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[#] Tue Dec 22 2020 02:40:07 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Apple in particular knows how to create the impression of "responsiveness" - a lot like the way BMW does - Your BMW isn't necessarily more agile than the Audi on the skidpad, being measured. But it FEELS less leaden in the corners, it feels more communicative. The Miata has a lot of this going for it. It has never been a tremendously quick car - but everyone who has ever drove it will talk about how much FUN it is to drive. 

The truth is that OS X is doing all of those things that Debian does at boot. It is *hidden* unless you specifically turn it on... because watching a string of line by line, "now I'm doing this... now I'm turning on the USB. Oh, you have a firmware bug, you should install this... timing out... moving on..." diagnostic noise makes the boot SEEM longer. Staring at a gray Apple logo with a progress bar SEEMS much faster. 

Even so... I just booted my Mac just to see - and although it is an i7 with 16 GB of memory and my Linux box is an i5 with 8, so it isn't Apple's to Apple (no pun itended) - I can't see how the core would make that much of a difference. Debian takes a LONG time to boot. 

And it is ugly the whole time it is doing it. The Mac looks very pretty and polished as it quickly gets me to an equally pretty log in screen. 

The truth is, again... most people don't do things where the response time you're talking about matters. Web and e-mail and most user space things - users don't really care. Spreadsheet calculations may matter - but they need a reliable program that is a standard that they are familiar with and that everyone in their sphere of business can work with. People who write and compile large programs, who work with advanced relational databases - they care - a lot. They're not most people. 
But even then - to get me to learn Blender as opposed to the CGI and animation programs available for the PC... to get me to change from Photoshop to GiMP... to give up Illustrator for *anything* else... the speed increase would have to be *phenomenal* in Linux. It isn't. A very fast Windows machine will do all the things within a margin of performance compared to whatever speed gains I'd get from Linux. 

Now... compiling - data-base activities - those are a matter of raw speed. Executing scripts, dumping databases and transaction logs, log shipping - compiling... They're at a very fundamental level of the PC architecture. 

I think you're right about there not being enough money to make games for Linux, and therefore, Linux never has enough gamers to make it worth porting games to Linux. Catch-22. That is at least part of the problem. 

But for whatever reason - Linux only has benefits for a small minority of the computing user public - unless you're in it for the "cause" - or because it is cheap. That is kind of the Linux demographic... 

People who are doing something at such a fundamental part of the OS that only speed and reliability matter. Programmers, guys writing scripts... 

People who are really just trying to be anti-mainstream. "Windoze and Crapple is for LUSERS who are corporate shills and bootlickers, dude! RATM!" 

And people who are broke. 

Plus networking and web infrastructure professionals. But a lot of times, the Linux there is supporting hosted servers that are running Quickbooks and other MS platform products for SMBs. 

It is like Cinderella, but in reverse. The stepsisters are pretty and get all the attention and Linux is the ugly one that keeps everything humming behind the scenes. :) 

 

Mon Dec 21 2020 14:31:49 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Faster as in response time doing similar functions. Of course in many cases its not the *same* application ( see below ), but functionality you can compare so its not quite apples and oranges. Sure, that speed is influenced by what is running under the surface, but if an OS is running a bunch of nonsense just to keep it running, yes i'm going to blame it. GUI toolkits also come into play, but as an 'overall user 'feel' you can compare them.

Boot times? Well, i can say on same hardware for me, Debian boots noticeably faster than windows. Have i measured it? No as to be honest, boot time on modern machines is not a factor to me, a few seconds there either way, i dont care. Its when it gets into minutes of waiting to login like windows can when its in a bad mood, then i care.

And yes for the most part applications are different and 'work a likes' across platforms, with a few exceptions, such as LibreOffice, blender, spyder ( i do python ), chrome, FreeCAD, PostGreSQL, and a few others. But i do tend to see faster "times" with Linux/BSD than windows/OSx. Earthshaking? Perhaps not, but a noticeable amount to me at least.

GPU performance, that depends on who's drivers you use. Opensource NVIDIA for example, they work well enough for video and such, but wont break any records for gaming.  OEM NVIDIA, work as well as a windows drivers. ( i'm sort of forced to use them on my NVIDIA AI boxes ) Mali drivers, same sort of situation. Intel, i cant tell a difference really between OSS and commercial. Perhaps INTEL actually opensourced theirs, i donno, never cared enough o look.

I think there is more than just speed issues keeping people from porting games away from windows and more about not wanting to making 2 code bases, just for a smaller market. Just my feeling, but not being in that world i cant talk intelligently about it.   Pretty sure games use a lot of OS tricks,  so it woudl be a pain to support 2 when there isn't large *paying* user base. 

Blender? All ill say is i have a been a fan boi even back when it was still a commercial product back in the early 90s, and being used by NAN for their business, and you had to pay to play. ( I still have my license, it was a work of art. And my signed manual... ) Is it hard to use? Thats relative, most 3D tools at that level have their own learning curve. 

I cant comment personally on the gimp/Photoshop thing. I know professionals who 'get by' out of principle after Adobe going cloud, but not sure if its at the same level at this point in time. But they get their jobs done, so does it matter?

 

That is all i got for a Monday :) 

 



 



[#] Tue Dec 22 2020 12:53:54 UTC from Nurb432

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Yes, *nix does start up a bunch of things too, but they are not nearly as 'heavy' as the stuff MS does.  OSX, being a mach based system is 'unix-ish' so it would be similar. At least until they start their proprietary crap towards the end. There are ways to hide all the flying boot text and just show a pretty progress bar of some sort, but its true most *nix people dont care. Many would actually turn it off.  It also seems that from a user standpoint, the GUI does start before many of the service so, so it 'feels' faster. Not tangible, but a feeling, which for average people, that all that matters.

I still do think its more than 'just the cause' for many ( but agreed, not all ), i personally see speed improvements, better stability ( which has taken a hit due to systemD.. ), lower cost, and in theory more freedom since you can, if you really want to, look at the code and even change it. Perhaps its poor/lack of marketing makes the barrier seem high, when it really isn't. If marketing changed, perhaps more commercial apps would appear that people want and then the cycle would start to become mainstream..  But i donno. you still have the issue of getting it at time of purchase, most people will use whatever they are given and want to use the same thing at home as office.  ( talking desktop here, not server side where there is a LOT of it, or mobile where its freaking everywhere. ).

I have converted several people, and companies over the years. and for the most part they didnt even notice. Everything they needed was either web, or spreadsheets and mail.   2 i had using LibreOffice already to avoid the cost of MSOffice, so the only thing they noticed was the start menu looked different, as i didnt bother trying to skin it to look just like windows. "just think of it like going from windows xp to 7, its an upgrade"   main reason for their desktops was either to save a few bucks and build machines for them, or when win 10 came out, drivers for their fully usable machines vanished overnight, If they had them locally where i could manage them, their servers were already converted, but I agree they dont care what it is in the closet, as long as its cost effective and 'just works'.

I also know myself i dont call people names who choose other things, i may think they made the wrong choice ( in many cases, not all ) but i dont downgrade them personally.  Yes, there are too many out there like that, making the rest of us look bad. But not all of us.

 

But at this point im rambling.. 

 

 

Mon Dec 21 2020 21:40:07 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

Apple in particular knows how to create the impression of "responsiveness" - a lot like the way BMW does - Your BMW isn't necessarily more agile than the Audi on the skidpad, being measured. But it FEELS less leaden in the corners, it feels more communicative. The Miata has a lot of this going for it. It has never been a tremendously quick car - but everyone who has ever drove it will talk about how much FUN it is to drive. 

The truth is that OS X is doing all of those things that Debian does at boot. It is *hidden* unless you specifically turn it on... because watching a string of line by line, "now I'm doing this... now I'm turning on the USB. Oh, you have a firmware bug, you should install this... timing out... moving on..." diagnostic noise makes the boot SEEM longer. Staring at a gray Apple logo with a progress bar SEEMS much faster. 

Even so... I just booted my Mac just to see - and although it is an i7 with 16 GB of memory and my Linux box is an i5 with 8, so it isn't Apple's to Apple (no pun itended) - I can't see how the core would make that much of a difference. Debian takes a LONG time to boot. 

And it is ugly the whole time it is doing it. The Mac looks very pretty and polished as it quickly gets me to an equally pretty log in screen. 

The truth is, again... most people don't do things where the response time you're talking about matters. Web and e-mail and most user space things - users don't really care. Spreadsheet calculations may matter - but they need a reliable program that is a standard that they are familiar with and that everyone in their sphere of business can work with. People who write and compile large programs, who work with advanced relational databases - they care - a lot. They're not most people. 
But even then - to get me to learn Blender as opposed to the CGI and animation programs available for the PC... to get me to change from Photoshop to GiMP... to give up Illustrator for *anything* else... the speed increase would have to be *phenomenal* in Linux. It isn't. A very fast Windows machine will do all the things within a margin of performance compared to whatever speed gains I'd get from Linux. 

Now... compiling - data-base activities - those are a matter of raw speed. Executing scripts, dumping databases and transaction logs, log shipping - compiling... They're at a very fundamental level of the PC architecture. 

I think you're right about there not being enough money to make games for Linux, and therefore, Linux never has enough gamers to make it worth porting games to Linux. Catch-22. That is at least part of the problem. 

But for whatever reason - Linux only has benefits for a small minority of the computing user public - unless you're in it for the "cause" - or because it is cheap. That is kind of the Linux demographic... 

People who are doing something at such a fundamental part of the OS that only speed and reliability matter. Programmers, guys writing scripts... 

People who are really just trying to be anti-mainstream. "Windoze and Crapple is for LUSERS who are corporate shills and bootlickers, dude! RATM!" 

And people who are broke. 

Plus networking and web infrastructure professionals. But a lot of times, the Linux there is supporting hosted servers that are running Quickbooks and other MS platform products for SMBs. 

It is like Cinderella, but in reverse. The stepsisters are pretty and get all the attention and Linux is the ugly one that keeps everything humming behind the scenes. :) 

 

 

 



 



 



[#] Tue Dec 22 2020 21:22:14 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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First paragraph, I agree almost completely outside of the first line. I feel like Linux does a LOT of heavy stuff at startup - but I also agree, you're more aware of it because it is reporting it in a very old-school feeling text scroll that really doesn't mean anything to the average person: 

APF BIOS transposer intersection A0:32:GG v.20 flux capacitor start failed - Retrying. (This may be caused by a Makecompile error in your semiphore transmap tablatures. Read "Man Tsrk.goo.figbar" for more information
APF BIOS transposer intersection A0:32:GG v.20 flux capacitor start failed - Retrying. (This may be caused by a Makecompile error in your semiphore transmap tablatures. Read "Man Tsrk.goo.figbar" for more information
APF BIOS transposer intersection A0:32:GG v.20 flux capacitor start failed - Retrying. (This may be caused by a Makecompile error in your semiphore transmap tablatures. Read "Man Tsrk.goo.figbar" for more information
APF BIOS transposer failed, exiting. Did you configure your nkbrd.drk.conf file to redirect named aliases to legolasspace? 

But both OS X and Windows get me to a desktop GUI faster than the i5 NUC I'm running Debian on. But yes, Linux people *like* this verbosity in their OS and dislike a pretty splash screen that hides what might be important messages. 


" and in theory more freedom since you can, if you really want to, look at the code and even change it."

That right there is PART of "The Cause". *nix people - especially Linux people, care about this *concept*. Most people don't get that they only own a license to read their eBook or watch their streaming movie. When Linux people start talking like this, normal people start going, "You spent a lot of time stuffed in your local in high school, didn't you?" 

I've tried conversions - they never work. Here is what I believe... Linux people tend to operate in circles that are more Linux friendly. For example... I always hear Linux professionals talking about how omnipresent Linux is in corporate datacenters. I spent my life working for corporate IT in fortune 500 and fortune 100 companies. There was some Linux - but... the enterprise was almost exclusively dominated by Windows servers. Almost every professional I came up with has the same basic opinion. All of us were in the top ranks of IT - a few of us have published books that you probably are aware of, if you haven't read - and we don't think Linux doesn't MATTER. It just isn't as dominant in IT as Linux professionals would lead you to believe. 

That has changed a bit in the last 10 years, with cloud services, and virtualization. But I find making this point with Linux professionals is pissing into the wind. Their experience is different. It is like speaking English and not understanding how much of the world actually speaks Spanish. You're seeing the IT landscape through your IT experience. You're not seeing how many shops are still MS dominant, because you wouldn't ever look for a job there, or work there, because there isn't a lot of work for you there. 

One of my advantages professionally is that I'm incompetently competent in Linux - I'm not terrified of it. Linux pros go, "what is that guy DOING?" Windows guys go, "Wow, I didn't know you were a Linux pro!?!"

One thing I notice professionally is that a lot of Linux people are like deer in the headlights with MS issues, and the vast majority of Windows pros are absolutely terrified of anything *nix. When you know a lot about both, it helps you to be better at both of them. I worked at a Linux consultancy group that did phone support for clients - and the clients were inevitably hybrid environments. The other techs were great at Linux support for the most part, but when they had to answer Windows problems, I heard a lot of, "It probably has a virus, you should reinstall windows." Which made my skin crawl. 

My first day on, I had built a CentOS test box, and forgot the password, and didn't know how to log in in single user mode to fix that. The guy who helped me rolled his eyes at me. Later on, he was working with an issue with a VoIP server that had stopped sending out VMs over SMTP. I forget what the fix was, but I was very familiar with the issue from being an Exchange Admin - and basically walked him through that entire customer's issue. Enterprise, AD, Windows corporate experience vs. - I worked for HostGator and really know LAMP. 

Two different worlds. 





Tue Dec 22 2020 07:53:54 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Yes, *nix does start up a bunch of things too, but they are not nearly as 'heavy' as the stuff MS does.  OSX, being a mach based system is 'unix-ish' so it would be similar. At least until they start their proprietary crap towards the end. There are ways to hide all the flying boot text and just show a pretty progress bar of some sort, but its true most *nix people dont care. Many would actually turn it off.  It also seems that from a user standpoint, the GUI does start before many of the service so, so it 'feels' faster. Not tangible, but a feeling, which for average people, that all that matters.

I still do think its more than 'just the cause' for many ( but agreed, not all ), i personally see speed improvements, better stability ( which has taken a hit due to systemD.. ), lower cost, and in theory more freedom since you can, if you really want to, look at the code and even change it. Perhaps its poor/lack of marketing makes the barrier seem high, when it really isn't. If marketing changed, perhaps more commercial apps would appear that people want and then the cycle would start to become mainstream..  But i donno. you still have the issue of getting it at time of purchase, most people will use whatever they are given and want to use the same thing at home as office.  ( talking desktop here, not server side where there is a LOT of it, or mobile where its freaking everywhere. ).

I have converted several people, and companies over the years. and for the most part they didnt even notice. Everything they needed was either web, or spreadsheets and mail.   2 i had using LibreOffice already to avoid the cost of MSOffice, so the only thing they noticed was the start menu looked different, as i didnt bother trying to skin it to look just like windows. "just think of it like going from windows xp to 7, its an upgrade"   main reason for their desktops was either to save a few bucks and build machines for them, or when win 10 came out, drivers for their fully usable machines vanished overnight, If they had them locally where i could manage them, their servers were already converted, but I agree they dont care what it is in the closet, as long as its cost effective and 'just works'.

I also know myself i dont call people names who choose other things, i may think they made the wrong choice ( in many cases, not all ) but i dont downgrade them personally.  Yes, there are too many out there like that, making the rest of us look bad. But not all of us.

 

But at this point im rambling.. 

 

 

 


[#] Tue Dec 22 2020 21:33:48 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Rambling is good for a BBS. If you don't have people rambling, your BBS is like mine... 

Hollow and empty like a goth kid talking to himself in a corner of the quad. 

 



[#] Tue Dec 22 2020 22:05:30 UTC from Nurb432

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LOL

Perhaps my office is a bit different than yours.  We have several hundred Linux servers running various workloads ( oracle app servers, databases, API servers, bla bla ).  We also have several thousand windows servers running on top of ESX, so they are all 'tied' to Linux, in a way. I used to be the backup admin for that when we were smaller, along with my day job, but glad not to be now. We even have a small mainframe on site. ( thankfully never been asked to help that team, i gave that up in the 80s...no more big iron for me )

A previous job back in the 90s, i was considered the 'windows guy', ironically.   It was a Novell shop that had just started to convert due to costs ( ! ).  First week there, "hey, you are the windows guy, right" "um, i guess ", "great, pack your bags we need to go to the north side of the state for a couple of days, we had a crash at a clients site and no one knows what to do".Pretty sure it was NT4 ( i dont think it was 3.x, its been a few years now ). So not afraid of it, just hate it :). And i know it was part of why i got the job, knowing a bit of everything.  Before that i was supporting OS/2.. fun times there.

But yes i do know people who are stuck in their box, and afraid of anything that isn't within it.  Not a problem i have ever had, personally but i see them. 

 

Tue Dec 22 2020 16:22:14 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored


APF BIOS transposer intersection A0:32:GG v.20 flux capacitor start failed - Retrying. (This may be caused by a Makecompile error in your semiphore transmap tablatures. Read "Man Tsrk.goo.figbar" for more information



[#] Tue Dec 22 2020 22:08:02 UTC from Nurb432

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Oh, and at one point "you are the mac guy, aren't you"...  Or "the printer guy"

 

The curse of knowing a little of everything.. 



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 02:34:32 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Yup. I get that. 

At the last place I really held a "real job," IT manager of the hosted healthcare and billing company in NE Ohio... when I first got there... they would pull me out of my office to take calls because I was the only one who could speak Spanish because I was from California. 

There was a collections agency next door to us, and they had a lot of Spanish speaking employees - because when you're collecting the money, you HAVE to know Spanish - not so much when you're *billing* them. 

Anyhow... At one point, I was eating lunch late, there was a guy from the collection's agency in the room, and he was talking on the phone in Spanish. He got to a part where he was talking about his Uncle worry about not having his green card, 

"Mi tio no tiene una trajeta verde..." 

And when he said it, I let out a chuckle... 

And after that, everyone from that team would stop speaking in Spanish when I came in the breakroom for lunch. :) 

 

Tue Dec 22 2020 17:08:02 EST from Nurb432 @ Uncensored

Oh, and at one point "you are the mac guy, aren't you"...  Or "the printer guy"

 

The curse of knowing a little of everything.. 



 



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 06:15:21 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Just had an "a-ha" moment with Macintosh and understanding why developers prefer it to Windows so overwhelmingly.


I've lost a file among literally about 20TB of total storage spread over a dozen different machines. I just recently saw it, and made a mental note to remember where it was - which I've since completely forgotten.

I thought it might be on my old G4 Quicksilver Mac, but Spotlight wasn't finding it.

I don't know much about the title, but I'm pretty sure it is "The Collected Works of Pagan Flames."

There may be spaces, there might not.

Then I realized, because of all my recent crash-course on Debian getting Citadel up and running, that an old PPC Mac was still BSD based and had a terminal.


So I dropped into it, SUed, and did a find / -name *collected*.*

And find / -name *pagan*.*

Both of which failed to turn up the file, and I'm certain it scanned the entire file structure from root - and I could have grepped results if I wanted to.

Which led me to search for grep -iRL "pagan" ./

And then I realized I could easily use this on volumes mapped as SAMBA shares.

Aha. This will probably be easier on Linux or OS X than on Windows.

But... it also isn't the kind of thing the average user has need for very often - but it is the kind of humbug folks like programmers, developers, and Database analysts probably frequently require.

Yeah, my terminal on the G4 is plugging along right now as I write this on my MBP, finding every file with the word "pagan" somewhere in it. This may be a pretty important breakthrough for me in finding this file - or narrowing down to being on one of the PCs for certain.

I think OS X will have the advantage here, as I can plug in Windows formatted external drives and I think they'll mount automatically - which I doubt is the case under Linux.

Interesting discovery...



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 09:32:29 UTC from darknetuser

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And i donno, if you are pulling old PCs out of the dumpsters you are

better off with NetBSD.   Modern GUIs on Linux ( or FreeBSD.. )
suck resources too, just like Apple's or Microsoft's. ( its obscene
really ).  But to be fair, on 1:1 hardware, *nix runs faster then
windows, as there are far fewer background process eating away at
things. I think OSX is better in this regard too.  Its even worse if

you are on a corporate network with all its overhead.


I think both Linux or Net/OpenBSD work well for dumpster hardware.

Modern Linux desktop distributions suck because they consume so much in resources, agreed, but you can always get a bloatware desktop environment kicked out and replaced by something more lightweight.

[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 14:12:36 UTC from Nurb432

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At one point, i was CTO in a manufacturing company that was 49% American owned and 51% Japanese owned. President and QC manager were Japanese, so i learned to read enough Japanese to get by. ( VP was Chinese.. was really odd situation ) Was fun when the president was trying to teach me we woudl get to something "um, errr there is no translation" and we would move on. Nice unassuming old guy, had more power than anyone else i had ever met, even in the huge businesses i worked ro ( like EDS or GM or Ford ).  I remember one time in his office when he got a phone call out of the blue.  His girl came in "um, a guy on the phone says he is the chairman of the joint chief of staff and would like to talk to you".  The feds invited him to come watch a navy ship christening out in California.... Or when we needed business due to losing a major contract: "hang on... "  " ok, the CEO of Saab will be here tomorow afternoon, clean the place up"

1/4 of our line crew was Mexican ( migrant, mostly winter workers as we have a lot of farmland they would work at during summer ).. so had to relearn enough of that from high school so i didnt look foolish.

Fun place to be. Its too bad we had a CFO come in and bankrupt the place.

Tue Dec 22 2020 21:34:32 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

Yup. I get that. 

At the last place I really held a "real job," IT manager of the hosted healthcare and billing company in NE Ohio... when I first got there... they would pull me out of my office to take calls because I was the only one who could speak Spanish because I was from California. 

There was a collections agency next door to us, and they had a lot of Spanish speaking employees - because when you're collecting the money, you HAVE to know Spanish - not so much when you're *billing* them. 

 

 



 



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 14:57:45 UTC from Nurb432

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The entire reason NetBSD exists is "we support everything, even your toaster".. True, sometimes it just means 'it boots, good luck', but at least they try.

OpenBSD is more about security than universal compatibility. Not sure they are really any more platform friendly than FreeBSD is these days. 

Desktop wise, i stopped using 'environments' like KDE decades ago, and now stick with something simple and light like LXDE.  I'm sure that does skew my 'comparisons' with windows.   Perhaps in years gone past i might have "needed" the integrated extra bits that a true DE can give you, but as i slowly moved to standalone apps over the years ( and none of my own code used the extra features either ), the overhead became just that, overhead. While its not for me anymore, I do see the advantage for some people to have a unified toolkit/interface, and i do admit to missing something like the old pre-SUN Star-office, when even the browser was integrated in one consistent 'blob of stuff' ( i was a fan of Framework back in DOS days too. for the same reason..   )

But, the idea of changing out desktops for the 'average guy' may not happen.  Back to the old 'its an appliance, i use what i get' mentality that keeps us in 3rd place.

 

Wed Dec 23 2020 04:32:29 EST from darknetuser @ Uncensored

I think both Linux or Net/OpenBSD work well for dumpster hardware.

Modern Linux desktop distributions suck because they consume so much in resources, agreed, but you can always get a bloatware desktop environment kicked out and replaced by something more lightweight.

 



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 15:19:35 UTC from ParanoidDelusions

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Either way - my point was kind of clear... 

A big part of the *nix community is made up of people who dumpster dive behind computer stores for their next machine... God bless 'em. 


Wed Dec 23 2020 04:32:29 EST from darknetuser @ Uncensored
And i donno, if you are pulling old PCs out of the dumpsters you are

better off with NetBSD.   Modern GUIs on Linux ( or FreeBSD.. )
suck resources too, just like Apple's or Microsoft's. ( its obscene
really ).  But to be fair, on 1:1 hardware, *nix runs faster then
windows, as there are far fewer background process eating away at
things. I think OSX is better in this regard too.  Its even worse if

you are on a corporate network with all its overhead.


I think both Linux or Net/OpenBSD work well for dumpster hardware.

Modern Linux desktop distributions suck because they consume so much in resources, agreed, but you can always get a bloatware desktop environment kicked out and replaced by something more lightweight.

 



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 15:28:01 UTC from Nurb432

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Some of their stories, make me jealous

 

" found this stack of 1 year old macbook pros on the corner out at the local school"  or " ya, these 10 xeon servers, sitting in a box beside the dumpster" " or this Altair at a garage sale for 5 bucks"  why cant i ever be like that?

In my decades of being in the business, i have found ONE machine like this.. People next door to me in a double moved out and left an Apple II on the kitchen floor, that i noticed due to a 'shared' driveway..  ( not including things i have got by doing upgrades myself and 'hauling' away the old stuff as that wasn't technically 'found' ). not new by any stretch, but i was still collecting retro machines at that point, so it was a nice find for me.

 

 

Wed Dec 23 2020 10:19:35 EST from ParanoidDelusions @ Uncensored

Either way - my point was kind of clear... 

A big part of the *nix community is made up of people who dumpster dive behind computer stores for their next machine... God bless 'em. 


 


 



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 19:22:56 UTC from IGnatius T Foobar

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Those 80-core ARM systems are shipping out to their initial target market, which is hyperscalers looking to start deploying fleets of ARM kit.  They buy from server manufacturers that even most people in IT have never heard of.  If you've ever heard of the pets vs. livestock analogy, these machines are designed to be livestock.  They're built to the lowest possible price point and designed to be basically disposable; when one fails, the workload moves somewhere else and the data center operator discards it.

Enterprise data centers don't work that way.  They want a Dell or an HPE server that is designed to last through its expected service life and handle an intentional workload.  Even if it's part of a VM farm, it was installed for a purpose, and the data center operator has amortized its cost over the expected service life.

Don't worry, if ARM takes off, there's no way Dell and Lenovo (and for that matter, Microsoft) will allow Apple to run away with the desktop ARM development market.  All the evidence you need is the fact that Microsoft built WSL -- yes, Linux running on Windows!! -- because they saw all the web developers buying Apple laptops.

This could turn out to be nothing, or it could be a long overdue inflection point.



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 19:33:58 UTC from Nurb432

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I think in datacenter space its a done deal, and ARM will directly compete.  For workloads that dont require windows 'services', it may even overtake. Who knows. I agree those 80 core chips were never meant to be in the hands of us consumers. But, with NVIDIA putting out desktop class ARM now ( tho targeted to AI ) and AMD about ready to, there will be proliferation of ARM desktops i suspect.  Sooner than we expect.  ( and for a "lower power" desktop or portable ARM is already there and you can buy them today, just have to choose the correct SoC they are not all created equal ). Not sure how the overall market will shake out, as most people wont care whats in it.. "does it run xyz?"

I have seen a few developer stations being sold recently. Still pricey for end-consumers but its part of the supply chain that is needed, and its there, today.



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 19:39:32 UTC from LoanShark

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But yes i do know people who are stuck in their box, and afraid of
anything that isn't within it.  Not a problem i have ever had,
personally but i see them. 

consultants, man...

[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 19:52:52 UTC from LoanShark

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desktop ARM development market.  All the evidence you need is the
fact that Microsoft built WSL -- yes, Linux running on Windows!! --
because they saw all the web developers buying Apple laptops.

yes and I believe WSL actually runs on windows ARM.

[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 19:53:34 UTC from Nurb432

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LoL

Not all of them are that bad, but ya, lots are.

Wed Dec 23 2020 14:39:32 EST from LoanShark @ Uncensored
But yes i do know people who are stuck in their box, and afraid of
anything that isn't within it.  Not a problem i have ever had,
personally but i see them. 

consultants, man...

 



[#] Wed Dec 23 2020 19:54:58 UTC from LoanShark

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2020-12-23 14:33 from Nurb432
I think in datacenter space its a done deal, and ARM will directly

eventually we'll get there. but for certain workloads, not yet--Java performance lags on ARM. Erlang's JIT is only available on x86. Etc...

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