TCB13

TCB13 , 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to linux in Project Bluefin: A Linux Desktop for Serious Developers

Linux desktop will, most likely, fail for: Developers and sysadmins, because not everyone is using Docker and Github actions to deploy applications to some proprietary cloud solution. Finding a properly working FTP/SFTP/FTPS desktop client (similar WinSCP or Cyberduck) is an impossible task as the ones that exist fail even at basic tasks like dragging and dropping a file.

Linux desktop is great, I love it but I don’t sugar coat it nor I’m delusional like most posting about it.

It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.

tadeubento.com/…/linux-desktop-a-collective-delus…

Also, immutable distributions are a scam:

Guess what happens whenever people popularize immutable distros as the next hype in tech that will make everything better? You get yourself into a totally unreasonable and avoidable ecosystem just because those systems won’t cut it for most use cases… same that happened with Docker/Kubernetes.

I’ve been saying it for year and nobody cares: nowadays those companies are all about re-creating and reconfiguring the way people develop software so everyone will be hostage of their platforms. We see this in everything now Docker/DockerHub/Kubernetes and GitHub actions were the first sign of this cancer. We now have a generation of developers that doesn’t understand the basic of their tech stack, about networking, about DNS, about how to deploy a simple thing into a server that doesn’t use some Docker BS or isn’t a 3rd party cloud xyz deploy-from-github service.

The latest endeavor in making everyone’s hostage is the new Linux immutable distribution trend. Immutable distros are all about making thing that were easy into complex, “locked down”, “inflexible”, bullshit to justify jobs and payed tech stacks and a soon to be released property solution.

We had Ansible, containers, ZFS and BTRFS that provided all the required immutability needed already but someone decided that is is time to transform proven development techniques in the hopes of eventually selling some orchestration and/or other proprietary repository / platform / BS like Docker / Kubernetes does.

“Oh but there are truly open-source immutable distros” … true, but this hype is much like Docker and it will invariably and inevitably lead people down a path that will then require some proprietary solution or dependency somewhere that is only required because the “new” technology itself alone doesn’t deliver as others did in the past.

As with CentOS’s fiasco or Docker it doesn’t really matter if there are truly open-source and open ecosystems of immutable distributions because in the end people/companies will pick the proprietary / closed option just because “it’s easier to use” or some other specific thing that will be good on the short term and very bad on the long term. This happened with CentOS vs Debian is currently unfolding with Docker vs LXC/RKT and will happen with Ubuntu vs Debian for all those who moved from CentOS to Ubuntu.

Those popularizing immutable distributions clearly haven’t had any experience with it before the current hype. Let me tell you something, immutable systems aren’t a new thing we already had it with MIPS devices (mostly routers and IOTs) and people have been moving to ARM and mutable solutions because it’s better, easier and more reliable.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

Do you research very well before buying other boards than a Pi. It may be for you or now, depends a lot on your use-case.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

Fair enough 😂

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

??? Armbian is open-source. Some boards eventually get stuff from Armbian merged back into upstream Debian however you’re still better running Armbian as it comes with optimizations to avoid burning SD cards etc.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

That’s the reason why Armbian exists. So those devices will keep having newer kernels and software. Read into the things.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

That’s just good password security and reasonable.

Yes, that’s my point, you don’t need to disable it by default.

See that qualifying word there? “Most”? That’s why they force SSH to be disabled and password changes. If you PERSONALLY can guarantee that no one will EVER put a freshly imaged RPi directly on the internet backed by a 10 million dollar/pound/euro guarantee per incident it still doesn’t matter; there’s still a need to change these defaults. I’ve seen the RPi’s deployed in a business environment and I 10000% know that vendors are fscking stupid and would leave default permissions enabled because they’re the lowest bidder.

There are those things called licenses and liability liability waivers that are signed specially for those cases. The people doing deployments on business environment should know how to change password / use SSH keys and whatnot, if they don’t that’s not the Pi’s problem.

It’s people like you why we have massive botnets due to default security measures being ignored by major manufacturers.

By enabling people who shouldn’t be configuring Pi boards in the first place you’re are the one creating botnets. They might be saved by the fact that it doesn’t have SSH enabled by default just to be hacked later on when they decide to run a sudo wget … | sh.

Making things easier has this downside, you protect people so much, they don’t ever learn and then things go bad they can’t handle it and the damage is way way worse.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

Where I work I bump into them all over - including in security systems and door-access.

Yes and like me you’re perfectly capable of changing a default password / using SSH keys for those critical use cases. People who use them for serious things also know how to properly handle security and in the other cases security isn’t required at the level they pushing for. A simple “change password on first login” was enought.

What’s not equally serious with banana pi is support. I went to their wiki, it lists Android and Debian (previous version) “images” but no download links, so it’s hard for me to verify that this board boots with sshd running or not

www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Standard…

In case you aren’t aware the Banana Pi are a platinum member of Armbian and they provide money, code and general support to the project and actively tell people to use Armbian is they don’t want Android. They also the the same with OpenWRT for specific models. This is true open-source collaboration, not what the Pi Foundation does, and leads to long term, well supported boards with kernel updated and paid support for enterprise customers. And why isn’t the Pi Foundation also contributing to Armbian? Simple, they want to keep things for themselfs.

Making things easier for you Armbian are builds of Debian or Ubuntu with tweaks for SD cards, low level device tree overlays, kernel tweaks and everything required to have a barebones Debian system for SBCs.

The telemetry is bad news - soon we will be out of food because someone knows what size of sd-cards you use, and the number of installs you do. So better go buys a silly board, track down some ancient image of an install someone did at some point where they managed to compile the nic drivers and include the binary blob. Because nobody gets to force you to add an empty file to your sd-card!

The Pi is better in education, hobbyists and people who aren’t that proficient with electronics and computers however it opens the door to a lot of potencial market abuse, Apple-style ecosystems and whatnot. At the end of the day it is overpriced and it isn’t really good at anything - not even in ethics - as specialized options in those niches (ESP32, Arduino, Other SBCs, MiniPCs…) are better for said use cases. It looks a lot like the Pi Foundation knows about this market-fit issue and is just trying to push more and more stuff into the hobbits as a way to keep growing and making money. The SSH/telemetry/app bundle thing isn’t objectively bad alone, but people aren’t complaining and it is just opening the door to a LOT of more custom stuff and eventually a closer ecosystem and a situation like Chrome market dominance.

What the next step for them? A cloud service that you need to use / pay to develop stuff for the Pi? :)

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

I get that you love this board and think that “the establishment” is evil. But you come off as someone not having the knowledge to back your assumptions.

No, no. I like “the establishment” as long as it doesn’t turn out to end up like Google Chrome. Think about it, few things against the Pi:

• Overpriced / last to market:
  • Only the model 3B+ had gigabit ethernet - however still shared with the USB. At that time the majority of other brands already had gigabit for about two years. To make things worse also remember that in 2009 (yes 09) the “original” SBC, the SheevaPlug also had gigabit ethernet and it wasn’t USB;
  • In 2018 there were tons of SBCs with PCIe x2 on the market. The Pi only got it in 2023 and it’s x1 only;
• Questionable practices:
  • We now have PCIe just to end up with a custom connector that is yet another push for selling more hats, boards and adapters. Other vendors did the right thing and used generic PCIe interfaces or the M2 format that is also very common and cheap to work with;
  • Instead of pushing the OS to be something truly open by contributing to a project such as Armbian they’ve kept running their own thing - just image if every PC manufacturer out there developed a custom version of Windows/Linux just because they didn’t feel like using generic MS Windows / Linux;
  • Microsoft repo and key are automatically added to Raspberry Pis - even if not installed by default the fact that the repo is included leaks information and for what’s worth “installation binaries come packed with some proprietary stuff, like telemetry and tracking”. I believe we’re all aware of the fact that VSCode isn’t true open-source nor it plays nice;
  • Showing the middle finger to consumers during COVID: I get it, profit matters but still they could’ve handled it better;
  • Disabling SSH by default when the old policy of “mandatory password change on first login” was enough. The interesting part is that change was made close to the time when telemetry was included on their flasher app;

Overall the Pi is isn’t even great at anything specific besides “holding the hand” of beginners and whatnot. If you’re looking for a networking / storage solution you’re better using another SBC with real PCI and/or a Mini PC. If you’re into electronics an ESP32 will be more than enough to drive a couple of GPIOs and will cost 3$, in short too little CPU for computing tasks and too much CPU for basic electronics. If you’re under heavy industrial environments the Pi won’t be up to your certifications or you’ll require protective gear that is so expensive that a solution from Gateworks will be cheaper at that point.

On a side note, just notice how the Pi bulldozed the Arduino business by simply integrating the GPIO in the CPU and then now they’re going in the opposite direction into the classic “big CPU talks to small microcontroller architecture for low level stuff” with their “innovative” RP1 chip.

…and I’m not the only person with that 1 2 opinion it seems.

Sometimes this will be the right board, sometimes a Pi is better. And sometimes 2-3 microcontrollers are a better fit. But the choice should not be based on telemetry in an optional imager, or the fact that your headless setup requires editing of config files.

I do agree with you there, I know the the Pi is better in education, hobbyists and people who aren’t that proficient with electronics and computers however it opens the door to a lot of potencial market abuse, Apple-style and whatnot. At the end of the day it is overpriced and it isn’t really good at anything - not even in ethics - as specialized options in those niches (ESP32, Arduino, Other SBCs, MiniPCs…) are better for said use cases.

It looks a lot like the Pi Foundation knows about this market-fit issue and is just trying to push more and more stuff into the hobbits as a way to keep growing and making money. The SSH/telemetry/app bundle thing isn’t objectively bad alone, but people aren’t complaining and it is just opening the door to a LOT of more custom stuff and eventually a closer ecosystem and a situation like Chrome market dominance.

What the next step for them? A cloud service that you need to use / pay to develop stuff for the Pi? :)

TCB13 , 8 months ago to linux in which distro and why do you prefer it over others?

Immutable Linux are just a path for yet another ecosystem twisting the developer/sysadmins workflow to the point things will require further centralization and/or subscriptions to something.

TCB13 , 8 months ago to linux in which distro and why do you prefer it over others?

+1

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

Did you know you have to enable it during installation on both Debian and canonicals derivative?

The difference is that Debian requires you to install with a screen/keyboard and/or use something generic like cloud-init not a proprietary tool that pushes people into telemetry and whatnot. Also a Pi is a lot less critical than a full system and almost always used by hobbyists. Professional users would change passwords / use keys so, yes, it makes absolutely no sense.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

I preordered the raspberry pi 1 when it launched and I don’t remember SSH ever being enabled be default in their image

I was, I remember it being that way. They later on made it so you would be required to change the password after the first login.

Having it enabled by default is a pretty massive security hole.

Most people are running those in a home network that is isolated either way. Most people even share their entire hard drives on the network with little to no security and you’re telling me a Pi with SSH access enabled by default is a risk? Professional deployments will be done by people who know how to change the passwords, port and use keys. There’s no reason to consider that an issue because of those reasons.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

The workarounds are either using their tool or doing what you suggested. Other SBCs do the reasonable thing and have it enabled by default like the Pi did in the past. This change simply pushes less-proficient users into using their tool.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

The full PCIe slot on those boards is just gold. I have a NanoPi M4v2 that also has PCIe in a M2 slot, used a cheap board to get 6 sata ports out of it.

TCB13 OP , 8 months ago to selfhosted in Banana Pi BPI-M7 - More Reasons to Avoid the Raspberry Pi

No… I compared the highest possible TDP on a Pi with with the average TDP of a “T-CPU” (power-optimized) running at full load and I concluded by saying a realistic idle consumption is 11W.

Look I’m sure the Pi does a lot better than 11W idle, but at those such low consumptions is is mostly irrelevant. I also added that given load X (equivalent to the Pi CPU at max load) the Intel CPU will make make it without reaching even the 35W while the Pi is going to be running at a full 27W.