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Re: blog via finger

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On 2026-06-12, Koen Martens wrote:

> Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> On Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:09:51 -0000 (UTC), Koen Martens wrote:
>>> A Raspberry PI is just a modern linux system, and comes with all the
>>> annoyances of modern software that is abstractions on top of
>>> abstractions on top of abstractions on top of ... to the point that
>>> no-one knows what's going on anymore and stuff breaks all the time.
>> 
>> It’s not a Windows system -- it’s not a black box, so don’t treat it
>> like one. Linux has inbuilt tools so you can diagnose problems and fix
>> them -- there is no big sticker across the cover saying “NO
>> USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE”. It’s designed for tinkering. If you’re
>> a retrocomputing enthusiast, you’re probably already a hardware
>> tinkerer, but perhaps you’re not accustomed to thinking of software
>> the same way?
>
> I've been using Linux since the nineties, never used MS Windows
> otherwise than at gunpoint for customers that refused to let me use
> a Linux or BSD machine. My servers, at home and in the datacenter,
> are mostly FreeBSD with some Linux VMs here and there. Throw in
> some IlluminOS, NetBSD and OpenBSD for fun as well. Yes, I'm
> pretty much a 'software tinkerer', thank you.
>
> Linux is as bad as windows these days. With one big poorly documented
> daemon that does everything and is opaque as heck. With competing
> audio standards that all fight for access to the underlying ALSA sound
> device, sometimes emulating each other, sometimes not. Wayland that
> makes screen capture involve at least 3 daemons, of which many variants
> exist and you need the exact right combination for it to work, and
> that makes your screen flicker constantly. And if you file a bug report,
> everyone's pointing to the other project.

Does make for somewhat funny moments as some people will do things like
insisting you can't stay with ALSA because it "does not support"
concurrent applications.

As for bug reports, this does touch a quite big issue, the amount of
projects that nowadays require using such bloated sites, with limited,
if any, browser compatibility. And that's besides sites being
Cloudflared. At least stuff like Anubis is better designed, besides
working on more browsers these days, it also has a default setting that
enables users to access the sites if there is a problem passing the
challenge. Unlike Cloudflare which actively changed their offering so
that it'd not support more than a few browsers. And that's besides their
ability to screw-up, like when they required Origin: in every request
other than the first and turned their Browser Integrity Challenge in a
self-DDoS, as their services kept redirecting non-Origin: browsers to
square one...

> And I haven't even started to talk about the different bloated desktop
> management systems and their associated GUI libraries and plethora
> of daemons that need to be running to start the most basic of graphical
> applications (and yes, you'll need all of them running for all of the
> variants if you use a decent selection of applications). Oh, and they
> all have their own equivalent of what is known as 'the registry' in
> windows, and to change something silly like a font or DPI scaling,
> you need to make sure all those registries agree.

I keep finding this funny given that two decades ago I've found changing
resolution (and thus scaling the UI) to be something supported under
X11, but I've been meaning to do further tests to see what did I forget
and what does happen nowadays. And I'm still not happy with how some X11
drivers seem to override the EDID-provided information by forcing a
hardcoded resolution (96?), instead of retaining the one computed from
EDID, but I might be missing something here...

> I still use Linux on the desktop (various distros on different
> machines). It's just the least bad of the lot, but only marginally.
>
>> Running a Linux system like a Raspberry Pi is much less work (and less
>> money spent) than trying to keep old authentic hardware running.
>
> I prefer the simplicity of CP/M on the RC2014 over the pain of
> managing a modern Linux install on a Raspberry PI. Also, RC2014 is not
> old authentic hardware, it's brand new. But even old authentic hardware
> takes a lot less effort to keep running than modern Linux. And I have
> ample experience of both.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Koen

-- 
Nuno Silva

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blog via finger Daniel <me@sc1f1dan.com> - 2026-06-08 18:00 -0700
  Re: blog via finger Daniel Cerqueira <dan.list@lispclub.com> - 2026-06-09 09:50 +0100
  Re: blog via finger gmc@metro.cx (Koen Martens) - 2026-06-09 09:31 +0000
  Re: blog via finger "Kurt Weiske" <kurt.weiske@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-5g5-this> - 2026-06-09 07:32 -0700
    Re: blog via finger Daniel <me@sc1f1dan.com> - 2026-06-09 12:02 -0700
      Re: blog via finger "Kurt Weiske" <kurt.weiske@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-vti-this> - 2026-06-10 06:58 -0700
        Re: blog via finger Daniel <me@sc1f1dan.com> - 2026-06-10 11:35 -0700
          Re: blog via finger Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-06-10 23:51 +0000
            Re: blog via finger gmc@metro.cx (Koen Martens) - 2026-06-11 11:09 +0000
              Re: blog via finger Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-06-11 19:02 +0000
                Re: blog via finger Jonathan Lamothe <jonathan@jlamothe.net> - 2026-06-12 13:44 -0400
                Re: blog via finger Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-06-12 18:52 +0000
                Re: blog via finger drb@ihatespam.msu.edu (Dennis Boone) - 2026-06-12 19:54 +0000
                Re: blog via finger Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-06-14 15:36 +0100
                Re: blog via finger gmc@metro.cx (Koen Martens) - 2026-06-13 06:34 +0000
                Re: blog via finger Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-06-14 15:39 +0100
                Re: blog via finger Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-06-14 15:30 +0100
              Re: blog via finger Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-06-12 00:10 +0000
                Re: blog via finger gmc@metro.cx (Koen Martens) - 2026-06-12 15:20 +0000
                Re: blog via finger Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-06-12 23:50 +0000
                Re: blog via finger scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-06-13 14:46 +0000
                Re: blog via finger Jonathan Lamothe <jonathan@jlamothe.net> - 2026-06-14 13:27 -0400
                Re: blog via finger Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-06-14 23:48 +0000
                Re: blog via finger "Kurt Weiske" <kurt.weiske@realitycheckbbs.org.remove-25-this> - 2026-06-15 07:10 -0700
                Re: blog via finger John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2026-06-15 08:17 -0700
                Re: blog via finger mechanicjay@sol.smbfc.net (Mechanicjay) - 2026-06-13 01:09 +0000
                Re: blog via finger Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-06-14 15:52 +0100
                Re: blog via finger Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-06-14 15:49 +0100
                Re: blog via finger gmc@metro.cx (Koen Martens) - 2026-06-14 16:21 +0000
        Re: blog via finger Thomas Prufer <prufer.public@mnet-online.de.invalid> - 2026-06-11 07:50 +0200

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