Dota (1, in warcraft 3) would have a hitch every once in a while, and i’d die if it was in a fight. Cause was swap writing to disk, that you can’t turn off in winxp. I was already looking at linux, so i said f it. Bdw warcraft 3 runs well on linux if you add -opengl.
I think it would be good if they expanded the permissions system. Taking inspiration from the android world where it will ask for the permission whenever it needs to access something on the system. This is an ideal world but would take a lot of effort for the maintainers to implement. I guess it needs time to mature. I just hope flatpak devs want to adress the issue eventually… So far I only ever see people just accepting the way it is now and finding workarounds…
Android has the benefit of being greenfield and has an API that everything needs to go through to access the system. Flatpacks and snaps do not have this. They need to work with applications that were never designed to be sandboxed and just expect to have access to everything all the time so is a much harder problem to solve.
No reason why Flatpak can’t create such an API though so that new applications can use it, older applications can eventually switch to, etc. We’re already seeing adoption of things like xdg-desktop-portal so it isn’t that out of the question.
Yes, but this takes time and still has to work with applications that dont support it. Where Anrdoid can just force everyone that wants to create an app to use their API. So it is harder for flatpack to encourage everyone to adpot it.
Of course, it will definitely take time to transition over, but that’s the case for all APIs in the PC ecosystem. I am a firm believer of “if you build it people will come” and I am sure a well integrated Flatpak permissions system with good UX is a convincing argument for a lot of apps to switch over.
Unfortunately this means that sometimes the project maintainers get complaints and not the package maintainer. Two projects I’m involved with don’t officially support Flatpak. With one of them we do want to support it eventually but things just aren’t there are and we have far bigger fish to fry.
The problem is that some well meaning people have created flatpaks and published them to flathub which means every single time something breaks or doesn’t work correctly they come to the actual project to complain about something we didn’t even do.
I don’t know if the 10M is a pun or something but it reminisce the same amount that Mark Shuttleworth pledged when he started a Debian fork project called Ubuntu.
About the reason for switching, it was something pretty small, actually:
Windows' UX getting increasingly worse for keyboard-centric usage (it slowly but surely got to my nerves e.e" ). Added with my HDD with Win10 dying after 6 years, being impulsive and loving to learn new things, I set to test new systems, in search for the ideal UX for my needs. Then, the Linux distros fitted like a glove, even more so with how customizable they could be, and they became my main systems (Mint currently). Still, ever since stopping using Windows as my main system family, I don't shy away from testing other systems. Even got the chance of testing Vista (surprisingly functional despite its infamy) and Macintosh 7 (I got very lucky in finding someone with such a computer).
And as mentioned before, a good part of Linux is being customizable. And surprisingly (from an outsider's perspective), you don't need to know coding most of the time! You just need to know how to do troubleshooting (which Linux programs more often than not facilitate by showing the error in detail). Also also, from an ADHD point of view, it is good for non-linear learning, since small things you learn in one activity can help immensely in other activities, potentially even helping with non-Linux systems.
But as a cautionary tale, not all things work on Linux, so it's always good to have a back up system or system installation ISO around. And given Linux's open nature, you either have companies working behind them, such as Canonical, Red Hat and Microsoft (this last one with their "Azure" server system), potentially deteriorating their systems for the sake of profit, or systems made from users to users, which then depend on the devs being interested in continuing development, so don't expect your favorite distro to be supported or viable forever, and be ready to make the jump to other distros if you need to.
Really hoping that the enshitification of these various things, further enshitification in the case of Twitter, brings about a really fun “find out” period.
Sadly I think it will get worse in the case of RHEL. I can see IBM locking down access to many of their products to AIX, RHEL, and in many instances Windows. Currently, GPFS, something I work with a lot, supports Debian and Ubuntu (I think). It would not surprise me to see that go away.
Windows XP looked like such a downgrade from Windows 2000. Lacked stability. Wanted something more customizable. I liked the idea of community powered software so Linux was the solution.
Most modern distros are either new distro trying to have more modern sensibilities, distros based off of Debian, Arch, or Fedora, or occasionally original things that are okay with being superficially similar to one of those while doing things differently at lower levels. OpenSUSE is one of the few remaining distros from the olden days that has been independent and doing their own thing for decades without spawning a bunch of forks or dying off. If you want to try something even older and crazier Slackware is sure an experience.
Slackware’s package manager doesn’t even do dependency resolution. I respect the fact that it’s managed to keep existing this long and that so much of what it did inspired other distros, but I honestly have no idea why anyone would use it in 2023. Imo dependency resolution is the main reason to even have a package manager, without that I might as well install everything by cloning random git repos. If you want packages compiled from source, why not just use Gentoo (or Source Mage? Idk much about it, but I read through their website and it seems neat).
That being said, if anyone uses Slackware, I’d love to know why. It’s survived this long, surely it must be doing something right.
It’s completely surprise free. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and find it’s dumped Systemd and Wayland on your front porch like some unsokicited car wreck.
I use Slackware because, in my opinion, it is simple, easy to understand, doesn’t get in your way, and strikes a good balance between being up to date, stable, and bug free. I also have it set up how I like it and don’t feel like installing something else. Honestly, the lack of dependency resolution has really not been a problem. By default, Slackware comes with a lot of libraries, and sbopkg (which builds SlackBuilds from slackbuilds.org) can do dependency resolution, as can some third party package managers. And with appimages and flatpacks, this is less and less of a problem.
That said, I use Manjaro on my Pinebook and am perfectly happy with it, and I’ve used Debian in the past too.
<rant> I use RHEL at work and it’s not bad, but I don’t really care for it. It feels overly complicated in terms of configuration and daemons running, and I don’t know systemd that well. Although I think this is mostly the fault of our satellite server, “dnf update” breaks on me at least once a month. Also, some packages are just plain archaic, and didn’t even update from RHEL 7 to 8. And I can’t seem to wrap my head around source rpms or how to make rpms. Slackware and Manjaro use straightforward build scripts. </rant>
Overall, pretty good considering it’s low price. It is a bit quirky, kind of like running Linux on a laptop 15+ years ago. Hardware support is somewhat lacking because it’s all pretty new. That said, the default Manjaro that ships with it works pretty well out of the box. It struggles a bit with video conferencing, in my case, roll20. It can play Minetest and Supertuxkart on minimum settings.
The Slackware community has produced about 8 package manager front-ends that handle dependency resolution, so it’s not an issue at all and hasn’t been for over a decade. The big thing with Slackware is an emphasis on simplicity of design over ease of use and an expectation that the user will make all the decisions regarding how their system is maintained. I love it, use it on my main machine (Void on my laptop, Ubuntu on my server). It’s taught me a lot about operating systems in general and Linux in particular, and it lets me do whatever I like. I use sbotools and flatpak for my 3rd party software, the former being a ports-like interface to slackbuilds.org (like the AUR for Slackware, but far smaller and with a lot more quality control). Works great, no surprises, boots fast, rock solid and dependable.
I use it because 22 years ago it was more appealing than redhat or Mandrake. It forced me to learn more about Linux because I had to resolve almost everything myself than any other distro. I was using before it had a package manager and honestly after the dependency hell of rpms in 2000s it just seemed more problematic to use one that resolved dependencies than not. Usually I used to and sometimes still use it for a nice base to compile everything on. I dunno. It's my Linux equivalent to my first car that I loved.
It’s a wonderful distro that will teach you a lot about how Linux works. It’s weird, and beautiful and you might brick your system or an essential component (why the heck would I need groff?), but you’ll come out the other side knowing more and appreciating how things work and how easy they’ve become.
Back in the days of Vista, I had been dual-booting and using Knoppix (Live CD) as needed for a while. My main daily use outside of games was all open source that was available on Windows and Linux, OpenOffice (would recommend LibreOffice now), Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.
Windows used to get dreadfully slow, unless you reinstalled. Or maybe I was fixing something. Reformatted the hard drive, set up the Linux partition (Ubuntu 6.06 IIRC), Synaptic, tick all my usuals, apply. Come back a little bit later, fully up to date, do some logins, Linux is fully usable. Even installed Battle for Wesnoth in case.
Boot over to Windows, update, reboot, update, reboot, install drivers, more reboots. More drivers, more installables, more updates, more reboots
It was bedtime, off finish off later, and I ended up using Ubuntu as my main for a week.
After that week, I found I only booted to Windows for games. Never looked back. That week is the week I flipped from 60%/40% Windows/Linux to 60%/40% Linux/Windows. Since then Linux only gets better, and I use Windows less and less.
I really didn’t want to install Vista. I didn’t like how it looked or felt so I swapped out XP for Ubuntu. I stayed until Win7 and switched back to windows, but windows 8 rolled around and I went to Fedora. I’ve been here ever since.
So it was 1995, and a new version of Windows came out. Sadly it didnt run on our 486 so we upgraded to a new computer with a Pentium processor (a week before the Pentium Pro was released). My parents got their new machine and i was left with with Windows 3.11.
A friend of mine from school, a few years older, had just come back from a computer show down in Green Bay with a box fully of floppy disks (like 70). That weekend i brought my computer over to his house along with a few other friends and we all installed Slackware. At that point we were all using the Universe of Wisconsin’s dialup service and were able to get online, do some Gopher, IRC and MUDing.
The only other time i ran a non *nix OS would be when work gave me a Windows machine or when I was gaming (Quake, Ultima Online). Otherwise it has been Linux and BSDs since 95
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