Linux (2003) | Hacker News Reader

Linux (2003)

urbandictionary.com

108 pointssetra42 comments

> Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful.

The year is 2016, and every time I upgraded my Linux distro in the past several years, I had to search down several different (and incompatible) input method packages, install them one by one, try several different command-line tools to tell the system what input system the applications should expect (which they may or may not honor, depending on whether they're linked with GNOME or QT or whatever), read several howtos and stackoverflow articles, and finally settle down with the best one that supports Korean input on at least half of the applications, sort of.

I forgot when was the last time Windows didn't support acceptable Korean input out of box. Sometime in the 90s, I think.

> You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"

More like, "At first it crashed fifteen times, but when I followed this great article to mine my own titanium ore and replace the fuselage with my custom built one, there was no problem at all! Oh, by the way all the screws must be left-handed, don't ask me why, but I found it works best that way."

I have an anecdote too. Last week Windows update corrupted itself and was boot looping i spent two days trying to debug and fix it. Even repair from disc didn't help. 30+ reboots later i decided to just reinstall it. Meanwhile my two Linux desktops have no issues, and when they do i can fix it without rebooting million times and i never had to reinstall them just because they get corrupted randomly.

Heh, it's funny how "no issue at all" is a flexible thing. Not talking about your case, maybe you really don't have any issues, but recently I had sort of revelation - I spent good part of my professional life (20+ years) on Windows. I dabble in Linux, I have a home server and know my way around it, but my proficiency was always Windows. And I never understand the amount of complaints about Windows - for me that thing just worked. My last Windows machine was Thinkpad W520, and in three years I didn't had one single Windows crash.

Then I moved to Mac. I was puzzled first couple of months - comparing to Windows, the platform was, for me, almost an utter shit. Yeah, some things were cute, some things are better from the start (application installation, for example) but OSX crashed on me couple of times (which Windows never did), Finder is an atrocity compared to Explorer, etc, etc.

Some time passed (three years). I learned how to use Mac. Somehow OS stopped crashing. Pain points disappeared. Finder isn't so bad after all, it have some nice tricks. And now, when I need to work on Windows, I want to kill someone out of frustration - nothing works exactly like I want.

Because I forgot things about Windows. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm familiar with something, when I understand how something works, I tend to use that thing (Windows, macOS, Linux, whatever) in a way that will not make me problems. When I said "Windows is rock stable" I mean it, but I learned that it was rock stable for me, because I knew how to use it.

I assume that's the reason why there's so many opposing stories about linux - people who knows linux doesn't understand how someone can have any problem with it, because linux just works for them. Forgetting and not thinking about million simple, small things they do every day to ensure that Linux is working correctly.

It's not an issue of familiarity or stability for me. I've been using Windows more or less daily since Win98. I'm more frustrated about not beeing able to fix it in sane way when things go wrong. I'm able to patch and compile kernel, but i'm unable to fix Windows update. It does not make any sense to me.

Windows, FWIU in the majority of cases (and at least every time I did it) still does not support being moved to a new motherboard. Every time I upgrade a Windows PC's motherboard, the windows install becomes unbootable. Linux doesn't care.

In support of your "Linux doesn't care.": It works so well that I stopped installing Linux on every new Thinkpad I buy but instead just switch my SSD on demand. Need mobility: put the disk into the X series. Want to work in the garden: put it into the T series with the outdoor display. Need to do graphics on the road: Put it into the T series with the higher resolution and the Radeon card.

Using Debian.

Not a (current) thinkpad user. What's the effort involved in swapping out the ssd?

I don't have the newest models, either. On my devices, there's an enclosure fixated with a philips screw. I removed the enclosures, so the SATA bay works essentially like a pc card slot for me.

It supports moving to a new motherboard if you don't forget to run sysprep first. If you don't or can't (hello new hardware because the old died!), you're basically SoL.

It would help if this wasn't the first time I'd ever heard of sysprep. Microsoft don't exactly go out of their way to advertise it. It doesn't even show up when searching from the start menu.

Searching online, the easiest results to find seem to be either to manually uninstall hardware-specific drivers in the device manager, or simply to assume that motherboard upgrades will just magically work. Whilst one can find results that mention sysprep, how is a user to know that the sysprep method is the right one?

And now I read:

When sysprepping an existing Windows setup, it only works if the Windows was installed clean and has never been upgraded or repaired using repair install.

So that's great.

Linux actually doesn't care at all. I used a laptop hard drive in a desktop which had a AMD processor instead of an Intel one (both have iGPUs) and it worked perfectly fine.

I put my hard-disk with Windows 10 installed for Gigabyte H61M motherboard(i3 3rd gen) to Asrock H91M S1 Plus(Pentium 4th gen) and it booted properly. It was slow for about half an hour(probably installing drivers in background) and then it worked fine afterwards.

Last year I diacovered I can remove the SSD from my Linux laptop while it is on and come back later and put it back in and it continues as if nothing's happened.

You should maybe take over maintenance of korean package of your distribution. You'll find the work you do each time more rewarding when you'll get respect from your fellow koreans smoothly enabling korean language without thinking of it.

Ooh, let's continue the metaphor.

Sometimes Linux Airlines forgets to equip its planes with doors. Others in Linux Airlines, who are used to entering through the windows, suggest that you should start a door company yourself to outfit the planes.

Or, you know, do his or her real job and have a life. Seamless internationalization is not a one-person job.

> I had to search down several different (and incompatible) input method packages, install them one by one

I'm curious what input methods have you tried. Not sure about Korean, but for my English/Japanese/Thai setup, ibus (w/ mozc/kkc/libthai) has been working very reliably so far on Arch (been using since February). On the other hand, the hunt to find something that actually works wasn't exactly fun, though.

I'm using Linux Mint with KDE. (Probably not the best tested distro out there, so maybe I reap what I sow.)

At one time, ibus worked pretty well, and I was content. After one upgrade, ibus stopped working, and I couldn't make it work again. Tried skim (which I had used several years ago, but abandoned when it also stopped working for some reason): it managed to lock up X windows. Finally found uim, which almost worked the same, so I was content again.

And then about a month ago I had to upgrade again (long story short: Linux magically forgot that I had a second monitor and refused to acknowledge it), and then uim stopped working in some KDE applications, including Konsole. Spent several hours trying different things. (Even tried to compile uim from source, but apparently figuring out dependencies for graphic libraries is not my strong area.) Finally just settled down for uim again. Who needs to type Korean into terminal anyway?

Well, at least now I don't have to restart gvim every time after reboot, so that's the plus.

See, "Why don't you report bugs" is missing the problem. For example, I had gvim running on a KDE system that somehow forgets the input method whenever I reboot the system, but when I restart gvim, it finds the input method without problem. I don't even know which application I should report this bug against.

And of course I'm using distro packages that may be years old (the last release of uim was in 2013), so for all I know, the problem I have is already fixed in the most upstream version.

I'm sure Windows have other problems that Linux solves quite well. I'm not arguing Linux is worse in every respect. I'm just pointing out there are a horde of problems that should have been solved for once and all fifteen years ago: there should be a metapackage, or ideally a single button that says "If you want to enable Korean/Japanese/Hindi input, press HERE," and that should be the end of story.

But these problems are never properly solved, because the "bazaar" nature of Linux development means whatever solution worked today is not guaranteed to work two years later. Each solution is made of five packages developed by different teams, and maintainers drop out all the time either because they're bored or they have other life obligations. And then some other people start a new sexy project that more or less subsumes previous iterations (but in a brand new codebase), and the cycle continues.

Conway's law[1] says "organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." It doesn't just apply to MS or Google: it also applies to Linux. I don't know if it can be improved, but that's the way Linux is now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

I'm currently running Linux Mint on my home PC and I installed it and then tweaked from there (granted, I use English so no need to tweak the inputs). It's been very smooth - smoothest experience so far and I'd definitely recommend it to others.

However, last time I installed Ubuntu it booted to a black screen of death and then googling told me it didn't come with nvidia drivers out of the box, etc.

It sounds like you did a lot of manual work, in a way that may or may not be supported by your desktop environment, which might help explain why your upgrades are so painful. I don't use Korean locale so I don't know what troubles you might have had.

Generally, I think a big problem with Linux is all the low quality advice sprinkled around Stack Overflow and other web forums where people recommend doing all sorts of forced installs and run script that "fix" your system. No wonder these people find Linux complicated. Many with bad experience from it did some bodge at some time to get some unsupported hardware working.

I also dislike the idea that started to get popular in the early 00s that Linux was somehow "about choice". Sure you can swap out system components, which you can with any OS from the same era, but that doesn't mean you should. You're going to have a tough time upgrading if you run your own init system.

Modern Linux distributions are great in the sense that they "just work". Plug in my printer and it just works. Third party drivers are much more common in the Windows ecosystem, and they have varied quality. Good luck getting that printer working in a modern Windows as you'll only find drivers for older versions. Suspending my Thinkpad works every time, while another laptop sometimes awakens all over again. The key to "just working" is running well known hardware (no third party drivers required) and not messing about too much with your system internals just because you read it was the cool thing to do.

I've had no problem with IME in a long while, but every single time I install a new machine I forget how to get fontconfig to behave "correctly" wrt monospace fonts when the locale is japanese. Somehow, as long as I have japanese fonts installed, it picks a non monospace font for monospace. Which makes e.g. <pre> sections in a browser look wrong, ghex display completely fucked up, etc.

Last time happens to have been two weeks ago, so now I know what I did this time: create a .config/fontconfig/fonts.conf file containing:

  <?xml version="1.0"?>
  <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
  <fontconfig>
  <match target="pattern">
      <test qual="any" name="family">
          <string>monospace</string>
      </test>
      <edit name="family" mode="prepend" binding="strong">
          <string>Noto Mono</string>
      </edit>
  </match>
  </fontconfig>

(I used Noto Mono, but pick what you like) In case that's helpful to someone else...

I am in complete agreement. No matter how many troubles Windows may have caused me over the years, at least I've never managed to somehow completely delete its entire GUI while attempting a routine software update.

What Linux distribution(s) have you had this problem on?

More like, you didn't try to use Linux Mint. It works out of the box.

Nice FUD you got there. For last 5 years I had Kubuntu and OpenSUSE on my parents PCs, for the 5 years I had no psyhical access to the machines. For the 5 years I did all upgrades and distr-upgrades remotely. Never failed.

You don't say a word if your parents use an Asian language interface? That's the parent's point, not Linux upgrades in general.

Re Windows NT blowing up vs Linux being safe, this was written in 2003 before the stream of critical vulnerabilities of the last two years.

Yeah, the Linux plane flies great, but they forget to mention the string of CVE-12345 "Wings detach if a bad guy looks at them from the ground".

> BTW, linux is the kernel, GNU/GPL software make up the rest of the OS and apps. GNU/Linux is the way lawyers will say it in court.

Good point.

GNU/GPL software make up the rest of the OS and apps

No, they really don't. Plus those are very different things, organization membership vs choice of license.

You miss the point of "love of free". People (like me) who love GNU always include GPL in some or other way even if software is not on GNU packages.

Maybe in 2003 when that was the most unique aspect. To many it seems to be just a synonym to which binary compatibility the system has.

Today such terms seems old and less descriptive. People know if they are running Debian, android, Ubunutu, or Red hat, and the kernel/system tools are not the main distinguishable feature of the system any more. The lawyer and the person would both call an android system android.

When in terms of license they must have to talk about GNU GPL v2 or v3.

My Laptop screen flickers and the only thing that fixes it is to plug an HDMI cable in. This is a new bug that was introduced in kernel version 4.8.14. It was not there in previous versions. If I want to use my laptop then I have to carry around an HDMI cable.

I don't know where this guy drew his "once settled... [things go great idea]..." conclusion. Relevant XKCD[1]

1. https://xkcd.com/196/

I'm using Linux for 10 years now and have to admit it got rather good.

But distribution upgrades are still broken.

I never got a distribution upgrade working. It always destroyed the OS and I had to reinstall the whole thing.

Just last weekend I tried to upgrade my Xubuntu to 16.04 (last LTS to new LTS), which didn't work out.

Guy I know said/says to me "your hipster Linux" haha

It's like my computer's are garbage so I use Linux to compensate for the lack of hardware but now I like using Linux as a web developer.

Does the Linux airline have wifi that works out of the box?

Yes, unless you have an obscure chip with over restrictive vendor (e.g. Realtek RTL8723BS)

I have tough time dealing with HDMI sound than Wi-Fi these days.

I have an obscure dongle that I use for wireless on my desktop PC. Since Ubuntu 14.04, it works out of the box.

Dongle usually works because the chipset shouldn't be too uncommon. What I was referring to was the Wi-Fi chipset that use SDIO interface rather than PCI/PCIe/USB (like the mentioned RTL8723BS, which is a Bluetooth + Wi-Fi combo module used in few tablet models due to its low power usage).

Yes, but the GUI doesn't work because it complains that you have to be root to do that. You wonder why they didn't give you a password prompt for root and just decided not to change your wifi settings. You go back to using ifconfig to configure it.

It has for about the last decade, yes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com