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Sauron

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  1. Agree
    Sauron got a reaction from xAcid9 in I think of giving Linux one last chance help would be appreciated   
    support for 10 ends in almost exactly 19 months.
    There's no sugar coating this, even if you can get all of this to run it will not run as well as on Windows. If all your main use cases require Windows only software then your Linux experience will inevitably be sub par. HDR support in Linux is mostly absent with the exception of some very experimental implementations in specific desktop environments; don't count on it ever working.
     
    If you really want to quit windows and have a decent experience you should look into which Linux native software you could use instead of these programs. Wine, proton etc. should be seen as crutches to run a couple of programs or games that aren't available for Linux, not the main use case.
  2. Agree
    Sauron reacted to Crunchy Dragon in Can I load an OS installer on my primary drive itself?   
    I'm not currently aware of anything that would let you do that.
     
    It may be faster to install if the installer is directly on the drive you're installing on, but it's near infinitely more convenient to have a USB drive with your installer on it. I keep a USB drive with Ventoy installed that holds all my various operating system installers, that I can grab and install just about anything short of macOS from just one drive.
  3. Agree
    Sauron got a reaction from Needfuldoer in Help me to understand. People upgrading their GPU but still using their 10 YO CPU   
    in the roughly 2010-2018 time frame consumer cpus barely got any better, especially in terms of game performance (partially due to the console generation of the time relying on relatively slow CPUs) so it really didn't make much sense to upgrade your CPU regularly. Nowadays if you have a cpu from those times it's probably holding your system back.
  4. Agree
    Sauron got a reaction from Holmes108 in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    You should never trust computers to do anything. If a computer is doing a dangerous or mission critical task it should always have redundancies and external safeguards. If anything, computers have become less reliable and predictable as the complexity of hardware and software has skyrocketed; while at the dawn of computing you could have a comprehensive understanding of everything going on with a given machine, today you have to place your trust in millions of lines of code written piecemeal by thousands of people who may or may not have documented any of it, running on proprietary and extremely complex hardware.
     
    That doesn't mean that we should go back to having humans do what we entrust computers with today, but a healthy degree of suspicion should be maintained.
  5. Agree
    Sauron got a reaction from Average Nerd in How is it that not more people switch to Linux?   
    IMO the main and most relevant reason not to is software support. This doesn't just mean games, but also (and notably) drivers. I answered a post yesterday where OP was asking about HDR support to tell them that it pretty much doesn't exist on Linux aside from very experimental implementations. GPU drivers are mostly inferior to their windows counterparts (through no fault of Linux or distribution developers and maintainers, but nonetheless it is the case) and on occasion you run into situations where they just make your desktop unusable.
     
    Most of the other reasons people give are either misinformed, a product of habit or personal taste. That's not to say that habit and personal taste aren't valid reasons not to change, but they're not really something that can be addressed by developers; either you're willing to spend a little time adapting to something you're not used to, or you're not.
    This is not a good metric. Unused ram is wasted ram and caching is used when possible to speed up your system, both in Windows and in Linux; this doesn't mean that that memory will not be available if you open more programs that have active need for it. "Bloat" has become (and possibly has always been) a useless buzzword that today seems to simply refer to "using system resources", no matter what those resources are being used for.
  6. Like
    Sauron got a reaction from Blasty Blosty in Apple will allow iOS app downloads directly from websites in the EU   
    Partially, but given recent developments their rules seem to be "we must like you personally and you must not in any way prevent us from making money". Despite the propaganda their security checks have never been very good, even within the app store... if you obfuscate your hidden API calls your app will just breeze through the filter with apple being none the wiser.
    Or they could just make this opt-out with a big ol' warning that disabling the restrictions exposes you to risk. As you mentioned, idiots will get phished and scammed anyway through regular old websites.
     
    Or, they could have a collective verification system that doesn't entirely depend on Apple's interested opinion, and their mediocre security checks, determine whether an app should be allowed.
    Except here it's also an abuse of monopoly power. As an app developer you can either play ball with them and accept any condition they impose or lose what, a third of your potential market? That's mob level behavior.
  7. Agree
    Sauron reacted to thevictor390 in Apple will allow iOS app downloads directly from websites in the EU   
    The fact that Apple has to authorize developers at all means little has changed. The point isn't the literal app store, it's the control they have over the market.
  8. Agree
    Sauron reacted to LAwLz in Long, but excellent, article by Steven Sinofsky (in charge of Windows when it went through the EU wringer) on Apple's DMA compliance   
    Sinofsky is a massive twat. I am not surprised that he is strongly against the DMA, a piece of legislation trying to keep giant tech companies from abusing their positions of power to lock users into their ecosystems. That is exactly what Sinofsky was trying to push (and in some regards succeeded) when he was at Microsoft.
     
    I also think he is being a bit silly or maybe disingenuous when he says the legislation is "clearly aimed at specific US companies" and then goes ahead and lists companies like Samsung, ByteDance, Alibaba, AliExpress, Booking.com, and Zalando as also being affected. Is he aware that those companies aren't American? I mean, it is Sinofsky we're talking about so I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't know Samsung isn't from the US...
     
    Maybe the issue isn't that "the legislation is aimed at US companies because the EU is evil and want to harm America!" but rather "a lot of the big companies that are abusing their power are from the US"?
     
     
    There is so much bullshit in this article it's not even funny.
    Things like claiming Apple has never abused their position of power and that no consumer has been harmed by the way Apple acts. I would argue that the 30% cut Apple takes is an abuse of their position. Especially since they forbid developers from telling users about for example cheaper rates on their website. Telling developers "no, you are not allowed to tell your users that they can subscribe to the service without also paying us, Apple, is not allowed and we will take away everything from you if you do" is not exactly a friendly and non-abusive way of handling your users or developers. Sinofsky might think that's not abusive because he looks up to Apple a lot and wanted Microsoft to be like Apple, but if he is going to claim that's perfectly fine, good and not an abuse of power then he is in my eyes a dumbass.
  9. Agree
    Sauron got a reaction from goatedpenguin in I think of giving Linux one last chance help would be appreciated   
    support for 10 ends in almost exactly 19 months.
    There's no sugar coating this, even if you can get all of this to run it will not run as well as on Windows. If all your main use cases require Windows only software then your Linux experience will inevitably be sub par. HDR support in Linux is mostly absent with the exception of some very experimental implementations in specific desktop environments; don't count on it ever working.
     
    If you really want to quit windows and have a decent experience you should look into which Linux native software you could use instead of these programs. Wine, proton etc. should be seen as crutches to run a couple of programs or games that aren't available for Linux, not the main use case.
  10. Funny
    Sauron got a reaction from Eigenvektor in Coders Just Lost Their Jobs (WAN Show Topic Suggestion for Luke)   
    *Gets to the benchmark*
     
    *14% of issues resolved*
     
    ok dude 😅 I'm quaking in my boots
  11. Funny
    Sauron got a reaction from da na in Coders Just Lost Their Jobs (WAN Show Topic Suggestion for Luke)   
    *Gets to the benchmark*
     
    *14% of issues resolved*
     
    ok dude 😅 I'm quaking in my boots
  12. Funny
    Sauron got a reaction from filpo in Coders Just Lost Their Jobs (WAN Show Topic Suggestion for Luke)   
    *Gets to the benchmark*
     
    *14% of issues resolved*
     
    ok dude 😅 I'm quaking in my boots
  13. Funny
    Sauron got a reaction from Poinkachu in Coders Just Lost Their Jobs (WAN Show Topic Suggestion for Luke)   
    *Gets to the benchmark*
     
    *14% of issues resolved*
     
    ok dude 😅 I'm quaking in my boots
  14. Informative
    Sauron reacted to leadeater in Windows 11 24H2 goes from “unsupported” to “unbootable” on some older CPUs   
    Probably along the same lines for why a lot of things are or are not done, if it isn't broke then don't fix it. "Minor" differences or changes go a very different analytical consideration path when you are considering affecting many tens of millions if it's not so "minor" and it does cause problems.
     
    But also unless there actually is a benefit at all then why do it at all?
     
    Which then leads on to the actual situation, Microsoft latest Insider Preview is using the new Rust Kernel which is the root cause for this. Not because Rust doesn't support older CPUs like those but if you are making such a huge change you want to do a lot of things and one of those is reduce the required testing and the potential for issues which means cutting out support for unreasonable hardware.
     
    If it were just a compile setting change and some code modifications then the reasoning would have to be a lot more specific, but here you have to argue why to support rather than why it was removed.
     
    Windows 11 24H2 is the introduction of the Rust Kernel, so you must justify what hardware is to be supported and if you can't then it's not.
  15. Agree
    Sauron reacted to Alex Atkin UK in Driver support on Linux is depressing?   
    Unfortunately we also get people like Elon Musk with a similar attitude but completely lacking the skill or reason, forcing engineers to do dumb things like make the Cybertruck.
  16. Like
    Sauron got a reaction from goatedpenguin in Books   
    One of the most respected textbooks on operating systems is the "dinosaur book" https://archive.org/details/operating-system-concepts-9e/mode/2up
  17. Agree
    Sauron got a reaction from goatedpenguin in Configuring i3 window manager.   
    So... just use something else.
     
    I told you you should not be using i3 or other barebones window managers if you don't know what you're doing:
    The advantage of a wm like this is that you can spend time (I'm talking months) customizing it to behave exactly the way you want. Just throwing in someone else's configuration defeats the purpose, you might as well use a preconfigured desktop environment which won't require weeks of muscle memory training to be usable.
    The terminal emulator is a program like any other, if you don't like the one you have just install another. There are dozens of options.
  18. Agree
    Sauron reacted to Needfuldoer in How to only login as root?   
    Doing regular user things as root is an incredibly bad idea. Half the reason Linux is as 'secure' as it is, is because you don't run everything as root.
  19. Agree
    Sauron reacted to Brooksie359 in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    Yeah my thought are similar in the sense that people who know coding can use AI to write code or parts of code to speed up their process. All of that said you still need to learn coding to use it effectively making Nvidia's CEOs statements super dumb imo. I mean I don't think AI changes how much code your colleague has to know. 
  20. Like
    Sauron got a reaction from Ripred in question for the professional developer's   
    As mentioned by others, if you know how to program then the specific language is almost irrelevant. I wouldn't spend all my time coding in something ultra obscure like Zig if I were looking for a professional career, but as long as you have some background in a fairly popular language like any of the ones you mentioned you'll be fine.
  21. Agree
    Sauron got a reaction from Eigenvektor in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    Maybe a larger version capable of longer outputs could make something that's at least coherent over a hundred pages or so, that's not theoretically impossible... although it may require more computing power than would make sense to give it right now. But either way I don't think the output would be a very good book, if not directed by a human who has some idea of what a good book even is. By virtue of how these systems work you always get the most statistically probable output, which is a mediocre one by definition. You might get a serviceable dime-a-dozen young adult sci-fi novel but I doubt you'd get Dune.
    And as we discussed before, a program could also be perfectly written and extremely efficient while doing the wrong thing.
    My work involves designing and programming industrial machinery, I have colleagues whose job it is to make sure the finished machine works as intended; they aren't programmers or engineers by trade, but they do need to know the basics of programming. If they could reliably get decent code snippets from chatGPT (not gonna happen, because automation languages are too obscure to be well supported by something like this, but still) it would certainly save them a lot of time, allowing them to focus on the electrical and mechanical side of the machine. That's how I would envision this being useful more than anything else.
  22. Agree
    Sauron reacted to OddOod in question for the professional developer's   
    Honestly, 90% of what I use in my day to day job I learned *on* the job. Book learnin' and lecture can only take you so far, everything else is just time behind the keyboard.
    If you're really gonna make a go at it, I'd commit and go for an internship after nailing the basics. I learned more SQL in a week of doing support tickets than I did in two semesters of database classes. I haven't taken a C# class in my life but that's >80% of my professional output. 
    So, can you get work in a language you don't know? Yes, but mostly at the entry level. I did get dang far in an interview process for a senior level Go position after spending 3 hours learning stuff, but that's a rarity. 

    Oh, and for internships, you really wanna hone your soft skills. Get good at talking to people. Active listening and empathy are learnable skills that will pay dividends for you every day for the rest of your life. In fact, I would say that the most valuable class I took in my 7 years of college was Improv for Engineers.
  23. Agree
    Sauron reacted to OddOod in question for the professional developer's   
    I've got about a decade of professional coding experience.

    I find that Java and C# are pretty interchangeable. They are both full fat languages with massive sets of libraries behind them. Takes a bit of effort to switch between them but it's not a ton of effort. I primarily professionally code in C#. If you want to work in the web dev sphere, either is a great place to focus effort

    As for Python, dang, it's POWERFUL, but ultimately a lot of that power comes from precompiled binaries often written in some flavor of C. But it's most useful in building pipelines. If you want to work in data sciences (computational biology, any physics/astronomy, most geology/oil/water, etc.) it's a really good tool, but know that there is *very* little money in those fields without a PhD. That being said, if I'm writing something personal and durable that can't be easily done in bash/cmd/ps, I always reach for python.

    Ultimately, the best advice is to stay language agnostic. Learn the fundamental concepts of programming: boolean logic, objects/interfaces/inheritance, lambda functions, etc. Then apply those ideas with whatever syntax the language requires. Heck, there are some super cool things being done with Rust and LUA and Go. They all have their strengths and they all have their weaknesses, but never let anyone tell you that one language is better than all others, even PERL has its place... probably.
  24. Agree
    Sauron reacted to Eigenvektor in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    I assume you've had wonderful experience of developing something that matched the customer's description to a T, only for them to come back with "What on earth is that, that's not what we wanted at all"
     
    Even as a developer, I'd say the most unambiguous way to describe what you really want is to write it in code. As you said, human language isn't precise, which means you'd likely have to add so much clarifying context that it is probably more efficient to simply write the code yourself.
     
    Additionally, if you don't know how to code, how do you verify that the output is correct? Sure, you can run and observe the program. You can probably have another AI generate test cases. But that still requires at least a rudimentary understanding of what you're doing.
     
    Fast forward a few years: Software companies desperately searching for employees able to debug and fix their AI generated code… As the leader of a company that relies heavily on both hardware and software (drivers), I'm not sure how Jen-Hsun Huang can make such a statement in good faith.
  25. Agree
    Sauron reacted to porina in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    Interesting to see who spins this which way.
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