I’m pretty impressed with the multiboot systems. Maybe some developers are starting to get the obvious user preference for distros that “play nice.” Distros that want to hog the entire disk–or entire computer–can and should be relegated to the not-used pile.
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I second that. A distro should not assume sole ownership of your computer.
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Yes, one time for fun, I had 5 distros loaded on one disk. If I remember correctly they were Ubuntu, Mint Cinnamon, Zorin, Xubuntu, and Mint Xfce.
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I agree. COBOL got it right decades ago. I started on the mainframe, and everything was upper case by default and variable names were separated into words using dashes.
this-is-the-easiest-way-to-type
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Does that count when you have mint 2 times cinammon and xfce ? Especially as they are both based on ubuntu… think you only get 5 mark from me out of 20 especially as you had xumuntu as well
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I’m currently nerding out on the origin of the word NERD.
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Spending some of my day today learning Rust. I need to suffer more. Don’t really know why, I’ve been retired for 15 years so not looking for a job.
I like what I see so far but it’s quite different from most other languages. I made a living for a while using C and then C++. I hated C because it was so prone to bugs, pointers pointing who knows where. I probably hated C++ more because when it was first being adopted all the new college hires wanted to make everything a class, and muggins here had to fix the bugs in their spaghetti code.
So without C/C++ I had a gap in my arsenal, no compiled executables. No problem on my own systems where I had the interpreters installed for python etc. but I couldn’t write programs for my Windows friends.
Rust does seem to address many of my dislikes of C++, I was a heavy user of linting tools but Rust covers linting with its compiler. Hope I feel the same in a few weeks.
And I have to add that the “Rust Book” on rustup is one of the best written tutorials I have ever come across. It’s so easy to understand partly the result of good grammar, but also very logically presented.
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Maybe a failing grade since two of the distros were brothers and the rest were 1st cousins. But hey, I said 5 distros and each one was a separate distro.
But I also use MX and tried Manjaro. Do they count?
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I never disliked C. I could live with the likelyhood of memory bugs. I intensely disliked C++ , so I never really went there.
There was no rust 30 years ago … I went to R. It suited my work requirements. I still mostly use R for serious programming and for data manipulations.
I did have several tries at Julia. I think it needs more work on the user interface, but conceptually it is superior to R. It is still a painful process getting my mind into Julia mode.
Neither R nor Julia are suitable for system programming.
If rust does not please you, have a look at Nim. It looks like Python with static types, but it compiles into C.
Some say that the current Linux system reprogramming effort should have used Zig rather than Rust. I can see the point … Zig is more like C in that it retains the low level features. I have never tried Zig. From reading I think it would be my choice. I like simple low level programming languages, especially for system programming.. I think Rust is too complicated. It will be a difficult task for others to read Rust code in Linux.
Let us know how rust goes.
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Cannot see the point, you basically ended up with 5 distros running the same packages!! Where as I run Gentoo and LFS and mostly just Gentoo!! Why, because I do not need the crapware that comes with other distros!!
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Some people need or prefer extra help beyond the raw command line. Unfortunately the quality of that GUI help varies and there are no standards like Posix to hold it up.
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So incest, keeping it in the family …
Like me, who just about only use gui.
With the exception of lubuntu I have never tried the other versions of ubuntu, brothers sister or cousins. Once i found mint, even then stayed with one desktop originally mate due to machine age but then lmde occasional xfce for small memory slower machines.
I once tried dual boot with a client 2 copies of mint as I was going on holiday and this client always called me whilst I was away. So when he did screw up the first version told him how to select the second. Same with browsers chrome firefox chromium, same client when one does not work use next on list then i sort him on my return. He is 80 plus, not a well man just likes to click plus he likes me to go sort him, not a question of money just company for him
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Default apps and useful tools distinguish distros. Different layouts and ‘look and feel’ distinguish desktops. As for sharp or rounded corners–who effing cares?
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I must admit that Linux now using Rust influences my decision to learn it. I don’t know Zig either. And yes, rust can seem complicated, I’m hoping that as I get further along it will not be. But I get your point about non-rustaceans finding it hard to read.
I have thought about learning R, often handling very large CSV files for which I use Python. For example the lists of known plants from Kew Gardens. Do you like R and do you find it capable of general purpose tasks if not low level systems work?
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Yes. I have a package in the R CRAN package repo.
R is both a language and a statisticsl analysis package .
Most professional statisticians use R today … but Python and Julia ard alternatives. R gas the best publucation quality graphics.
You can read .csv files into an R dataframe, which is an object very similar to a Python dataframe.
One thing about R that is different … R works with an ‘in-memory’ workspace and it automatically keeps every object you create in that workspace, which is saveable when you quit. So it accumulates lots of junk, but you never lose anything.
Python does not have a workspace, it uses fhe filesystem. Julia has a workspace but it is not saveable, the user has to save files. I prefer the R workspace … it saves to the directory you started R in … so you can have 2 R’s running at once if you start them in different directories.
I cant recommend a R book. I learnt S and Splus (they are commercial) before migrating to R which is practically identical with S but is open source.
Yes, if you mean numerical tasks. That includes image processing and data graphics. Anything with numbers.
This is what I learnt from
It is way too expensive.. … If you can find it in a library use it.
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Zig is a serious attempt to correct the bug-prone parts of C. It deserves some consideration .
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It’s Labor Day here in the states, so I’m redesigning my home office. As I get older, I rely more on my home office, especially as I farm out my own work (separate from my current, full-time job). I have quite a few computers lying around, testing for Ubuntu on the daily, and bookshelves that need to be rearranged. So, today, I have decided to clean it all up, to the best of my abilities.
Problem: there is no way I can do this in one day. So, I am taking a piecemeal approach. First, reorder my books and bookshelves. Once I get that done, on the next day off, I’ll start working on my rigs and getting them in order. I’ll probably have to buy an extra desk to do it, but it will get done. I still have a good decade-plus of working full-time, but I do enough part-time work out of this office, it needs to look more professional. My wife says I’m an office slob. I told her, well, who am I kidding, she’s right.
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I can remeber my old boss proudly telling this story…
A young overeseas visitor came into her office , sat down and after the usual greetings said " I am told that bright people are untidy".
It made her day.
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Similar to that is, “If you see a tidy desk, that person likely doesn’t do much.”
Not sure how true that is. Some days I feel like both a slob and someone that doesn’t get much done.
This weekend I updated my Gnome Wallpaper Switcher. I added a ban and un-ban parameter, so I don’t have to look at some pictures returned by my query to Unsplash.
Here is an example of my current wallpaper/background image.
I have it switch at the top of the hour.
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Something I read steered me away from Zig, that it is still version 0. Maybe that was a red herring.
It’s the memory leaks in C/C++ that bothered me. I worked on printer software, printers sit for ages without being rebooted so memory leaks are critical. I spent too much of my life finding leaks in other peoples code. New hires came in and wanting to prove themselves wrote vast amounts of code quickly then moved on to something else leaving muggins here to sort things out.
Nim does look interesting, easy transition from Python. Thanks for the tip.
It sounds a bit Monty Python ish, we are the knights who write Nim!
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