scratchandgame

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Linux and BSD doesn't just work. I've been using Plan 9 and when I have to use linux I feel very frustrated when graphical windows doesn't open in a terminal like in plan 9.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Not knowing where to find anything.

man, try info too. But linux might not have good man page, so use the wiki too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Great! I would like to use -O0 or -O1 on my distro..

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Oh, I heard you are saying about privacy. The programs you are using have unlimited access to your filesystem if you do not sandbox it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Insane graphical installer. You cannot install an os with just serial console access.

We’re using Firefox to render the UI when you’re installing locally. (There’s no Chromium or Electron involved.)

Both are insane.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The only thing that is a genuine problem with Linux as a whole is that a lot of apps and games just aren’t compatible

Because two systems are different.

It is not a problem. Shut up and hack.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

It can find and load your ssh keys. Does it just do one thing well?

Use plan 9.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Just install plan 9. It is better than anything else.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Yes, the syntax is the same. It also support various GNU and BSD extensions.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

GNU bc is unmaintained for years. The latest version is from 2017. It don't have a repo or a mailing list.

bc-gh started in 2018 and it is still actively developed. It is adopted by many projects I've listed in my post.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

perhaps they don't care about bc. I think they don't even notice that GNU bc haven't been updated since 2017.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

I will change it to "licensing reason". Thank you

But the software you listed are used by many peoples. bc-gh is robust and performant, GNU bc is not actively developed, and benchmark shows that it is clearly slower than bc-gh in most case. But in most distros bc-gh is not available.

 

(for anyone who do not know, bc is a "arbitrary-precision arithmetic language". its syntax is similar to C)

Gavin Howard's bc (bc-gh) is adopted by busybox, toybox, FreeBSD, Android, macOS for its robustness and superior performance. It is also shipped with Gentoo Linux; LFS also use bc-gh.

Even though bc-gh is more robust and updated, Linux distros other than Gentoo and Fedora do not package it it. bc-gh is not available on Arch (available on AUR), Debian and perhaps all of its derivative. The reason seems to be a licensing reason: bc-gh is under the BSD license.

bc-gh is clearly superior to GNU bc, Gavin Howard's benchmark show that bc-gh is faster than GNU bc in most case, while bc-gh actually do more work than GNU bc.

Today I tested GNU bc and bc-gh. I let they do this operation: (1024*1024)^(1024*1024). GNU bc give me the answer in five minutes, bc-gh give me the answer in two minutes.

GNU bc do not have a repository. All development happen in private, and we can't make sure it is still maintained. The latest version is 1.07 from 2017. bc-gh have a public repository and it is actively maintained.

So it is clear that other Linux distro not adopting bc-gh is purely licensing reason. They reject software not under the GPL license, even if they are more robust and more performant.

We need a campaign to raise awareness about superior software alternatives. We need to stop Linux distro for not adopting superior and updated softwares for licensing reasons.

 

Distributions like RHEL and Debian freeze packages, you will have to use old package when the newer is available. I think these distributions is just for highly mission-critical system, they have to run software smoothly, no breakage. Most personal computer don't need that stability.

Can anyone explain more about what a stable distributions mean?

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