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linux

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Fungus OP , in Which lightweight Linux Distribution with GUI would you recommend for an old Laptop ?
@Fungus@lemmy.world avatar

Thank you for all the suggestions, I don’t have access to the laptop right now, so I can’t get the specs, I’ll try to post them tomorrow

h3ndrik , (edited ) in Why are we stuck with bash programming language in the shell?

why are you stuck with bash? just write a shebang and then your interpreter in the first line of your script.

i can use bash, python, lua and al kinds of stuff…

i don’t understand the question. if you mean, why does my shell only accept bash syntax, if i set my shell to bash, idk. use another shell?

‘sh’ is kind of the smallest common thing that’s available everywhere. so when you got to script something that needs to run somewhere not under your control, you use ‘sh’. and that’s kind of it works. you’ll find something, that’s been around for some time, otherwise it won’t have spread everywhere. and now you can’t replace it in newer products, because there is so much stuff using it.

if that isn’t one of your problems, go with my first suggestions and just use python or something like that.

clb92 ,
@clb92@kbin.social avatar

I'm gonna get crucified for saying this, but... I write a lot of my scripts in PHP. It's just a language that I'm very familiar with.

db2 ,

This isn’t reddit, if that tool does the jobs effectively then great.

maegul ,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

crucified?! You’re awesome mate!

Plus, on the fediverse, PHP’s kinda cool again (I think) … or at least should be.

h3ndrik ,

i think lemmy is coded in rust.

maegul ,
@maegul@lemmy.ml avatar

The backend yes. The frontend (or the default web UI front end) is coded in typescript using a React-like library (called Inferno if I remember correctly).

Shareni ,

I’ve used Js for scripts, especially when JSON is involved.

My logic is to use whichever language is best for the job out of those I’m familiar with, and can be understood by people who might read it. Then I forget logic and try to use lisps wherever possible.

h3ndrik ,

( my oppinion: i personally don’t like php and js for being too complicated. they are very easy to begin with, which is a good thing. but too difficult to master. there are soo many weird things going on, so many edge cases to remember, and all the pitfalls that are there to help the beginner but require a professional to pay close attention. i like something strict, maybe with type safety and a compiler that yells at you if you’re forgetting something or trying to do something stupid. not silently convert it. )

Other than that: Whatever floats your boat… I don’t think it’s wrong to use something like php. i have used it and still use it from time to time. heck, i’ve even used lua where people start counting with ‘1’. sometimes it is the correct tool. sometimes it’s more important to get a job done, than having it done in a certain way. and of course people like to work with something that they’re familiar with. you’re probably better off and faster this way.

seperis , in why did you switch?
@seperis@lemmy.ml avatar

I got into Linux after doing my first end to end build of a pc, I needed an OS, and I wanted to learn basically how to build a server for my own amusement.

Here are the benefits: literally ninety-nine percent of everything else in the world is or seems to be based on Linux or it and Linux dated at some point. The best programs for ripping/encoding movies are on Linux. If you want to build a home media server or do home automation: Linux. If you want an easy, cheap NAS: Linux. Network wide ad blocker: Linux. You can do all of these on the same machine at the same time and it will be ‘let’s go’ and it can do it on surprisingly lower resources than Windows ever will. Once you’re comfortable with Linux, there’s a massive range of things you wanted to do or didn’t even know you wanted to do but Windows made difficult or expensive or inconvenient that are ridiculously easy to do. Even something as simple as doing backups to your primary machine are suddenly low stress. This is why when getting my friends into it, I tell them to use an old PC or laptop and go: every time–every time–they’re like “I’ve been wanting to do X and it’s right here” and me “yeah, I know, welcome to a much less frustrating digital life”.

If you can’t or won’t for whatever reason transition fully from Windows; you don’t have to. It makes life with Windows monumentally easier as you can lower your expectations on what it will do and leave it for things that for whatever reason, it has to do. Linux fits itself into your life, you don’t have to carve out spaces and overthink way too much to make a space compatible with Windows.

For me, the biggest benefit: I have ADHD and depression and was and still am perpetually bored combined with low grade misery. I combat that with learning new things, setting up projects to do, anything to occupy my mind. Linux is amazing: there’s always something new to learn and to do, because it can do anything. I want to learn how routers work; flash a router to DD-WRT and go. Get into advanced terminal and command line: Ubuntu Server, Arch, or Slackware, let’s go… Home Automation looks interesting: there’s an entire OS for that or I can run it in a container on my primary machine. I know what a container is and how to use it: awesome. Media Server, NAS? I’ve built them on single board computers and run them or I throw them on the same machine: Linux can do that.

Here’s the funny part: I went back to school to get a degree in Software Dev and decided actually, I may get three; I was barely a mid-passing student the x decades ago I tried this education thing. Since I restarted, everything is just–easy. Someone gave me a scholarship, which is insane. I tutor people, for fucks’ sake; its weird. At work, I started getting much more advanced assignments: batch? Terminal, sure, send me the design documents, I’ll test that. SOAP: never seen it before, but not really worried, send the documents and give me a demo, I can do that, I"ll write everyone a tutorial afterward.

The most important thing Linux does is it teaches you–and keeps doing it–that your computer is not an unknowable force of nature you have no ability to control or anticipate, but a tool. A complicated, advanced tool, but a tool. It shows you and tells you how each part of the tool works and why and how they fit together and you have no reason to be afraid or panic ever again. Nothing will faze you anymore: hard drive error to cataclysmic failure, motherboard short to weird beeping that never stops: okay, you have experienced it (twice) or you read about that on that site when you were looking up sed statements, you can handle this. You may have checklists for it. You recompiled kernels, which at one point you were sure were some sci-fi thing; this is not even on the radar for upsetting.

You will have the extreme pleasure of telling Windows when it gets saucy with you 'You do know I can format you down to bare drive and reinstall everything in the next five seconds? My data is safely backed up on Watson Xubuntu and I have some free time; are you really feeling it right now?" And do it. And be annoyed for the next few hours you have to do it, but you can and if you have to, will, and it’s inconvenient but you’re not worried at all because this is not some unknowable wtf black box magic; Linux taught you this is just a tool, and exactly how it works and everything will be fine.

This has been my SepTalk on me and my feelings about Linux.

maniac , in Need a good gaming mouse that is Linux compatible. Any suggestions?
@maniac@lemmy.world avatar

Every mouse should be fine. It’s just the ones with software might not be configurable.

Molecular0079 ,

Could be configurable if you pass through the device to a Windows VM. Far from an ideal experience but its doable.

Kerb ,
@Kerb@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

afaik that should work,

running the software in wine/lutris could be an simpler solution

Molecular0079 ,

I’ve never had much success with wine when it comes to hardware access or anything driver related, but I could be wrong in OP’s case.

maniac ,
@maniac@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah it’s possible but the solution seems less ideal. Luckily I don’t thing changing settings on a mouse is a common thing.

rambos , in Solidworks and other industry-class CAD software on linux

I was on the same boat 15 years ago. Still waiting solidowrks replacement on linux haha. All open source or free CAD is okayish, but they cant replace proper software like solidworks. Inventor, catia, proe, they are all decent, but solidworks became kinda industry standar, so better stick with it since you already have some experience (its easy to switch between them). Compatibility will stop you from using any other if you need to share files (not step or stl) with someone. Even different versions of SW (every few years) are not backward compatible. Solidworks is almost the only reason why I still have windows

johnhamelink ,

It’s a shame to hear that all the advances in proton & video game performance haven’t translated into CAD tools? I was hopeful this thread would have good news on that front!

rambos ,

Yeah its sad. But dont lose hope, Im sure Im gonna run proper CAD on linux before I die haha

yenguardian , in why did you switch?
@yenguardian@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

These days, Windows constantly gets in your way with ads, forced updates, crappy apps that install themselves, useless features like Cortana, forcing you to make a Microsoft account, etc. Linux or the BSDs, however, usually give you a bullshit-free and distraction-free experience. Plus, no spyware, completely free, endlessly customizable, and low resource usage (if you use a lightweight setup, but even “bloated” distros like Ubuntu and Mint are often light compared to Windows).

And what surprised me? I guess the only thing that surprised me is how easy the experience is, especially for things like gaming, which Linux has historically had a bad reputation for. Also, how nice it can be to use the terminal, not that you have to, especially as a novice user.

shreddy_scientist ,
@shreddy_scientist@lemmy.ml avatar

Word is Microsoft quietly killed Cortana, so Windows has that going for it now!

synestine ,

Windows still got 99 problems, but that bitch ain’t one.

architect_of_sanity ,

I was around when Clippy died. Fuck that bent piece of recycled pop can.

Then they gave us Cortana.

synestine ,

Just wait till they bring it back, now powered by Chat GPT!

nan ,
@nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Cortana had funny jokes, and would actually do passable imitations of characters like Darth Vader, but that was the only thing I ever used it for.

Madtsu ,

They are just gonna replace Cortana with the gpt4 powered assistant

OmltCat ,

Things you mentioned about windows before “etc” can actually be disabled through group policy or other means. It’s an annoyance nonetheless. But after ~30 minutes of tweaking after a new install, windows is not that bad these days.

Anyway, if I don’t play games I’ll probably be Linux all the way. Most things today are web based anyway.

But how is gaming on Linux nowadays, if you may elaborate? I have top of the line hardwares but the games I play easily max out their usage. I know there are things like translation layer, but I’m afraid the performance hit may be not ideal…

Cableferret ,

I have a lower-mid tier (Ryzen7 2700 or 2700x, I don’t exactly remember right now, Nvidia GTX 1650, 16gigs of RAM,) and I can game just fine at 1080p. Granted I’m not exactly worried about 4K or 666 FPS or whatever the hardcore gamers are into these days, but most games work well with proton and steam. Some even run better through proton than they do in Windows natively.

yenguardian ,
@yenguardian@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Wine, DXVK, and other compatibility aids have made gaming a relatively trouble-free experience. Most of the time, if you use Steam, you can just click play and your game will work out of the box with Proton. Performance hit is usually not a big deal, and some games even perform better on Linux. Some games I play also have decent native ports. Outside of edge-cases, the only issues tend to be games with aggressive DRM or anti-cheat, which is hard to get around (though the situation is getting somewhat better with some forms of anti-cheat starting to be Linux/Proton-compatible). Though, personally, most of the games I play are at least a few years old, and most of the new games I play are indie, so I can’t exactly attest to the performance of new AAA games. I tend to hear they work well, outside of the previously mentioned issues, however.

Nioxic ,

But linux uses more power…

catfish , in why did you switch?

Windows 95 was dreadful.

Yes I am old and my knees do hurt, thank you.

Raphael , in Is my project useful?
@Raphael@lemmy.world avatar

No.

BlueDragon28 , in why did you switch?

I was learning OpenGL at the time and I was frustrated that I could not play a game using OpenGL (When I use a technologie in programming, I love using software that use it) because none of the games in my library supported it. So I discovered Ubuntu 16.04 and I immediatly loved it. I also reinstalled it seven times because every time I broke it and I didn’t know how to fix it.

What realy chocked me at the time is how easy it is to install C++ dependencies for your project. You just use the package manager and boom, you link it to your project and your done and if for whatever reason the package is not available in your package manager, you can build it manually very easely.

However, there where some downside too. VSCode didn’t exists at the time (are I didn’t ear of it) and the only proper IDE was kdevelop which I never liked. Hopefolly, when VSCode came it was realy cool, but not as cool as when I discovered NeoVim. The gaming too was bad, Proton didn’t exist, Wine was not as advanced as today and DXVK was not a thing yet. You could only play games that where 5+ years old and only at 15/20 fps with a lot of glitches.

Linux nowoday serve all my needs, I only need to start Windows when I deploy and test some program to it or when I play a game that is not well supported on Linux and I only do it in a VM with single GPU Passthrough.

dethb0y , in why did you switch?

I got tired of windows pretending it knew better than me what i wanted, whether that was updates or security scans or fuck knows what else.

The final straw was when they shitted up the start menu with garbage and tried to shove their app store down my throat. At that point i was done.

someguy3 ,

That start menu is so bloated it takes time to load.

dethb0y ,

yeah it’s absolutely ridiculous. Whoever decided that the start menu, of all things, needed to be encrusted with garbage should have been fired on the spot.

someguy3 ,

But they get to advertise NETFLIX! Guy probably got a bonus.

dethb0y ,

The sad thing is, they probably did get a bonus, then set about how to further monetize it

QuazarOmega , in Why are we stuck with bash programming language in the shell?

Everyone talks about the fact that Bash is what it is because it is first and foremost an interactive shell, but nowadays some design decisions are just inexcusable in my opinion, like the awful syntax of common programming constructs, the if in particular, that would only benefit from following how every other language works even if they aren’t meant as shells.
Some also argue against the non-modularity with the fact that you should use it for only quick and easy stuff, but that’s just an excuse, if the language runtime that comes preinstalled in your system had modern features and sane syntax you would stick to that and save yourself from installing Python/Ruby if they’re not needed; and it is clear that there is a need for modularity, otherwise plugin managers wouldn’t exist, many swear by downloading the scripts directly and sourcing them in the name of “KISS”, but that is just silly when there is a good system set in place that makes it actually easier to manage it all.
Then there’s the issue of the holy pipelining, that has more or less been overcome by some languages already, this example in Rust shows that it can be easy, so there’s no reason why a terse scripting language couldn’t achieve the same.

In the end I don’t know what’s holding the landscape back, I noticed Xonsh that looks very interesting, but I never tried it, I wonder if it is POSIX compliant and if that aspect even is so fundamental to the success of a shell

donut4ever , in Red Hat: why I'm going all in on community-driven Linux distros.
@donut4ever@lemmy.world avatar

Just spun up a Debian 12 server, and it’s a chef’s kiss.

Botzo , in Is my project useful?

I’m all for building new tools!

You might want to take a hard look at a lot of the ways Homebrew works to find similar problems you’ll need to solve to make this production ready.

docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux

eleitl , in why did you switch?

I never switched. I checked out BSD and Linux when it was new and I stuck with Linux.

Ok, I was on AmigaOS before, but it died.

cocolopez , in Which lightweight Linux Distribution with GUI would you recommend for an old Laptop ?
@cocolopez@lemmy.world avatar

Artix or archbang. For the debian side, antix linux.

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