As someone with a Thinkpad, that weird thing Lenovo does where they switch the control and function keys gets me every time I switch between Thinkpad and non-Thinkpad laptops. Usually when I use a non-Thinkpad, it’s someone else’s laptop and I look like an idiot in front of them wondering why their copy and paste is broken.

I get that the function key isn’t technically a standard key on the keyboard (I’ve only seen them on laptops) and Thinkpads always had that layout dating back the IBM days, but it’s still annoying.

The issue with AI is not that it’s not an impressive technology, it’s that it’s built on stolen data and is incredibly wasteful of resources. It’s a lot like cars in that regard, sure it solves some problems and is more convenient than the alternatives, but its harmful externalities vastly outweigh the benefits.

LLMs are amazing because they steal the amazing work of humans. Encyclopedias, scientific papers, open source projects, fiction, news, etc. Every time the LLM gets something right, it’s because a human figured it out, their work was published, and some company scraped it without permission. Yet it’s the LLM that gets the credit and not the person. Their very existence is unjust because they profit off humanity’s collective labour and give nothing in return.

No matter how good the technology is, if it’s made through unethical means, it doesn’t deserve to exist. You’re not entitled to AI more than content creators are entitled to their intellectual property.

Ideally the entire system.

Centre click is a godsend though. I recently had to start using Windows again and I keep instinctively hitting it.

When I heard about schools using Chromebooks literally the first thing I said was “Linux can do more than a Chromebook can and is free, why the hell aren’t they using that?!” Linux running on the cheapest OEM laptop (make sure you get ones without the prepaid Windows license so you don’t spend more than you need to) is a better experience than the most expensive Chromebook.

Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?

Isn’t .NET open source and cross platform now? Isn’t there an official Linux runtime? Or is it just the most basic subset of .NET without any of the GUI libraries or other things Windows .NET apps routinely depend on?

Why not just use and support fully open source alternatives like Krita, Inkscape, Kdenlive, etc instead of giving money to Adobe?

A door with the best lock possible is still not as secure as no door at all

Boo

Where app data is stored.

~/.local

~/.config

~/.var

~/.appname

Sometimes more than one place for the same program

Pick one and stop cluttering my home directory

Fedora Linux has been the most stable OS in my experience, having used Windows XP to 10 and switching to Linux before 11 came out. I can leave it on for literally weeks on end and the memory never randomly fills up, nor does it get more and more glitchy/crash prone as you leave it on, both of which I have experienced on Windows.

Why would anyone bother writing it like that? That just seems like int main() with extra steps. Like does auto enable some compiler optimisation of the return type that I’m not aware of?

Every time Rust takes forever to compile something, I picture in my mind it checking every possible edge case and buffer vulrnability I didn’t check and suddenly I’m a lot more okay with how long it takes.

Reminder that Linux’s decision to write an entire kernel in C and not a mix of C and assembly was just as controversial back then as Rust vs C is now. The pro-assembly programmers used many similar arguments as the anti-Rust programmers (it’s bloated, it’s too high level for the kernel, it has a complicated compiler, it’s just a pointless abstraction over what’s actually happening at the processor level, it’s not mature enough, if you were competent in assembly you wouldn’t need to use C, if assembly is too difficult for you then you shouldn’t even be developing a kernel, etc). Now Linux is hailed as one of the pioneer software projects that led the switch from assembly to C for kernel level code.

If even senior C developers can and regularly do write critical memory vulnerabilities that can give attackers remote code execution as root, then I’d say it’s indeed already broken.

“We don’t need TCAS on commercial airliners because any colisions are the pilot/controller’s fault”

Except that’s literally the reality with computers. Everything evolves and things go obsolete. I’m sure the COBOL and Fortran programmers were pissed when the kids started using C too.

IMO every distro should have a rolling release option. Kind of like how OpenSUSE has the normal version and Tumbleweed. You have normal version for when you need the OS to work (you’re new to Linux, it’s your main personal/work computer, it’s a server, etc) and then you have the rolling release option for when you’re willing to give up stability for the newest versions of everything as soon as possible.

Sorry to say it (and as much as i like C) but C is already on the path to inevitable obsolescence. Everyone is learning Rust now and fewer people are learning C. Maybe not soon, but definitely eventually. Linux can join C on this path to obsolescence or it can pivot to a language that still has a clear future.

Rust will go obsolete a some point too when the next next generation of languages come out. And software projects using Rust will have to switch languages again to stay relevant.

Don’t forget that languages like COBOL was once state of the art but was replaced by… C.

That’s just the computer circle of life.