Posts by Liam Proven

[Author here]

> To be fair, MacBook Pros these days are basically iPads with a bundled keyboard.

Can't argue with that really. I just wish mine had a more ports. A lot more ports. And the keyboard from a PowerBook G3 Pismo. And three trackpad buttons.

I do like the battery life, though, the superfast sleep/wake, and the performance is creditable.

Re: Doesn't TrueNAS Scale work just as well on the HP Microservers?

> just buy the known/recommended ECC RAM sticks

I did. It didn't work.

That's after half an hour of disassembly and reassembly.

> (mine is Kingston, that I picked up for £40 the pair).

Now there is the thing. For a decade-old server that cost me £90, I consider that 50% of the computer's price for more memory is excessive. Your mileage clearly varies substantially.

For my herd of ageing Thinkpads, I generally pay about £5 for an 8GB module.

[Author here]

Features, probably not, no.

But I think there are costs.

• As I mentioned in the article as well as in the comments above, significantly poorer memory inefficiency, which renders the Linux-based product less suitable for small/low-end deployments and constrained hardware.

• FreeBSD has a reputation for better stability than Linux, and fewer, less frequent, updates.

• The FreeBSD hypervisor is small, efficient, clean and modern:

https://klarasystems.com/articles/bhyve-the-freebsd-hypervisor/

It can also cope with handy features like memory overcommit -- you can assign more RAM to VMs than is available at that time -- and lazy commit, so they don't try to initialise all of it when they start.

Re: Some backtracking here, maybe

Yes, I know and I do take your point.

By and large, in my experience so far, the vendors of CentOS clones do not put a huge amount of R&D into their efforts. The thing that made the RHELatives desirable was their compatibility with RHEL. If a vendor were to make profound changes in order to pass a test, it wouldn't be CentOS compatible any more, and thus, they might as well have chosen something else, such as Debian.

So, the real answer here is I don't know, and I am not going to go to great effort to find out, as both are historical now. The companies aren't going to tell me, the Open Group probably doesn't know, and it doesn't matter any more.

The point is not "Linux is right now at this moment a Unix because it carries the Unix branding". It cannot be: it does not any more.

The point is: "Linux passed in the past. It has done it before, and therefore, it is a certainty that given some effort it could do it again."

I am sure any of the BSDs could as well, if anyone wanted to spend the time and effort... but nobody does.

Xinuos might have the best case to do so, but I don't think it has enough money. I think its niche is small and not very lucrative.

But it did happen, and a lot of people in this sector of this industry seem to be blind to this fact, which is why I keep repeating it.

From the many fora and lists I inhabit, my strong impression is that most people still believe that "Unix" still means "based on AT&T code" and that nothing _not_ based on AT&T code can be a Unix. That has not been the case since very soon after the beginning of the public Linux project, and I think it's important to acknowledge this.

Current OSes that bear the brand are macOS, AIX, Unixware, SCO OpenServer, HP/UX, and gods help us, z/OS.

(Note: not Solaris.)

But _OSes still in active development_ that bear or have born the brand are macOS and Huawei EulerOS/openEuler.

AIX and HP/UX are in maintenance, as are the Xinuos products.

Even their more current offering, OpenServer 10, is FreeBSD-based:

https://www.xinuos.com/wp-content/uploads/Xinuos-Data-Sheet-OpenServer-10.3.pdf

And it's no longer mentioned on the homepage, or the products list. I think it's dead.

For my money, there is a Venn diagram here, and the interesting part is is the intersection between "previously passed the testing" and "is in continued active development".

That ellipse holds 2 editions of MacOS and 1 Linux distro.

Re: Doesn't TrueNAS Scale work just as well on the HP Microservers?

Fair enough. I did try to spell it out, though:

«

One of the problems with ZFS on Linux is that because it's not part of the kernel, its cache must remain separate from the Linux kernel's own cache,

»

Re: And what about the Clustered version?

[Author here]

> an Active/Passive cluster pair

AFAICS, if you are clustering them, then you are therefore using TrueNAS SCALE, according to the company's own page:

https://www.truenas.com/m-series/

Scale is not based on FreeBSD. It is based on Debian. It is unaffected by this. You are running the product that has _replaced_ the product that this article is about.

Re: Some backtracking here, maybe

[Author here]

> if you don't include FreeBSD in the group of systems that are under the UNIX banner.

Nobody has paid for FreeBSD to be put through Open Group UNIX™ testing, therefore, FreeBSD is not a UNIX™ and never has been.

At least 2 companies paid for this for Linux: Huawei and Inspur. There may be others: I do not have access to historical records.

Legally speaking, BSD is not UNIX, as the FreeBSD project carefully spells out:

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/explaining-bsd/

Note that the BSDI company mentioned in that page is now known as iXsystems. This is the original company that productised and sold BSD/OS stepping away from BSD. I think that's very sad.

Re: Doesn't TrueNAS Scale work just as well on the HP Microservers?

[Author here]

> I don't see why having HP Microservers would be a problem if you wish to stay within the TrueNAS ecosystem

Sir is missing the point. It's not the Microservers _qua_ Microservers. It's the difficulty and expense of putting more RAM in them.

I have an N54L with 8GB, an N40L with 6GB, and a Gen 8 with 8GB. That is why I specified "with 22GB of RAM between them" in the article. 8+8+6 = 22.

Of the 3, only the Gen 8 can be affordably upgraded, and even then it would be neither cheap nor easy.

It would be considerably cheaper to replace the two older N-series Turion-based servers with newer models than to upgrade their RAM. RAM upgrades also require removal of the motherboards which means disconnecting all cabling: about a dozen cables, some tiny, some big, all difficult. And on the small island where I live, obtaining used replacement hardware involves expensive shipping, and a high probability of receiving damaged/broken kit. All 3 of these servers were bought used, and for all 3, I collected them in person.

FreeBSD is if anything _more_ RAM-efficient than Linux. OpenZFS on Linux is _substantially_ less so because it requires two separate caches, the Linux kernel's page cache _plus_ the OpenZFS advanced read cache. These cannot be combined because ZFS cannot be merged into the Linux kernel due to a conflicting source code licence.

> It means you're earning money from it and are prepared to pay accordingly.

I don't buy the things _new!_ I'm not _crazy_ or something.

> From my PoV Mac laptops all seem to have screens too tiny for my ageing eyes.

My own one is a 27" iMac with a 27" second screen. I had to buy a stand to make the 2nd screen portrait, because it's so huge it was literally giving me neck ache having them side to side. I don't want a screen any bigger than this, thanks.

I don't personally have any of their laptops because I can't stand their flat keyboards and buttonless trackpads. I do have a work MacBook Air, which is good for travelling and some things, but it's a bit unpleasant to type on. I wouldn't personally buy one, though, and the Arm-powered iMac doesn't appeal at all. Smaller, fewer useful ports, less expandability, and so thin there's not enough room for an Ethernet port and that's banished to the (proprietary) power brick. No thanks.

Re: Coincidence...

Don't be daft.

> What you are basically saying is that all software should only be available via a gatekeeper.

No. I am saying that for unskilled, non-expert users, they should have an easy way to get whatever they want.

And no, nobody should be downloading and running binaries. That's a terrible way to use an OS.

> That makes it very easy for governments to ban stuff.

No, it does not. It is already easy for governments to ban whatever they want, but it has zero effect on people who don't live in that country, and not much effect on anyone sufficiently determined who _does_ live in that country.

> Streaming capture, distributed software, pretty much anything they don't want people to have.

Have you ever actually used a Linux computer?

> It's a recipe for digital fascism.

Nonsense. Utter gratuitous bollocks.

That's fair enough and a perfectly legitimate POV.

I do think there's room for both.

I'm glad there is a professional paid tier. SUSE paid my salary for 4 years and that was very handy thank you. Red Hat pays for a huge amount of Linux and FOSS development.

They don't have much to offer a random home user, though. But Zorin does, and good for them.

And of course if you don't want all the bundled apps, you can grab the free edition, and if you don't want GNOME -- which personally I don't -- you can grab the Lite edition for free as well.

Re: Coincidence...

Good ma— er, blood beast. :-)

Re: Hmmmm....

[Author here]

> the guest additions that require a license from Oracle, perchance?

No. You are wrong, and furthermore, you are questioning my professional knowledge, and I am not OK with that.

The guest ADDITIONS are free, open source, and are in the Ubuntu repositories.

https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=virtualbox-guest-x11

The VirtualBox EXTENSION PACK is proprietary, and must be licensed.

https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.0.14/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.0.14.vbox-extpack

Learn the difference, and kindly presume that I do actually know what I am talking about.

[Author here]

> as a Linux user, it seems to me that this is exactly what running Windows has become.

100% this, but people do not notice things that they are totally used to. Windows users have been conditioned to little beeps and bongs and pop up messages every time they plug something in, or unplug it, and it's normal to them.

This is why when Mac users talk about how easy and low-stress it is, the PC users flatly _do not believe them_ and call them brainwashed, cultists, fanboys, etc.

I am a Mac user too. I am typing on a Mac right now.

I don't use the App Store. I don't have any payment methods on my Apple Account. I don't have an iPhone or an Apple Watch. I run almost entirely FOSS apps and a few bits of proprietary freeware, like Skype, Google Drive, Dropbox and things. I don't have an Apple mouse or keyboard or trackpad. (I hate the things.) I have a clicky mechanical keyboard and a cheapo Acer wheelmouse.

The way I use Macs is deeply alien to habitual Mac users and they don't get it. No gestures. No halo effect. No automated sign-in. I don't even use Safari or iMessage.

They don't get why I'd want a Mac if I don't want any of that, but the thing is, to me it's a fast, silent, stable, FOSS Unix box. (With no APT command.)

I talked with a loyal Fedora user last week. He likes it. He said "every time they get a new version, I back up my data, format, reinstall, and copy my files back. It's great, it's always super fast and it's really easy!"

My oldest working Ubuntu install started out as version 13.10.

It's all what you're used to.

There _is_ no walled garden around macOS. You don't _have_ to use any of the Apple stuff. You don't need to jailbreak it or root it or anything. You are one `sudo` away from root at any moment. It is perfectly usable as a free Unix, with the same suite of apps I use on Linux, from Firefox to VirtualBox to Panwriter.

Linux users don't get why I'd use a Mac. Both Windows and Mac users don't get why I use Linux.

I don't get why millions of techies use Windows when there are better alternatives sitting right there with their keys in the ignition.

But they don't know how to drive. They think they do, but actually, they only know how to press the Start button and state their destination.

This includes Microsoft. I drive Windows with the keyboard. It's a lot faster. It makes the whole OS like Vim to an experienced skilled user. I only use the mouse for web browsing. But only blind people know how to do that now, and Windows 11 makes it very plain that this is true right inside Microsoft itself.

Re: Coincidence...

[Author here]

> even as an experienced computer user I struggled with the frustration

Computers are not a monoculture and they should never be. If you are only experienced in Windows, you are not an experienced computer user. You're an experienced _Windows_ user and that does not mean you know anything whatsoever about computers in general.

Sorry if that sounds harsh or mean but it's true.

You may be able to drive a car but that does not mean you can ride a motorbike.

You may be able to swim across a lake, but if I put you on ice skates, you will not be able to move 10 feet, even though you have probably spent most of your life standing on 2 feet and using them to move around. Same for skis, same for roller skates.

Sadly I have had to work with lots of people who think they are techies and think that they know their way around IT and computer systems, but all they know is Windows, and take that away from them and they are baffled... and naturally, they get angry and blame the computer.

Re: Coincidence...

> *I miss Pear Linux, and was very sad when David Tavares closed the project.

I vaguely remember, I think, reading that Apple bought him out?

Re: I myself am not so averse to using the command line, but I know I am in the minority.

[Author here]

> I'm much happier with a UI.

Missing letter?

Makes the whole message very ambiguous. GUI? TUI? A command line is a kind of UI.

Re: Coincidence...

[Author here]

> Linux for consumers needs to be a single desktop environment

I have good news for you, then. It has one.

I have bad news, too.

It's GNOME.

But there's less-good but still good news. You have alternatives, unlike on Windows, unlike on MacOS.

Which is why there isn't just one.

Even in China a third of a billion PC users have a choice: UKUI or Deepin Desktop. Both are better than GNOME, but both are Windows knock-offs.

Re: Coincidence...

[Author here]

Obviously I think you are wrong, but I think the key detail that you said that gives the whole game away is this:

> I'm soft after so may years on Windows where a click on a .exe does the work,

That is the SINGLE WORST WAY to install software on any computer and any operating system ever invented, and it should have been banned when the Internet started rolling out to PCs.

It is to the credit of the evil marketing lizards at MICROS~1 that they have trained a billion people to do this.

_Never_ download binaries from anyone you would not personally trust with the front door key to your house and your car keys for the weekend.

MS knows this anarchy is why it has a malware problem, and that's why it has the Windows Store. (It also wants a cut like Apple gets, too, of course.)

Zorin has an excellent app store, which handles 3 different formats and is easier than the MS Store, and you don't even need to pay.

If you are fooling around trying to download binaries, *you are doing it wrong*. Don't do that. Not ever, not on Windows, not at all. Don't run anything you just got off a random website. Don't download programs from websites.

If you are typing commands, you are doing it wrong. If you Googled for how to get apps, learn to just trustworthy websites from bad ones, because no site that can be trusted will tell you to type commands.

That is 2000-and-noughties stuff. Don't do it.

Re: Coincidence...

[Author here]

> Are you saying Linux uptake would be better if distros just had a minimum of apps so it would be able to do less? Where's the sense in that?

Well, it's worked for ChromeOS.

What mystifies me is why no Linux vendor has done its own ChromeOS-a-like yet. Ubuntu even has single-sign-on and a cloud storage system: it's ideally positioned.

Re: I have a copy of IBM OS/2 Warp.

[Author here]

> I have a copy of IBM OS/2 Warp.

Good for you.

For what it's worth, in a box somewhere, I have O/S 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 4.0 and Warp Server 4.5.

Part of the reason is that I've been in the PC businesses for nearly 40 years and we get evaluation copies of all sorts of stuff thrown at us for free.

Except for IBM. I had to buy OS/2 2.0 for my own home computer. Then I bought a mouse driver (for my Prohance PowerMouse, a unique mouse with a numeric keypad on it) and then I think I had to pay for a driver for my parallel-port sound device (a Logitech Audioman).

Then I had to pay for the upgrade to 2.1.

Which stopped my sound "card" working, stopped the PC speaker driver working, and stopped my very useful 800*600 in 16 colours screen mode working.

But such things aside, it was a genuinely world-beating PC OS in its time. It was worth the money. It was worth buying special hardware to run it, just as Windows NT users had to do as well.

So I paid. Not gladly but I paid. It was that radical, that transformative.

But later, IBM realised the error of its ways, and it gave away 3.0 and 4.x for the asking. That's why I kept them: as companion pieces to the most expensive piece of PC software I ever bought.

Re: Yes, this was the problem

[Author here]

Yep. I bought OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 with my own money. I also tried the eval of OS/2 Warp.

Amazingly hard to install and giving away a time-bombed OS release is _such_ a bad idea! In the unlikely event that you do get the bally thing it to install, it _will_ turn itself off and brick your PC a month later!

Re: Microsoft Presentation for the 1989 IBM PS/2 forum

> I remember Outlook 97 was particularly bad.

I mean, yes, it was, but was that not the first ever release?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Outlook

Re: Re You forgot

> That's the big what if, not OS/2

I am not convinced.

On the one hand, SCO Xenix was a very good, solid OS. SCO made a lot of money in the 1980s from it, and they earned it. It was a good product, and back then, charging extra for a C compiler, and more for networking, and more still for X11, was viable -- because most people didn't want or need any of that.

But the real story is that MS and IBM decided that they could go up against the Unix vendors with their own multitasking OS.

And it's still selling strongly today.

So, a good gamble, I'd say.

I like your point about Nokia, though. :-)

Re: Very Different

[Author here]

> Was the PSION Organiser not a PDA? The Series 3 definitely was, and I wouldn't call either a tablet.

Exactly!

A couple of years ago, I got my own original 1989 Psion Organizer II LZ back again, 30 years after I sold it.

I still have a Series 3A and 3C, and a 5MX.

Re: Versions of MS-DOS did support more than 32MB partitions

[Author here]

> Compaq DOS 3.31 had no trouble supporting a 76MB partition.

You are right. And indeed a lot bigger than that; I tried it extensively, and I think I had a *single partition* DOS setup on the biggest HDD I could find: 330MB.

There is a little more to it than that, though.

Several vendors' versions of DOS 3.3x could do that. The difference is that the Compaq edition was the only one I knew that did it _the same way that later official DOS versions did._ So it was forwards- and backwards-compatible: DOS 4/5/6 could read Compaq DOS 3.31 hard disks, and Compaq DOS 3.31 could read DOS 4/5/6 disks.

This may be connected with the fact that IBM did PC DOS 4.0, and Microsoft was more or less forced to adopt the changes.

Aside: I supported a lot of 3Com 3+Share servers then: a DOS-based NOS. It was terribly crippled by 32MB DOS 3 partitions. I tried it on Compaq DOS 3.31 but it couldn't read them. :-(

It only supported a single big-partition tool: V-Feature Deluxe from Golden Bow Systems. (How the blazes I remember this nearly 40 years later I don't know.) Most of my customers wouldn't buy that as well as the not-cheap NOS, so for one customer's new server -- maybe the same one I mentioned above -- I ended up partitioning the Model 80's 330MB disk as drives C:, D:, E:, F, G:, H:, I:, J:, K:, and L:.

Trying to usefully map all those shared volumes was... not fun.

> I can't help but wonder if MS took away Compaq's right to make their own version of DOS after Compaq broke the 32MB barrier before MS did.

An interesting speculation. It's possible! But gradually IBM and MS versions of DOS absorbed all the changes that the OEMs made.

I think DR was pivotal in this.

MS was lazy and complacent. So was IBM. Maybe _because_ they wanted to push OS/2.

Then DR came along and made good business selling the first ever retail DOS upgrade, DR DOS 5.0, with big disk partitions, built in 386 memory manager, a HIGHLOAD command, a graphical file manager/program launcher (ViewMax), and so on.

This jolted MS awake and resulted in MS-DOS 5 which copied all those features.

So DR did DR-DOS 6, which bolted on disk compression and automatic memory optimisation as well. That resulted in MS-DOS 6, which again copied that stuff. (Literally copied: it included code taken from STAC's Stacker disk compressor. That's why MS-DOS 6.2, 6.21 and 6.22 happened.)

Novell bought DR and did Novell DOS 7, which bundled Netware Lite for peer-to-peer networking.

(But it ate RAM. MS responded with Windows for Workgroups, moving the network stack out of DOS and into Windows, a much better move.)

Re: Very Different

[Author here]

> The author was implying if Windows did not exist, Microsoft would not have been successful

No, I was not.

> Bill Gates would not have bailed out Apple in 1997.

I laughed out loud at that.

He didn't. Apple sued. MS settled out of court. Don't believe the hype. Never ever listen to the marketing lizards. They are paid to lie.

The famous US$150M payment from MS to Apple was not an investment. It was punitive damages. Microsoft Video for Windows contained code stolen from Apple QuickTime. Apple sued and won; this was MS paying the penalty.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/stop-the-lies-the-day-that-microsoft-saved-apple/

Re: Very Different

[Author here]

> Interesting article, but this paragraph is hyperbolic nonsense.

I don't think you understood my point at all. That's fair enough.

Most of this is rambling and not connected with my article at all, so I am not going to even attempt to rebut it. (Gods know I am guilty of rambling myself often enough.)

> It's got nothing to do with the Mac.

Apple was nearly killed by Win95. That precipitated the return of Steve Jobs. That caused the iPod, the iMac, etc. You're obsessing on tech and that's not the point. The point is that it was the return of Jobs that caused the renaissance. If Apple had died earlier,

If the MS/IBM partnership were shipping a 32-bit GUI OS with stable multitasking and networking in 1990, as the product discussed in this article *shows existed*, then my point is that it would have killed off Apple earlier.

> I think there was an MS OS/2 from 1989.

It is mentioned in the article.

> Most of the WIMP GUIs were inspired by 1970s Xerox.

Inspired by, but Apple made it work.

> Apple iPod succeeded because of iTunes 99c track deal. They were late into PMPs/MP3.

1. [[citation needed]]

2. It's not about what made it succeed. It's about why it happened. Who launched it?

> The iPhone a success due to the data contracts.

[[citation needed]]

> It was 9 years after smart phones came out

I know. I owned several.

> All internal Microsoft email transport was done on Xenix-based 68000 systems until 1995–1996, when the company moved to its own Exchange Server product.

1. [[citation needed]]

2. So? It ran inventory and sales on AS/400. It ran Hotmail on BSD.

3. MS Xenix flopped. SCO made Xenix a hit. (Note: SCO != SCO Group.)

> MS doing NT was inevitable.

No it was not. Never would have happened at all unless DEC screwed up and killed Prism and Mica.

> The IBM - MS "partnership" on DOS and then OS/2 was never going to last.

[[citation needed]]

As for the rest...

I deployed Windows 3.0, 3.1, Workgroups 3.1, Workgroups 3.11, NT 3.1 and all succeeding versions in production. I also ran OS/2 2.0 myself. I own 2 Apple Newtons and a first-generation Acorn Archimedes.

I am not your grandmother, and you can't teach me to suck eggs. :-)

Re: Very Different

[Author here]

> The really bad part is that Liam didn't even explain why he wrote that, so I just have to guess.

"Always leave 'em wanting more." ;-)

The article was long enough as it was, and I didn't want to ramble on for paragraphs more. But you more or less have it right.

OS/2 1 was a flop. IMHO it should have been 386-native from the start. Even the text-mode-only OS/2 1.x with multitasking DOS sessions would have been useful in 1987-1988. My employers around then were selling IBM PS/2 Model 80 machines as servers with 2-4MB of RAM. Some ran 3Com 3+Share, some SCO Xenix, but the point is that 386DX machines with multiple megs of RAM were shipping products in the late 1980s.

Even Amstrad, UK pioneers of cheap PC clones, launched the PC2386, a 386DX with 4MB of RAM, in 1989.

But the story goes:

1. IBM insists on 286-only OS/2 1.x

2. OS/2 flops

3. MS & IBM break up, MS does Win3 instead

4. It takes IBM years to finish OS/2 2. By then Windows is a hit. It's too late.

The existence of _MS_ OS/2 2 shows it didn't happen like that and even as MS was getting ready to launch Win3, it had MS OS/2 2, lacking only the WPS.

Instead of taking another 3Y to get NT out the door and 5Y to get Win95 out, MS could have launched OS/2 2 with IBM in 1990.

What MS did, and which proved a big hit, was a dual-OS strategy: Windows 9x for the low end and NT for the high end. It took 'til 1995 to get going and ended in 2002 when XP went on sale (after an OEM-only soft launch in late 2001).

What this product shows is that strategy could have started some 3-5Y earlier, with Win3 as the low-end OS and OS/2 2 as the high-end OS.

MS versions with the same UI (Program Manager + File Manager) but with integrated networking.

IBM versions, maybe, without networking but with a snazzy UI instead.

It was very nearly ready.

Re: Pints' on me Brian

[Author here]

> Now, let's rebuild this into "what should have been".

Not unless Microsoft releases the source code. And I doubt MS still even has it.

The only way I can ever imagine this happening would be this:

Forget lobby groups. Get enough people together to crowd-fund salaries for a team of programmers to go through the code, identify any elements belonging to 3rd parties (that is, not MS and not IBM) and remove that code. This would, realistically, need to be incorporated as a company, and that company and the programmers would need to sign NDAs and corporate confidentiality statements.

You'd need to get _both_ IBM _and_ Microsoft on board to agree to this.

It's a vast job, and I am sure it would never happen.

What _might_ be doable would be to assemble such a project, and get enough people and money to buy DeviceLogics and DR-DOS, and to buy what's left of Multiuser DOS and open source that.

Maybe resurrect the Multiuser DOS Federation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiuser_DOS_Federation

As far as I can tell, a kitchens company in Thacham UK (!) ended up the last owners of Multiuser DOS source code that was still around, and since I contacted them in 2022, they may have gone under.

https://www.construction.co.uk/c/672236/integrated-solutions

Re: So... let's stir a bit the hornets

[Author here]

> Some thought about systemd.

Let me guess... Benno Rice?

*Clicky*

Confirmed.

He speaks a lot of sense. It's not a bad tool in all ways. I liked it at first, until some of my boxes started not booting.

*Turn sarcasm dial to 11*

But like much that comes out of RH, it makes sense if you know the RH corporate ~~religion~~ culture.

* We _are_ Linux. No other distro really matters: they are rounding errors and background noise.

* We don't dual boot with other distros, because of point #1: there _are_ no other distros.

* OK, officially, we don't dual boot because servers don't dual boot

* OK, OK, we dual boot with Windows. 1 copy. That's your lot.

* Our use cases are:

- a RH staffer's notebook with Fedora

- a server running RHEL

- oh, some other stuff, probably, but it's not very important

So, for example, systemd dies in a heap if you reformat a partition it's mounting from `fstab`, because it can't handle UUIDs changing, because you'd need another OS to do that and there are no other OSes, remember? Don't bother filing a bug.

But lots of effort goes into mounting encrypted volumes because we all use those because it's a company rule, and if that rule means you can't dual boot, well it doesn't matter, because there's nothing to dual boot with, because there are no other distros, remember?

[Author here]

> Awilfox's comments on, and the call for reform and refinement of, the mission creep monster that is systemd were eminently sensible:

Did you not read as far as the footnote, then?

«

# Bootnote

For context, we thought that this assessment, systemd through the eyes of a musl distribution maintainer, offers interesting perspective. The author is one of the core maintainers of Adélie Linux, a separate distribution from Alpine, although it uses some of the same components: musl libc, OpenRC, and the APK packaging tool.

»

Re: what's left of the commercial Unix world [...] Solaris 10

[Author here]

> *cough* AIX.

Yeah, but...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/ibm_aix_developer_jobs/

The tricorder indicates... He's dead, captain.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/17/unix_is_dead/

Re: I am just not wildly fond of Raspbian.

[Author here]

> Debian includes all the common GUI environments in its standard repo

It does. But that does not remove the one it comes with, and the tools that one comes with.

I don't want any other desktops than the one I have chosen and am using. I don't want 6 text editors, 3 system monitors, 4 calculators, 16 image viewers, etc. I want one, the best one that fits in with my environment. That's the job of a distro builder: pick the best for me, so I don't have to.

Removing this stuff from an installed environment is hazardous. One additional dependency and you remove something critical and the system fails. Been there, done that, many many times.

Re: NVMe on a Pi5 - kernel bug

Could, perchance, this "reluctant commentard" be the source of the FOSS desk's Pi 5?

Re: Raspberry Pi Imager with Other OS

> I don't see any technical reason to use a cut down GUI as opposed to standard (Gnome based) Ubuntu GUI.

OK, two things here.

Firstly, I strenously object to that grossly unfair and inaccurate "cut down GUI" nonsense. There is nothing "cut down" about Xfce, or indeed Budgie, MATE, or multiple others. They are not "cut down". You have your history back-asswards.

Xfce is older than KDE, which is itself older than GNOME.

These other desktops are not "cut down". They are older, better-written, more functional, more flexible, and in general better. They are smaller because of tighter code.

Setting aside my professional hat for a moment: in fact, the reverse is true.

GNOME 3 totally rebooted the project, partly out of a desire to be less Microsoft-like and partly due to a -- largely failed -- effort to build a version for touchscreen devices.

GNOME Shell is largely unlike older versions, is less customisable, has less standard UI, less functionality, less theming support, and indeed, less of pretty much anything useful -- except code. There is a lot of that, because they rewrote the entire damned shebang in smegging Javascript, possibly the worst possible choice of language. Then they reimplemented every separate accessory and supplementary app they could, because it's Red Hat sponsored project, and as such, it rejects everything that was Not Invented Here.

I want by UI fast, responsive, and I also want it small, so it leaves more resources for *my apps,* thank you. For that, on Unix, I want it in a compiled language that generates native code, not some gigantic interpreted blob that that a JIT engine desperately tries to make quicker.

[*wanders off grumbling "'cut down' my backside... bloody whippersnappers"*]

P.S. You're missing the point about the imager, as well. I am talking about OSes it doesn't know about and cannot download for you: so, pointing it to `.img` files you downloaded yourself.

Re: and don't forget RISC OS

[Author here]

Yup, my Pi 400 mainly runs RISC OS Direct. It's a shame that it can't use the other CPU cores, although the rumour is that wifi support is in fact coming soon.

Years ago, I proposed a hack for SMP support: port RISC OS to run inside Xen. Run a master copy in dom0, and then you can multiple other "worker" instances under the master one. Needs some cleverness in communications between them, and the worker instances must cope with being run in arbitrary-sized windows... but hey, how hard could it be? :-D

Re: arm64 versions of OpenBSD (and likely FreeBSD) should work too

[Author here]

> for that matter FreeBSD's offerings.

Funnily enough that was the immediate response I got on Mastodon, too.

I need to refine my FreeBSD 14 skills on bare x86 metal a bit first, I think.

[Author here]

> It looks as though MX might have been a more supported option.

In my humble opinion, as a not particularly devout systemd-mild-disliker, MX is _streets_ ahead of Devuan (or Debian itself) in every imaginable way.

Re: Debian

"Right, that's bad. Okay, important safety tip. Thanks, Egon."