The only thing Samba is really great for is interop with Windows. If that’s not an issue, Dolphin can browse SFTP directly by adding it as a network share (you may need to setup a password-less key pair to avoid having to login). SSHFS is a similar option and works even if the client is totally naive (it just looks like any other mounted FS).

Right. GCC -f optimizations are basically like “how hard are we going to try to be clever” and are, I believe, orthogonal to the actual instructions used. Machine dependent args start with -m, like -march or -mavx etc.

For XP, the machine KVM presents as may be too new, but that isn’t an issue with non-virtualized QEMU.

Reason number one million capitalism sucks. We should be happy to turn over dangerous or menial jobs to machines but we can’t do that because without jobs our society views us as worthless.

You can, but it’s not a perfect solution. Mostly because the TVs interface is still designed around this app mentality.

I bought a Samsung TV recently and it’s never been on the internet, but I still have to go to a dead home screen where all of the ads would be just to switch inputs and half the buttons on the remote are for services I don’t want.

TIOBE is weighted toward languages that have existed for a long time by virtue of counting lines written / skilled engineers etc. but the speed at which Rust is climbing that list is a better indicator. Also, a lot of the languages above it wouldn’t be appropriate for anything like a DE.

But you’re right, it’s hyped, I just think the hype is real.

This is a weird take. Rust is very popular and is the current heir apparent to C for systems level stuff. It’s a great choice to start a new DE/toolkit.

As for the rest, you’re right the end user doesn’t care about the language their graphical app is in, but the developers fielding their bug reports and making fixes/features sure do.

I recently (2020) played BG1 and 2 with their expansions and on the one hand you’re right… But on the other getting the same story with 10x the graphics and some modern QoL would be great. Reaching BG3’s massive audience - that isn’t all 90s nostalgia gamers - with a story that’s new-to-them would really help cement it in the same way BG2 did for BG1.

Holy shit, please let this happen.

They don’t, but they define the socket the processor slots into and probably did this to market the newer chips as more advanced than they are (by bundling a minor chip upgrade with an additional chipset upgrade that may have more uplift).

I see no other reason to kneecap upgrades like this when upgrading entails the consumer buying more of your product.

John Carmack, author of the Doom engine, is a long time Linux user and for a while the policy was to open source the idTech engines once they had moved on.

However, Doom was hugely popular on its own before this, and was actually more pivotal for making Windows a gaming platform (over DOS).

The reason it runs everywhere is a combination of it’s huge popularity, it’s (now) open source and it’s generally low system requirements.

It does that everywhere, even on non .deb distros.

One thing I’d like to suggest is get most of their forward facing apps as Flatpak and let them install software that way instead of using the system package manager (even if it has a GUI). This jibes with others suggesting an immutable base system.

Obviously this may be more of a concern for older kids, but my kid started with Linux and it did fine… Right up until Discord started breaking because it was too old and they didn’t want to tangle with the terminal. Same thing when Minecraft started updating Java versions. Discord and Prismlauncher from Flatpak (along with Proton and Steam now) would have kept them happier with Linux.

As for internet, routers come with parental controls these days too, which have the added advantage of being able to cover phones (at least while not on mobile data). Setting the Internet to be unavailable for certain devices after a certain time on school nights may be a more straightforward route than DE tools.

For music I’m just sick of the apps streaming super compressed crap. It sounds like 192kbps MP3 sometimes and you can definitely tell the difference. Setup Airsonic and never looked back, although still have YT music for the fam and finding new music. It is a bit of hassle, but it’s worth it and a FLAC collection feels way smaller than it did 10-20 years ago (both in terms of disk and home streaming bandwidth).

This isn’t a benchmark of those systems, it’s showing that the code didn’t regress on either hardware set with some anecdotal data. It makes sense they’re not like for like.

I read “The Idea Factory” about Bell Labs, focused mostly on inventing the transistor, but it included their consolidation into this lab and just how state of the art it was. The book implied that it was the first corporate “campus” designed more like a university than a factory or office.

The book really made me understand that AT&T / Bell Labs was the hot tech firm of the early 20th century, long before getting to computing advances (C, UNIX) I was more familiar with.

Hello fellow ex-IBMer. I came to the corp from an open source background and I was happy that my LTC coworkers seemed to despise software parents despite the huge pressure from management.

I wonder how much of this is that IBM fell out of the patent lead and decided to just take their ball and go home. Or how much is RedHat influence shifting the mindset away from the patent Mexican standoff with everyone else.

I used (u)xterm for like 20 years before discovering that Konsole is solid and beautiful. My whole tiling setup is backed up with KDE apps now.

I didn’t mind the pie chart, the slices are labeled clearly, no need to use coloring like you have to read a legend.

I’m a little sad this ended up in the ACM. There’s plenty of shit computing can be tried and convicted of as a discipline… This ain’t it.