arran 🇦🇺

  • 0 Posts
  • 29 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: September 23rd, 2023
  • arran 🇦🇺@aussie.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•Some basic questions about Linux
    1·
    3 months ago

    Linux is a kernel, but people often refer to the whole thing as linux…

    Everything else is independent free software, which without a distribution you would have to source yourself, configure, and install. Plus provide small programs / scripts to glue everything together. This same software can run on other operating systems depending on what it is. Unlike Mac and Windows, these are often by one vendor and highly integrated, less so with other operating systems.

    KDE and Gnome, are desktop environments which are suites of applications, including a “window manager” which is the thing which draws borders, and allows you to minimize and maximize. Typically this is what non technical users think an “operating system is”

    Distributions are highly varied in terms of the glue, and updates they provide. The idea is they keep up to date on the software and take responsibility (most of the time) for integrating it and ensuring that the configuration works.

  • arran 🇦🇺@aussie.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•Best RSS Reader for Linux? Bonus if it has PDF/epub export
    2·
    3 months ago

    I"m not entirely sure on the pdf / epub use case, is that for RSS contents, or RSS referred contents? If it’s referred contents then perhaps use something like Omnivore or a script/plugin.

    I suspect you might be mixing something that’s better done as two different apps into one. Omnivore and similar tools you would probably want an integration for a “read later” tool.

    If it’s the RSS contents you might need to use a script or plugin in an existing tool, or just write something.

    In terms of desktop RSS readers I like, RSSGuard, but currently using Akgregator.

    Miniflux IIRC has integrations for sending things to “read later” tools like “Omnivore” but not many.

    You might find something like mailbrew useful, but if you do perhaps a “send to email” is all you needed?

    You could also publish content directly to imap and use the phone’s mail client which stores things offline too. (You don’t need a full setup for imap.)

  • arran 🇦🇺@aussie.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•Are NixOS / Guix SD / Gentoo good choices for development?
    2·
    3 months ago

    Gentoo user here. It can be great for dev as you have everything that is required to build the software you’re running assuming you’re trying to produce something using the same base. Ie C++ with Qt for KDE etc.

    It’s also a lot easier to build your own repo and packages with than any dev setup I’ve seen, it’s literally just a text file.

    It does take a while to compile. However you need opinions to use it… Otherwise you will just have useflags enabled on everything. It does require a bit of understanding of how linux is built but the guide does most of the work for you, and it’s easy to install on an existing system. If you’re using btrfs you can install it on a subvolume and try it out easy.

    However I used it during the 00s and 20s… But not the 10s. The difference is that software is moving way too fast for distributions to keep up with, so you will definitely want to build your own ebuilds at some point. Emerge / portage can sometimes cause issues upgrading too. But nothing a btrfs snapshot can’t save you from.

  • arran 🇦🇺@aussie.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•The Dislike to Ubuntu
    12·
    3 months ago

    Moved from Gentoo to Ubuntu in 2008 as I needed to focus more on my job, moved back to Gentoo in 2022. Snaps were part of it, but really the lack of maintenance and vision around the apt repository was really the issue. More and more I was installing stray debs, or having to use flatpaks / AppImages for what what I wanted the system to manage for me.

    Not that I’ve entirely stopped using flatpaks or AppImages, but the process of creating an ebuild is far simpler than trying to do anything with a deb. For a while I had hope about the ppa, however that became fewer and fewer. I do think that the battle to have a comprehensive software repository is a loosing one because of the way things are currently structured.

  • arran 🇦🇺@aussie.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•Linux during the mid to late 90s (Windows 95 and 98 era)
    3·
    6 months ago

    This. However from about the release of knoppix and ubuntu things started looking and feeling a lot more like they are today. – I credit that to Knoppix for X & filesystem work and Ubuntu for setup and everything desktop.

    So even though late 90s it was tough, it was nothing like mid 90s. But by around 2004-2005ish the install and setup was substantially easier however the reputational damage still exists to today.

    I remember spending a lot of time in XFree86 config files, re-configuring it trying to figure out what works best on my monitor, and then the migration to XOrg. All good times.

    There was however a substantial amount of hype around Linux. It wasn’t quite what it is with AI. But you couldn’t read a magazine without encountering it in some way, but it was the type of hype were everyone knew of it but few people had anything to do with it.

    Another thing that hadn’t been mentioned is that there was a new distribution cropping up every day or so. (It felt like at least.) But this seems to back up that statement: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

  • arran 🇦🇺@aussie.zonetoLinux@lemmy.ml•Why does nobody maintain PPAs anymore?
    2·
    8 months ago

    Most of the reasons mentioned, and also they are a bit out of the way to install and setup, you don’t get much feedback as per users using them. As they integrated with the OS you have to search for them as a user, and you have advertise them as a someone packaging. Every extra step creates friction which ads up. It feels like a solution based in the concept of maintaining SEP. – Plus people aren’t exactly paid to do this.