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renzev

@renzev@lemmy.world

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renzev ,

Microsoft: small and soft in name, huge and hard in reality?
Also, cool of you to include a transcript

renzev OP ,

sadly

renzev OP ,

A technology that was made To Stop Criminals™ being used against a political whistleblower? Color me surprised! (thanks for sharing the link btw, didn't know about that)

renzev OP ,

Thanks for name-dropping these. I'm kind of in the market for an old-ass printer after learning about this lol.

renzev OP , (edited )

Actual opinion some people hold: "We need to make end-to-end encryption illegal to stop criminals"

How on earth is that meant to work? Criminals are criminals. They don't care whether or not it's illegal. At this point, just declare all crime illegal and call it a day. At least that won't be a huge infringement on honest people's privacy and security.

renzev OP ,

Is pasting in your signature digitally not an option? That's what I've been doing all my life, but then again the area where I live is quite progressive in terms of technology.

On a related note, someone should make an image filter that makes digital documents look like they've been scanned in. Would save a ton of paper and people's time lol.

renzev OP ,

Just take a photo with a trusted regular camera app and then enhance it with imagemagick. I have this script, works like a charm: convert INPUT_IMAGE.jpg -colorspace gray \( +clone -blur 15,15 \) -compose Divide_Src -composite -normalize -threshold 80% OUTPUT_IMAGE.jpg. Pretty sure you can also specify multiple input images, and imagemagick can merge it into a PDF file. For joining a really large number of images into PDF files (e.g.scans of entire books), you can convert each image individually, and then pdunite them. So something like for i in *; do convert $i $i.pdf; done; pdfunite $(ls *.pdf | sort -n) output.pdf

Apps are bloat. Reject modernity, embrace shell scripts.

renzev OP ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f0b4c9d3-c5d4-4b07-976b-9bb08e0a53a7.png

renzev , (edited )

All those new video standards are pointless. VGA supports 1080p at 60Hz just fine, anything more than that is unnecessary. Plus, VGA is easier to implement that HDMI or Displayport, keeping prices down. Not to mention the connector is more durable (well, maybe DVI is comparable in terms of durability)

renzev , (edited )

Really, what "normal people" use cases are there for a resolution higher than 1080p? It's perfectly fine for writing code, editing documents, watching movies, etc. If you are able to discern the pixels, it just means you're sitting too close to your monitor and hurting your eyes. Any higher than 1080p and, at best you don't notice any real difference, at worst you have to use hacks like UI Scaling or non-native resolution to get UI elements to display at a reasonable size.

renzev ,

Okay, fair point, sorry for ninja-editing that.

renzev ,

I look at my laptop's internal display side-by-side with an external VGA monitor at my desk nearly every day. Not exactly a one-to-one comparison, but I wouldn't say one is noticeably worse than the other. I also used to be under the impression that lack of error correction degrades the image quality, but in reality it just doesn't seem to be perceptible, at least over short cables with no strong sources of interference.

renzev OP ,

LaTeX is great, but I prefer Markdown for software documentation (bonus points if your flavor of markdown supports LaTeX-style math). Standard LaTeX is geared towards typesetting and formatting, which is great for reports and journals, but not so much for software documentation, so you end up with a lot of boilerplate. Markdown syntax is also more accessible to beginners, I feel. And if you have a really big project that requires features like cross-references, there's things like myst markdown.

renzev ,

ayo nice legs

What do you guys do when you want to run unmaintained programs? (lemmy.world)

I recently wanted to run tegaki, and my experience is pretty much summed up by the meme. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, but I just couldn't figure out how to compile it. So I just gave up, downloaded the .exe and put it into a fresh wine prefix. After installing CJK fonts, everything ran fine. Now I'm trying to get gpaint...

renzev OP ,

TIL about sif. Thanks, will give it a try!

renzev OP ,

Hmmm I'm a bit hesitant about nixpkgs, since when I last tried using it (outside of nixos), many (modern) GUI apps were broken, at least on my distro, But I'll give this a try if u/observanTrapezium's suggestion doesn't work. Thanks!

renzev OP ,

Wine tends to work better for W*ndows programs that already have a Linux port, because they depend on fewer m*crosoft-specific libraries... which is not very helpful most of the time, but it is the subject matter of the meme.

renzev OP ,

Loving those fanboys in your replies getting absolutely triggered haha

renzev OP ,

I love bottles. Especially the flatpak version, since I don't have to worry about w*ndows programs shitting up my filesystem. And the recent per-bottle sandbox feature is also great for running semi-untrusted applications without needing to toggle things in Flatseal every time. I do wish Bottles kept support for winetricks tho. Recently wanted to run M$ Paint (the XP version), and it just wouldn't work with Bottles. Ended up installing the official Wine flatpak and using winetricks from there (it comes pre-installed).

renzev OP ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/982cface-56f4-4985-812e-268dc8b82549.webp

renzev OP ,

I read that as "they cygwin" and tbh it's a pretty accurate depiction of doing anything with cygwin, in my experience at least

renzev OP ,

Haha don't stress it man I'm just messing with u. Of course it's best to use updated software. I only use abandonware for nostalgia/archivism purposes, and only in contexts where it's not a security issue (e.g. non-networked apps) and sandbox it as much as possible. If you even just recognize the supremacy of free software over propr*etary and cl*ud based software, you're already leagues ahead of the people that meme is trying to make fun of

renzev OP ,

The redpill is that there are none. You know how w*ndows search is absolute crap, but you can get actually decent search results with Powertoys Run? You know how instead of trolling through control pannel and Settings, you can just directly search for whatever configuration you need with god mode? You know how w*ndows has a package manager, but it is not even installed by default? Or how it supports hibernation (suspend-to-disk), but hides it from the power menu? Ask yourself, why add all of these useful features, and then hide them far away, while presenting the user with a painfully outdated interface bloated with crap like c*pilot or c*rtana or whatever? The answer is that to remain relevant, M*cros*ft needs to keep the computing experience painful for their users. If they make W*ndows actually nice to use, people will swiftly realize that using your computer can actually be enjoyable. And that leads to trying out alternatives like BSD and Linux. And trying out alternatives leads to finding out that those alternatives are superior. Think about it. They've already lost in the server world. Once the remaining office workers and college students realize that m*cros*ft has been pissing in their mouths while telling them that it's raining, the only userbase that will be left are "capital G" g*ming addicts. And that demographic is also slowly waning thanks to wine and the fact that modern v*deo g*mes are slowly becoming utter trash.

renzev OP ,

False alarm! I'm on Void Linux too, gtk2 is alive and well! I was just being an idiot and searching for gtk2 while the real package is called gtk+2. I absolutely agree about gtk3 and gtk4. With gtk4 its like they didn't even bother. Client-side window shadows?!? seriously???. I personally prefer CLI and TUI for my apps, but gtk2 would be my second pick if I ever need to develop a GUI app. Partly because if my app ever gets popular, it would piss off a lot of those updooter types. I would love to use something even more minimalist like nuklear but sadly that's missing a lot of actually useful desktop integration like IME support (as far as I understand).

“win32 is the only stable ABI in Linux”

kek I'll be stealing this one

renzev OP ,

In the unix world, truly great programs tend to stay around for ever. less has been around since 1983. grep was there ten years earlier. Linux users love vim. What does the "v" stand for, you ask? "Visual", of course, because it was one of the first text editors to offer support for computer monitors. And before that, when we had teletypes, people used ed, which still comes pre-installed with Ubuntu. Not to mention that the modern linux terminal is basically emulating (that's why we called them terminal emulators) an electronic typewriter with some extra extensions for color and cursor support. They're backwards compatible to this day. That's why it says tty (teletype) when you press ctrl-alt-F2.

The caveat is that these examples are all low-level programs that have few dependencies. And they are extremely useful, therefore well-maintained. When it comes to more complex programs with a lot of dependencies, unless there is someone to keep it updated with the latest versions of those dependencies, it will eventually get broken.

The reason this happens less often in W*ndows is because w*ndows historically hasn't had a package manager, forcing devs to bundle all their dependencies into the executables. Another part of the reason is that m*cros*ft would lose a lot of business customers if they broke some obscure custom app with a new update, so they did their best to keep everything backwards compatible. Down to the point of forbidding you from creating a file named AUX in order to keep support for programs written for qdos, an OS from before filesystems were invented.

renzev OP ,

isn’t there a way for Linux users to automatically install every missing dependency for a program?

Great question! There is. What you’re describing is a package manager. Overall, they are a great idea. It means devs can create smaller “dynamically linked” executables that rely on libraries installed by the package manager. The w*ndows equivalent of this is using DLL’s. Another advantage is that urgent security updates can be propagated much faster, since you don’t have to wait for each app that uses a vulnerable library to update it on their own. Also, dynamically linked executables can help save on ram usage. With statically linked executables, everyone brings their own versions of some library, all off them off by a few minor revisions (which all have to be loaded into ram separately), whereas a bunch of dynamically linked executables can all pointed to the same version (only needs to be loaded once), which is what package maintainers often do. Finally, package managers eradicate the need for apps to include their own auto-updaters, which benefits both developers and users.

This model goes wrong when software depends on an outdated library. Even if the package maintainers still provide support for that outdated version, often it’s difficult to install two wildly different versions of a library at the same time. And apart from libraries, there are other things that a program can depend on, such as executables and daemons (aka background processes aka services), old versions of which are often even more difficult to get running along with their modern counterparts.

So when you say that the "W*ndows way kind of looks superior here", you are right about the specific edge case of running legacy apps. It just happens that the Linux crowd has historically decided that the other benefits of package managers outweigh this disadvantage.

There are tools for developers to bundle dependencies. Statically linked binaries, "portable" apps, AppImage, and so on... It's just that package managers are so widespread (because of the aforementioned benefits), few developers bother with these. The general attitude is "if you want a statically linked executable, go compile it yourself". And by the time it's time to make an "archiveable" version of an app because it's abandoned... nobody bothers, because it's, well, abandoned.

However, as disk capacity and ram size steadily increase, people are starting to question whether the benefits of traditional package managers really outweigh the added maintenance cost. This, combined with the recent development of a linux kernel feature called "namespaces", has spawned various new containerization tools. The ones I am familiar with are Docker (more suited for developer tools and web services), and Flatpak (more suitable for end-user desktop apps). I personally use both (flatpak as a user, and docker as both a user and a developer), and it makes my life a whole lot easier.

As for what makes it easier for users to get old apps working (which is what you're asking), well... that's sort of what we are discussing in this thread. Again, these tools aren't very widespread, because there is rarely a practical reason for running legacy programs, other than archivism or nostalgia. More often than not, modern and maintained alternatives are available. And when their is a practical reason, it is often in the context of development tools, where the user is probably skilled enough to just Dockerize the legacy program themselves (I did this a couple times at a job I used to have).

renzev OP ,

Do you happen to know what (if any?) technical advantages appimage has over "portable" applications (i.e. when the app is distributed as a zipped directory containing the executable, libraries, and all other resources)"? As far as I understand, appimage creates an overlay filesystem that replaces/adds your system libraries with the libraries that the packaged app needs? But why would that be necessary if you can just put them in a folder along with the executable and override LD_LIBRARY_PATH?

renzev ,

Not OP but I know which one is fake because I remember actually doing the other one haha

renzev ,

Debian, at some point, had updatedb scheduled as a cronjob by default. Nearly shit my pants thinking I was hacked when it started up on my computer out of the blue haha.

renzev OP ,

DOT/graphviz is great, very useful for making diagrams in reports and such. Now I just wish there was a flavor of Markdown that supported embedded DOT graphs along with LaTeX math. Then we would have truly unprecedented typesetting POWERRRRR!!

renzev OP ,

The DOT code is CC0, which itself doesn't include any images. To compile this meme, you would have to find your own images. Kind of like finding proprietary blobs to build libreboot.

renzev ,

It's kind of a tradition among the r*ddit refugees from s*bs like linuxmemes and linuxmasterrace. Posting things that aren't strictly linux-related, but would still be appreciated in general by computer nerds.

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