• 5 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 21st, 2023

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  • Haven’t seen the video, I’m only commenting based on the summary in the comments.

    It’s good that flatpak is switching to OCI containers. Hopefully that will end the flatpak’s dependency hell. This week I was looking at flatpak as a way to publish my app and found the user experience (user is the app publisher in this context) quite bad. Could be skill issue obviously.

    I thought I could just look into a database of flatpak runtimes, pick the one with the software I need, add additional packages and be done with it. Unfortunately it is not that simple. First of all as far as I know, there is no “database” like archlinux.org/packages. You have to download the runtime and then search /usr/include/ or /usr/bin/ to check if particular piece of software exists in it. Adding additional packages is also quite difficult. There are these runtime extensions which are like “baby runtimes” for special software like ffmpeg, java, etc. They kinda suffer from issues similar to the issues of the runtimes. And unlike in regular distros where you can get a package for almost anything, here you don’t have the luxury and have to bundle that not so popular dependency.

    I hope that with OCI I will be able to just provide the binary, a link to the base image and a list of dependencies to install and be done with it.



  • Yep my thoughts. New selfhosters think the hard part of selfhosting is command line but that’s “kinda” like thinking that the hard part of math is writing numbers on paper. Terminal is just the medium, not the complex part. Navigating filesystem and editing files is easier on the desktop but changing permissions and managing services would be be extremely difficult for a newbie without using the terminal because (almost) every online tutorial uses terminal. OP would have to learn how to translate the terminal command to its desktop counterpart at which point they might as well use the terminal.

    OP also has an XY problem. They asked for a system which does not require terminal usage but they should have actually asked for an easy to set up system. People are recommending things like Yunohost though, so it’s fine in the end.



  • As I said there are many alternative coreutils (BSD utils, toybox) for the embrace extend extinguish. I just don’t see a model situation because that seems to me like embracing, extending and extinguishing a programming language. Nobody does that because it is not financially viable.

    It’s not required to do work, if you want to use GPL licensed software for commercial applications. You need to share your source code, if you modified the GPLed code. But most people don’t modify the coreutils’ code. Are coreutils getting so much work done on them? To me it does not seem like it when this new uutils project managed to dwarf them in performance in some benchmarks.

    Anyways I think I’ve read somewhere that the project author is open to change the license, if the contributors want to. I guess someone could open a discussion about it. The issue is that it cannot be people from this comment section because they cannot engage in an adult discussion. I do think it’s worth considering the advantages of changing the license to GPL, mainly that users will be forced to share their potential bug fixes. But people have to cut their Canonical conspiracy crap, which just does not make any sense and only makes it harder to convince the uutils author.


  • Well the dev said that he does not care about the license. He wanted to create a coreutils alternative with better concurency using Rust as a pet project. He had even stated that he was not interested in the MIT vs GPL drama, yet people here were acting like children over it.

    People think it’s some kind of Canonical evil master plan, yet it’s just some random dude slapping a license on his cool new code, without really thinking about it. Also this conspiracy does not make sense at so many levels. For one Canonical would shoot themselves into their foot if they created their own proprietary coreutils, because admins would not want to deal with non-portable scripts. Also there are already the BSD utils, so if they wanted to create their own fork, they would have already done that by now. They won’t because they prefer free labor from FOSS devs.







  • I’m reposting a reply to similar comment. Replying to “Mental Outlaw is far right and cryptobro”. But the TLDR of that could be that he has some takes that people here like and some takes that people here don’t like but he is not a National Socialist, otherwise give source. Perhaps Drew has been cooking again?

    Those are just insults people, who cannot gasp that someone could have a slightly different opinion about something, use against him.

    Some political things about him include: He …

    • is an anarchist (or somewhere on that political spectrum)
    • wants to have the right to own a gun
    • is pro free speech
    • thinks using money should not have to earn mega corporations that much money
    • thinks “brother should not kill brother” in the war in Ukraine
    • is not a fan of Elon Musk, Teslas or self driving cars
    • is pro Free Software and for privacy

    Obviously depends on what is meant with “far right nutjob”. If it implies that anarchy (no government) is the opposite of socialism (far left - maximum government) then yeah but usually it just means “massive bigot”, which I don’t think he is, otherwise give source.

    Similar with crypto bro. For me it means the pump and dump scheme scammer or at least someone who is pro crypto because he sees it as a mean to get rich quick. But if “Crypto bro” just means anyone who likes the advantages of crypto, then he indeed is one.

    But regardless of how we name things, he doesn’t have any evil values (as far as I know). He just has different opinions than the average lemmy user. It should not be hard to tolerate him, considering this platform is a mass murderer fanclub (actual evil values, not just “quirky” politics).


  • Those are just insults people, who cannot gasp that someone could have a slightly different opinion about something, use against him.

    Some political things about him include: He …

    • is an anarchist (or somewhere on that political spectrum)
    • wants to have the right to own a gun
    • is pro free speech
    • thinks using money should not have to earn mega corporations that much money
    • thinks “brother should not kill brother” in the war in Ukraine
    • is not a fan of Elon Musk, Teslas or self driving cars
    • is pro Free Software and for privacy

    Obviously depends on what is meant with “far right nutjob”. If it implies that anarchy (no government) is the opposite of socialism (far left - maximum government) then yeah but usually it just means “massive bigot”, which I don’t think he is, otherwise give source.

    Similar with crypto bro. For me it means the pump and dump scheme scammer or at least someone who is pro crypto because he sees it as a mean to get rich quick. But if “Crypto bro” just means anyone who likes the advantages of crypto, then he indeed is one.

    But regardless of how we name things, he doesn’t have any evil values (as far as I know). He just has different opinions than the average lemmy user. It should not be hard to tolerate him, considering this platform is a mass murderer fanclub (actual evil values, not just “quirky” politics).


  • Ok but Linux-libre does not solve the security risk. It just makes hardware not work. You might as well say that any kernel module is a security risk (be it Free or proprietary) and it’s better to turn it off.

    Also unlike the blobs which “can cause risks”, Linux-libre causes risks. It removes proprietary microcode updates. So the outdated (also proprietary) microcode installed on your computer leaves you vulnerable to things like Spectre.

    This is potentially not an issue if OP uses ARM for example but using Linux-libre for security reasons is a really bad joke.


  • Since you are already using Libreboot, you already have (proprietary) microcode updates installed. So I think it shouldn’t be a security disaster with Linux-libre (that assumes that you keep your Libreboot updated). Worst thing that would happen is that your hardware won’t work. That’s also the best thing that will happen. The blobs are just firmware that gets loaded on a device that needs it. If you have the device, it won’t work without blobs. If you don’t have it, the firmware is not loaded so the outcome is not that different from regular linux. And also reading from comments there are some blobs for enabling DRM content. I guess that’s not mandatory.

    Though imo Linux-libre is pointless. For noobs it’s a potential security disaster and skilled users would be better off compiling their own kernel with just the features they need to reduce attack surface.


  • I think the difference is that with the n-word both the targets of the insult and the non-targets recognize it as an insult. Meanwhile considering the rice-word, both parties either only know the current-day meaning or think that the insult and the description of someone making their car look (but not function) like a race car are 2 different terms with different origin.

    You also seem to imply that the asian poster might have just been a white person trying to prove their point. Well here is a video of a chinese-american using it (and not as some kind of “protest slur” or what’s the term for rappers using the n-word in their songs) https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=68sTT4mFTnA

    I agree that using terms with racist origin is bad but I think that this term outside of the linux circles cannot be racist because nobody even knows it was racist at some point. edit: Obviously it should stop being used inside the linux circles because a) people here are more likely to read the wikipedia article than watch hours of automotive video content and b) the term does not even make sense for linux desktops because it just means “to make your desktop look cool”. There aren’t cosmetic linux desktop mods that make the computer look fast or like supercomputer or whatever.


  • I used to selfhost on a core 2 duo thinkpad R60i. It had a broken fan so I had to hide it into a storage room otherwise it would wake up people from sleep during the night making weird noises. It was pretty damn slow. Even opening proxmox UI in the remotely took time. KrISS feed worked pretty well tho.

    I have since upgraded to… well, nothing. The fan is KO now and the laptop won’t boot. It’s a shame because not having access to radicale is making my life more difficult than it should be. I use CalDAV from disroot.org but it would be nice to share a calendar with my family too.



  • It sounded like you got annoyed that I was guessing and it sounded like you tried to make it clear to me that the guess was not helpful to you with the use of sarcasm. I guess I misunderstood, sorry.

    Regarding the actual questions: You asked how does it compare to Coreboot. Canoeboot is actually coreboot, just slightly modified to work with Free Software Foundation’s rules but these rules are kind of absurd. See [1]. Libreboot is also modified Coreboot but one that’s actually good. The difference between them is that Libreboot should be a bit easier to install and that they support different hardware.

    In terms of battery life the same laptop with or without Coreboot should perform the same. Coreboot really only handles the booting. Battery life should depend on the “EC firmware”, which is like a second chip on your motherboard that handles stuff like blinking LEDs or checking if your lid is opened or closed. It also depends on the OS itself so Linux vs Windows will make a difference. Canoeboot is an exception because it does not include “microcode updates” for ideological reasons. Microcode is code that runs on a “CPU inside of your CPU”. Not updating it will A) make your CPU buggy and vulnerable to attacks like Spectre [2] and B) maybe even have worse battery life because Microcode can control the voltage your CPU runs at. More voltage -> more power (P ~ V^2)

    [1] https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability)