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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • GNU / Linux is an overstep. It is inaccurate and misleading.

    “Linux” as the majority of people that know the term use it refers to a family of operating system “distributions” that share a large number of common traits ( including the Linux kernel ).

    GNU / Linux is a poor name for the majority of these distributions. It would be an ok name for a specific distribution from the Free Software Foundation.

    Not all Linux distributions use Glibc. You mentioned Alpine Linux. There are others. This does not make Alpine less of a Linux. ( this is a tangent but saying “most” software does not work on MUSL is wildly inaccurate ).

    Not all Linux distributions use the GNU utils. Check out Chimera Linux sometime. If I sat a Linux user down at Chimera, they would be perfectly at home. They can of course even install Flatpaks or use Docker or Podman. Because it is Linux even with no GNU.

    Not all distros use GCC. I have listed one already.

    Saying Linux was “never completed” is wildly inaccurate. Linux has been completed in many different ways and it continues to expand and evolve.

    Even on the most popular Linux distros, GNU represents only a tiny fraction of the software installed. In most distro repos, the most popular license is MIT. So even if we pretend that GPL means GNU ( itself a totally inaccurate overreach ) a GNU label for the entire system makes no sense.

    As above, there is more MIT licensed software in most distros. Should it be MIT / Linux? Red Hat probably contributes more code than anybody ( including to Glibc and GCC ). Should all Linux be Red Hat / Linux? Both those are bonkers but, fair attribution wise, they make more sense than GNU / Linux does.

    Yes, Richard Stallman has asked all the Linux distros to call themselves GNU. He should not have. He should stop. There is no problem to solve other than he has not stopped asking.

    GNU is a massively important project historically. The GPL is a vital piece do the Free Software landscape. These need to be celebrated and acknowledged. This is not the way to do it.

    But let’s take another look at history. First, of course Linux would likely not have caught such early momentum without GNU utils and certainly not with GCC. Linux had its own libc but Glibc was better. Sure.

    Did you know that the author of GNU HURD originally wanted to use the BSD kernel? That would have been an interesting alternate history. GNU may have truly emerged as an OS alternative. It could have filled the space now occupied by Linux. We would all be using the GNU OS.

    In 1992, GNU / Linux may have been a decent description of what Linux was at the time ( though that is a bit of a slap to XFree86 ).

    FreeBSD was a complete OS before anybody ( anybody free ). However, they got caught in a lawsuit around whether they were allowed to be free. Linux appeared in the space left by BSD and, it was while BSD was under a legal cloud that Linux filled its sails with wind. By the time that was settled, BSD was way behind. Not as far behind as GNU without Linux would have been though.

    If there had been no Linux kernel, the BSD lawsuit would have ended and the world would have had a free UNIX while GNU was still a collection of utilities with no kernel.

    If Linux had not appeared and FreeBSD had taken off, few of us would probably ever have heard of the GNU Project. Many GNU fans totally underestimate how important Linux has been to them.

    Finally, how is GNU a desktop OS ( especially in 2024 )?

    Here is the full list of GNJ projects. “All GNU packages” straight from the horses mouth:

    https://www.gnu.org/software/software.en.html#allgnupkgs

    First, many people will be surprised how short that list is. My distro offers 70,000 packages. Fewer than 500 are GNU. That is what I was saying above.

    But where is the display server? Where is the sound server? Where is the desktop environment? How may GUI applications are there?

    You can say that that GNU kernel is “unfinished”. If GNU still wants to be a desktop, it would be better described as “unstarted”.

    It is not 1992 anymore. GNU is not a desktop OS.

    Of course a GNU desktop could use X11, Wayland, and Mesa. Those are all Free Software but they are are not GNU. In fact, all those are MIT licensed and not even GPL.

    None of the desktop environments are GNU. There is GNUstep but its homepage says explicitly that it is “not a desktop”.

    Anyway, GNU is a massively important project. Let’s educate people on why it did and does matter. But let’s not destroy its legacy and goodwill by abusing its name and misrepresent its role today.





  • Agreed. To expand on your OS comment, SerenityOS is an operating system that was largely written by one guy. Then he started a web browser for it ( Ladybird ).

    Despite having a lot more help on the browser, he expects it to take longer. It is very clear that a modern web browser is a much bigger undertaking than the OS.

    A browser engine is such a significant investment that even Microsoft sees it as too much effort. They dropped their internal engine to switch to Blink ( Chromium ).


  • Yes, because it would be crazy to learn keyboard skills for text editing. Such a super great point.

    The thing about the vi keystrokes is that almost all programming editors support them. There are few skills that will save you more time and retraining than vi movements as you inevitably move from editor to editor.

    Vim, IntelliJ / Rider, and VS Code. If you know the vi movements, you are productive in any of them right away.



  • Well, now you are hitting on my real recommendation which is to use Distrobox. Distrobox allows you to install multiple userlands that are all isolated from each other but all seem native on your system and give you full access to shared files and resources ( even the GUI desktop ).

    It is very common to work on something not that just has outdated packages but that targets a specific distribution. If you are building something that will target an Alpine container in the cloud, it is handle to create an Alpine Distrobox to have all the same libraries. Similarly an app might target a specific version of Ubuntu. One of the products I worked on last year was based on Ubuntu 18.04. I could easily create an Ubuntu 18.04 Distrobox to work on that.

    Distrobox also means I can prevent the build-up of cruft from all the little specialty tools and dependencies that projects require that I will not need long term. Remove the Distrobox and remove all the junk.

    This is different than pure Docker to Podman though since Distrobox still gives you full access to your base system. You only have to install what you uniquely need in Distrobox. So i am not necessarily installing all my tools in Distrobox. Just the specialty ones.

    Anyway, this is a more complicated answer and setup. In my view, the host environment still matters a lot and what I said above still stands.



  • Not the OP but he may mean that application authors have unintentionally made Windows a monopoly.

    Either way, I am not sure I agree about the intentionality. App devs didn’t slip and support only Windows by accident. They may not have explicitly intended all the consequences of Windows monopoly but one dominant platform is an advantage for the app vendors too. Too many targets to support is part of what keeps commercial software off Linux.

    The only ones hurt by a Windows monopoly are the consumers. Well, and commercial Windows alternatives obviously. But all the app makers are fine with it.

    Valve ( makers of Steam ) can be seen as an alternative platform for gaming. This is why you see Valve investing so heavily in Linux even though they make all their money on Windows.


  • I cannot speak for the OP but most of the pepper claiming they are waiting will not switch. They may use an illegally patched or trimmed version of Windows 11. Many won’t even do that.

    The biggest risk for Microsoft is that everybody stays on Windows 10 without updates. Or that massive customers will force them to push back the “enterprise” date over and over. To encourage migration, expect Microsoft to make Windows 10 just as bad as 11 before support expires.


  • Windows is a platform for Office. Linux is not a supported platform for Office. Most businesses will not migrate their desktops off Windows because they will not migrate their workforce off Office.

    Beyond that, Windows is not as important to Microsoft as it used to be. The real money makers are Azure and Office. With Azure, they do not care if you run Linux. They even have their own distro ( Azure Linux — previously CBL Mariner ).

    Azure is the future ( even for Office ).

    Since Windows is less strategic, Microsoft is looking to milk it as a cash cow while they can. So, Product Management is tasked with finding new ways to monetize it. Data is worth a lot of money. The best way to farm data from users these days is to frame it as security ( or AI ).

    Expect a lot more SIngle Sign On. Expect a lot more AI. Expect a lot more cloud integration. Expect all of these to focus on data harvesting.

    A bit later, expect “services” for Linux that attempt the same. Like Google on Android. This is harder though as Windows does not have monopoly control over Linux as a platform. I am sure they are having many meetings about how to change that.


  • It is Truth and Reconciliation:

    Truth - the past happened and we don’t deny it

    Reconciliation - coming together as friends

    Sounds like you have done the Truth part. Just start reconciling. Perhaps collaboratively work towards a better future if the opportunity presents itself. At the very least, show that you are up for it.

    Note I did not say guilt or compensation. You can do that if you want but it is not a requirement.





  • Newer kernel matters and can actually make the distro more new user friendly for sure.

    Newer packages as well which prevents you from having to find newer versions in PPAs and other places. In my view, this makes a distro less stable and harder to maintain.

    In fact, I think Arch can be more stable than Ubuntu precisely because Arch users hardly ever have to look beyond the repos. I think Arch users really less on Flatpak for the same reason. In theory the AUR is no different than a PPA but it causes way fewer problems in practice ( especially conflicts ). There is something about APT as well that handles conflicts by removing stuff ( stuff you may really need ). Pacman and dnf do not seem to do that.



  • Video gets higher engagement. If you want your information to be consumed, video is a better bet.

    That will not stop every video from having a top comment complaining about it though.

    I prefer written content myself. But, as you say, I am happy for content in whatever form I can get it. I did not pay for it. How it is generated and shared is not up to me.

    Soon I hope, we will have a bot that transcribes every video. Then that can be the top comment instead of the endless complaining.