This is more just a note for younger and less experienced devs out there...

I've been doing this for around 25 years professionally, and about 15 years more generally beyond that. I've seen a lot and done a lot, many things most developers never will: built my own OS (nothing especially amazing, but still), created my own language and compiler for it, created multiple web frameworks and UI toolkits from scratch before those things were common like they are today. I've had eleven technical books published, along with some articles. I've done interviews and speaking engagements at various user groups, meetups and conferences. I've taught classes on programming. On the job, I'm the guy that others often come to when they have a difficult problem they are having trouble solving because I seem to them to usually have the answer, or at least a gut feel that gets them on the right track. To be blunt, I've probably forgotten more about CS than a lot of devs will ever know and it's all just a natural consequence of doing this for so long.

I don't say any of this to try and impress anyone, I really don't... I say it only so that there's some weight behind what I say next:

Almost every day I feel like I'm not good enough. Sometimes, I face a challenge that feels like it might be the one that finally breaks me. I often feel like I don't have a clue what to do next. My head bangs against the wall as much as anyone and I do my fair share of yelling and screaming out of frustration. I beat myself up for every little mistake, and I make plenty.

Imposter syndrome is very real and it never truly goes away no matter what successes you've had and you have to fight the urge to feel shame when things aren't going well because you're not alone in those feelings and they can destroy even the best of us. I suppose the Torvald's and Carmack's of the world possibly don't experience it, but us mere mortals do and we probably always will - at least, I'm still waiting for it to go away!

Remember that what we do is intrinsically hard. What we do is something not everyone can do, contrary to all the "anyone can code" things people do. In some ways, it's unnatural even! Therefore, we shouldn't expect to not face tough days, and being human, the stress of those days gets to us all and causes us to doubt ourselves in a very insidious way.

But, it's okay. You're not alone. Hang in there and go easy on yourself! You'll only ever truly fail if you give up.

Met a guy who uses linux as his main os, told me stuff about setting up i3, powerline, git.

Then I woke up, good dreams

Edit; I don’t really have any friends close to me to talk about these stuff (some lives in different provinces)

A couple of months back I got an interview for a junior android devel position. I do not consider myself a junior devel, bt fuck it they paid 78k a year plus benefits and this is for south texas where it ain't thaaat expensive. So i kept my mouth shut and went with it.
The company was glorious, one of those hipsert marketing companies with cool couches and shit and people doing fuckign whatever all over the place and cool tools and desks.

So the initial interview with the hr dept went amazing, real cool guys and very down to earth. Next was the senior android dev.

This dude.

It was to be a phone interview, with a lil coding test. Fine whatevs. But the moment he called i knew shit was going down hill. Dude sounded dead af. Like he could not stand being himself that day. Asked asshole questions that every developer in Android should know that were frankly quite insulting ("what company develops the Android os" kind of deal) but kept my mouth shut and answered as needed.

Then the coding portion. Given a string, find the first position of the first repeated char, so if I had , fuck i dunno "tetas" then t was the first (and only) char repeated and it should have given out 2.
Legit finished it up in less than 6 mins and only because he was making me explain my entire thought process.

He got angry for some reason. Mind you I speak like a hippie, with a melow town and calm voice all the damned time, got that Texas swag going on as well as any good ol' boy from Texas should right?
Well this dude was not having none of that shit that day.

Dude was all like "ok now....why exactly did you do it this way?"

With a VERY condescending tone. And i explained that at first I normally think about solutions in pseudocode, so I wrote that as well...1 min or less. In python. This is after I still had the Java solution on screen with perfectly clean and working Java. I saif that since Python was as close to pseudocode as it gets that I figured i would just write the "pseudocode" in python and then map it to Java with all the required modifications.

"Welk i did not ask you to write it in java, so i dunno why you would even do that to begin with"

That is one of many asshole remarks. The first when I mentioned that I found React Native good for prototyping complex ideas for FUCKING FUN. Passion motherfucker. Shit so fly I do it for fun. "We don't deal with that here so I am not interested in what you can do with that or how would it help me"

Mofocka plz.

Well going back to the python shit. I explain (calmly) that it was just a way that I had to figure details, to think of different implementations. He continues by saying that it takes valuable company time.

Then he proceeds to tell me that he believes that i cheated since i fi ished the java "problem" too fast.
I told him that simple stuff like that should take even less for any senior java dev and that we could run another example if he wanted.
Bring it puto.
But no.

He then said that he still did not understand the need for Python in my solution. I lost it.

"Look man, getting real tired of your tone, i explained already, it is just a mental process, i do this when comming up with solutions, thinking in theory, not languages, helps me bridge the gap between problem and implementation, the solution works, it is efficient and fast and i can do it in 5 diff ways if you wanted, i offered and you said no. Don't really know what else you want"

"All i am saying, i am not going to hire you if you are going to be writing Python for Android, that is useless to me"

Lost it more.

I do sound different when pissed. So I basically told him that he asked for my reasoning behind and it was given, that not getting it was a you problem.

Sooooo did not get the job. Was relieved really. Can't imagine having a twat like that as a lead devel.

Well, here's the OS rant I promised. Also apologies for no blog posts the past few weeks, working on one but I want to have all the information correct and time isn't my best friend right now :/

Anyways, let's talk about operating systems. They serve a purpose which is the goal which the user has.
So, as everyone says (or, loads of people), every system is good for a purpose and you can't call the mainstream systems shit because they all have their use.

Last part is true (that they all have their use) but defining a good system is up to an individual. So, a system which I'd be able to call good, had at least the following 'features':
- it gives the user freedom. If someone just wants to use it for emailing and webbrowsing, fair enough. If someone wants to produce music on it, fair enough. If someone wants to rebuild the entire system to suit their needs, fair enough. If someone wants to check the source code to see what's actually running on their hardware, fair enough. It should be up to the user to decide what they want to/can do and not up to the maker of that system.
- it tries it's best to keep the security/privacy of its users protected. Meaning, by default, no calling home, no integrating users within mass surveillance programs and no unnecessary data collection.
- Open. Especially in an age of mass surveillance, it's very important that one has the option to check the underlying code for vulnerabilities/backdoors. Can everyone do that, nope. But that doesn't mean that the option shouldn't be there because it's also about transparency so you don't HAVE to trust a software vendor on their blue eyes.
- stability. A system should be stable enough for home users to use. For people who like to tweak around? Also, but tweaking *can* lead to instability and crashes, that's not the systems' responsibility.

Especially the security and privacy AND open parts are why I wouldn't ever voluntarily (if my job would depend on it, sure, I kinda need money to stay alive so I'll take that) use windows or macos. Sure, apple seems to care about user privacy way more than other vendors but as long as nobody can verify that through source code, no offense, I won't believe a thing they say about that because no one can technically verify it anyways.

Some people have told me that Linux is hard to use for new/(highly) a-technical people but looking at my own family and friends who adapted fast as hell and don't want to go back to windows now (and mac, for that matter), I highly doubt that. Sure, they'll have to learn something new. But that was also the case when they started to use any other system for the first time. Possibly try a different distro if one doesn't fit?

Problems - sometimes hard to solve on Linux, no doubt about that. But, at least its open. Meaning that someone can dive in as deep as possible/necessary to solve the problem. That's something which is very difficult with closed systems.

The best example in this case for me (don't remember how I did it by the way) was when I mounted a network drive at boot on windows and Linux (two systems using the same webDav drive). I changed the authentication and both systems weren't in for booting anymore. Hours of searching how to unfuck this on windows - I ended up reinstalling it because I just couldn't find a solution.
On linux, i found some article quite quickly telling to remove the entry for the webdav thingy from fstab. Booted into a root recovery shell, chrooted to the harddrive, removed the entry in fstab and rebooted. BAM. Everything worked again.

So yeah, that's my view on this, I guess ;P

Whoever designed UEFI, FUCK YOU!! Giving the OS control over every fucking thing in the hardware instead of letting the BIOS do that separately, WHO IN THEIR RIGHT FUCKING MIND THOUGHT THAT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?!!

And same goes to fucking you Microsoft! How difficult is it to do a fucking ACPI shutdown and do it properly?! How fucking difficult is it to not make the fans spin like jet engines because why the fuck not?! And yes the fucking PC is dust-free and bloat-free so I don't want to see any fucking Wintard comment that.

You know where else I saw the inability to power down? In Linux 4.20-rc2. A kernel that is within active development, and rc2 at that!! A kernel branch that's designed to be unstable, for testing purposes. Meanwhile the stable branch of MS Windows does the same. Also designed to be unstable because fuck QA?! Filthy fucking motherfuckers!!

Prologue
My dad has an acquaintance - let's call him Tom. Tom is an gynecologist, one of the best in Poznań, where I live. He's a great guy but absolutely can not into tech of any kind besides his iPhone and basic PC usage. For about a year now I've been doing small jobs for him - build a new PC for his office, fix printer, fix wifi, etc. He has made a big mistake few years ago by trusting a guy, let's call him Shitface, with crating him software for work. It's supposed to be pretty simple piece of code in which you can create and modify patient file, create prescription from drugs database and such things. This program is probably one of the worst pierces of code I've ever seen and Shitface should burn for that. Worse, this guy is pretentious asshole lacking even basic IT knowledge. His code is garbage and it's taking him few months to make small changes like text wrapping. But wait, there's more. Everything is hardcoded so every PC using this software must have installed user controls for which he doesn't have license and static IP address on network card.
Part 1
Tom asked me to build him a new PC that will be acting like a server for Shitface's program. He needs it in Kalisz (around 150 km from my place). I Agred (pun intended) and after Tom brought me his old computer I've bought parts and built a new one. I have also copied everything of value and everything took me around three hours.
Part 2
Everything was ready but Shitface's program. I didn't know much about it's configuration so when I've noticed that it's not working even on the old PC I got a bit worried. Nevertheless I started breaking everything I know about it and after next three hours I've got it somewhat working. Seeing that there's still some problems with database connection (from Windows' Event Viewer) I wrote quick SMS to Shitface asking what can be wrong. He replied that he won't be able to help me any way until Monday (day after deadline). I got pissed and very courteously asked him for source code because some of libraries used in this project has license that requires either purchase of commercial license or making code open source. He replied within few minutes that he'll be able to connect remotely within next 10 minutes. He was trying to make it work for the next hour but he succeeded. It was night before deadline so I wrapped everything up and went to bed thinking that it won't take me more than an hour to get this new PC up and running in the office. Boy was I wrong.
Also, curious about his code, I've checked source and he is using beautiful ponglish (mixed Polish and English) with mistakes he couldn't even bother to fix. For people from Poland, here's an example:
TerminarzeController.DeleteTerminarzShematyDlaLekarza
Part 3
So I drove to Kalisz and started working on making everything work. Almost everything was ready so after half an hour I was done. But I wanted to check twice if it's all good because driving so far second time would be a pain. So I started up Shitface's program, logged in, tried to open ANYTHING and... KABUM. UNHANDLED EXCEPTION. WTF. I checked trace and for fuck sake something was missing. Keep in mind that then I didn't know he's using some third party control for Windows Forms that needs to be installed on client PC. After next fifteen minutes of googling I've found a solution. I just had to install this third party software and everything will work. But... It had to be exactly this version and it was old. Very old. So old that producent already removed all traces of its existence from their web page and I couldn't find it anywhere. I tried installing never version and copying files from old PC but it didn't work. After few hours of searching for a solution I called Mr Shitface asking him for this control installation file. He told me that he has it but will be able to send it my way in the evening. Resigned I asked for this new PC to be left turned on and drove home. When he sent me necessary files I remotely installed them and everything started working correctly.
So, to sum it up. Searching for parts and building new PC, installing OS and all necessary software, updating everything and configuring it for Tom taste took me around what, 1/3 of time I spent on installing Mr Shitface's stupid program which Tom is not even happy with. Gotta say it was one of worst experiences I had in recent months. Hope I won't have to see this shit again.
Epilogue
Fortunately everything seems to work correctly. Tom hasn't called me yet with any problems. Mission accomplished. I wanna kill very specific someone. With. A. Spoon.

!rant & story_time
This happend to the startup I was working for at ~2011. I was a junior Android dev, working on a very popular app.
During experiments for a new feature, I discovered that the system AlarmManager has a serious bug - you can set a repeating alarm with interval=0ms. If your app takes more then 1 ms to handle the Intent, then the AlarmManager will start to fill up the intent Queue, with unexpected results to the OS. causing it to slow down, and reboot when it ran out of Ram. Why? my guess was that because the AlarmManager was part of the OS, then any issues caused by it caused the system process to ran out of ram, crashing it, and the whole system with it. the real kicker was that even after a reboot, the AlarmManager still had Intents queued, causing the device to bootloop for a while, untill the queue was cleared. My boss decided to report the problem to google, as this was an issue in the OS. I built an example app, that caused the crash 10-30 seconds after starting, and submitted to Google. Google responded later that day with "not an issue, no one will ever do this".
Well... At this point I decided to review the autoupdate feature in our app, to make sure this will not happen to us. We just released a new feature where a user can set an update schedule option in the app settings - where you could setup a daily, weekly, or hourly update for the app. after reviewing it, It looked good, and the issue was not triggered in the manual QA I did. So, it was all good. And we released an updated version to the store.
After we did an update-install, we discoverd that, there was a provlem reading the previous version SharedPrefs value for the update schdule settings, and the value defaulted to 0...
the result was, our app caused all our users to go into a bootloop, and because the alarm was reset when the devices booted up, the bootloop could only be solved in a factory reset, or removing our app, before the device rebooted, and then waiting a few reboot cycles.
We lost 50 places in the market, and it took us 6 months to get back to where we were.

It was not my fault, but it sucked big time!

Got a call from Google!

Asked for two months to study: Discrete mathematics, Calculus, introductions to algorithms, design patterns, CTCI and linux/unix OS workings in general.

I know I'll be banging my head against the wall and I don't have my expectations too high. But regardless I feel like this is a good excuse to speed up my studies and push myself in the direction I want to go already. It'll be a win-win even if I don't land the position because I'll definitely gain a ton in the process of preparing.

I will be expose to all of this material (except for calculus because I've been learning it for a couple of months) for the first time so I know it'll be a challenge and I am looking forward to it.

If any of you have any tips on good study habits that'll be much appreciated; I currently like to read most of my material and supplement with videos/tutorials... Khan is great but they lack material on discrete mathematics unfortuantely. Thanks in advance!

Wish me luck (:

Me a while ago talking to a recruiter over the phone. This was for a C++ dev position.

(R)ecruiter : So except for the development things, we are looking for someone who has experience configuration linux. Do you have any experience with that?

(M)e : Sure, I use Linux all the time. What do you mean.

R : Well, Just using Linux isn't enough for this position, you need to have experience in configuration Linux.

M : Well. I can't answer your question if you don't specify what you mean. Do you mean that I need to be able to install my own packages? Set up my dev environment? Bash scripting? Being able to configure my bash profile to have good aliases? Use Linux to develop software? Because I can do all of these.

M : Or do you need someone who can write Kernel modules for the OS, because I don't have any experience in that but would like to learn.

R : Oh, I don't really know what it means. But the paper says that you need to have experience configuration Linux. So what would you say your experience with that is?

Me internally : JESUS CHRIST I JUST TOLD YOU WHAT I KNOW AND WHAT I DON'T KNOW HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ASSESS ME CORRECTLY.

Me 😎 : I use Arch and you have to set it up completely from the ground by your self so I know everything there is to know.

Basically every question was like this with the recruiter. I got further in the process but quit because the workplace looked like it would drain my soul when I got interviewed by the employees of the company.

Jesus Christ though, some recruiters could be replaced by an automated phone system.

I'll use this topic to segue into a related (lonely) story befitting my mood these past weeks.

This is entire story going to sound egotistical, especially this next part, but it's really not. (At least I don't think so?)

As I'm almost entirely self-taught, having another dev giving me good advice would have been nice. I've only known / worked with a few people who were better devs than I, and rarely ever received good advice from them.

One of those better devs was my first computer science teacher. Looking back, he was pretty average, but he held us to high standards and gave good advice. The two that really stuck with me were: 1) "save every time you've done something you don't want to redo," and 2) "printf is your best debugging friend; add it everywhere there's something you want to watch." Probably the best and most helpful advice I've ever received 😊

I've seen other people here posting advice like "never hardcode" or "modularity keeps your code clean" -- I had to discover these pretty simple concepts entirely on my own. School (and later college) were filled with terrible teachers and worse students, and so were almost entirely useless for learning anything new.

The only decent dev I knew had brilliant ideas (genetic algorithms, sandboxing, ...) before they were widely used, but could rarely implement them well because he was generally an idiot. (Idiot sevant, I think? Definitely the idiot part.) I couldn't stand him. Completely bypassing a ridiculously long story, I helped him on a project to build his own OS from scratch; we made very impressive progress, even to this day. Custom bootloader, hardware interfacing, memory management, (semi) sandboxed processes, gui, example programs ...; we were in highschool. I'm still surprised and impressed with what we accomplished.

But besides him, almost every other dev I met was mediocre. Even outside of school, I went so many years without having another competent dev to work with. I went through various jobs helping other dev(s) on their projects (or rewriting them), learning new languages/frameworks almost every time: php, pascal, perl, zend, js, vb, rails, node, .... I learned new concepts occasionally (which was wonderful) but overall it was just tedious and never paid well because I was too young to be taken seriously (and female, further exacerbating it). On the bright side, it didn't dwindle my love for coding, and I usually spent my evenings playing with projects of my own.

The second dev (and one one of the best I've ever met) went by Novo. His approach to a game engine reminded me of General Relativity: Everything was modular, had a rich inheritance tree, and could receive user input at any point along said tree. A user could attach their view/control to any object. (Computer control methods could be attached in this way as well.) UI would obviously change depending on how the user could interact and the number of objects; admins could view/monitor any of these. Almost every object / class of object could talk to almost everything else. It was beautiful. I learned so much from his designs. (Honestly, I don't remember the code at all, and that saddens me.) There were other things, too, but that one amazed me the most.

I havent met anyone like him ever again.

Anyway, I don't know if I can really answer this week's question. I definitely received some good advice while initially learning, but past that it's all been through discovering things on my own.

It's been lonely. ☹

TL; DR: please save me from IT hell

Note 1: this is a rant that comes after a couple other rants I'm going to call "family business saga" from now on because I feel like this is gonna go on for a while

Note 2: the following may look exaggerated but it's because of how pissed off I am at said person

So I have to help this one family member with his computer but he's worned me out so much last summer that I can't stand him (it's all tech based). At all. Both in person and via text calls. I dread and become pissy each time he's nearby, just his presence makes me want to jump in a hole and stay there for eternity.
And he's not the smartest cookie in the jar when it comes to tech, so he comes to me for help (instead of going to my brother. Aaagh why doesn't he go for my brother as well, it's mentally tiring having to "help" him - as he doesn't learn what I'm trying to teach him even after several attempts). I don't really mind being sought for help when it comes to tech, but this guy takes it one step further.
He entered my room with his computer in his hands saying this friend of his has installed W7 on his PC (why didn't he handle all the things he wants to do, it would save me a lot of anger containment) and that I *had* (it's always "YOU HAVE" because I'm a tech-ish person and I'm in uni for CS) to help him do a bunch of things.
So he boots up the thing and there are 32 updates to do, so I'm guessing that he didn't boot it up after the OS update until now. He leaves my room and I sigh out of relief. He comes back with the AC remote complaining it's too hot in my room and that he's gonna put it down a degree or 2. Jesus christ do not tamper with my AC settings, it's fine to me. The updates are still going on. He leaves again.
The computer takes its time to update and so does he. I'm happily playing minecraft when he comes back, the computer off after updating. He looks at it and says "why is it off?". I reply back "it finished updating.", trying to keep my cool. Even the most simple questions are irritation inducing.
He reboots it and lets it run. After it boots and it's ready to go he just stays there for like 2' without doing anything because the hard drive light was going off. I think he thinks the computer is going to explode if he touches it while the light is blinking 😬
He goes to connect the computer to the internet and gets all surprised that the computer doesn't recognize our home's internet (he has been here before with his computer, I guess, so he had connected, so I think he was expecting it to auto connect like that). I tell him that the computer doesn't recognize our home's connection because it has had a fresh OS installation and so it didn't have any connection registered. He types in the password and the connection is established.
He them starts going on about that he wants to get these pics on the business' website and how does he put them in his computer and all that. I do that for him and he's all like "how did you do that?? 😮" like it's a magic trick
And he's always going on at everything as if it's all a big undoable thing. "How do I do this? You know what, do it yourself and show me because I don't wanna fail". Dude. Bro. Everything - EVERYTHING - you are afraid of doing is undoable. EVERYTHING. Good christ.
I swear I've never felt so glad I'm going back for uni next week

Step 1: Run to the store to buy a USB card reader because all of a sudden you have a need to use a 16Mb CF card that was tossed in a junk drawer for 20 years (hoping it still works, of course), but that was the easy part...

Step 2: Realize that the apps - your own - you want to run on your new (old) Casio E-125 PocketPC (to re-live "glory" days) are compiled in ARM format, not MIPS, which is the CPU this device uses, and the installer packages you have FOR YOUR OWN APPS don't include MIPS, only ARM (WHY DID I DO THAT?!), so, the saga REALLY begins...

Step 3: Get a 20-year old OS to install in a Hyper-V VM... find out that basic things like networking don't work by default because the OS is so damn old, so spend hours solving that and other issues to get it to basically run well enough to...

Step 4: Get that OS updated so that it's at least kind/sorta/maybe (but between you and me, not really!) safe online, all without a browser that will work on ANY modern site (oh, and good luck finding a version of Firefox that runs on it - that all took a few hours)...

Step 5: Okay, OS is ready to go, now get 20-year old dev tools that you haven't even seen in that many years working. Oh, do this with a missing CD key and ISO's that weren't archived in a format that's usable today, plus a bunch of missing dependencies because the OS is, again, SO old (a few MORE hours)...

Step 6: Get 20-year old code written in a language you haven't used in probably almost that long to compile, dealing with pathing issues, missing libs, and several other issues, all the while trying to dust off long-dormant knowledge somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of your brain... surprisingly, it all came back to me, more or less, in under an hour, which lead to...

Step 7: FINALLY get it all to work, FINALLY get the code to compile, FINALLY get it transferred to the device (which has no network capabilities, by the way, which is where the card reader and CF card came into play) and re-live the glory of your old, crappy PocketPC apps and games running on the real thing! WOO-HOO!

Step 8: Realize it's 3:30am by the time that's all done and be VERY thankful that you're on vacation this week or work tomorrow would SSUUCCKK!!!!

Step 9. Get called into work the next day for a production issue despite being tired from the night before and an afternoon of errands, lose basically a whole day of vacation (7 hours spent on it) and not actually resolve it by after midnight when you finally say that's enough :(

Talk about your highs and your lows.

Just now I realized that for some reason I can't mount SMB shares to E: and H: anymore.. why, you might ask? I have no idea. And troubleshooting Windows.. oh boy, if only it was as simple as it is on Linux!!

So, bimonthly reinstall I guess? Because long live good quality software that lasts. In a post-meritocracy age, I guess that software quality is a thing of the past. At least there's an option to reset now, so that I don't have to keep a USB stick around to store an installation image for this crap.

And yes Windows fanbois, I fucking know that you don't have this issue and that therefore it doesn't exist as far as you're concerned. Obviously it's user error and crappy hardware, like it always is.

And yes Linux fanbois, I know that I should install Linux on it. If it's that important to you, go ahead and install it! I'll give you network access to the machine and you can do whatever you want to make it run Linux. But you can take my word on this - I've tried everything I could (including every other distro, custom kernels, customized installer images, ..), and it doesn't want to boot any Linux distribution, no matter what. And no I'm not disposing of or selling this machine either.

Bottom line I guess is this: the OS is made for a user that's just got a C: drive, doesn't rely on stuff on network drives, has one display rather than 2 (proper HDMI monitor recognition? What's that?), and God forbid that they have more than 26 drives. I mean sure in the age of DOS and its predecessor CP/M, sure nobody would use more than 26 drives. Network shares weren't even a thing back then. And yes it's possible to do volume mounts, but it's unwieldy. So one monitor, 1 or 2 local drives, and let's make them just use Facebook a little bit and have them power off the machine every time they're done using it. Because keeping the machine stable for more than a few days? Why on Earth would you possibly want to do that?!!

Microsoft Windows. The OS built for average users but God forbid you depart from the standard road of average user usage. Do anything advanced, either you can't do it at all, you can do it but it's extremely unintuitive and good luck finding manuals for it, or you can do it but Windows will behave weirdly. Because why not!!!

Some old couple screaming I was a liar and a thief because I told them their HDD needed to be exchanged because I wasn't able to install any OS on it... It kept failing on every CD / pen drive I used but it worked with the other store... I left them screaming alone outside the store after telling them to have a good day with a poker face...

I just signed up to get this off my chest.
Dear Windows, you god damn moronic, ugly, unuseable abomination of an excuse for an OS. I wonder how we could end up here in this situation. You suck, in every way imaginable. I didnt choose Linux or Mac, you made me do it.
I know no other OS that can screw you up this bad when setting up. My friend is an experienced windows user and the last install took him 2 days. I just spend the last day trying to get this uncompatible sucker installed. I manage to set up an hackintosh quicker than I was able to install Windows the last three times I checked, you scumbag.
Your error messages suck ass, there is nothing I cant figure out given enough time, except your useless hints and pathetic attemps to get anything done on your own.
And you are fucking slow. Just why, do you keep installing stuff I didnt ask you to. Now I got this ugly ass Bing-Toolbar because I missed a damn checkbox in an .exe, which could have also been an exploit, you never know.
You are cluttered with useless stuff. I dont care about you lame ass app store, idc about your cortana annoying spy assistant and I certainly dont care about your forced updates.
Just sit back and feel your PC getting slower every day by background processes. Watch your productivity decline while dealing with their brain dead privilege and file system.
You ugly malformed mutation of software. When I look at your UI I feel disgust while wondering how you can fail with the most basic principles of UX.
How pathetic, badly supported, bug ridden and dangerously unsecure can an OS be you ask while trying to navigate through the settings, a pile of legacy software debt this garbage pile was build on. And your shell... what a sick joke.
I hate you Windows. For screwing other OS with your asshole boot manager, hardware driver requirements and making people send me .zip and .docx. You should be embarrassed to charge money for this unfunctional junk, but you do, a lot.
I really try to see the positive here. You got all the software, but thats not on you, thats because all those poor suckers are trapped with you and the effort to change is too big.
This OS is the most disappointing thing technology could come up with today. I would rather set myself on fire than work with this pain in the ass software professionally. I mean if you are a serious developer at some point you have to admit that you just cant develop on windows. You will get fucked 5 times as often as any Mac or Linux user. Fuck you, Windows.
Hey Microsoft, thanks for Typescript and VSCode and all the other good things you have done. But burn in hell for what you have done to all of us with this piece of shit OS.

Microsoft are you serious! You are installing a major update that will take a while, specifying that it will restart my computer many times without even asking if I want to proceed with it now or later! I don't have my charger ! What would happen if It goes out of battery! Damn you Microsoft !! Isn't there any good OS or what! Windows is sometimes buggy ! Linux distros don't make use of GPU! And I don't even talk about Mac.. God damnit we're on year 2017 and made so many astonishing work and still there is no fully operational and good OS! 😬😬😬

I haven't ranted for today, but I figured that I'd post a summary.
A public diary of sorts.. devRant is amazing, it even allows me to post the stuff that I'd otherwise put on a piece of paper and probably discard over time. And with keyboard support at that <3

Today has been a productive day for me. Laptop got restored with a "pacman -Syu" over a Bluetooth mobile data tethering from my phone, said phone got upgraded to an unofficial Android 9 (Pie) thanks to a comment from @undef, etc.

I've also made myself a reliable USB extension cord to be able to extend the 20-30cm USB-A male to USB-C male cord that Huawei delivered with my Nexus 6P. The USB-C to USB-C cord that allows for fast charging is unreliable.. ordered some USB-C plugs for that, in order to make some high power wire with that when they arrive.

So that plug I've made.. USB-A male to USB-A female, in which my short USB-C to USB-A wire can plug in. It's a 1M wire, with 18AWG wire for its power lines and 28AWG wires for its data lines. The 18AWG power lines can carry up to 10A of current, while the 28AWG lines can carry up to 1A. All wires were made into 1M pieces. These resulted in a very low impedance path for all of them, my multimeter measured no more than 200 milliohms across them, though I'll have to verify and finetune that on my oscilloscope with 4-wire measurement.

So the wire was good. Easy too, I just had to look up the pinout and replicate that on the male part.

That's where the rant part comes in.. in fact I've got quite uncomfortable with sentences that don't include at least one swear word at this point. All hail to devRant for allowing me to put them out there without guilt.. it changed my very mind <3

Microshaft WanBLowS.

I've tried to plug my DIY extension cord into it, and plugged my phone and some USB stick into it of which I've completely forgot the filesystem. Windows certainly doesn't support it.. turns out that it was LUKS. More about that later.

Windows returned that it didn't support either of them, due to "malfunctioning at the USB device". So I went ahead and plugged in my phone directly.. works without a problem. Then I went ahead and troubleshooted the wire I've just made with a multimeter, to check for shorts.. none at all.

At that point I suspected that WanBLowS was the issue, so I booted up my (at the time) problematic Arch laptop and did the exact same thing there, testing that USB stick and my phone there by plugging it through the extension wire. Shit just worked like that. The USB stick was a LUKS medium and apparently a clone of my SanDisk rootfs that I'm storing my Arch Linux on my laptop at at the time.. an unfinished migration project (SanDisk is unstable, my other DM sticks are quite stable). The USB stick consumed about 20mA so no big deal for any USB controller. The phone consumed about 500mA (which is standard USB 2.0 so no surprise) and worked fine as well.. although the HP laptop dropped the voltage to ~4.8V like that, unlike 5.1V which is nominal for USB. Still worked without a problem.

So clearly Windows is the problem here, and this provides me one more reason to hate that piece of shit OS. Windows lovers may say that it's an issue with my particular hardware, which maybe it is. I've done the Windows plugging solely through a USB 3.0 hub, which was plugged into a USB 3.0 port on the host. Now USB 3.0 is supposed to be able to carry up to 1A rather than 500mA, so I expect all the components in there to be beefier. I've also tested the hub as part of a review, and it can carry about 1A no problem, although it seems like its supply lines aren't shorted to VCC on the host, like a sensible hub would. Instead I suspect that it's going through the hub's controller.

Regardless, this is clearly a bad design. One of the USB data lines is biased to ~3.3V if memory serves me right, while the other is biased to 300mV. The latter could impose a problem.. but again, the current path was of a very low impedance of 200milliohms at most. Meanwhile the direct connection that omits the ~200ohm extension wire worked just fine. Even 300mV wouldn't degrade significantly over such a resistance. So this is most likely a Windows problem.

That aside, the extension cord works fine in Linux. So I've used that as a charging connection while upgrading my Arch laptop (which as you may know has internet issues at the time) over Bluetooth, through a shared BNEP connection (Bluetooth tethering) from my phone. Mobile data since I didn't set up my WiFi in this new Pie ROM yet. Worked fine, fixed my WiFi. Currently it's back in my network as my fully-fledged development host. So that way I'll be able to work again on @Floydian's LinkHub repository. My laptop's the only one who currently holds the private key for signing commits for git$(rm -rf ~/*)@nixmagic.com, hence why my development has been impeded. My tablet doesn't have them. Guess I'll commit somewhere tomorrow.

(looks like my rant is too long, continue in comments)

! exactly dev

I'd ditched Windows and spent a while exploring the Linux ecosystem for content creation. And I have to say, it was not a nice experience.

As much as I respect the Linux mantra of "free as in freedom" and "you need to roll up your sleeves and figure out stuff on your own", it just isn't good enough for non-dev work. Sorry guys, but I need software that gets out of my way and at least does what it's supposed to do. I can't stand a horrible UI or delays and random crashes, which is exactly what happens with most things under Linux.

To replace my Windows workflow I used the following:
1. Windows -> elementaryOS (because Debian/Ubuntu repositories seem to have the best software support, and elementaryOS is the least horrible looking thing that supports that) and then Arch, because, well, Arch.
2. Blender + Maya -> Blender + Maya on Linux.
3. Reaper + FL Studio -> Ardour + LMMS.
4. Photoshop -> GIMP + Krita + Inkscape.
5. ZBrush -> nothing :(

As you can see, my use cases are pretty much all over the spectrum.

Firstly, installing and configuring stuff. A pleasure on Windows, an absolute pain on Linux. Everything just worked on Windows, I had to wrestle with library versions and patches and unstable audio layers (Linux audio just sucks, except for JACK) on Linux.

Out of these, Blender and Maya were the best experience. But even then, both would suffer from random crashes that just didn't happen on Windows.
Ardour is actually really nice when it works. Its use of JACK for routing makes it really really flexible, but it just isn't stable enough to depend on. LMMS is utter crap. I'm sorry, but I just hate the UI. Can't stand it.
GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape can't beat Photoshop, even when you consider them together. Adobe software workflow is just so much better and more intuitive.
Blender 3D sculpting is not bad, but it's nowhere as good as ZBrush.

Also, if you're a C++ dev like me, nothing beats Visual Studio 2017. Nothing. That IDE just blows everything else out of the water. Even VSCode. And it's not slow at all, it handled a fairly large project (PBRTv3) just fine on my Windows development VM. Yes, a VM.

So...I ditched Linux and went back to Windows, but I keep Linux as a VM for when I actually want to mess with Blender or Ardour. Or some dev stuff which Windows sucks at (which is becoming less frequent because of WSL).

Out of all the above, the only one I'd consider ready for production use would be Blender. Developers of open source software, please learn from Blender. Kickass UI and user friendly operation is extremely important, you can't make a random window with GTK buttons and text boxes and arcane config files and expect people to use it for serious work.

Also, Windows beats Linux hands down as an everyday OS. It's always been rock solid, if you take care of it properly (and that goes for any OS). Updates hardly take any time because I run it on a SSD. As for all the advertising and marketing bullshit, you can block a large amount of stuff. And for what can't be blocked, well, I just have to live with it, because the alternative is compromising on my creative output, which is too much for me.

I still run Linux on my server, though. And on my embedded devices (Pi, BeagleBone, etc.). It absolutely rocks there.

I realize that Linux software is not going to improve unless we do something about it, so I'll be contributing fixes and code (the joys of being a C++ dev, yay). Still, I feel that the platform and software as a whole is just not mature enough.

Since apparently lots of you are into Linux, I would like some advice.

I'm wanting to install a distro to use as my main OS, but there is just too much choice.

I'm coming from Windows 10 so I read that KDE is a good choice for a desktop environment and the Plasma version looks pretty good.

Yesterday I've tried Deepin OS but I'm not a huge fan, looks good but not enough content / customization.

So right now I'm hesitating between Manjaro (with KDE) and Elementary OS.

Would you recommend any of these, and why ?

Btw, this is my first rant 😎

Why me. Why is it always me who has issues with Windows. (The OS)

I HAVE to use windows for a specific thing right now. Fair enough, I have an old system lying around somewhere with not the best specs ever but it'll do. Windows 7, clean install.

Firstly, let's boot up! Booting goes fine, login goes well... "Installing device drivers" (keyboard and mouse combi). I connected this set a gazillion times before so no clue why windows would need to download the drivers YER AGAIN. But, fine, it works.
Let's connect a USB webcam and to to the hardware testing website to see if my setup is right!

(I mostly don't blame this part on windows)

The webcam drivers install successfully, good. Although the page says it isn't working, it displays the live cam footage well so whatever.
Installed Chrome (not chromium too badly) to see if it shows fine there but chrome doesn't detect ANY cam/mic combination at all, not even the integrated one(s).

Annoying so let's reboot and see if it works normally with all checks okay on Firefox.

Rebooted.... aaaaand the USB webcam driver installation fails. I'm weirded out since the drivers were installed BEFORE the reboot already. Firefox now does not display any can/mic.... until it does after a few reloads. Windows is still saying that the driver installation failed.

The testing webpage, however, still says its not working while I'm literally seeing my ugly smug on screen. I contact support which does a remote check and says all is good but there was probably "a glitch with Windows" while the checks are still mostly red, I take a copy of the chat log just to be sure.

Now, I kinda want to shut this system down until the time I'll need it but I'm rather afraid that Windows is going to throw driver conundrums yet again and I simply *CANNOT* have this right now. So, I'm leaving this system on until I need it, and I'll pray windows plays along well.

I’ve been trying to use Debian without a graphical UI, at least for the most part. I use X window to run firefox since I feel that is the best way to browse. But simply using the terminal for almost everything feels so refreshing somehow.

I start to find these gems such as a music player for the terminal that works really well, my HOME area feels so clutter free and I feel like I finally can finely control and tune my system to a much larger extent. I’m coming from an extensively cluttered windows system so just seeing a few things makes me feel like I can finally focus.

For me it feels like I’ll have an easier time managing my projects by setting up github in a good way in HOME. I’ve been putting more time into my vimrc to make it better for my different workflows and general productivity (and for the sake of minimalism trying to keep it mostly to hand written stuff). I’ve also been looking into Lutris to be able to fire up games or use wine for other necessary tools that I might need during cowork with others.

Generally I believe that if this test works out I’ll truly consider to make this my main OS. The clutterlessness keeps me much more distraction free. The terminal environment make me read about and learn of new ways to do things. And most of the tools I use can either be used from command line, multiple ones with a multiplexer and in the case I truly need to use GUI or want to play a game I can just fire it up on demand.

*happy*

Do you guys have any distraction free OS or setups that you want to share? Anyone with a similar experience of revelation?

Not just Stack Overflow, but all help forums:

If someone asks a question, and you think you might know the answer based on its subject or context, please spare a thought for others and instead of dragging the post on for pages and pages without an answer in order to show the poster up for being inadequately articulate, please make the first post a link to at least seemingly relevant reference material.

Nothing more frustrating looking for some undocumented api syntax, finding a similar question that you might be able to gleam from, and then only seeing pages of "aaah, but what OS are you on? What colour is your desktop? What is the average velocity of a..."

You can see they are struggling with an api, and you clearly know where to find the answer, so just quit the cocksure jostling of pretending you're any good at support and just be useful. The poster may be a tool, but the thousands of hits from Google will just think you're a twat.

After using linux as the main os for the last two weeks, here are the biggest drawbacks of linux in my opinion.

1. AMD hybird apus are not supported by linux kernal and it's very lousy.

2. Cannot do any graphics related work without having my screen going black several times.

3. Using dual screen is not reliable, and black screen occurs in one or both screens.

4. The computer goes crazy after waking up from suspend mode and gets overheated!

5. Kernal updates! Is much worse than Windows updates. At least after the painful windows update restart you know everything will be ok, but with linux good luck!!!

6. Realtek Wifi dongles still suffering since 2010.

In my opinion, if you are going to use linux for the first time make sure your hardware is compatible with linux, else be ready for a fight of unstable hardware problems.

!rant
Medium long story about POP!_OS

TL;DR : A true K.I.S.S. OS. Very well designed UI. In general suitable for everyone. Any distro-hoppers MUST try out. If your current OS is already heavily customized to your needs, DON'T bother with POP. (Read till the end if you are on toilet, nothing to lose)

Backstory : I am never a fanboy of anything although I am loyal to the tools I use daily. So OS is also something I picked and use to meet my needs except when I was a student. My first linux experience was about a decade ago with ubuntu. Have tried almost all kinds of light-weight and minimal distros after that (lubuntu, arch, mint, puppylinux, fedora, centos and others I forgot) during my student years.

I like all things minimal. ("Keep It Simple Stupid" is my email signature.) When I started working, Windows became the sole OS I use since it met my needs better than others. Except that one time when I tried Elementary. Although I found it a good OS, it didn't get installed as a dual-boot. I don't find Elementary minimal. It is one of well designed OSs but I still think it can be improved. (Plus I had this weird feeling that it is similar to Mac OS)

At the start of this year, Widows alone was not enough for my needs. Decided to look for a minimal linux distro. My old i7 ASUS has 8GB RAM and roughly 250GB free storage. So I am not that worried about hardware requirements. My main struggle is downloading stuffs. (Few of you guys must know by now the speed of my internet LOL.) Well, even if I had a good speed, I will still look for minimal distro as first priority. So I went with minimal ubuntu image and xubuntu environment. Although I do not like the UI design, it is acceptable. Through out the years, I have configured it to suit my needs and currently pretty happy with it.

Thoughts on POP!_OS : To me, it is literally like meeting a young girl who is perfect for my life. She has the perfect body, beautiful face, amazing appearance and good manners. And she is young, of course there is a lack of experience issue. But it can be taught and she has a very high chance to become a wonderful lady if she continues like this. Only crap is I already have someone and in a committed relationship. So I could not go any further than introduction. I do save her contact and will keep in touch with her online. You know? Things change. Things always change somehow.

Pull-to-refresh is useless.

If you are a mobile app developer, please get rid of pull-to-refresh. Your users will thank you.

I have the impression that mobile app developers choose to implement the pull-to-refresh gimmick just in order to make their app comply with a design trend. It seems like a desperate attempt to appear "modern" and "fancy", not because of the actual usefulness of the gesture.

Pull-to-refresh is one of those things that are well-intended but backfire. It appears helpful on first sight, but turns out to be a burden.

It takes effort and cognitive strain to avoid triggering a pull-to-refresh. The user can't use the app relaxed but has to walk on eggshells.

Every unwanted refresh wastes battery power, mobile data (if it is an Internet-connected app), and can lead to the loss of form data.

To avoid pull-to-refresh, the user has to resort to finger gymnastics like a shorter swipe for scrolling up or swiping slightly up before down. Pull-to-refresh could even be triggered while pinch-zooming in or out near the top of a page, if the touchscreen does not recognize one of the two fingers.

Pull-to-refresh also interferes with the double-tap-swipe zoom gesture. If one of the two taps are not recognized, a swipe-down to zoom in can trigger a pull-to-refresh instead.

To argue "if you don't like pull-to-refresh, just don't use it" is like blaming a person who stepped on a mine, since the person moved and the mine was stationary.

A refresh button can be half a second away in the menu bar, URL bar, or a submenu, where it is unlikely to be pressed accidentally. There is no need for a gesture that does more harm than good.

Using a mobile app with pull-to-refresh feels like having Windows StickyKeys forcibly enabled at all times. The refresh circle animation sticks to the finger.

If the user actually wants to refresh, pull-to-refresh is slower than a refresh button in a menu if the page is not at the top, meaning pull-to-refresh is useless as a shortcut anyway if the page is in any other position than the top.

An alternative to pull-to-refresh is pull-for-details. Samsung did it in some of their apps. Pulling down against the top reveals additional information such as the count and total size of selected items.

If you own a website, add this CSS to make browsing your website on the pre-installed Android web browser not a headache:

html,body { overscroll-behavior: none; }

Why is this necessary? In 2019, Google took the ability to deactivate the pull-to-refresh gesture on their Chrome browser for Android OS away from users. On Chrome for Android, pull-to-refresh can only be disabled on the server side, not the user side. The avalanche of complaints? Neglected.

Good thing several third-party browsers let the user turn off this severe headache.

*flashback to days of windows xp*
Just finished formatting and installing xp on friend's trash pc cuz the os was compromised due to a shitload of viruses. Notice that other partitions might still be infected and i don't have an antivirus on me.
"Big boi Ill be back in an hour, just whatever you do, don't open ANY drives no matter how urgent it is. Just Don't do it or i won't be able to help you"

Come back and VIOLA this worthless trash avocado opened a drive to play a game and d pc was infected. Again. Back to square one. It almost broke my heart. Almost.

I remember that day well. I was 15yo and hopeful. That day marks d start of my hatred toward tech incompetent people.
SO FKIN
A N G E R Y

So today
College
My classmates stink of incompetence. I'm not that smart in fact i consider myself to be a noob among devs but seeing ppl that are several order of magnitudes trashier than me breaks my heart and makes me soo Fkin

A N G E R Y

Hey you cunt of a skunk, WHY can't you even compile a fkin cpp file without an IDE what the fuck is wrong with you? What do u mean ur program isn't compiling? Well it literally says there syntax error on line 15 congrats u moron u fkin spelled else as esle. Why shud I waste my time on stupid Shitty ppl like u huh?

And waddup mr shithead.No. Not gonna help you partition ur drives and install a fkin linux just cuz ur too lazy to google it urself.
And if i refuse to help cuz im working on my shit then I AM D BAD GUY? Stop bitching about me u lazy bastards get ur lazy arse off and read the fkin book. Watch a tutorial or sm shit why the fuck can't u understand YOU LITERALLY PAY TO COME HERE AND YOU AREN'T EVEN TRYING TO LEARN THE BASICS GOOD LUCK GETTING A JOB YOU WORTHLESS CUNTS.

Now now all the poison is out i can finally focus on improving myself and stop giving a fuck about them. Its hard to be calm and cool when ur surrounded by ppl like this all day. Even harder when there is almost noone that you can look upto. All this time, there's only one thing I've learnt- in a place like dis, being an asshole is better dan being polite.

hey ranteros! i like to dream and i know many of us dream of a nice machine to do anything on it, if you want to post the specs of your ideal build(s) (even a laptop, pre-built pc, space gray macbook pro... doesn't matter). and your current one.

here's mine:

ideal: {
type: desktop-pc,
cpu: intel i7-8700K (coffee lake),
gpu: nvidia geforce gtx 1080ti,
ram: 32gb ddr4,
storage: {
ssd: samsung 960 evo 500gb,
hdd: 2tb wd black
},
motherboard: any good motherboard that supports coffee lake and has a good selection of i/o,
psu: anything juicy enough, silver rated,
cooling: i don't care about liquid cooling that much, or maybe i'm just afraid of it,
case: i accept any form factor, as long as it's not too oBNoxi0Us,
peripherals: {
monitor: 1080p, maybe 1440p, i can't 4k because of the media i consume (i have tons of shit i watch in 720p) + other reasons,
keyboardmousecombo: i like logitech stuff, nothing fancy, their non mechanical keyboards are nice, for mice the mx master 2 is nice i think, i also don't care about rgb because i think it's too distracting and i'm always in darkness so some white backlight is great
},
os: windows 10, tails (i have some questions about tails i'll be asking in a different post,
}

i think this is enough for ideal, now reality:

current: {
type: laptop,
brand: acer (aspire 7736z),
cpu: pentium dual-core 2.10ghz,
gpu: geforce g210m 2gb (with cuda™!),
ram: 4gb ddr3,
storage: hdd 500gb wd blue 5400rpm (this motherfucker stood the test of time because it's still working since i bought this thing (the laptop as it is) used in late 2009 although it's full of bad sectors and might anytime, don't worry i have everything backed up, i have a total of 5 hdds varying from 320gb to 1tb with different stuff on them),
screen: 17 inch hd-ready!!! (i think it's a tn panel), i've never done a test on color accuracy, but to my eyes it's bright, colorful, and has some dust particles between the lcd and backlight hah,
other cool things: dvd player/burner, full-sized keyboard with numeric keypad, vga, hdmi, 4 usb ports, ethernet, wi-fi haha, and it's hot, i mean so hot, hotter than elsa jean and piper perri combined,
os: windows 10, tails
}

if you read this whole thing i love you, and if you have some time to spare on a sunday you can share your dream rig and the sometimes cruel current one if you dare. you don't have to share them both. i know many will go b.o.b and say "what you're hoping to accomplish, i already did bitch.", that's cool as well, brag about your cool rig!

4 years ago I made a personal goal/plan to be a full stack developer. Meaning a good understanding of any development between os level code and web/front end user experience.

Over the years this term 'full stack' has been abused greatly and now basically means 'a javascript developer that generally knows what they are talking about'.

So now, devRant collective I ask you. What do you call a developer with good skills in:

- os level code (c, c++ and os apis)
- database level tech (advanced querying and db aglo/modeling)
- software architecture
- application level (workflow and business logic)
- transport level (protocol design and usage)
- front end tech (graphics programming and event driven paradigm)
- user experience

So recently I installed Windows 7 on my thiccpad to get Hyperdimension Neptunia to run (yes 50GB wasted just to run a game)... And boy did I love the experience.

ThinkPads are business hardware, remember that. And it's been booting Debian rock solid since.. pretty much forever. There are no hardware issues here. Just saying.

With that out of the way I flashed Windows 7 Ultimate on a USB stick and attempted to boot it... Oh yay, first hurdle to overcome. It can't boot in UEFI mode. Move on Debian, you too shall boot in BIOS mode now! But okay, whatever right. So I set it to BIOS mode and shuffled Debian's partitions around a bit to be left with 3 partitions where Windows could stick in one more.

Installed, it asks for activation. Now my ThinkPad comes with a Windows 7 Pro license key, so fuck it let's just use that and Windows will be able to disable the features that are only available for Ultimate users, right? How convenient would that be, to have one ISO for all the half a dozen editions that each Windows release has? And have the system just disable (or since we're in the installer anyway, not install them in the first place) features depending on what key you used? Haha no, this is Microsoft! Developers developers developers DEVELOPERS!!! Oh and Zune, if anyone remembers that clusterfuck. Crackhead Microsoft.

But okay whatever, no activation then and I'll just fetch Windows Loader from my webserver afterwards to keygen my way through. Too bad you didn't accept that key Microsoft! Wouldn't that have been nice.

So finally booted into the installed system now, and behold finally we find something nice! Apparently Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate offer a native NFS driver. That's awesome! That way I don't have to adjust my file server at all. Just some fuckery with registry keys to get the UID and GID correct, but I'll forgive it for that. It's not exactly "native" to Windows after all. The fact that it even has a built-in driver for it is something I found pretty neat already.

Fast-forward a few hours and it's time to Re Boot.. drivers from Lenovo that required reboots and whatnot. Fire the system back up, and low and behold the network drive doesn't mount anymore. I've read that this is apparently due to Windows (not always but often) mounting the network drive before the network comes up. Absolutely brilliant! Move out shitstaind, have you seen this beauty of an init Mr. Poet?

But fuck it we can mount that manually after every single boot.. you know, convenient like that. C O P E.

With it now manually mounted, let's watch a movie! I've recently seen Pyro's review on The Platform and I absolutely loved it. The movie itself is quite good too. Open the directory on my file server and.. oh. Windows.. you just put db.thumb on it and db.thumb:encryptable. I shit you not, with the colon and everything. I thought that file names couldn't contain colons Windows! I thought that was illegal in NTFS. Why you doing this in NFS mate? And "encryptable", am I already infected with ransomware??? If it wasn't for the fact that that could also be disabled with something as easy as a registry key, I would've thought I contracted ransomware!

Oh and sound to go with that video, let's pair up some Bluetooth headphones with that Bluetooth driver I installed earlier! Except.. haha nope. Apparently you don't get that either.

Right so let's just navigate the system in its Aero glory... Gonna need to flick the mouse for that. Except it's excruciatingly slow, even the fastest speed is slower than what I'm used to on Linux.. and it's jerky as hell (Linux doesn't have any of that at higher speed). But hey it can compensate for that! Except that slows down the mouse even more. And occasionally the mouse driver gets fucked up too. Wanna scroll on Telegram messages in a chat where you're admin? Well fuck you mate, let me select all these messages for you and auto scroll at supersonic speeds! And God forbid that you press delete with that admin access of yours. Oh maybe I'll do it for you, helpful OS I am!

And the most saddening part of it all? I'd argue that Windows 7 is the best operating system that Microsoft ever released. Yeah. That's the best they could come up with. But at least it plays le games!

The more I use LinkedIn the more I hate it. I know I shouldn't be a nosy fuck but sometimes I've got nothing better to do for a couple of minutes on my work OS and the tab's right there. Every time I open it up it reminds me of why I'm not on Facebook. My coworkers are probably the most benign people to follow, all they do is repost company videos and blogposts. Basically advertizing, whatever.

It's the other people who get to me, the ones who are advertizing themselves. The soapboxing, the 'look at all the cool shit im doing', the reposting shit from people who I have no clue about. It's literally a window into just the good parts of peoples lives, like any other shitty social media site, but put through the filter of corporate PR bullshit. At least you can be yourself somewhat anywhere else, everything on LinkedIn needs to conform to what's acceptable to the sterile corporate environment, which amounts to showing off your certs or marketable products and the most surface-level 'progressive' social politics.

Fuck LinkedIn and fuck my curious ass for opening it like a dumbass kid who doesn't understand why you shouldn't touch a hot stove.

For all the hate against windows I built over the now 8 years using linux as my main os. Now I feel windows 10 is quite good.

I got a little beefier desktop lately, been using just laptops from the last 8 years(8D) so I got this urge to get a desktop for gaming, I bought an entry level machine. ryzen 5 2400g, put my lovely linux mint and... the fucking machine was hanging up when the load was too high, and the load was too high too often because react/node etc.

I gave up in less than a day, I just did a quick search and some people said about secure boot or whatnot, some other claimed that ryzen cpus had no problem with mint, I got fed up quickly and did not try any solution with linux. Then I installed windows 10, installed the godamned drivers from the provided dvd ... since then it was a breeze.

The dark mode is gorgeous and no hanging up at all... I'm just sad that mint did not worked soo well. I wanted to have consistency between my laptop/desktop and I loved mint above everything. But well, some things improve while you're not looking at them, win 10 is quite good, I'll keep my desktop as gaming/programming pc with win 10, and well, the laptop will be auxiliar programming machine.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As some of you know I work as an occupational therapist and one of my clients wants to ungoogle his phone by installing lineage os on it.

He was asking me today if there are some good tutorials for doing that. He has an Xiaomi A1 phone and he would like to have a german tutorial.

If you know any pls share link.

Because I am very interested in cyber security and plan on doing my masters in it security I always try to stay up to date with the latest news and tools. However sometimes its a good idea to ask similar-minded people on how they approach these things, - and maybe I can learn a couple of things. So maybe people like @linuxxx have some advice :D Let's discuss :D

1) What's your goto OS? I currently use Antergos x64 and a Win10 Dualboot. Most likely you guys will recommend Linux, but if so what ditro, and why? I know that people like Snowden use QubesOS. What makes it much better then other distro? Would you use it for everyday tasks or is it overkill? What about Kali or Parrot-OS?

2) Your go-to privacy/security tools? Personally, I am always conencted to a VPN with openvpn (Killswitch on). In my browser (Firefox) I use UBlock and HttpsEverywhere. Used NoScript for a while but had more trouble then actual use with it (blocked too much). Search engine is DDG. All of my data is stored in VeraCrypt containers, so even if the system is compromised nobody is able to access any private data. Passwords are stored in KeePass. What other tools would you recommend?

3) What websites are you browsing for competent news reports in the it security scene? What websites can you recommend to find academic writeups/white papers about certain topics?

4) Google. Yeah a hate-love relationship, but its hard to completely avoid it. I do actually have a Google-Home device (dont kill me), which I use for calender entries, timers, alarms, reminders, and weather updates as well as IOT stuff such as turning my LED lights on and off. I wouldn"t mind switching to an open source solution which is equally good, however so far I couldnt find anything that would a good option. Suggestions?

5) What actions do you take to secure your phone and prevent things such as being tracked/spyed? Personally so far I havent really done much except for installing AdAway on my rooted device aswell as the same Firefox plugins I use on my desktop PC.

6) Are there ways to create mirror images of my entire linux system? Every now and then stuff breaks, that is tedious to fix and reinstalling the system takes a couple of hours. I remember from Windows that software such as Acronis or Paragon can create a full image of your system that you can backup and restore at any point to get a stable, healthy system back (without the need to install everything by hand).

7) Would you encrypt the boot partition of your system, even tho all data is already stored in encrypted containers?

8) Any other advice you can give :P ?

So instead of installing Ubuntu alongside windows, somehow I'm installing pop! OS. Thanks brain!
Is it any good?

@linuxFanboys
I'm getting a Chromebook, and, obviously, I'd rather wget all my webpages before I use chrome as my main os. so any recommendations for distros? I want a good, smooth ui, kinda like what windows was aiming for but so terribly messed up. I want apt package manager, and I wouldn't mind pentesting tools, and it has to be light enough to use on a computer with 4gb ram and 16gb ssd. I assume it's implied with linux, but I want one that's generally consider to be secure. I plan to run android studio (I expect it to be slower than a commodore 64 running windows 10), eclipse, gcc, if that helps. any suggestions? thanks!

Thank God it's Friday and my brain is toasted from this specific email to IT department which I had to call to get more details. Here are the parties involved.
1) Original sender (OS), 2) Sender to IT (SIT), 3) IT (Me)

SIT: Can someone from IT print this for OS? She's having issue printing.

Me: It's just an image file in the email. What issues is she having when trying to print?

SIT: Idk. She said she's having issues printing.

Me: Yeah, but what issue? She can't connect to printer, the file won't open or what? Can you ask her what the issue is?

SIT: *hold on...comes back... She just said that again..issue printing..

Me: Well, we need to know what issues it is so we can fix it. In that case she can print and not keep sending documents or files to someone else to print. Btw, did you try printing the image file?

SIT:Since she said she's having issue printing I figured to send to IT to fix the issue and print. I didn't print it.

Me: 😕😂🤔🤨😒..what? First of I still don't know whatever issue she is having. Second, you should try printing it and if you also have issues, let me know.

SIT: Ok how?

Me: *shows her how to get

SIT: Thanks it printed. Now I'm also wondering what issue she was having because this was easy to print..

Me: Can you transfer me to her phone?

Now pay attention here. She is SIT's boss.

Me: Hi OS, what issue are you having when trying to print the image file in your email? I'd like to fix it so you don't encounter that issue from now on..

OS: No issues. I was too busy to do it so I asked my secretary to do it.

Me: So you can print image files with no issues, correct?

OS: Yes.. actually I just printed my a picture my daughter sent me.

Me: Ok, have a nice..

*I call SIT back

Me: She's all set

SIT: Thank you so much fo fixing her issue.

Me: She didn't have any issue. She can print fine..

SIT: WTF!?!

Me: Have a good day, SIT..

😂😂😂😂 I was WOWED!!!

I've had a Xiaomi Mi 8 for a few months now. Although I'm impressed by what I got for the amount I paid (a phone that cost about $250 for 6GB RAM, Snapdragon 845, Android 9 and premium build quality is quite a steal), it definitely comes with a consequence.

MIUI (specifically MIUI 11) is godawful. It is single-handedly the worst Android ROM I've ever used since my shitty Android 2.2 phone back around 2010. If you're gonna buy a Xiaomi phone, plan to install Lineage OS on it (but even that's a pain which I'll explain why later).

- Navigation buttons don't hide while watching a video.

Why? God only knows. The ONLY way to bypass without root this is to use its garbage fullscreen mode with gestures, which is annoying as all hell.

- 2 app info pages?

Yeah, the first one you can access just by going to its disaster of a settings app, apps, manage apps and tap on any one.

The 2nd one you can access through the app info button in any 3rd party launcher. Try this: Download Nova launcher, go to the app drawer, hold on any app and tap "app info", and you'll see the 2nd one.

Basically, instead of modifying Android's FOSS source code, they made a shitty overlay. These people are really ahead of their time.

- Can only set lock screen wallpapers using the stock Gallery app

It's not that big an issue, until it is, when whatever wallpaper app you're using only allows you to set the wallpaper and not download them. I think this is both a fuckup on Xiaomi and (insert wallpaper app name here), but why Xiaomi can't include this basic essential feature that every other Android ROM ever made has is beyond me.

- Theming on MIUI 11 is broken

Why do they even bother having a section to customize the boot animation and status bar when there's not one goddamn theme that supports it? At this point you're only changing the wallpaper and icon pack which you can do on any Android phone ever. Why even bother?

They really, REALLY want to be Apple.

Just look at their phones. They're well designed and got good specs, but they don't even care anymore about being original. The notch and lack of a headphone jack aren't features, they're tremendous fuckups by the dead rotting horse known as Apple that died when Steve Jobs did.

Xiaomi tries to build a walled garden around an inherently customizable OS, and the end result is a warzone of an Android ROM that begs for mercy from its creator. Launchers integrate horribly (Does any power user actually use anything that isn't Nova or Microsoft launcher?), 3rd party themes and customization apps need workarounds, some apps don't work at all. People buy from Xiaomi to get a high end budget Android phone at the price of some ads and data collection, not a shitter iOS wannabe.

They really, REALLY want you to have a sim card

If you don't have a sim card and you're using your phone for dev stuff, you're a 2nd class citizen to Xiaomi. Without one, you can't:

- Install adb through adb
- Write to secure settings
- Unlock your bootloader and get away from this trash Android ROM

What's the point? Are they gonna shadow ban you? Does anyone contact them to unlock their bootloader saying "yeah I wanna use a custom rom to pirate lizard porn and buy drugs"? They made this 1000000000x harder than it needs to be for no reason whatsoever. Oh yeah and you gotta wait like a week or something for them to unlock it. How they fucked up this bad is beyond me.

So yeah. Xiaomi. Great phones, atrocious OS.

I hate iOS. Everything works perfectly on windows / OS X on any browser, but then you have retarded iOS not understanding anything of the (simple) ES5 JavaScript I throw at it, and good luck debugging that when your Mac isn't with you.

Getting tired of Apple's shit

F*ck Apple. WatchOs 4 is a downgrade! On first apple watch the system runs half the speed. The music app is now shit, because I can only play music downloaded on the 2gb apple watch. Seriously wtf? Maybe I have more music than 2gb. There new design of the app slowed the app down to 15 fps...
The story watch face is complete crap it shows all the time only "Good morning, name".

The worst is I can't go back to the watchOS 3 which was so many times better...

And you still have this bug that pisses me off since watch OS 1 you can hear every sounds coming from your watch with your Bluetooth headphones, but not calls.
You have to hear the call with the apple watch speakers when you don't want to buy airpods.
In other words the function is useless.
And it's one of the most important.

Pls apple why has every watchOS update have to be an downgrade...

And I don't have any chance to get off of this version unlike with iOS.

everytime i buy a new phone ,i feel this sense of extreme regret :(

i bought a moto g 5g phone last year in feb, it was so good . it didn't had any out of the world cameras or some funky stuff, but it gave a decent performance and i couldn't want any other phone.

In October my mom's phone started giving issues so i bought a realme phone for her that was half my phone's price. i couldn't spent any mor e because otherwise she wouldn't take it. she accepted the cheaper phone and within 4 days sue was cursing it. the phone had decent specs but would lag in certain apps like zoom, and won't run some call recorder apps. at the end i swapped my phone with mom's since i didn't cared about zoom or the recorder.

now this shit realme phone's memory has gone around 60% full of my stuff, and its showing its limitations. this shit auto relaunches insta after a few minutes of usage, probably because its runtime memory gets short( 4gb 128gb device gets memory shortages. nice). its video quality is shit and camera also takes rarely good pics.

the worst thing i like about smartphones today is how they over optimise the ui. this insta issue and auto call recorders not working is simply because of the realme skin running over the stock android. i had similar issues with a xiaomi device i bought for my dad sometime ago. (fortunately my dad is more medieval so that crap has not came back to me :'/ )

so overall i am buying a 3rd phone in 17 months.
This time it's Samsung f23 and am worried that it's also going to suck. i was this 🤏close to buying a pixel 6 or even an iphone coz i can afford them.

but the regret of buying such an expensive phone that will need replacement in 2 years made me rethink.

the only android os that have suited me the best is stock and as of now only 2 companies are making it : google and moto(* it's 100% aosp with 3 extra apps but they can't say that, so they also state that they are not stock os) . one plus is also a brand that i have heard makes a good os . but recently i also heard that they have completely scrapped their os and using oppo's softwares . plus the amount of tickets we get for notifications not working in oneplus, am sure their optimization is extremely aggressive.

so everything between a moderate price phone ( that will need a replacement in 2 years ) to a flagship felt unnecessary to me, so i went ahead with a Samsung's shit phone. f23 has almost same specs as moto but it's again a heavily customised os. i wanna waste my money on trying a custom os and declare it shitty.

most of my friends that use Samsung are fan of it but they are also not very techy so i guess it suits them well. i am the guy who first installs nova launcher in his device, so let's see what it brings on the table. from the 3rd person p.o.v, i felt its screen and camera images to he nice whenever i used their mobiles, so let's see what this brings to the table :(

Imagine a web way ahead of our time where its size goes beyond our imagination...

This is my first rant, and I'll cut to the chase! I don't like how web currently stands. Here's what makes me angry the most altough I know there's a myriad of solutions or workarounds:

- A gazillion credentials/accounts/services in your lifetime.

- Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel.

- There's no single source of truth.

- Why the fuck there's so much design in a vision that started as a network of documents? Why is it that we need to spend time and energy to absorb the page design before we can read what we are after?

- What's up with the JS front end frameworks?! MB's of code I need to download on every page I visit and the worse is the evaluation/parsing of it. Talk about acessibility and the energy bills. I don't freaking need a SPA just give a 20-50ms page load and I'm good to go!

- I understand that there's a whole market based on it but do we really need all that developer tools and services?

- Where's our privacy by the way? Why the fuck do I need ads? Can't I have a clue about what I wan't to buy?

Sticking with this points for now... Got plenty more to discuss though.

What I would like to see:

A unique account where i can subscribe services/forums/whatever. No credentials. Credentials should be on your hardware or OS. Desktop Browser and mobile versions sync everything seemlesly. Something like OpenID.

Each person has his account and a profile associated where I share only what I want with whom I want when I want to.

Sharing stuff individually with someone is easy and secure.

There's no more email system like we know. Email should be just email like it started to be. Why the hell are we allowing companies to send us so much freaking "look at me now, we are awesome", "hey hey buy from me".. Here's an idea, only humans should send emails. Any new email address that sends you an email automatically requests your "permission" to communicate with you. Like a friend request.

Oh by the way did I tell you that static mail is too old for us? What we need is dynamic email. Editing documents on the fly, together, realtime, on the freaking email. Better than mail, slack and google docs combined.

In order for that to work reasonably well, the individual "letter" communication would have to be revamped in a new modern approach.

What about the single source of truth I talked about? Well heres what we should do. Wikipedia (community) and Larry Page (concept) gave us tremendous help. We just need to do better now.

Take the spirit of wikipedia and the discoverability that a good search engine provides us and amp that to a bigger scale. A global encyclopedia about everything known to mankind. Content could be curated from us all just like a true a network.

In this new web, new browser or whatever needed to make this happen I could save whatever I want, notes, files, pictures... and have it as I left it from device to device.

Oh please make web simple again, not easy just simple and bigger.

I'm not old by the way and I don't see a problem with being older btw.

Those are just my stupid rants and ideas. They are worth nothing. What I know for sure is that I'll do something about or fail trying to.

>>Server sind für mich "Neuland".<<

I want to switch to a new server with my website. I have a bunch of questions and hope you beautiful people will help me out.

1. I've decided to switch from shared hosting to an virtual server. Therefore I am going to rent the cheapest VS from hetzner.de. is this a good choice?

2. What do I have to care about and what stuff there is to be done in the beginning?

3. The reasons I want to switch are more root accessibility and I want to switch to https. What about that? Is let's encrypt enough?

4. How do I move the server from a to b?

5. What OS should I choose?

6. What about security?

7. Any further advice from experienced people is welcome!

Sry for those noob questions, but I've never been in touch with server work...

Today, I have installed/uninstalled a combination of [windows 7, arch linux, dual-boot] a total of 9 times...

I wouldn't be surprised if my 120G SSD fails next week

It all started when I had to whip up a GUI-wrapped youtube-dl based program for a windows machine.

Thinking a handy GUI python library will get it done in no time, I started right away with the Kivy quick-start page in front of me.

Everything seemed to be going fine, until I decided it would be "wise" to first check if I can run Kivy on said windows machine.

Here I spent what felt like a day (5 hours) trying to install core pip modules for kivy.. only before realizing my innocent cygwin64 setup was the reason everything was failing, and that sys.platform was NOT set to "win32" (a requirement later discovered when unpacking .whl files)

"Okay.. you know what? Fuck........ This."
In a haze of frustration, I decided it was my fault for ever deciding to do Python on windows, and that "none of this would've happened if I were installing pip modules on a Linux terminal"...

I then had the "brilliant" idea of "Why don't I just use Linux, and make windows a virtual machine within, for testing."

And so I spent the next hour getting everything set up correctly for me get back to programming.... And so I did.

But uh... you're doing GUI stuff, right? -> Yeah...

And you uh.. Kivy uses OpenGL on windows, doesn't it? -> Yeah..?

OpenGL... 2.

-> Fuck.

That's when I realized my "brilliant" idea, was actually a really bad prank. Turns out.. I needed a native windows environment with up-to-date non-virtual graphics drivers that supported at least OpenGL2 for Kivy GUI programs!

Something I already had from square 1.

And at this point, it hurts to even sigh knowing I wasted hours just... making... poor decisions, my very first one being cygwin64 as a substitution for windows cmd.

But persistent as any programmer should be in order to succeed, I dragged my sorry ass back to the computer to reinstall windows on the actual hardware... again.

While the windows installer was busy jacking off all over my precious gigabytes (why does it need that much spaaace for a base install??? fuck.). I had "yet another brilliant idea" YABI™

Why not just do a dual-boot? That way, you have the best of both worlds, you do python stuff in Linux, and when it's time to build and test on the target OS, you have a native windows environment!

This synthetic harmony sounded amazing to the desperate, exhausted, shell of a man that I had become after such a back-breaking experience with cygwin

Now that my windows platter with a side of linux was all set-up and ready-to-go, I once again booted up windows to test if Kivy even worked.

And... It did!

And just as I began raising my victory flags, I suddenly realized there was one more thing I had to do, something trivial, should take me "no time" to do, being in a native windows environment and all.................... -.- (sigh)

I had to make sure it compiles to a traditional exe...

Not a biggy, right? Just find one of those py2exe—sounding modules or something, and surprisingly enough, there was indeed a py2exe—sounding module, conveniently named... py2exe.

Not a second thought given, I thought surely this was a good enough way of doing it, just gonna look up the py2exe guide and...

-> 3 hours later + 1 extra coffee

What do you meeeeean "module not found"? Do I need to install more dependencies? Why doesn't it say so in the DAMN guide? Wait I don't? Why are you showing me that error message then????

-------------------------------

No. I'm not doing this.
I shut off my computer and took a long... long.. break.

Only to return sometime the next day and end up making no progress, beating my SSD with more OS installs (sometimes with no obvious reason to do so).

Wondering whether I should give up Kivy itself as it didn't seem compatible with py2exe.. I discovered pyInstaller, which seemed to be the way Kivy wants exe's to be made on windows..

Awesome! I should've looked up how Kivy developers make exe's instead of jumping straight into py2exe land, (I guess "py2exe" just sounded more effective to me then)

More hours pass, and you'd think I'd have eliminated all of my build environment problems by now... but oh, how wrong you'd be...

pyInstaller was failing, and half the solutions I found online were to download some windows update KB32946..whatever...

The other half telling me to downgrade from Python 3.8.1 to Python 3.8.0000.009 (exaggeration! But you get the point)

At the end of all that mess, I decided it wasn't worth some of my lifespan, and that maybe.. just maybe.. it would've been better to create WINDOWS GUI with the mother fuc*ing WINDOWS API.

Alright, step 1: Get Visual Studio..
Step 2: kys
Step 3: kys again.

I have to listen to Pandora or something when I program... it's gotta be low volume, and the song can't be too bad or I'll get distracted from my hatred of it, and the song can't be too good because then I'll start singing along. Why am I so prissy about this? It's the only thing I'm prissy about, not like a norm dev… I'll use any editor, I don't care, any OS… but the music gets to me.

Just got a lovely update on Windows 10. It pops up on login and informs me of this great new browser called edge. Then it fucking takes over the screen and gives me one fucking option: "Get Started". I cannot escape, I cannot close the app, I cannot right click the app icon on the toolbar and close this POS. My only option is to fucking ctrl-alt-del and kill this piece of garbage. You also cannot uninstall this shit either. I even found a thread where the MS guy was trying to help them uninstall, but the end result is that you cannot on newer Windows 10. So I have this POS thing that keeps updating flash and other shit periodically that is nothing but a security hole. Now I never want to ever run this garbage.

The irony is this. I have read a lot of good things about Edge. I was considering it as an alternative to Chrome for specific use cases. Now I absolutely no longer want to run this fucktard pos software. This one experience has now tarnished any gains MS has in the browser arena. It is just more overbearing malware being pushed by assholes. Tech these days is defined by assholes. Apple is assholes, Google is bigger assholes, and MS is still the classic assholes.

Microsoft LET ME FUCKING JUST WORK! Is this not the pro version or what?

Fuck you edge and your pos os.

Now I feel better!

Edit: That was a rendition of the evil caption Kirk from episode 27.

Ugh am so done with linux.

I dualbooted ubuntu 16.4 LTS alongside win10 on my new laptop 3 years ago. Back then , the whole os and kernel stuff were new for me, but once i understood how things work in it, i always found linux to be a superior alternative for doing any development related task than windows.
The way terminal gives us sheer raw power to handle services and applications ourselves makes everything easy in linux.

Wanna run a lamp server? Install all parts by yourselves. Problems with the lamp server? You are just 1 command away to know which service/package is causing issue. Some python module fucked up? You can go on checking every package present anywhere on your disk. No permissions? Sudo.

But recently i got so much fed up of its gui. I have gone from 16.4 to 18.4 to 20.4 , but no version seems to handle multiple gui s/w running parallely .
I usually have the requirement to open 2-3 windows of chrome with 30-40 tabs, 1-2 projects of Android studio and studio emulator. But this shit blows even with just 1 project open on studio and nothing else! The even the keyboard and mouse gets stuck when i studio is making a built.
And don't get me started on how slow my system becomes when switching b/w AS and chrome :''( . Maybe there's issue with the dual boot or because i gave very large swap/root partitions when i first dualbooted or something else , but i am in so much pain :/

Finally i went back to win10 a month ago and was a little surprised to find that it sucks a little less now. Aside from the ugly forceful updates, it has been a breeze for working . The builds take longer time (fuck windows defender), but My Android studio (and everything else) does not lag when switching between multiple processes. I even once ran an emulator instance and it was still working fine . The process management of windows is very good.

I have heard that mac is kind of in middle of the 2 and better than both providing rich process management and powerful terminal commands . Waiting for the day when i have enough money(or no longer require my kidney) to buy and maintain a MacBook :/

!!rant life toptags bottags
My tags seem to be okay. Let's go.
I'm 14. I live in a place where nobody smart lives, and the school I go to has no coders.
Last year, all my friends moved. The only friend I had left now hates me, simply because they yelled at me everyday and I yelled at them once.
I am in the middle of my exams. I also have the flu, but thankfully it's not the e-flu, otherwise you guys should prepare for 24/7 headaches.
Due to the medications I am taking, I'm half-asleep all the time, and I probably am messing up all of my grades.
My entire extended family is in India, and I go there 2 times a year. I miss them so much right now :(.
At the same as doing exams, I am trying to keep my laptop (primary) and PC (secondary, desk) configuration and setup approximately synchronized. In order to do that, I am setting up my dotfiles repository.
Except that all my laptop config (which works) is written horribly, and I need to rewrite it all.
At the same time, I have 3 other projects going on: An OS written in D, a source-based package management system written in D, a small website (not online), and a whatever's cooking in my mind at this moment.
Right now, I'm supposed to be studying for my French exam.
Instead, I'm here, typing this out on my phone.
I have a classmate in school who can type QWERTY at 80WPM. I'm learning Dvorak (Programmer's!) and my current speed is 33WPM, after about 2 months of half-hearted practise during work time and at school.
Sometimes, I look at the world we have here, and what we're doing to it, and I wish that sometimes we could simply be content with life. Let's just live, for once.
I find ~60 random songs in one go, simply by finding a song I know on YouTube and going to the 'Mix - <song>' playlist. I download them all (youtube-dl), and I listen to them. Sometimes, I find this little part in a song (Mackelmore & Ryan Lewis - Can't Hold Us beginning instrumentals, or Safe and Sound chorus instrumentals) that make me feel so happy I feel like all's good in the world. Then the song moves on and with it, my happiness.
I look at Wayland, and X, and I think - Why can't we have one way of doing things - a fixed interface to express anything, so that one common API exists for everything of that type? And I realise it's because they feel that they're missing something from the others. Perhaps it's a bug nobody's solved or functionality that's missing, and they think that they can do better than that. And I think - Well, that's stupid. Submit a fucking bug report or pull request instead of reinventing the wheel. And then I realise that all the programming I've ever done in my life IS simply reinventing the wheel. And some might say, "Well, that guy designed it with spokes and wood. I designed it with rubber and steel," but that doesn't work, because no matter what how you make it, it's just a wheel. They both do the same thing. Both have advantages and disadvantages, because nothing's perfect. We're not perfect because we all have agendas and wants and likes and dislikes and hates and disgusts and all kinds of other crap, and our DNA's not perfect because it manages to corrupt copy operations (which is basically why we die of old age, I think).
And now I've lost my train of thought and this is too large to scroll over so I'm just going to move on to the next topic. At this point (.), I have 1633 letters left.
I hate the fact that the world's become so used to QWERTY because of stuff that happened 100 years ago that Dvorak is enough of a security to stop most people from being able to physically use my laptop.
I don't understand why huge companies like Google want to know about me. What would you do with this information? Know how to take over my stuff when the corporation-opocalypse comes around? Why can't they leave me alone? Why do I have to flash a ROM onto my phone so that Google cannot track me? What do you want, Google?
I don't give a shit any more, so there's my megarant.
Before anybody else (aside from myself) tells me that this is too big, all these topics are related simply because my train of thought went this way. There's a connection between each of these things, but I just don't know what it is.
Goodnight, world. 666 is the number of characters I have left. So is 42, for that matter (thanks, Douglas Adams!). Goodbye.

Rant time. Oh boi.

So, a bit of context: I am a university student in Greece and I have a desktop PC with elementary OS on it. When the unis closed down because of Coronavirus, I moved back to my parents', without my PC, only a usb stick with elementary OS installed on it. That was before the lockdown. My parents have a desktop PC and my old laptop, both with Windows rn. I'm only able to work using Linux, so I've been just popping that elementary OS USB stick whenever I needed to work.

All cool and good. Until the usb got full. It was a 16GB one after all. No biggie, I bought a new 64GB one from a well known Greek tech shop along with a webcam my mother needed. It was a LEXAR one.

They fucking took a week to transfer it. As if the closest shop to me was in fucking Germany. For context, the drawing tablet I bought from China the other day only did 2 weeks to come. During this time I could barely use Linux because my USB stick had only some 600MB free.

Ok, wtv I said to myself. I am a patient person after all. I received the USB stick, along with the webcam, in good condition, in their packaging. Alright. I dd'ed everything from the 16GB stick to the 64GB one and then I extend the partition. Everything works flawlessly. And it's faster too.

Next day, I boot up from it again. It boots up good. Nice, time to do some work. I open my editor. And it fucking freezes. The editor is not some VSCode or Atom or any of that heavy shit, it's just elementary OS Code. A very lightweight Gtk3 app. Strangely though, the rest of my OS (the dock autohide, eg.) Seems totally responsive. I try to open another app. No luck. Not even switching TTYs work. Good shit. I force shutdown my PC. I try to boot again from that piece of shit. And guess what! NO BOOT BITCH. Like, fuck you. I boot from my previous 16GB one. Linux won't recognize it. No /dev/sdc like I used to have. Ok, lsusb. Nope, nothing. I disconnect it and reconnect it, and lsusb. An empty entry appears.I run it a couple of times, and the it disappears again. I switch to TTY 2. I get read errors and usb error -71.

And I want to fucking explode

I call back to support for the warranty coverage. I wait for a good 10 minutes and a nice lady picks up. I tell her the issue. She says that the support team will call me for the issue this day it the next day.

I hang up.

It feels like some fucking prank. YOU MOTHERFUCKING TOOK SO LONG TO DELIVER MY SHIT. Not to mention that the shitty courier service they are working with wouldn't deliver the goods to my home because it's slightly out of town. AND NOW YOU ARE DELAYING MY WARRANTY RETURN? HOW THE FLYING FUCK DID YOU BECOME A WELL KNOWN TECH SHOP WITH SUCH SHITTY SERVICE?

IF YOUR BRAINS WERE DYNAMITE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TO BLOW YOUR NOSES.

YOUR THE SERVICE EQUIVALENT OF A PARTICIPATION AWARD.

Foreigners' view of Greeks suddenly doesn't seem so unreasonable. Yes, we are fucking lazy asses. And we also hate that. We hate each other for that very reason. May this country not live any longer.

So, for a few months, as my finals are comming near, I was wondering is it a good idea to re-format my SSD and put Ubuntu on my laptop.
Reason? So I can't play games on my laptop and focus more on coding.
Downloaded Ubuntu, format, install, I was happy.
Soon as it installed, I downloaded all the sht I need (slack, discord, VSCode, nodejs, pixie dust and unicorns...), and did a 10 minute setup so the OS feels "nice".
After few hours of "trying" to work, I noticed it runs rather slow (vscode keeps freezing, app I'm developing stutters in chrome...), so maybe Ubuntu is being a douche to my laptop.
Downloaded xubuntu, did mostly the same (less work has to be done since xubuntu feels nicer than ubuntu (thanks xfce (mouse <3)), and started doing the same.
I realised that I can't use any of my Logitech stuff (mouse, headset (and by "can't use, I mean I can't use the Logiteh gaming software to set the DPI, mouse speed, buttons, nor set up the headset, so they sound like jack shit)).
Frustrated, I went to fix all the stuff manualy, with no success.
Also, the OS froze 3 times completely.
Luckly, I made a whole Windows 10 backup so I've spent a few hours more just waiting for it to restore.
Oh, did I mention I can't tether my Android device internet via usb on ubuntu?
Do I have so much to learn or this is how my life is going to look like when I start working as a developer?
*insert Sad panda gif here*

Anyone have any good suggestions for Java IDEs/Editors? I'm using Eclipse right now, and since I'm a student I can get IntelliJ Ultimate free, except I can't figure out why the run/debug buttons are greyed out...

Also would be cool to suggest good dark themes for whichever program you guys mention. And which OS would be good to use? I'm thinking Ubuntu right now

Plz don't hate for these dumb questions, I'm only a first year xD

Hell of a Docker

One application in c++. 4 in c# targeting Linux. Several logging places, Several configuration files , dozens of different folders to access (read/write). Many applications being called from just one that orchestrates everything.

OS is Linux. Installation is to be made inside a docker image and later placed in a container by means of several bash files and python scripts. All these are part of a legacy set of applications.

They’ve asked me to just comment out one line which took 3 days to find out because they didn’t remember where it was and in which application it was and what was in that line.

After changing it, I was asked to create a test environment which must have resemblance to the current server in production. 12 days later And many errors, headaches, problems with docker, I got it done.

Test starts and then, problems with docker volumes, network, images, docker-composer, config files and applications, started to appear.

1 month later, I still have problems and can’t run all applications at least once completely using the whole set.

Just one simple task of deploying locally some applications, which would take one or two days, is becoming a nightmare.

Conclusion: While still trying to figure out why an infinite loop was caused by some DB connection attempt in an application, I am collecting a great amount of hate for docker. It might be good for something, that’s for sure, but in my experience so far, it is far worse than any expectations I had before using it.

Lesson learned: Must run away from tasks involving that shit!

Whelp, I made the switch to android about a week ago. Didn't go two days without getting malware on it. I only browse hacker news and used devRant, standard messaging app, no root, so no shady things, just fairly standard things besides devRant. When I called Samsung support, they said it was a known issue and sent me some links to some forums where people were having the same issues. After digging through those threads, there was an official answer from Samsung saying they weren't going to fix the issue (at least in any foreseeable future). That's unacceptable for a phone that was released less than a year ago.

I'm done with Samsung phones for good. I might come back to Android on a google phone.

I hate how Android is distributed and the manufacturers don't take ownership of their issues. They just work on the new phone without caring for anything older than 6 months. If I had to get a new phone every time a major security issue was found and the company refused to fix it, I'd spend more money than on an iPhone.

It seems like Google keeps their devices up to date better, presumably because they have better control of OS releases. But non-google Android devices are dead to me.

Back to my iPhone for now...

🎵sad Charlie Brown music🎵

Hey everyone.

I just had a job offer today for one of my dream companies!
They gave me a choice between a Linux or MacOS laptop. I've never owned a MacOS laptop before and I've been using Linux as my main OS for around 6 years or so now.
Also, abount a month ago I bought a new laptop on which I installed linux.

So basically, I have a Linux laptop for personal stuff and I was thinking of getting the MacOS one for work. Does anyone have any relevant experience and, if so, how did it turn out?

Thanks for your time, have a good one!

Ok. I'm working on a small website, and MOTHER OF OF WEB DESIGN.
I try to set up WAMP, but it takes me 2 F-ING DAYS.
SO THEN THE FREAKIN HTML SCRIPT REFUSES TO WORK. AND THEN, ONCE I FINALLY GET MY HOPES UP, WAMP DECIDED TO JUST NOT WORK TODAY, SO I SPEND 3 HOURS FIXING THAT CRAP, AND THEN AFTER THAT PIECE OF HELL, I CAN'T FIND ANY EXAMPLE CODE OUTSIDE OF ADVANCED WEB DESIGN, SO I SIFT THROUGH THAT, JUST TO FIND HOW TO MAKE IT UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL A DATABASE IS. THAN I REALIZE THAT I HAVE TO INSTALL MIRE PROGRAMS. THAN, I REALIZE THIS GUY IM LISTENING TO IS USING A MAC OS X ALTERNATIVE. SO IM DESPERATELY TRYING TO GET THIS TO WORK. AND THEN, *POOF* ALL MY WORK IS UNREADABLE SPAGHETTI.
ALL FOR A DAMNED TEST.
TL;DR, Php is not good if your working offline.

Is there a Linux distribution without a lot of problems with Nvidia drivers? I'm currently using elementary os, because I like the look of it, but I'm getting a lot of graphical glitches and black screens all the time and I was wondering if changing to another distro would help. Is elementary is known for graphical glitches, or is it just the Nvidia drivers? I've also turned my display manager into a mess while trying to customise my login screen, so it might be a good time to change to another distribution. Any recommendations? And one more thing, just out of curiosity, can you install multiple distributions and use the same home directory if home is mounted on a separate partition?

I was planning to buy a new laptop.. any suggestion...

requirements:
i7 7th gen
16gb ram
1tb storage
OS anything other than windows.

good to have:
128gb ssd

Random thoughts on more out of the box tools/environments.

Subject: Pharo

Some time ago I had shown one of my coworkers about Pharo and he quickly got the main idea behind it but mentioned how he didn't like the idea of leaving behind his text editor to deal with source code.

Some time last week I showed the dude some cool 3d animations you can do with Pharo while simultaneously manipulating the code to change them in real time. Now that caught his attention particularly and he decided he wanted to know more about the language but in particular the benefits of fucking around with an image based environment rather than a file based.

Both of us reached the conclusion that image based makes file based dev enviroments seem quaint in comparison, but estimated that it was nothing more than a sentiment rather than a fact.

We then considered what could be the advantage/disadvantages of such environments but I couldn't come up with anything other than the system not having something like Vim or VS Code or whatever which people love, but that it makes up for it with some of the craziest IDE tools I had ever seen. Plugins in this case act like source code repos that you can download and activate into your workflow in what feels something similar to VS Code being extended via plugins written in JS, and since the GUI is maleable as it is(because everything is basically just subsets of morp h windows) then extending functionality becomes so intuitive that its funny

Whereas with Emacs(for example) you have to really grind your gears with Elisp or Vimscript in Vim etc etc, with Pharo your plugin system is basicall you just adding classes that will convert your OS looking IDE into something else.

Because of how light the vm machine is, portability is a non issue, and passing pharo programs arround is not like installing Java in which you need the JVM.

Source code versioning, very important, already integrated into every live environment and can be extended to do pushes through simple key bindings with no hassle.

I dunno, I just feel that the tool is too good to be true. I keep trying to push limits into it but thus far I have found: data visualization and image modeling to work fine, web development with Teapot to be a cakewalk and work fine, therr are even packages for Arduino development.

I think its biggest con would be the image based system, but would really need to look into how this is bad by any reason other than "aww man I want vim!" since apparently some psychos already made Emacs and VS code packages for interfacing with Pharo source trees.

Embedded is certainly out of the question for any real project since its garbage collected and not the most performant cookie in the jar.

For Data science I can see some future, seems just as intuitive and interesting as a Jupyter Notebook actually, but the process can't and will not be the same since I still don't know of a way to save playground snippets unless you literally create classes for it, in which case every model you build gets saved inside of an object, sounds possible but, strange since it is not a the most common workflow in jupyter.

Some of the environment is sometimes glitchy, but it does have continuos development and have not found many hassles.

There is a biased factor from my side: I seem to be wired to understand the syntax and simple object model better than in other languages. To me this feels natural as if I was just writing ideas rather than code, mostly because I feel that there really ain't much in terms of syntax, the language gets out of my way and the IDE feels like the most intuitive environment in the world to me. I can see why some people would find it REALLY weird of counterintuitive tho.

Guess I really am a simple dude.

Sydochen has posted a rant where he is nt really sure why people hate Java, and I decided to publicly post my explanation of this phenomenon, please, from my point of view.
So there is this quite large domain, on which one or two academical studies are built, such as business informatics and applied system engineering which I find extremely interesting and fun, that is called, ironically, SAD. And then there are videos on youtube, by programmers who just can't settle the fuck down. Those videos I am talking about are rants about OOP in general, which, as we all know, is a huge part of studies in the aforementioned domain. What these people are even talking about?
Absolutely obvious, there is no sense in making a software in a linear pattern. Since Bikelsoft has conveniently patched consumers up with GUI based software, the core concept of which is EDP (event driven programming or alternatively, at least OS events queue-ing), the completely functional, linear approach in such environment does not make much sense in terms of the maintainability of the software. Uhm, raise your hand if you ever tried to linearly build a complex GUI system in a single function call on GTK, which does allow you to disregard any responsibility separation pattern of SAD, such as long loved MVC...
Additionally, OOP is mandatory in business because it does allow us to mount abstraction levels and encapsulate actual dataflow behind them, which, of course, lowers the costs of the development.
What happy programmers are talking about usually is the complexity of the task of doing the OOP right in the sense of an overflow of straight composition classes (that do nothing but forward data from lower to upper abstraction levels and vice versa) and the situation of responsibility chain break (this is when a class from lower level directly!! notifies a class of a higher level about something ignoring the fact that there is a chain of other classes between them). And that's it. These guys also do vouch for functional programming, and it's a completely different argument, and there is no reason not to do it in algorithmical, implementational part of the project, of course, but yeah...
So where does Java kick in you think?
Well, guess what language popularized programming in general and OOP in particular. Java is doing a lot of things in a modern way. Of course, if it's 1995 outside *lenny face*. Yeah, fuck AOT, fuck memory management responsibility, all to the maximum towards solving the real applicative tasks.
Have you ever tried to learn to apply Text Watchers in Android with Java? Then you know about inline overloading and inline abstract class implementation. This is not right. This reduces readability and reusability.
Have you ever used Volley on Android? Newbies to Android programming surely should have. Quite verbose boilerplate in google docs, huh?
Have you seen intents? The Android API is, little said, messy with all the support libs and Context class ancestors. Remember how many times the language has helped you to properly orient in all of this hierarchy, when overloading method declaration requires you to use 2 lines instead of 1. Too verbose, too hesitant, distracting - that's what the lang and the api is. Fucking toString() is hilarious. Reference comparison is unintuitive. Obviously poor practices are not banned. Ancient tools. Import hell. Slow evolution.
C# has ripped Java off like an utter cunt, yet it's a piece of cake to maintain a solid patternization and structure, and keep your code clean and readable. Yet, Cs6 already was okay featuring optionally nullable fields and safe optional dereferencing, while we get finally get lambda expressions in J8, in 20-fucking-14.
Java did good back then, but when we joke about dumb indian developers, they are coding it in Java. So yeah.
To sum up, it's easy to make code unreadable with Java, and Java is a tool with which developers usually disregard the patterns of SAD.

Okay so I have been thinking about transferring to linux. But I'm not too sure because of a few things I'm hoping yall can explain to me.

1st problem.) The operating system just feels so empty

2nd.) Theres a lot of customizing I would have to go through (which isnt really a problem it's just difficult getting it to look good)

3rd.) I'd have to learn to use the terminal more (which might be easier than I'm thinking)

4th and final.) I dont think I'd be able to use C# I know .NETCore is a thing but I dont think I'd be able to do as much with it.

I know these would probably go away after awhile but I've tried using it before but im afraid of making it my main OS I'm also putting aside games in my problems cause I know they recently made gaming better on linux I just dont know the extent to that.

Any help is appreciated and please go easy on me 😅

I once was working on my family's business during summer and was doing something on the laptop that was there (according to the owner, it was in a "good shape" - oh my god that laptop nearly gave me cancer: an old Toshiba, running W10, with half the F keys not working - specially F5. I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT F5 OH MY GOD -, and also the ➡ key (arrow keys). It was bought in a flea market and some IT guy, a friend of the owner, repaired it a bit and installed the OS because a laptop that old ran WinXP or Win Vista for sure) when suddenly it died on me.
I rebooted the thing and right before the time it should be showing the windows logo, the screen froze (on a black screen with some text) and it started to beep. Loudly. A loud continuous beep. I turned it off and on some times after that, seeing if turning it off and on did something (as it seems to work LoL) and it continued with the beeping. After a quick search I found out that that was a common problem with Toshibas that old, and that I needed to press F2 (that key worked thank god) when the black screen with the text showed up (I don't remember what was written there, it were some booting instructions, I think).
It worked. Great. Now the N key doesn't work when I press it. Greeeeeeeaaaaaat. Also it seemed that, when I opened the start menu, it would automatically write "nnnnnnnn(...)" without me pressing any key (pressing any key would make it stop though, maybe it was stuck).
Then I told the owner not to turn it off, because the laptop would start beeping and such (and I know he'd panic about it).
From then on I think it went off for good and now he's been using his own Toshiba, that runs Vista and is slow as all hell.
Moral of the story: he should have been used his crappy PC from the beginning, at least all its keys work

(Note: watching him type hurts my soul. When one is used to use both hands to type, and is fast-ish on the keyboard and uses tabs to change fields, watching someone type with only one hand every 2" or so and using the mouse to change fields hurts. So much time wasted 😭)

I have an opportunity to buy a cheap ThinkPad which I want to install Arch Linux on to get more familiar with Linux. So I want to setup the environment and try to use it as my home PC to write code, watch YouTube etc. No gaming.

Is it worth it? It’s not a lot of money but definitely not free either. Does anyone have any experience going from OS X to any Linux/GNU? I’m not expecting to enjoy it so much that I’ll switch permanently but who knows.. And what about ThinkPads, good stuff?

Fuck those who hate on Mac os and say that they aren't customizable and cost money for everything. Like some days ago I saw this post about how Mac users need money for like getting simple shit done. Tbh most of the ppl haven't even used Mac for dev stuff. And after using Linux I would say MAC IS AS GOOD AS LINUX. (if u use Mac ports or brew as a package manager) and u can even run Linux apps in there without almost any hassle.

mann... either i am dumb or my team is a bunch of excited monkeys.

for last 6 months my senior and this contract dev (both in Android) have been fussing about adding coroutine flows in our codebase: how our codebase "needs" it and how flows will help our codebase become "better"

when i asked them why, they gave me even more shit about hot flows cold flows, state flows, and how ots the latest "solution" from google.

So today, while going through another existential crises in my free time, i decided to understand what these "flows" are.

and from what i understand, it is mainly for cases in which there os actively changing data and we want to get latest updates without any event or trigger, like those streaming datas , chat messages, location etc.

but we are a freaking insurance app! user presses a button and we make an api call! what is the fucking problem here that isn't being solved by good old livedata and coroutines? There isn't any "live" api in app as far as i know and even if there is the code should be modified for 1 such api.

why fuck the whole codebase for a usecase that isn't applicable for 99% of APIs?

also, if a flow is going to auto trigger and call api, how are we supposed to control it? like say there is a offers api(there isn't) which gives us the latest offer products to show user for 5 seconds then refresh. for this i will simply returrn

flow{

while(true){
emit (offer api results)
delay(5000)
}

}

but this is an infinite polling api! how to stop it when say user pressed a cross button or did some other interaction?

it seems useless as fuck.. i can achieve a more controllable polling using the same while loop in different location or some other solution that won't require me adding this wierd api

I am new to Ubuntu or any Linux OS and have been hearing a few good things about them.

So few days ago I decided to try out the Ubuntu 17.10, after which I installed Gnome Tweak Tool to customize the look and feel. After installing some themes and applying them I found the whitish bar appear as you can see in the photo I attached. I do not like it (hated it also when I used Windows). Please how do I make this go away as I have googled alot about it but cant get anything helpful.

I also have the issue of my Windows button not performing any shortcut task as before like showing the desktop screen (this now happens when I click the Windows buttton + A key)

Thank you all

I've lost count of the days at this point...

First things first, lets all praise musky for getting David Bowie stuck in my head for the next month or so, not a bad thing, his song choice was on point. Also the rants have become few and far between because apparently I have to be an "adult" and go to work, pay my bills, and other things that distract me from programming.

Okay, now to the actual dev stuff. I've started to think that maybe my scope of languages is limited somewhat to my comfort zone, which is only java at this point. So for my project (game development), I've decided to pick a language based on what will work best instead of what I'm comfortable with, my runners so far...

C++: The default go to for game development. I would chose this but if I did, my best C++ game would look like Frankenstein's monster and would be filled with terrible code. For that alone I have scratched C++ from my list, for lack of experience.

Java: My usual, my go to, my comfort zone. I don't want to be comfortable though, I want to learn things. That asides, java has tones of resources, frameworks, libraries, and tutorials available. In addition, it's also able to run on pretty much anything, huge ++. The cons are trying to find the best resources, frameworks, libraries, and tutorials to use for a particular situation and that can be hard and confusing. Java may still be my go to but I'll get to that with the next language.

C#: I have never touched C# in my life, and the only things I know about it are what I've heard or read. So far I've heard it is SIMILAR to java, based around C++, and has aged really well compared to other languages. I like that it is similar to java without it being the same language, it will force me to learn things over and you can never reinforce the basics enough. It also has the huge benefit of being Microsoft based while still running on iOS, linux, macOS, windows, and android. This gives me really easy access to implement a mobile version (in the future obviously), while being able to run well on windows, the default OS for most gamers.

Overall I will start writing in C# and see if I like it. If I don't it's no big deal, I still have a good option in java to fall back on. I'm open to hearing opinions on this topic, java vs. C# but please keep your bias nonexistent and you constructive conversation very high. If any actual game developers that have experience with both languages are out their, and reading this, please comment so I can pick your brain.

Some of you may ask about the android scholarship, I contacted google and told them android development wasn't for me so they sent someone a late invite and rescinded mine, hopefully someone else will put it to better use.

Holy god this is long. I'm sorry.

!rant

I want to use Linux again. I tried to use Ubuntu 16.04 and Linux Mint 18 before but for some reason my Laptop gets frozen randomly (and I think the kernels used in these OS are somehow responsible for it, because it was all okay when the kernel version was 3.xx) and I didn't get any solution from Ubuntu Forums, so I gave up.

So any suggestions? Which distro should I use? I'd love an user friendly DE (Like XFCE or Cinnamon) and good software availability.

And my Laptop also has a Touchscreen. I'd like to utilise it if possible.

P.S. Please go easy on me. I'm still learning.

Ok... Can someone explain me this?
Happen a few weeks ago.
My pc would crach on any 3D program or game.
Did some tests, was the graphic card.
Send it to repair (amd, Asus made)
Placed my old Nvidia, installed drivers all good.
My new card came, nothing repaired, nothing found, passed all stress tests.
Placed the card back ok, no OS.
Bios detects both ssds but don't start (windows 10.... Ya tryed Linux but doesn't work for my main past time in pc, Arma 3).
Loaded the USB with the windows instalation, used command line drive C is completely empty but has 160gb used.
Ended ip formating.
GC works perfectly.
So... Wtf happen?

Tested the windows linux subsystem. Thought windows did something good by implementing a complete Linux bash. Then I recognized that they just piped it into the win kernel. Lol they broke it again XD

Next steps are removing windows, burn that m2 ssd in some gasoline, throw the ashes in a deep hole next to my old bootcamp 40GB HDD (Mac OS X) and finally setting up a new fresh and clean system which won't get in touch with any Windows forever.

#Linux4Life

Hey guys, I've recently purchased an Asus Laptop (i3 7100U - 2.4GHz, 4gb ddr4 , 1tb HDD, 15.6 FHD,). I've swapped HDD with an SSD ( Kingston 120gb) . Everything seems great, Laptop's performance is good, pycharm runs faster etc. However, when I shutdown the laptop, it takes nearly 3-4 minutes to shutdown. Restarting laptop hardly takes 30 seconds. The only problem is shutting down. I've tried everything, resintalled OS( windows 10 home (GPT partition)) , drivers and os are up to date, updated bios but there is no change. It still takes 3-4 minutes to shutdown. Any ideas?

My week is up with Linux , im back on windows I tried about 10 variations 🙄

Best I could get was manjaro with KDE

It was pretty close to what I was looking for but I still have to install some of the programs I need using command line 🙄 how do they not have installers for them yet ... Crazy maybe they do.

I need a virtual machine which is fine I can still use my graphics so it's fast! Play games etc

But it crashed and died.

Not only that but every version of Linux.. it felt 🤔 shitty like the mouse was bolted tight to the screen and only heavy movement would do anything . Yes I have high mouse sensitivity (very high) but it feels sooooo rigid

Here's the thing I like what Linux is trying to do... It's just horrifically executed the learning curve to extreme and there is no central this is how you do it. With good reason yes but if you give someone to many choices they can't decide and give up and I think that's the only reason Linux isn't winning . It's to complicated.

Android is the only Linux OS I love manjaro did well .

But android is simple effective and does what it's meant to without any help

All other Linux os' are .. developerised as in only a developer really truly stand a chance to grasp it no normal folk out in the world.

People say Linux doesn't have long left to go... To me it seems like they are still miles off no closer then 5 years ago.

That was my experience at least ...

What (realistic) requirements would you need to run windows 10pro OS with kali linux on a VM for pentest/ coding environment ONLY. no gaming etc. ?
Im starting my software development school soon, and im needin a new laptop.
Any requirements/ good to know appreciated from you old time code gods

I don't have any experience in teaching, but I'd venture to say that teaching anything is hard. For most subjects, teaching has been refined over thousands of years to be easier and meaningful. Not CS. As has been mentioned by many people CS is a very new subject when compared to the likes of maths, for example, and education systems haven't been able to cope with it adequately (nor should they be expected to).

That the CS industry is rapidly evolving certainly doesn't help matters, but in reality that shouldn't really be that big of a problem (at least in earlier years of education). The basics of computer systems and programming don't really change that much (please correct me if I'm wrong) and logic stays the same. Even if you learn stuff that's a bit out of date it can still be useful and good lessons should be able to be applied to new technologies and ideas.

Broken computers is a big inconvenience, but a lot of very useful things can be done without a computer, and I should think the situation is a lot better than it was 5 years ago. What I think would be good, instead of trying to use broken computers would be to get students to set up and use a raspberry pi each; you learn about something other than windows, learn how to install an OS and you don't need that much computing power for teaching people computer science.

I think the main problem is a lack of inspiring teachers. Only a very few teachers will be unable to get you through the exams if you put in the effort, but quite a lot of the time students don't put in the effort because they can blame it on the teacher.

My solution would be to try and get as many students into computer science as possible and the rest will follow: more people will become teachers, more will be invested in the subject, more attention will be payed to the curriculum.

That's not to say I don't agree that many of the problems that have been mentioned need to be fixed for CS education to work properly, just that there is no way that I can see to fix them currently without either creating more problems or some very rich person giving a load of money.

This has gone on a lot longer than I expected so I'll stop now.

For those using Windows 11. How's it been as a development environment/base OS? Any temptations to switch to Linux? I've been seeing a good number of web developers on Twitter make the jump so I thought I'd ask.

any good tool which can make my usb boot able? Trying to install majaro.
Elementary os is so buggy

Greets. I need advice. And before reading just skip me with classic things you can't - you shouldn't. As i am Windows user last 20 years, I never actually used any other os (running ubuntu on vm occasionally doesnt count). So for some period of time I'm thinking about throwing myself fully into some Linux distro but I can't choose which one. I was thinking between Fedora, Arch and Debian (i dont want Ubuntu), but also what it should be a main key of my decision is good documentation backed up distro. Thanks in advice if you are willing to help my decision

The main difference between macOS and windows/linux is that it has Helvetica, the best typeface to ever exist, built in. When an email arrives, you know it's your fellow Mac user who sent it, so you know they at least take a shower every day, and you don't have to explain things like they're five.
You can use Helvetica for everything. Designers love it. Guess what — all of them have Macs, so things they design look best on your Mac as well. They don't test on windows or any linux.
Linux has the important mission of overthrowing windows as the main desktop OS for normies, and that's a good thing. Valve and Steam OS is a massive step forward. But, if you value your time and want to be surrounded with beautiful things, nothing beats macOS.

I think I finally reached a point where I Have to completely reinstall my RPi.

Running Raspbian, I was under the impression their kernel releases worked the same way a pure Debian release worked - That the kernel was somewhere in the system repository.

Turns out it was, but in a different pool. And also turns out the new kernel and initramfs won't fit into my /boot as, for some reason, it is under 50 MBs in size. I dunno why, but I don't have any unallocated space left to grow the partition...

I have no idea why the boot is so small (Probably because, when I was setting the system up, I wasn't really that good with Linux yet, and just went with defaults).

What do you guys think - Is it better to run the native Raspbian system (Formerly RaspberryPi OS), or go with a pureblood Debian for Arm? (Yes, I already checked, my HW revision [3B+] is already compatible])

TL;DR
I'm looking for a good cloud based python IDE. Let's hear suggestions...

Full Story
My employer provides me with a MacBook to use at work, however they use a custom OS X image that has whatever security configuration they decided was essential. Something about the configuration prevents me from running third party Python packages.

During those times that I'm "waiting for work things to compile", I'd love to tinker with a little Python project I'm messing with. Does anyone have any suggestions on cloud based IDEs for Python?

Yes I've Googled it, plenty of results. But anyone have suggestions based on their own user experience?

Thanks ahead of time!

I have been working on a long time, low progress project of mine that keeps on giving and giving.

Let's begin like two years ago where I dipped my toes into "more then gigabit" networking thanks to a Linus Techtips video about infiniband.
I had the dream of booting my Workstation from my NAS, a so called diskless setup.

Well, since I run FreeNAS on my Nas , a very nice Freebsd based Nas OS, everything's gonna be good.

In the beginning, there was no infiniband support.
Turns out, you don't need it, since the mellanox CX2 nics can do ETH too.
Yay.
Just took me a few weeks of anger.

So, to be able to boot something over the network, you need firmware that finds the bookable stuff and loads it.
That protocol and firmware is called PXE.
PXE needs a DHCP telling it what to do, and what is where and etc.

Freenas here I come! Installing dnsmasq on the actual freenas install turned out to be not that great of an idea because freenas thinks of itself as being an "appliance" that you don't fiddle with. So things work, until you update/ upgrade when everything will basically be wiped, except what you have done through the ui.
Ok. So I gona use a jail, a container like thing for that.
Everything is great, jail has internet, everything Installs fine, what could go wrong?
Dnsmasq can launch and work, but not as dhcp server. Some thing about permissions.
Turns out, jails have permission like things.
A few days of head scratching later, it has ALL the permissions.
Dnsmasq still can't work as DHCP server though, why you ask?
Because it needs a specific kernelmodule that isn't contained in the jail. Since jails are kind of like a docker container, they run on the same OS kernel, who does not have this module, I'd need to patch the freenas, which is an appliance, so fuck that.

Like a year later, freenas has finally added good VM support, so why not make a VM for the dhcpserver?

Well, about a year ago, I didn't know that the virtual Intel nic is a fucken unstable piece of garbage, crashing nearly any OS at some point.

So that was it for a while again.

Now to the last few weeks.
Finally dnsmasq is running in a freebsd VM with a good and working configuration which is rather simple, if those tutorial fuckers out there would explain shit instead of just telling you to copy, paste and replace X.

Now back to the PXE side.
I'm using iPXE because I have no clue how to boot anything over tftp so iSCSi it is, since that is what I can relate too.
The idea behind iscsi is to fake a SCSI disk over the network. Attached devices appear as if they are actually directly connected to the machine instead of over the network.

iPXE gets a lease from the server, can connect to it, everything is fucken great. Finally.
Except that if it "sanBoots" the iscsi drive, it can't find anything to boot.
Well fuck.
If I attach a Linux live USB over iscsi, it boots, finds grub, and crashes because the live iso isn't configured for network-boot.
But it boots.
So what's so different?

Well iPXE is booted in legacy mode, where as the content of the target is windows 10 in efi mode.
Ffff.

Ok. Can I get iPXE to boot in EFI mode?

Well yes, after like 3 days fiddling with it.
But it only finds the onboard Intel nic instead of the new Mellanox CX3 cards, and can't even connect to the target....

Sooo, I guess my options are as follows.
Either, get PXE efi to work on the network cards directly, its called flexboot and might be able to since I just found some firmware options for that.

Or give up on efi and install windows in legacy mode.
Which isn't that easy when it has to end up on a drive on my nas.