.com/garkov/
- jmagar 18y agoone more for this thread: http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/ http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
- unalone 18y agoI'd love to see an algorithm that takes a Garfield comic and makes it into GMG.
- AndyKelley 18y agoThe concept is even funnier than the actual result: Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.
- joshwa 18y agoReminds me of http://xkcd.com/349/ http://xkcd.com/349/
- unalone 18y agoThat one is just way too close to reality for comfort.
- sant0sk1 18y agoI love the extra commentary when hovering over the image. It's quite often the funniest/most intriguing part of the comic.
- superchink 18y agoAwesome. Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't noticed it before your comment.
- silentbicycle 18y agoIt seems to be a convention with several webcomics. I know Dinosaur Comics (http://chewbac.ca http://chewbac.ca) and Achewood (http://achewood.com http://achewood.com) do it, too.
- deathbyzen 18y agoMy progression was thusly: Day One: "Oh boy, Mandrake Linux sure is easy to install!" Day Two: "What the hell is this 'make' bullshit?" Day Three: "I think I'll try another distro..." Day Four: "Fuck it, I'm getting a Mac."
- KirinDave 18y agoIt's ironic this post is downmodded but the comic itself is upmodded. Goes to show a valuable lesson for all aspects of life: Presentation matters.
- davidw 18y agoThe comic is sort of funny, but a comment about someone being scared off by make and Linux on a site for hackers is like someone on a cooking site saying "what's this blender bullshit, ah fuck it, I'm going out to eat".
- deathbyzen 18y agoNot all of us are developers/programmers. I'm just a fan :)
- alex_c 18y agoWait, I thought all real hackers use Macs. (-1, flamebait)
- echair 18y agoGoes to show there are downarrows on comments but not front page links.
- weegee 18y agoI'm unable to downvote anything on this site as my karma score is too low, so I just vote everything up instead, even if I disagree, I upvote. Everyone who reads this comment will downvote it though. Weird.
- 18y ago
- stcredzero 18y agoUbuntu surprised the heck out of me. I was fiddling with the Wifi to try to get it to work when I decided I needed to download something. I connected the machine to the router using CAT5, and Ubuntu connected to the internet and figured out what to do for me. All I had to do was to tell it to proceed. Of course, in reality, it just probed the hardware configuration and downloaded a script someone else had figured out, but still, that was way impressive!
- Prrometheus 18y agoNice to know it does that for somebody. I'm using the x64 version of Ubuntu on a desktop with a USB wireless peripheral. Since I installed in March I've spent months without a functioning wireless connection and several weeks without a functioning wired connection. Currently I have a length of cat5 cable strung out under my door, across a hallway, and into my roommate's bedroom where the router is kept. My Ubuntu laptop also no longer has a working wireless connection. It's slightly older hardware (3 to 4 years) and I've given it up for dead. I love using Ubuntu, but unless you luck out in the hardware compatibility lottery, it is a second job to get a system up and running. I actually did not have a functioning Ubuntu system until I quit my job and had the hours to devote to configuring everything over a period of 3 to 4 days, and then another 3 to 4 days when I updated to 8.04.
- cdr 18y agoI've accepted that you have to plan your hardware if you want to use linux. I purchased a USB wifi dongle for my laptop that I knew worked, because I knew the internal chipset would not.
- Prrometheus 18y agoI bought a new USB wireless adapter with an eye on compatibility. Unfortunately, no USB wireless adapter is well-supported. There are a few that work out of the box for an unencrypted network or that work with old versions of the distro, but will not work with the most recent version and WPA encryption.
- 18y ago
- biohacker42 18y agoGetting a high karma score is an addictive game. We might need to commit nickb in a rehabilitation program some day.
- weegee 18y agoI've upvoted your comment, good luck!
- nickb 18y agoI don't even care what my score is, biohacker42. I add few links each day and stuff accumulates.
- unalone 18y agoHe's just jealous 'cuz his name's Nick B too, only you beat him to it. Something like that. But you do have an edge. Weren't you basically here when the site first was founded?
- biohacker42 18y agoI don't really care to get a high Tetris score, I just play it some times, occasionally I play for way too long. But it's not a subtle obsession or anything. I can quit any time.
- tx 18y agoHm... I look at this as a history lesson. I jumped on Linux wagon fairly late, in 2006. Since then I had to install it on 4 laptops and 3 desktops, with minor hiccups related to wireless and video: nothing that Google couldn't solve. And I never had to recompile the kernel. In fact, the only software I ever had to compile on Linux was mine (I did compile my own builds of a few apps, but only because I wanted to enable some "experimental" features not available in standard repositories). An isomorphic Windows comic would be about computer virus eating your cat or a pop-ups window bumping your grandma in the forehead.
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y agoBack in late '99 early '00 I was given a retail boxed copy of SuSE Linux 6.2. Between that and Slashdot (believe it or not) I ended up on a path that took me to working with Unix professionally and programming on Free Software stacks. I learned C and compilation and kept going on up the chain. The personal growth and achievement which was spurred by my introduction to Linux has just been phenomenal.
- Lammy 18y agoOK then http://www.isxkcdshittytoday.com/ http://www.isxkcdshittytoday.com/
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- mroman 18y agoFrom my own experience as a GNU/Linux NOOB, I believe that if you research the hardware and the distro you want to run in relation to that hardware BEFORE you purchase, you will be fine. Sticking to the Intel chipsets (as I believe Linus himself recommended) will go a long way toward a smooth experience. And that's coming from a noob. I am on my first Ubuntu install on my soon to be old machine. I just built a new machine, and Hardy installed without a problem. Ran my 24 hour burn in test, no problems. So a diligent noob can indeed have a smooth experience provided he/she does his/her homework.
- eru 18y agoNo problem with AMD here. (But that does not mean it's save.)
- mroman 18y agoOh absolutely, the machine I am on now (soon to be old machine) runs an AMD CPU, with an SIS chipset (not the greatest for GNU/Linux) yet I was diligent, and . . . it works! Have been running Feisty Fawn for almost a year, no major problems. I suppose there was a "luck" factor there, as I bought this hardware without researching into whether or not it was suitable for GNU/Linux. The new machine however I carefully researched the hardware for and, no problems there either. Now, I am not like evangelizing for Intel products, as you can indeed run GNU/Linux on hardware from other manufacturers yet I do find that Linus' statement regarding their chipsets is accurate, based on my own rather smooth experience with the 945GC Express.