Graf Zahl derails another thread by making up an excuse to troll Linux users, episode #875,482,348,234

[Graf Zahl]

1 minute ago, Gustavo6046 said:

 

Oh, okay. I mean, Doom was popular outside uni, wasn't it? 

 

 

Yes, sure - but back then it was uncommon for home computers to have sufficient power to run the game, so it was often run at the university or the workplace where more powerful systems were available.

 

[Maes]

Regarding DOS, most people just learned how to start Windows, their favourite games or day-to-day work application. Not every single MS-DOS user had mastered the MS-DOS manual or batch language  Most people just learned the basic commands like CD, DIR and looking for stuff that had EXE in their filename or might be what they wanted to run. A relative minority understood the concept of "files" and "directories" but that was it 

 

Often, their computers were even rigged to auto-start those "killer apps". If something out of the ordinary was needed, well, that was what paid technicians or geek friends were for.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Maes

[wallabra]

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

Yes, sure - but back then it was uncommon for home computers to have sufficient power to run the game, so it was often run at the university or the workplace where more powerful systems were available.

 

Ahh, okay.

 

25 minutes ago, Maes said:

Regarding DOS, most people just learned how to start Windows, their favourite games or day-to-day work application. Not every single MS-DOS user had mastered the MS-DOS manual or batch language  Most people just learned the basic commands like CD, DIR and looking for stuff that had EXE in their filename or might be what they wanted to run. A relative minority understood the concept of "files" and "directories" but that was it 

 

Often, their computers were even rigged to auto-start those "killer apps". If something out of the ordinary was needed, well, that was what paid technicians or geek friends were for.

 

Hmmm... So I see computer literacy has really been increasing ever since. That's good, right? :D

[Woolie Wool]

Another thing to note is that computer stores made brisk business administering people's machines for them. If many people had problems they would take their box to CompUSA or the like and pay to have it reconfigured. Nowadays these problems usually never happen to begin with because modern commercial operating systems administer themselves.

 

This also means that people like me who have a DOS system in the present day have a harder (if much cheaper) time maintaining and using it than people in the actual '90s, because I have no one to run to if I fuck something up; I have to fix it myself using the (often fragmentary and incomplete) information available online.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Woolie Wool

[dpJudas]

3 hours ago, Gustavo6046 said:

Well, you only ever installed Ubuntu yourself. So you can only bash on Ubuntu Linux... which, funny enough, is what most Linux people do!

Say what? Where did you reach that conclusion from? My current Linux distro of choice is actually Mint.

 

You are also nicely sidestepping the fact that it is YOU that decided to go join a Windows 11 thread to rant about your precious Linux. You don't see me go post on Linux threads and forums about how I think Windows is superior. So I don't really understand what point you are trying to make here.

[Murdoch]

4 hours ago, Maes said:

Regarding DOS, most people just learned how to start Windows, their favourite games or day-to-day work application. Not every single MS-DOS user had mastered the MS-DOS manual or batch language  Most people just learned the basic commands like CD, DIR and looking for stuff that had EXE in their filename or might be what they wanted to run. A relative minority understood the concept of "files" and "directories" but that was it 

 

Indeed. I remember both the computers my parents got from a company called PC General here in New Zealand and the computers I used at school (this is circa 1991 - 1993) all featured a primitive GUI called HDM - Hard Disk Menu. Divided the preinstalled software into easily navigable categories. You could even password protect the Exit to DOS function  to stop kids doing silly things. Unless you grossly underestimate the intelligence of said kids and make the password dos like my school did.

[CBM]

5 hours ago, Maes said:

Most people just learned the basic commands like CD, DIR and looking for stuff that had EXE in their filename or might be what they wanted to run. A relative minority understood the concept of "files" and "directories" but that was it

Many had some menu that the computer booted into....

Or a program like Norton Commander.

[PsychEyeball]

6 hours ago, Maes said:

Regarding DOS, most people just learned how to start Windows, their favourite games or day-to-day work application. Not every single MS-DOS user had mastered the MS-DOS manual or batch language  Most people just learned the basic commands like CD, DIR and looking for stuff that had EXE in their filename or might be what they wanted to run. A relative minority understood the concept of "files" and "directories" but that was it 

 

Often, their computers were even rigged to auto-start those "killer apps". If something out of the ordinary was needed, well, that was what paid technicians or geek friends were for.

Our first computer ever had this program that was called 3DMenu. It would start on bootup and set up in a way that we could easily access all programs we needed to access, as launching these would just type all the DOS commands required to launch the programs. Unless we had to get down and dirty and do things like copy, move or delete files, we rarely would even use the DOS command line at all.

 

As a kid, Windows 95 blew my goddamned mind. You no longer have to type things? You can do almost everything with just the mouse?!? Damn, things got way more simpler compared to DOS!

[ducon]

9 hours ago, Woolie Wool said:

Do you have anything to offer besides moral polemic?

 

Why, I wrote only one post?

 

9 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

And if you fight fire with stubbornness and ignorance you just get burned alive.

The way you act will achieve nothing. All it will mean is that nobody that counts will take you seriously and dismiss your views.

 

I know this sophism: false alternative.

[leejacksonaudio]

18 hours ago, Maes said:

 

Well, if you knew anything about wives, you'd know that this is a make-or-break factor ;-)

 

You have said a metric assload. My wife needs a new computer for Windows 11, and she is also the keeper of the budget for the household. In other words, she doesn't want a new computer, therefore she says up yours to Windows 11. (FWIW, my i9-10850K UberLaptop is the only thing in our house that will technically run Windows 11.)

[Maes]

7 hours ago, Gustavo6046 said:

Hmmm... So I see computer literacy has really been increasing ever since. That's good, right? :D

More like accessibility/confidence inspiration for the novices. Kinda like the difference between having to drive this:

 

 

and this:

 

You'd be surprised at how many people still need to be told to press ENTER for, well ENTERING stuff and things starting to happen. If anything I expect even basic typing skill to slowly wane.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Maes

[wallabra]

21 hours ago, dpJudas said:

Say what? Where did you reach that conclusion from? My current Linux distro of choice is actually Mint.

 

Which is Ubuntu based.

 

21 hours ago, dpJudas said:

You are also nicely sidestepping the fact that it is YOU that decided to go join a Windows 11 thread to rant about your precious Linux. You don't see me go post on Linux threads and forums about how I think Windows is superior. So I don't really understand what point you are trying to make here.

 

That's actually true. I joined a Windows 11 thread to rant about my precious Linux. It's still beyond me people still take Windows news seriously. But whatever it is or isn't, my militant mind mixes argument with emotion all the time. Know what, you can blame all of the blunders I've made in this thread to that simple fact that I mix argument with emotion all the time. Satisfied now?

 

15 hours ago, Maes said:

You'd be surprised at how many people still need to be told to press ENTER for, well ENTERING stuff and things starting to happen. If anything I expect even basic typing skill to slowly wane.

 

Yeah, but I think it's increasing, because more young people are being introduced to computers and earlier in their lives. Anecdotal case in point: me, and the vast majority of my young friends, who don't need to be told to press Enter for entering stuff, unlike friends and relatives who are older.

 

Nonetheless, it's not like Linux can't be image #2. :p

 

 

 

All that aside, I recognize I should probably step back a moment. Let you guys have some chatter and stuff. I'll depart.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Gustavo6046

[dpJudas]

25 minutes ago, Gustavo6046 said:

Which is Ubuntu based.

Sure, but that doesn't make it Ubuntu. The cinnamon desktop gives you quite a different experience. As for who maintains the debian packages below the surface, I don't really care much as I consider the entire design broken. If I knew of a Linux distro that truly did it differently (in the direction discussed on the previous pages) I'd switch, but I don't so for now that's the one I use.

[wallabra]

1 minute ago, dpJudas said:

As for who maintains the debian packages below the surface, I don't really care much as I consider the entire design broken. If I knew of a Linux distro that truly did it differently (in the direction discussed on the previous pages) I'd switch, but I don't so for now that's the one I use.

 

Yeah, dpkg is dumb, and point release is dumb. You should look into rolling-release distros more often.

[dpJudas]

Just now, Gustavo6046 said:

 

Yeah, dpkg is dumb, and point release is dumb. You should look into rolling-release distros more often.

As I said, in the direction I want. Not the direction you want. That means something which drops /usr/include and /usr/lib completely as a concept. I'm thinking something along the lines of macOS's .app folders as a way of distributing applications.

 

The last thing I want is rolling-release - that sounds horribly like being a constant beta tester.

[Graf Zahl]

10 minutes ago, dpJudas said:

I'm thinking something along the lines of macOS's .app folders as a way of distributing applications.

 

 

What I've been saying all along. Of course that must also imply that all mandatory application data must be part of the package as well, and not be scattered around the directory tree, far away from the executable. That's also one of those things where Linux creates too much mess.

[dpJudas]

Yep, trivially simple to implement. Too bad no distro wants to do it. Oh well. :)

[Woolie Wool]

Since this is basically a Linux argument thread now, I just had the experience of updating Arch on my ThinkPad when several AUR (a separate repository for unsupported software that is distributed as source rather than binary packages) packages I had installed updated simultaneously. On this groaning old dual-core laptop, the process took two and a half hours. God, what would updating Gentoo be like?

[ducon]

1 hour ago, Woolie Wool said:

Since this is basically a Linux argument thread now, I just had the experience of updating Arch on my ThinkPad when several AUR (a separate repository for unsupported software that is distributed as source rather than binary packages) packages I had installed updated simultaneously. On this groaning old dual-core laptop, the process took two and a half hours. God, what would updating Gentoo be like?

 

And what would updating snap/flatpak distribution be like?

First, download the 150 GB of packages.

Then, install the 1500 GB in deflated data.

[Graf Zahl]

1 hour ago, ducon said:

 

And what would updating snap/flatpak distribution be like?

First, download the 150 GB of packages.

Then, install the 1500 GB in deflated data.

 

When all else fails: Try to make your point with exaggeration and lies!

[Dragonfly]

How is this thread not locked yet lmao?

[ducon]

5 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

When all else fails: Try to make your point with exaggeration and lies!

 

If you install a hundred times the same library because you install a hundred (check your joke detector) flatpaks that need it, of course it won’t take 150 GB (ditto) but it will fill your hard disk for nothing.

Not everybody have enough money to buy a 100 TB hard disk (ditto) and have a direct link to the internet (ditto).

 

All else failed? No, I didn’t try wishful thinking, insults, sophisms or bullshit with overconfidence.

Edited October 20, 2021 by ducon

[Graf Zahl]

Reality check: Windows does precisely that and its HD space doesn't implode.

You are also forgetting something here: With most big applications the vast majority of storage space is application assets or app specific code, not those libraries you talk about.

 

Why are you so stuck in the past where storage came at a premium? These days even 1TB SSDs are dirt cheap.

I'd never trade system stability to save myself a few GB of hard drive space. I'm sorry but the entire notion is just the epitome of being amateurish.

 

[ducon]

34 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Reality check: Windows does precisely that and its HD space doesn't implode.

You are also forgetting something here: With most big applications the vast majority of storage space is application assets or app specific code, not those libraries you talk about.

 

Appimage (but not Flatpak nor snap) shares libraries but the packages are at least twice bigger than deb packages.

Moreover, there are security issues and it’s much slower to start an application when it’s in such a package (even from a SSD hard disk).

 

34 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Why are you so stuck in the past where storage came at a premium? These days even 1TB SSDs are dirt cheap.

I'd never trade system stability to save myself a few GB of hard drive space. I'm sorry but the entire notion is just the epitome of being amateurish.

 

Yes, the people do not own expensive computers with fat and speedy hard disks, processors and so on.

Buy and install a 1 TB SSD hard disk? I thought that Mr Everyone had difficulties to hit the Any key. Sorry, but hard disk space AND size of downloaded packages do matter (for example when you are poor or not exprimented in computers). Do you know that there are subscriptions where you pay for what you download? They are the cheapest ones.

[Graf Zahl]

15 minutes ago, ducon said:

 

Appimage (but not Flatpak nor snap) shares libraries but the packages are at least twice bigger than deb packages.

Moreover, there are security issues and it’s much slower to start an application when it’s in such a package (even from a SSD hard disk).

 

Something's broken here. Well, we are on Linux, aren't we?`:P

 

 

 

15 minutes ago, ducon said:

 

Yes, the people do not own expensive computers with fat and speedy hard disks, processors and so on.

Buy and install a 1 TB SSD hard disk? I thought that Mr Everyone had difficulties to hit the Any key. Sorry, but hard disk space AND size of downloaded packages do matter (for example when you are poor or not exprimented in computers). Do you know that there are subscriptions where you pay for what you download? They are the cheapest ones.

 

Yes, sure. It's just, when I check my Program Files folder on Windows, the only larger chunk of redundant code is Git which contains tens of executables which are 3MB large each. Obviously they all link one huge static library. But in the end all potential redundancy in there may add up to 2GB - the entire folder's size is 120 GB.

But it's funny that you argue for the lowest common denominator here to refuse adding some sane application mechanics.

 

What do you want? Get people onto Linux or just preserve the system you personally like? I think by now it is clear that the current way does not work for the general public.

It doesn't even work for many software developers, and as I pointed out, the number of technical issues with GZDoom is disproportionately higher for Linux users.

And with that, in the end shaving 1 GB off your hard drive storage means absolutely nothing if some software stops working and its developer decides that it isn't their fault that there's no stable set of libraries available. We have good reasons to statically link several critical third party dependencies in GZDoom to avoid that bottomless pit of dependency hell.

 

[Woolie Wool]

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

Why are you so stuck in the past where storage came at a premium? These days even 1TB SSDs are dirt cheap.

I'd never trade system stability to save myself a few GB of hard drive space. I'm sorry but the entire notion is just the epitome of being amateurish.

But...but...but...the good old days! Coding discipline! Bloat! Every byte counts! Assembly language! *wanking hand gesture*

 

(yes, I have had a Sonic rom hacker tell me that modern game programmers all suck because they don't write entire games in ASM anymore)

 

As far as dependencies go, I have hated external libraries ever since I experienced my first Windows 9x DLL hell in the '90s, but at least then hard drive space really was scarce and expensive.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Woolie Wool

[ducon]

21 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

Something's broken here. Well, we are on Linux, aren't we?`:P

 

So just stick on apt. ;p

 

Quote

Yes, sure. It's just, when I check my Program Files folder on Windows, the only larger chunk of redundant code is Git which contains tens of executables which are 3MB large each. Obviously they all link one huge static library. But in the end all potential redundancy in there may add up to 2GB - the entire folder's size is 120 GB.

 

My entire / partition (without /home and /usr/local) weights 42 GB and I have a truckload of packages that I should clean, one day.

My old hard disk is nearly full (there are also /usr/local and /home in it).

 

Quote

But it's funny that you argue for the lowest common denominator here to refuse adding some sane application mechanics.

 

On paper, it’s sane but in reality, it’s not so sane.

There are security issues.

 

Quote

What do you want? Get people onto Linux or just preserve the system you personally like? I think by now it is clear that the current way does not work for the general public.

It doesn't even work for many software developers, and as I pointed out, the number of technical issues with GZDoom is disproportionately higher for Linux users.

 

Maybe the Linux users are more keen on reporting bugs. For example, I never saw my wife reporting a bug… but I reported many and many bugs to Debian (about one or two each month for twenty years).

 

Quote

And with that, in the end shaving 1 GB off your hard drive storage means absolutely nothing if some software stops working and its developer decides that it isn't their fault that there's no stable set of libraries available. We have good reasons to statically link several critical third party dependencies in GZDoom to avoid that bottomless pit of dependency hell.

 

I have 7 GB remaining on /, so yes, I can’t install Appimage/Flatpak/Snap.

Sparing 1 GB on the hard disk is sparing also more than 100 MB of download.

Edited October 20, 2021 by ducon

[HavoX]

11 hours ago, Woolie Wool said:

God, what would updating Gentoo be like?

That would be something you should ask yourself after you install it, which is already complicated in the first place... :P

[Maes]

2 minutes ago, HavoX said:

That would be something you should ask yourself after you install it, which is already complicated in the first place... :P

 

And, God forbid, don't you dare upgrading the CPU or anything, because otherwise all those compilation flags that you painstakingly researched so that it fits your own CPU and chipset to a tee, won't be worth a damn.