Thanks. In the past I have worked in Slackware, and even had Gentoo on my home system for a couple of years, but otherwise I’ve been fully saturated in Debian and its children - so that’s my “comfort zone.” I used to like KDE, but drifted away from it when I got a 4K screen notebook and KDE hadn’t figured out resolution scaling yet, while Ubuntu/Unity had. I never quite warmed up to GNOME, but definitely have done my time with it. XFCE has matured enough for me to daily drive it without too much pain now, and I love the ways it can be de-featured (don’t want a launcher bar? Don’t run it, nothing else breaks.)

Server-side, I have been filling my Raspberry Pis with Docker containers for a while now… it’s not completely alien, but I do kind of tend to “set it and forget it” when it comes to container deployments.

Not mocking: can you share any good guides to practical immutable systems?

What I observed of Ubuntu Core made a strong “not ready for prime time, and even if it was I don’t want it” impression on me.

There’s a lot to dislike about Canonical, but snaps is still relatively easy to purge and just get on with your underlying Debian package support…

The one “good” thing about containers is that you keep your DLL-like mess localized. Just one or a few related apps run in the container and if they want / need some weird library version, they can have it without breaking other things.

The thing that grinds my gears is when I’m doing an apt update and then it goes off to check on the snaps and drags the process out a lot longer. It doesn’t help that they’re slower to load the apps too. Then there’s the additional attack surfaces to accumulate more CVE reports (and more out of date library versions on your system begging for a security patch…) Mostly, I just purge snap support from Ubuntu these days - but for people who don’t notice / mind such things, you do you - maybe they’ll eventually improve the lightweight container system until the rest of us don’t notice it either.

I wouldn’t say I have had a problem with snaps or flatpacks either. I uninstall all snaps first thing when I install recent Ubuntu versions, and I have never messed with flatpacks, so… no problems.

And they are still, in my experience, slow to load, a cumbersome addition to the update process, and often un-necessary.

Don’t get me wrong, if you’re in a tight spot and can’t make two significant software packages work in a distribution due to conflicting library version requirements… some kind of lightweight container solution is attractive, expedient, and better than just not supporting one of the packages. But, my impression is that a lot of stuff has been moved into flatpak / snap / etc. just because they can. I don’t think it’s the best, or even preferred, way to maintain software - for the desktop environment.

(Returns to checking on his Docker containers full of server apps on the R-Pi farm…)

That’s what happens when you have Intel inside ;o)

(Yes, yes, I know, it’s the whole binary based floating point thing, not just Intel, although my Atari 800 BASIC interpreter implemented floating point in BCD, so it didn’t have that issue.)

More like 0.10 + 0.05 = 0.20, in this case.

It has also led to me saying “I fucking told you so” more than a few times.

I have had several situations where I didn’t even have to give knowing looks, everybody in the room knew I told them so six months ago and here it is. When that led to problems working with my leadership in the future (which happened more often than not), that was a 100% reliable sign that I would be happier and more successful elsewhere.

Stack Exchange coding is 5% finding solutions to try and 95% copy-pasting those solutions into your project, discovering why they don’t work for you, and trying the next solution on the search list.

I just use A.I. to simplify the tedious data gathering and organizing.

If you’re conscientious, you check AI’s output the same way a conscientious licensed professional checks the work of an assistant before signing their name to it.

If you’re more typical… you’re at even greater risk trusting AI than you are when trusting an assistant who is trying to convince your bosses that they can do your job better than you.

We’ve hired a bunch of Indian guys who are using AI to do their work… the results are marginally better than either approach independently.

I had an Atari 800, and the manual for it was pretty complete.

At office in 1991 I started programming for IBM PCs in DOS, that was a big step into the void.

had comprehensive manuals

You must not have coded for DOS.

In the late 80s there were no man pages, we had a 50 page paper manual - and it was mostly useless.

I do most of my cursing during preliminary test…

Anytime, and incase you missed it: I’m not just talking about AI driven vehicles. AI driven decisions can be just as harmful: https://www.politico.eu/article/dutch-scandal-serves-as-a-warning-for-europe-over-risks-of-using-algorithms/

Sure, the internet is more practical, and the odds of being caught in the time required to execute a decent strike plan, even one as vague as: “we’re going to Amerika and we’re going to hit 50 high profile targets on July 4th, one in every state” (Dear NSA analyst, this is entirely hypothetical) so your agents spread to the field and start assessing from the ground the highest impact targets attainable with their resources, extensive back and forth from the field to central command daily for 90 days of prep, but it’s being carried out on 270 different active social media channels as innocuous looking photo exchanges with 540 pre-arranged algorithms hiding the messages in the noise of the image bits. Chances of security agencies picking this up from the communication itself? About 100x less than them noticing 50 teams of activists deployed to 50 states at roughly the same time, even if they never communicate anything.

HF (more often called shortwave) is well suited for the numbers game. A deep cover agent lying in wait, potentially for years. Only “tell” is their odd habit of listening to the radio most nights. All they’re waiting for is a binary message: if you hear the sequence 3 17 22 you are to make contact for further instructions. That message may come at any time, or may not come for a decade. These days, you would make your contact for further instructions via internet, and sure, it would be more practical to hide the “make contact” signal in the internet too, but shortwave is a longstanding tech with known operating parameters.

Photo made with AI, and that’s not Alligator Intelligence.