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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Mint was a reaction to Gnome 3, the unique workflow upset a lot of people and the people behind Mint decided to build Cinnamon desktop (its Gnome 3 made to look/work like Gnome 2). They needed a distribution to build/test their work and so based a distribution off of Ubuntu and called it Mint.

    As a bit of explanation, there are only a few projects which attempt to build an entire linux distribution from scratch. This involves finding code from thousands of sources, work out packaging, etc… We call these ‘base’ distributions, Debian is the base distribution for Ubuntu, Ubuntu is the base distribution for Mint.

    Ubuntu tends to be slightly ahead of Debian in the software versions it uses and automatically enables the ‘non-free’ repositories. Ubuntu tends to push some Canonical specific things like Snaps (which everyone hates)

    I believe Mint rolls the Canonical specific things out of Ubuntu and you get the latest version of Cinnamon.

    Its all a bit…


  • If its for work I would suggest picking a “stable” distribution like Debian, Kubuntu or OpenSuse.

    A lot of people recommend Arch or Fedora but the focus of those is getting the very latest releases, which increases your chance of stuff breaking.

    A lot of people will suggest niche distributions, those can be great for specific needs but generally you will always find Debian/Ubuntu/RHEL support for commercial apps.

    I would also suggest looking at the KDE Desktop, many distributions default to Gnome but it is unique in how it works, KDE (or XFCE) will provide a desktop similar to Windows 11.

    Lastly I would suggest looking at Crossover Linux by Codeweavers.

    Linux has something called WINE, its an attempt to implement the Windows 95 - 11 API’s so windows applications can run on linux.

    WINE is how the Steam Deck/Linux is able to play Windows games. Valve embedded it into Steam and called it “Proton”.

    WINE is primarily developed by Codeweavers and they provide the Crossover application that makes setting up and running a Windows application really easy.

    People will mention Lutris but that has a far higher learning curve.

    There is an application database so you can see in advance if your applications would work: https://appdb.winehq.org/


  • If you read the reports…

    Normally JPL outsource their Mars mission hardware to Lockheed Martin. For some reason they have decided to do Mars Sample Return in house. The reports argue JPL hasn’t built the necessary in house experience and should have worked with LM.

    Secondly JPL is suffering a staff shortage which is affecting other projects and the Mars Sample Return is making the problem worse.

    Lastly if an organisation stops performing an action it “forgets” how to do it. You can rebuild the capability but it takes time.

    A team arbitrary declaring they are experts and suddenly decideding they will do it is one that will have to relearn skills/knowledge on a big expensive high profile project. The project will either fail (and be declared a success) or masses of money will be spent to compensate for the teams learning.

    Either situation is not ideal


  • I have always had 1 question.

    In voyager we see the Borg have thousands of ships of varying sizes and control a vast area of space. Voyager is able to take down spheres and small cubes.

    Yet in Wolf 359 a single cube attacks and destroys hundreds of star fleet vessels. If a single cube is able to have that level of effect why didn’t the borg commit a larger fleet?

    You have the same issue in First Contact, they only commit 1 cube.

    Considering how difficult the federation finds holding them back, attacking with 3-6 cubes would seemto assure victory


  • The GAO has performed an annual review of the Space Launch System every year since 2014 and switched to reviewing the Artemis program in 2019.

    Each year the GAO points out Nasa isn’t tracking any costs and Nasa argues with the GAO about the costs they assign. Then the GAO points out Nasa has no concrete plan to reduce costs, Nasa then goes nu’uh (see the articles cost reduction “objectives”).

    The last two reports have focused on the RS-25 engine, last time the GAO was unhappy because an engine cost Nasa $100 million and Nasa had just granted a development contract to reduce the cost of the engine.

    However if you took the headline cost of the contract and split it over planned engines it was greater than the desired cost savings. Nasa response was development costs don’t count.

    Congress reviews GAO reports and decides to give SLS more money.


  • The other person was just wrong.

    Large scale Hydrogen generation isn’t generated in a fossil free way, Hydrogen can be generated is a green way but the infrastructure isn’t there to support SLS.

    Hydrogen is high ISP (miles per gallon) by rubbish thrust (engine torque).

    This means SLS only works with Solid Rocket Boosters, these are highly toxic and release green house contributing material into the upper atmosphere. I suspect you would find Falcon 9/Starship are less polluting as a result.

    Lastly the person implies SLS could be fueled by space sources (e.g. the moon).

    SLS is a 2.5 stage rocket, the boosters are ditched in Earths Atmosphere and the first stage ditched at the edge of space. The current second stage doesn’t quite make low earth orbit.

    So someone would have to mine materials on the moon and ship them back. This would be far more expensive than producing hydrogen on Earth.

    Hydrogen on the moon makes sense if your in lunar orbit, not from Earth.



  • @ergoplato I didn’t suggest that.

    Personally I don’t think its ego. I think you have two issues.

    The first is people go through stages learning DevOps. Stage 1 has people deploy a CI because its cool, they build a few basic pipelines and then 90% of people get bored. The 2nd stage is people start extending those pipelines, it results in really complex pipelines requiring lots of unique changes based on the opinion of the writer. You move to the 3rd stage when your asked to recreate/extend for a new project and realise how specific your solutions are.

    Learning how to make minor tweaks and hook in a few key points to get what you want takes years. Without that most packagers will want to make big changes upstream which won’t go down well.

    The second issue, I have met quite a few developers who become highly stressed when the build system is doing something they haven’t needed to do or understand.

    A really simple example I have a Jenkins function which I tend to slip into release pipelines, it captures the release version and creates a version in Jira.

    I normally deploy it first as a test before a few other functions to automate various service management requirements.

    Its surprising how many devs will suddenly decide every problem (test failed, code failed review, sharepoint breaks, bad os update, etc…) is due to that function.

    For me this little function is a test, if the team don’t care I will work to integrate various bits. If they freak out, I’ll revert decide if it is worth walking them through the process or walk away.


  • One of the reasons for the #DevOps movement is developers see building and packaging as #notmyjob.

    The task would historically fall on the most junior member of the team, who would make a pigs ear out of it due to complete lack of experience.

    This is compounded by the issue that most C/C++ build systems don’t really include dependency management.

    Linux distributions have all tried to work out those dependency trees but they came up with slightly different solutions. This is why there are a few “root” distributions everything branches from.

    That means developers have to learn about a few root distributions to design a deb/rpm/aur package systems to base their release around.

    That is a considerable amount of learning in a subject most aren’t interested in.

    The real question is why don’t package maintainers upstream a packaging solution?



  • It never quite finds its grove.

    Season 1, 2 & 3 all had fantastic premises I would have loved 7 seasons of but were all unrelated and concluded within a season.

    Season 4 actually demonstrates the missed opportunity, they deal with the fall out of season 3

    For example if you think of the scene set in “A Vulkan Hello”, you would have ended up with an Action focussed version of DS9.

    You didn’t need a spore drive, Jason Isaacs could have stayed the same and we could still have watched scientists struggle to become soliders with the war causing the type of fall out we see in Season 4.



  • Github stars is not a good metric, firstly because KBin is hosted on codeberg but mainly because a healthy project has lots of unique contributors and regular updates/enhancements.

    KBin has 79 open Pull Requests, while Lemmy has 29. From a visual check PR’s seem to be older than 2 weeks. Its hard to say one is “healthier” than the other, without scraping information into a spreadsheet.

    Secondly Rust is new and has a lot of hype surrounding it, as a result you get a lot of people using it on random projects.

    Languages have strengths and weaknesses and developer ecosystems build on the strengths.

    For example if I was writing a web application with a database backend I would choose C#, Java or Node.js because there are loads of libraries, tools and frameworks to make it really easy.

    Rust is gaining a lot of adoption by embedded system users (replacing C mostly). Lemmy is the only Rust based web server project I am aware of. Which means the level of work to do anything and to keep it updated falls on the Lemmy devs rather than spread out amongst a larger community.

    Everyone loves to insult PHP but it has a niche in webservers and won’t disappear anytime soon. KBin effort will thus be spent on KBin.


  • There is a standard for sharing tweet style information and for threaded type information between websites.

    You have software which implements the tweet standard (Mastodon), the threaded standard (lemmy) and both (KBin).

    You’ll notice some communities will be [email protected] or [email protected], etc… this indicates they are not local to the website your using and those addresses are KBin instances, its just your website has a copy of the information.

    KBin is newer than Lemmy, it has a fairly simple responsive design that works well on mobile. Lemmy has a REST api so its easier to build mobile applications, a lot of people seem to expect/need to access websites via mobile applications.

    The key difference is Lemmy is developed by Tankies, they think China’s genocide of Ughurs is justified and they administer lemmy.ml.


  • Engineering is tradeoffs.

    A command shell is focused on file operations and starting/stopping applications. So it makes it easy to do those things.

    You can use scripting languages (e.g. Node.js/Python) to do everything bash does but they are for general purpose computing and so what and how you perform a task becomes more complicated.

    This is why its important to know multiple languages, since each one will make specific tasks easier and a community forms around them as a result.

    If I want to mess with the file system/configuration I will use Bash, if I want to build a website I will use Typescript, if I want to train a machine learning model I will use Python, if I am data engineering I will use Java, etc .




  • Change to subscribed
    On KBin the default view is similar to /r/all this can be changed to limit your view to only magazines/communities you are subscribed to by going:

    • Select your account name in top right corner
    • Select ‘Settings’ from the account context menu
    • Select ‘Subscription’ from the ‘Homepage’ drop down
    • Select ‘Save’ on the settings page

    This will change your default URL to https://<insance url>/sub (e.g. https://kbin.social/sub). This will change your feed to the top/newest/hottest from your subscribed magazines/communities.

    Time Filter
    If you look at the KBin screen, you will notice a filter by time option. Look for the navigation bar with hottest/newest/etc… on it on that bar is a upwards arrow and 4 lines representing a triangle (its normally used as a sort symbol). That will let you set time limits similar to those mentioned in this post (e.g. 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 1t (is 1 week).

    Microblogs
    Its also worth looking at the ‘microblogs’ feature under /sub as that will focus on mastodon messages/kbin microblogs with hashtags associated with your magazines/communities.

    You can ask KBin to subscribe to people you find through Mastodon, due to the rate changes various twitter users are migrating around. I find KBin a nicer way to read their content.


  • Just to add.

    Look at any hobby in your life and break out the money spent vs the enjoyment you got out of it.

    For example the Cinema costs me £10 and a film is 2 hours long, meaning my fun time costs £5 per hour.

    A £100 console would have to provide me 20 hours entertainment for it to be comparable to going to the cinema.

    These days any PS4 game will have 10-40 hours content, but buying them costs money. Popping on CEX website the most expensive PS4 games are £12. Assuning you only get 10 hours of fun from a game…

    The question you should ask yourself is are there 3 games on the PS4 you are interested in playing?