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It's easy to crap on something, but I'm pretty happy with this system. I use: Trisquel GNU/Linux IntelliJ 2019.3 Perl, PGP, and text files About 20 differe

It's easy to crap on something, but I'm pretty happy with this system. I use: Trisquel GNU/Linux IntelliJ 2019.3 Perl, PGP, and text files About 20 different web browsers My own web-based information manager And yes, I sometimes use Word 97 for writing. And I'm pretty happy with it.

nickelpro 3y ago
Every single thing on your list (except the info manager and maybe more obscure web browsers) has tens of thousands into the hundreds of millions of users. Except for the web browsers, none of the things you listed are the result of or otherwise benefited from meaningful forks. You will never understand, much less be able to make meaningful edits in afternoon to, the entire Linux kernel. Likely much the same for Perl and PGP (150K lines of C and a highly specialized domain respectively). You don't have the tools to edit IntelliJ or Word 97 (was that what that bullet point was about?) Lord help you if you're updating any of those things. I better not see anything higher than 2.X in your uname -a. You overwhelmingly don't follow this post's advice
- iinnPP 3y ago
  "You don't have to do all this. Their benefits are additive, but acting on even one of these suggestions is better than nothing."
  - nickelpro 3y ago
    forgotmypw17 doesn't appear to follow any of these points except incidentally (most modern web browsers are forks of one another for complexity reasons, their preferred document editor is an EOL closed-source product therefore doesn't get updates)
    - forgotmypw17 3y ago
      If you look closely, each of them has a place in my regimen.
- II2II 3y ago
  It is probably best to say the author's advice is not practical and, for most people, not desirable. It is also worth adding the solution is problematic in the sense that being able to understand software from top to bottom is a skill set that few developers even have, even for the most trivial of applications. Most developers build their software on the shoulders of others. That said, the author's point about the trustworthiness of software is valid. In most cases software is more complex than individual users need it to be (and it is like that to serve a wider audience since software development is expensive). The complexity makes the software more vulnerable while making it easy to hide malicious intent.
  - nickelpro 3y ago
    I agree with your first paragraph entirely and it's worded more generously than mine. I think there's something valid in your second, but on the whole simplicity is often a myth. Hardware is complex, the world is complex, the software stack simply reflects these complexities, it does not invent them. It feels great to have simple code until your environment no longer mirrors that code's assumptions. You have an MBR bootloader that assumes the A20 line is on the keyboard controller, upgrade hardware, and suddenly you can't boot anymore, bet you wish you had a more complex bootloader now. You have a graphics renderer that knows no one has more than 4GB of VRAM so it measures allocatable memory by allocating up to 4GB of textures until it gets E_OUT_OF_MEM. Except on modern cards it overflows its texture counter, bet you wish you had a more complex renderer. And this is ignoring inherent complexity, or the nature of handling errors even without changing hardware, but I've ranted enough on this. There is a narrowly valid point here but it is presented without caveat and thus far too broadly.
anthk 3y ago
I wont use prop. W97 over Trisquel. Once you learn Groff+Mom+simple files cat'ted after.FOOBAR tags you wont go back.
Roark66 3y ago
I collect old computing equipment and I have a number of machines that run old software. The biggest problem with old operating systems (mostly Windows, but others too) is that modern web is unusable without TLS3 and back porting that to old browsers is pretty much impossible... How many times "I just wanted to download one file" on a windows 98 machine. The only "solution" is to maintain a proxy running a modern OS that renders modern web as image maps. As for Word 97,I remember when it was new. I also remember when Microsoft went to the "new" ribbon interface (it was much later, 2016 perhaps?) I hated it, my users hated it... Fast forward a decade and last time I tried to use pre-ribbon office product It was extremely inconvenient to use. I don't know if it is due to high dpi screens or something else. This and lack of good dictionaries is the main reason why I continue to pay for MS office instead of using Libre office (or one of ancient office products I own) for example.
- forgotmypw17 3y ago
  Half the browsers I use are still compatible with HN despite being 10+ years old. The other half I mostly use on my own websites, which allow plain HTTP.

nickelpro 3y ago

Every single thing on your list (except the info manager and maybe more obscure web browsers) has tens of thousands into the hundreds of millions of users. Except for the web browsers, none of the things you listed are the result of or otherwise benefited from meaningful forks. You will never understand, much less be able to make meaningful edits in afternoon to, the entire Linux kernel. Likely much the same for Perl and PGP (150K lines of C and a highly specialized domain respectively). You don't have the tools to edit IntelliJ or Word 97 (was that what that bullet point was about?) Lord help you if you're updating any of those things. I better not see anything higher than 2.X in your uname -a. You overwhelmingly don't follow this post's advice

iinnPP 3y ago
"You don't have to do all this. Their benefits are additive, but acting on even one of these suggestions is better than nothing."
- nickelpro 3y ago
  forgotmypw17 doesn't appear to follow any of these points except incidentally (most modern web browsers are forks of one another for complexity reasons, their preferred document editor is an EOL closed-source product therefore doesn't get updates)
  - forgotmypw17 3y ago
    If you look closely, each of them has a place in my regimen.
II2II 3y ago
It is probably best to say the author's advice is not practical and, for most people, not desirable. It is also worth adding the solution is problematic in the sense that being able to understand software from top to bottom is a skill set that few developers even have, even for the most trivial of applications. Most developers build their software on the shoulders of others. That said, the author's point about the trustworthiness of software is valid. In most cases software is more complex than individual users need it to be (and it is like that to serve a wider audience since software development is expensive). The complexity makes the software more vulnerable while making it easy to hide malicious intent.
- nickelpro 3y ago
  I agree with your first paragraph entirely and it's worded more generously than mine. I think there's something valid in your second, but on the whole simplicity is often a myth. Hardware is complex, the world is complex, the software stack simply reflects these complexities, it does not invent them. It feels great to have simple code until your environment no longer mirrors that code's assumptions. You have an MBR bootloader that assumes the A20 line is on the keyboard controller, upgrade hardware, and suddenly you can't boot anymore, bet you wish you had a more complex bootloader now. You have a graphics renderer that knows no one has more than 4GB of VRAM so it measures allocatable memory by allocating up to 4GB of textures until it gets E_OUT_OF_MEM. Except on modern cards it overflows its texture counter, bet you wish you had a more complex renderer. And this is ignoring inherent complexity, or the nature of handling errors even without changing hardware, but I've ranted enough on this. There is a narrowly valid point here but it is presented without caveat and thus far too broadly.

anthk 3y ago

I wont use prop. W97 over Trisquel. Once you learn Groff+Mom+simple files cat'ted after.FOOBAR tags you wont go back.

Roark66 3y ago

I collect old computing equipment and I have a number of machines that run old software. The biggest problem with old operating systems (mostly Windows, but others too) is that modern web is unusable without TLS3 and back porting that to old browsers is pretty much impossible... How many times "I just wanted to download one file" on a windows 98 machine. The only "solution" is to maintain a proxy running a modern OS that renders modern web as image maps. As for Word 97,I remember when it was new. I also remember when Microsoft went to the "new" ribbon interface (it was much later, 2016 perhaps?) I hated it, my users hated it... Fast forward a decade and last time I tried to use pre-ribbon office product It was extremely inconvenient to use. I don't know if it is due to high dpi screens or something else. This and lack of good dictionaries is the main reason why I continue to pay for MS office instead of using Libre office (or one of ancient office products I own) for example.

forgotmypw17 3y ago
Half the browsers I use are still compatible with HN despite being 10+ years old. The other half I mostly use on my own websites, which allow plain HTTP.