3 ms·

Great example of how Linux evenings randomly come about. Someone, somewhere, did a thing, and now user needs to find out who did what, and why it happend, and h

by 1970-01-01 3y ago

Great example of how Linux evenings randomly come about. Someone, somewhere, did a thing, and now user needs to find out who did what, and why it happend, and how to fix it by themselves.

ploum 3y ago
While with proprietary software, someone, somewhere, did a thing and now you need to change your whole workflow because it is the new "only way to do it". But you will like it because marketing said so.
- ketralnis 3y ago
  Absolutely. I may not be happy about the people that do the free work for me doing work I wish they didn't do. But at least I'm sufficiently in control that I can roll back, or that if literally the whole world hates the change that it can be forked. Whereas Excel had the bug with date format detection that the entire world had to work around with no chance of getting it fixed. The genomics field had to change the name of a gene because even though they all knew it and must have had some population of people that had the skills to fix it, just couldn't until Microsoft got sufficiently embarassed by it after decades (https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-fixes-excel-feature-that-forced-scientists-to-1850949443 https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-fixes-excel-feature-that-force...)
- numpad0 3y ago
  Everyone frantically rushes to archived versions of Wacom drivers and starts installing random .reg files from the Internet when Microsoft do this(they did couple times).
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Still less painfull than spending hours researching to find something that works, only to break at any kernel update. Got my first GNU/Linux in 1995 with Slackware 2.0, kernel 1.0.9, got fed up by the time Windows 7 got released, still own a Asus 1215B Netbook with Ubuntu, with its own share of kernel updates breaking graphics and wlan. Anything else, happy with Samsung, LG, Nokia, Apple, Google and Microsoft overlords.
  - ArneBab 3y ago
    So avoid that for giving lectures, I bought a refurbished laptop with Linux (Trisquel) pre-installed. In the past 5 years it did not give me trouble yet.
- d3w4s9 3y ago
  I'll take that any day.
nineteen999 3y ago
This is an example of a Fedora evening, which is a "bleeding edge" Linux distribution. It wouldn't happen on eg. RHEL or its free clones, or probably even Debian stable. Of course shit will break sometimes on Fedora, and you will spend a little time trying to figure out why, or working around it. No point running a bleeding edge distro and then having a sook when things break. The correct procedure is to file a bug report, downgrade to the last known kernel that worked correctly, and wait for a patched kernel to appear in updates. Or run a stable distro if it's such a problem. I don't get why "bleeding edge Linux distro has breakage" is such exciting news for HN. This is pretty much a non-story.
- PennRobotics 3y ago
  Rock and hard place. If you run something "well-tested" on a new platform (e.g. latest Thinkpad or XPS) you possibly aren't going to have sound, a webcam, a functional trackpoint, accurate color profile, mobile broadband, a fingerprint reader, proper sleep, and, and, and
  - nineteen999 3y ago
    It's long established that Linux will lag eg. Windows in terms of driver and hardware support. It's been that way since the 1990's. This is one of the few downsides and not news. You can always run a mainstream desktop OS on the shiny laptop and run Linux in a VM (eg. WSL2) until your hardware is supported by a stable distro.

Great example of how Linux evenings randomly come about. Someone, somewhere, did a thing, and now user needs to find out who did what, and why it happend, and how to fix it by themselves.

ploum 3y ago

While with proprietary software, someone, somewhere, did a thing and now you need to change your whole workflow because it is the new "only way to do it". But you will like it because marketing said so.

ketralnis 3y ago
Absolutely. I may not be happy about the people that do the free work for me doing work I wish they didn't do. But at least I'm sufficiently in control that I can roll back, or that if literally the whole world hates the change that it can be forked. Whereas Excel had the bug with date format detection that the entire world had to work around with no chance of getting it fixed. The genomics field had to change the name of a gene because even though they all knew it and must have had some population of people that had the skills to fix it, just couldn't until Microsoft got sufficiently embarassed by it after decades (https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-fixes-excel-feature-that-forced-scientists-to-1850949443 https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-fixes-excel-feature-that-force...)
numpad0 3y ago
Everyone frantically rushes to archived versions of Wacom drivers and starts installing random .reg files from the Internet when Microsoft do this(they did couple times).
pjmlp 3y ago
Still less painfull than spending hours researching to find something that works, only to break at any kernel update. Got my first GNU/Linux in 1995 with Slackware 2.0, kernel 1.0.9, got fed up by the time Windows 7 got released, still own a Asus 1215B Netbook with Ubuntu, with its own share of kernel updates breaking graphics and wlan. Anything else, happy with Samsung, LG, Nokia, Apple, Google and Microsoft overlords.
- ArneBab 3y ago
  So avoid that for giving lectures, I bought a refurbished laptop with Linux (Trisquel) pre-installed. In the past 5 years it did not give me trouble yet.
d3w4s9 3y ago
I'll take that any day.

nineteen999 3y ago

This is an example of a Fedora evening, which is a "bleeding edge" Linux distribution. It wouldn't happen on eg. RHEL or its free clones, or probably even Debian stable. Of course shit will break sometimes on Fedora, and you will spend a little time trying to figure out why, or working around it. No point running a bleeding edge distro and then having a sook when things break. The correct procedure is to file a bug report, downgrade to the last known kernel that worked correctly, and wait for a patched kernel to appear in updates. Or run a stable distro if it's such a problem. I don't get why "bleeding edge Linux distro has breakage" is such exciting news for HN. This is pretty much a non-story.

PennRobotics 3y ago
Rock and hard place. If you run something "well-tested" on a new platform (e.g. latest Thinkpad or XPS) you possibly aren't going to have sound, a webcam, a functional trackpoint, accurate color profile, mobile broadband, a fingerprint reader, proper sleep, and, and, and
- nineteen999 3y ago
  It's long established that Linux will lag eg. Windows in terms of driver and hardware support. It's been that way since the 1990's. This is one of the few downsides and not news. You can always run a mainstream desktop OS on the shiny laptop and run Linux in a VM (eg. WSL2) until your hardware is supported by a stable distro.