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bionsystem

720 karma · joined May 3, 2018

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bionsystem··on The vi family
I functionned this way for a very long time, plain vim with 5-6 options in .vimrc, no plugin (aside for the very occasionnal syntax highlighting like jinja.vim iirc). I kept this setup for more than 10 years mainly to stay compatible with multiple systems (in my case Solaris/Illumos, Linux, MacOS and even Windows).

But I made the switch to nvim / LazyVim. And it is actually pretty good. I had in mind those endless hours of config and lua scripting. At the end of the day all I needed actually was to remove a plugin (folke, which messes with my 's' key) and learn to use the package manager to setup the languages I wanted.

Having things like GrugFAR or lazygit at the tip of my finger is actually a quality of life improvement. I could do without those for sure but they fit my workflow and muscle memory well.

Still wish there was something better for ansible ; I should have gone with pyinfra with my current job's project but I only learned about it after writing 12k LoCs of ansible :'(

bionsystem··on Using a USB switch as a full KVM
No way I see the difference between 120 and 144, but it's just annoying to have to set it up that way, it's like getting a new motherboard and setting your cpu to 3.7Ghz instead of 3.8 or something. It's one more thing to figure out (because my screen would just go dark and it annoyed me for a couple days), setup, and remember next time.

For the desk I'm actually happy I got a reasonnably small one for my new place, the big one I had was just always filled with junk, now it forces me to tidy it up and throw away things. Also it's in my living room, not a dedicated room, so saving space feels better.

bionsystem··on Using a USB switch as a full KVM
I got a DeLock KVM switch recommended by the shop vendor (who actually did spend a good 15 min understanding my need and doing web searches), and quickly confirmed by ChatGPT as a solution to my need (plug the work macbook alongside my personal linux tower, no exchange of data between hosts, no driver needed, and do a KVM switch).

I actually end up using 2 mice and switching the keyboard from bluetooth (for the mac) to usb (for the linux) because I can't get usb working through the HDMI. And the screen is limited to 120hz (instead of 144hz) because of the switch quality or the HDMI cables, I do not know (it lights up and works for a minute and then goes black a few seconds every few seconds, losing sync).

In the end it is more tedious and less featureful than just plugging the mac to the screen via a USB to HDMI cable, switching everything from the screen (and doing the same mice / keyboard juggle than above), because at least I would get the 144hz and save the 150€ from the switch. I can't return it anymore because the 15 day window has passed so I still use it, it's a little bit easier to switch from the remote control than from the screen anyway, but that's expensive just to switch from a different button.

bionsystem··on Top laptops to use with FreeBSD
Incus is pretty damn good to be fair. You can mix and match VMs and containers, the terraform provider "just works", the setup is fast and easy, it plays well with ZFS. Now I wouldn't be surprised if it still lags jails (or Illumos Zones) in robustness or some capabilities but I'm a happy user of them now.
bionsystem··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)
Any connection with bao or openbao, the fork of hashicorp vault ? I fail to see any reference on the site
bionsystem··on MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
In my new position (on a different product) I don't have enough fingers to count how many times the previous guy bullshitted the PO/PM with "that's not possible" of having some features / workflows enabled. Just because he didn't bother thinking through it or just didn't want to do it. Most of the stuff is a bit boring but just a few days of work and test. So yeah I entirely agree with you.
bionsystem··on The whole thing was a scam
I still fail to see if that is their side hobby or the entire point for them.
bionsystem··on Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS
You are missing out the entire point. In a justice system, a single innocent in prison is a thousand times worse than a free criminal. This is where most people draw the line if they think about it. Because when you put innocents under arrest, suddenly you are no better than dictatorships and terrorist state.

The real justice is investing in a security system that tracks, investigates, and condemn actual criminals, in a targetted way, so that honest people can live securely and free. Believe it or not, plenty of countries manage to do that pretty well.

bionsystem··on Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS
There are companies I wouldn't candidate for, even with kids I think, although it's hard to say, I don't have kids, and apparently there is a mind-shift happening when you get one. Oracle, Palantir come to mind. But maybe not Microsoft, I don't know about that one. It's probably bad, but maybe not "I prefer to watch my kids starving" kind of bad.
bionsystem··on Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS
Maybe not, there are plenty of hard things to do at Microsoft scale, hypervisors (which I guess could count as "OS" but maybe not "Windows" in the consumer-product line sense), compilers, languages, hardware since Microsoft is doing that too, browsers (although the hard part is chrome-based, probably they contribute to it), databases, distributed systems for cloud products, etc. Plenty of hard things to do.
bionsystem··on Noctia: A sleek and minimal desktop shell thoughtfully crafted for Wayland
Depends on everybody needs obviously, but say you have your dev machine that is remote, and you want to connect to it from a laptop (for real-estate reason or just for working from everywhere you want), maybe you want everything on the same (remote) machine like browser, db, IDE, etc and access to it as a remote "desktop" not just an ssh session.

Of course cli tools would be enough for somebody who likes a full TUI dev environment (and for my own use cases that would be enough) but for some people I understand the need, and I feel it is a regression for them to not have it.

bionsystem··on Making niche solutions is the point
Maybe not a shit company but a trash company indeed.
bionsystem··on Doing the thing is doing the thing
I completely agree and went by the proverb "everything worth doing is worth doing poorly" about a year ago now, it took some time for it to sink in but now I'm actually productive. My main blocker was waiting for other's approval, now I feel a lot more free.
bionsystem··on The future of software engineering is SRE
I agree with your nuance, but that's not my default mode, unless I know the language and the domain well I am not going to write an MR. I'm going to read the stack trace to see it it's a conf issue though.
bionsystem··on The future of software engineering is SRE
Most devs can't do SRE, in fact the best devs I've met know they can't do SRE (and vice versa). If I may get a bit philosophical, SRE must be conservative by nature and I feel that devs are often innovative by nature. Another argument is that they simply focus on different problems. One sets up an IDE and clicks play, has some ephemeral devcontainer environment that "just works", and the hard part is to craft the software. The other has the software ready and sometimes very few instructions on how to run it, + your typical production issues, security, scaling, etc. The brain of each gets wired differently over time to solve those very different issues effectively.
bionsystem··on The future of software engineering is SRE
My take (I'm an SRE) is that SRE should work pre-emptively to provide reproducible prod-like environments so that QA can test DEV code closer to real-life conditions. Most prod platforms I've seen are nowhere near that level of automation, which makes it really hard to detect or even reproduce production issues.

And no, as an SRE I won't read DEV code, but I can help my team test it.

bionsystem··on FreeBSD
Maybe he meant boot environments ?
bionsystem··on FreeBSD
I've said it before too, it is exemplary in terms of what documentation should be ; just read through it with a VM on, type the things, and everything just works, no googling or LLMing around. I heard it is the same for other BSDs as well, will try those some day. Also a testimony of how coherent this system is.

As a seasonned SRE it is a breathe of fresh air in this world where everything else seems to change from one version to another and nothing seems to work at first try, ever.

bionsystem··on Show HN: Rails UI
There are a bunch of those for free no ? Rails blocks (paid, about the same price as this Rails UI), Ruby UI (MIT licensed), I think I saw a couple more here.
bionsystem··on Xfce is great
Yep LXQt is a beast, super snappy and complete. I use it on an old laptop (2012) and it still works great with a very low memory footprint (much lower than XFCE when I tested a bunch of them).
bionsystem··on Pyinfra: Turns Python code into shell commands and runs them on your servers
How does it compare to fabric ? I used neither of those. I'm quite proficient in ansible and fine with it but always interested in alternatives.
bionsystem··on Show HN: Play poker with LLMs, or watch them play against each other
I just watched for 5 min and no they don't play very well. Deepseek squeezed with K4o against CO open and BTN call with full stacks. Grok 3b AI with 25bb in the button with Q4s. Those are very far from optimal play which is well known since solvers. I wonder how they've been trained.
bionsystem··on Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS
I remember airport hostesses when they used it to get your boarding pass from the mainframe, it took them 5 seconds and a few key-strokes like 3 letter of my name to get the job done. When they switched to web-uis some year, I vividly remember seeing them, 4 at a time on the same screen, trying to figure out what was going on. Took them 15 minutes and a phone call to get the boarding pass ready. I feel sad when I think about this.
bionsystem··on Fabrice Bellard: Biography (2009) [pdf]
It's also the best way to use llms in my opinion, for idea generation and snippets, and then do the thing "manually". Much better mastery of the code, no endless loop of "this creates that bug, fix it", and it comes up with plenty of feedback and gotchas when used this way.
bionsystem··on Qt, Linux and everything: Debugging Qt WebAssembly
> It would be great for the browser become the cross-platform application target.

This is the kind of thing that I feel is very nice and terrible at the same time. Yes it is convenient but it is also such a complex piece of software, it's sad that it is required to run gui apps. Ok, it may not be required yet per say, but I have mixed feelings about this direction.

bionsystem··on A deep dive into QEMU: The Tiny Code Generator (TCG), part 1 (2021)
> Be kind rewind

This just reminded me of the existence of that excellent movie, will watch again (unrelated to the post or the topic except for the section title).

bionsystem··on Advent of Sysadmin 2025
I have a previous experience with it. I agree with most points. Jobs can be downloaded as xml config and thus kept/versioned. But the rest is valid. I just don't want to manage gitlab, we already have it at corp level, just can't use it right now in preprod/prod and I need something which will be either throwaway or kept just for very specific tasks that shouldn't move much in the long run.
bionsystem··on Advent of Sysadmin 2025
Yeah I was thinking of using it for us actually. Connects to everything, lots of plugins, etc. I wonder what the hate is from, they are all pretty bad aren't they ?

Will test forgejo's CI first as we'll use the repo anyway, but if it ain't for me, it's going to be jenkins I assume.

bionsystem··on CachyOS: Fast and Customizable Linux Distribution
Overall it works well and I like the defaults, the work done is remarkable, and it's been a huge relief considering the shitshow that's Windows 11, and even an improvement from Windows 10 which I enjoyed for years, but it lacks a bit of polish I feel, depending on what you use it for. I don't blame anybody it's really hard work to maintain something like that and a lot of things are nice, but here are some annoyances :

- It doesn't shut down properly most of the time, I have to cut the power ; which I do anyway to go to sleep but sometimes I forget after I use it in the morning before going to work, and it stays with a black screen and the fan running all day

- There are a lot of updates, a few Gbs per week, and I have to type my password several times a week (even when logged in), I can't find how to change that

- Sometimes after an update I'll lose an icon or two, or some settings like scroll speed, etc ; not a huge deal but forces me to google around to get the setting back

- Lots of apps are in flatpacks or snaps, I could try some other repos or maybe nix/guix/pkgsrc but I would lose the appstore anyway so I might as well look around for something else

- Some things seem painful to setup, nvidia drivers, incus/lxc, zfs on root... NVidia was the most important and I managed to make it work well now but didn't bother with the rest

bionsystem··on CachyOS: Fast and Customizable Linux Distribution
Funny I've been poking with the latest ISO last night in a VM. ZFS on root with mirroring and boot environment is seamless, which to me is a huge enabler for a rolling release with fast update cycle, so I want to try it deeper. Currently on fedora kde spin which has a lot of quircks, with Cosmic coming out soon I'll probably switch.
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