The Fedora Project has released Fedora 28, a significant update that supports something it shunned for years: third-party repositories of non-free apps. These third-party repositories allow you to easily install Chrome and Steam on Fedora 28, but for some they may come at the sacrifice of Fedora's long-standing ideals. Fedora …

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Friday 4th May 2018 08:38 GMT Anonymous Coward

In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.

Frankly, I find this discussion absurd. If you're really free, you're free to release your code as you like, and install any application you like.

Linux is trying to twist the words "free" and "freedom" in a way I don't like. It's an authoritarian/religious way, you're free as long as you bound yourself into a very strict set of rules and never challenge them, and shun everything else as evil, because you need to transform the world and reach the Promised Land of Open Source.

No nVidia cards? Are you kidding?

That's why Linux as a desktop system is still below 5% of the market - because desktop application very rarely can be the side effect of larger business like server ones could.

29 38 Reply
1. Friday 4th May 2018 10:23 GMT ibmalone
  
  Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
  
  Well, you've got this straw man back to front then, because even Fedora have now relented and allowed these non-free packages in. And they were always very clear what they meant in this context: things that they were not legally allowed to redistribute as source.
  
  Personally, as a Linux user, I'm not particularly concerned what 'market' share the Linux desktop has, so long as it's large enough to be sustainable. I realise the people who make the distros may sometimes wish it was bigger, but as a tool I use I'd prefer it if they didn't make changes to chase after people whose main requirement is the simplest push-button way of loading Word possible at the cost of functionality I need.
  
  I sort of appreciated Fedora's stance on non-free, it came from RedHat, and meant they tried to provide a completely open source, unencumbered, system from the ground up. I did always enable the rpmfusion repos on my personal systems too, particularly as I live in an area where some of the things that were not re-distributable under US law were fine, but the focus of the project is the point. For most of the past two decades if you were using mp3 on a Linux system in the USA you were probably infringing the patents, that's not the fault of the Linux crowd. RedHat's response to that promoted codecs like Vorbis and Theora, they didn't entirely succeed, but they did drive the technology forwards, so WebM is still with us.
  
  Lastly, every machine in this office that runs linux (the majority) has an nvidia card, as does my home box.
  
  Edit: if I have any particular worry about this development it's that it might sideline the great work that RPMFusion do. I haven't been following fedora-dev properly for a while, but I'd hope if they're going down this road that RPMFusion may eventually be included in the list of things you can turn on. That'll probably never happen though, because there are real legal issues there, and distros that include some of those things are either based elsewhere or take a 'see no evil' approach to legality.
  
  23 3 Reply
  1. Sunday 6th May 2018 12:32 GMT Jonathan Dieter
    
    Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
    
    The nvidia repository is actually provided by RPM Fusion, so I don't think you need to worry too much about them being sidelined.
    
    1 0 Reply
2. Friday 4th May 2018 15:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
  
  It’s not ‘Linux’ doing that it’s the free software fruitcakes who insist on it, open source has entirely different aims. I use only Linux but I don’t refuse to use or install proprietary software.
  
  Most Linux users don’t care about or listen to what Stallman says.
  
  22 1 Reply
  1. Friday 4th May 2018 16:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    @AC - Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
    
    You don't know what you're talking about.
    
    Nvidia for instance does not prohibit you from installing their drivers, they prohibit you from distributing their software. This is according to Stallman why their software can not be considered free. If you would have read Fedora justifications for not including non-free software you would not be posting such nonsense.
    
    Sheesh! Linux fruitcakes!
    
    9 5 Reply
  2. Saturday 5th May 2018 16:01 GMT keithpeter
    
    Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
    
    "Most Linux users don’t care about or listen to what Stallman says."
    
    Android, ChromeOS, no-name teles and routers, data centres and embedded devices, HPC clusters and the supercollider. You are certain to be right on statistical grounds.
    
    Not so sure about those making an active choice to install a Linux based OS on a laptop or desktop.
    
    0 2 Reply
3. Friday 4th May 2018 18:00 GMT keithpeter
  
  Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
  
  "In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman."
  
  Have a look at the *BSD based operating systems, permissive licence and nice design. My personal favourite is OpenBSD. No chance of nvidia though.
  
  "That's why Linux as a desktop system is still below 5% of the market"
  
  Nope. Most people just use what the device came with. And if it is a PC or laptop it probably came with Windows.
  
  12 0 Reply
4. Friday 4th May 2018 18:51 GMT JohnFen
  
  Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
  
  "If you're really free, you're free to release your code as you like, and install any application you like."
  
  True. And you are, as is Fedora. I'm unaware of anyone who was trying to forcibly prevent them from releasing a distro that's exactly as they want it to be.
  
  However, freedom is a multi-way street. You are free to make any sort of distro you want, and others are equally free to criticize the decisions you've made.
  
  10 0 Reply
5. Sunday 6th May 2018 18:56 GMT bombastic bob
  
  Re: In Linux, "freedom" means you have no freedom but to bow to Stallman.
  
  "If you're really free, you're free to release your code as you like, and install any application you like."
  
  True.
  
  As for the topic line:
  
  you have no freedom but to bow to ~~Stallman~~ Poettering.
  
  fixed it for ya.
  
  5 2 Reply
Friday 4th May 2018 08:42 GMT Anonymous Coward

A differente audience

"t feels like Fedora is chasing a different audience all the sudden,"

"I admin many a CentOS server."

I can't help seeing a link between those two sentences - could it be that Fedora is looking for a less ideologically pure audience, but one that can actually help pay its bills (via the use of non-free-as-in-free-beer RHEL)?

7 1 Reply
1. Friday 4th May 2018 10:38 GMT ibmalone
  
  Re: A differente audience
  
  Ideological purity wasn't really the RedHat / Fedora approach, it was more paying attention to legal and licensing issues. Not sure how they've overcome the nvidia issue; the nvidia license is a good example, it used to say you couldn't redistribute it. Is it "ideological purity" to look at that license and say "okay we shouldn't redistribute it then."? If there was an ideological core it was that you should be able to compile the system yourself, which remains one of the main selling points of Linux.
  
  Can't see this getting them more RHEL business though, the people using Fedora as a desktop who don't know how to add a repo for nvidia support or want to run Steam don't seem particularly likely to want to buy RHEL support.
  
  15 0 Reply
2. Sunday 6th May 2018 19:03 GMT bombastic bob
  
  Re: A differente audience
  
  smells a lot like Ubuntu, looks a lot like Unity.
  
  Unless it comes with Mate I'm not even going to download the thing - I don't like using rpm packages anyway, tried/tested CentOS and wasn't all that impressed with it. I got used to dpkg/apt a long time ago and I can stick with it.
  
  But at least the screenshots weren't all "2D FLATSO". I appreciate THAT much.
  
  Ubu has non-free packages. I guess this may have driven RH to do the same.
  
  But I believe in "true freedom" so I welcome the [mis-named] "non-free" package repo, particularly when it's 'non-free' as defined by STALLMAN and his hippie/commie fanbois. Stallman's fascist approach to GPL is not relevant any more. Who _CARES_ if the 'GNU List' of "approval" doesn't include Fedora? What matters is what the users/customers think.
  
  And right now, RH "gets it". Well, minus the whole systemd and gome-3-ness...
  
  0 3 Reply
Friday 4th May 2018 08:59 GMT fluffybunnyuk

For those for whom ./configure && make is too complex.

Its just another distro thinking its bigger and more important than what it is. It'll be reined in like ubuntu and unity eventually.

1 30 Reply
1. Friday 4th May 2018 09:49 GMT WallMeerkat
  
  "For those for whom ./configure && make is too complex."
  
  You'd be surprised. People want a computer that just works, and don't care if it is Windows / Linux / Mac, so long as they can launch a familiar browser.
  
  We have work experience kids in, ones who want to be in the software industry. Our first half day is usually spent teaching them CLI commands in a terminal window.
  
  23 0 Reply
  1. Friday 4th May 2018 10:21 GMT big_D
    
    I administer a large fleet of Linux and Windows servers. Apart from the Linux terminal server, all the Linux boxes are headless and have no GUI installed. To be honest, administering the systems with the CLI is second nature and a lot of Windows configuration is now quicker / easier with PowerShell, once you have a few scripts set up.
    
    I still prefer the GUI for many tasks. But my fellow admin only does the Linux side and only uses a CLI, even his Jabber chat client runs in a text console. He says how crap Windows is, because you have to use a mouse to click checkboxes to set options, as opposed to writing them out long hand with vi in a configuration file... For him having a list of options and checking off the ones you want is wrong, it is much better to have to remember arcane commands in the config files.
    
    But for the average user an easy to use desktop environment, they don't care about how the system works underneath. They just want to get their work done the quickest and simplest way possible. Anything that can help to make their lives easier is going to make the distro more attractive to them and increase your audience.
    
    Linux is like the German Reinheitsgebot (the regulation for brewing beer, only water, hops, malt and yeast can be used), for those interested in brewing, it is great. For those that just want to drink, it is irrelevant, as long as it tastes good. If you want to add fruit juice or something else to change the flavour, then it is no longer beer... For the drinker, they don't care, if it tastes good. The same goes for computer operating systems, most people don't care about what is underneath, as long as they can complete the task at hand with as little fuss and frustration as possible.
    
    21 3 Reply
    1. Friday 4th May 2018 15:23 GMT GIRZiM
      
      Re: Reinheitsgebot
      
      I all but sobbed the day that was rescinded - if want flavoured beer, I can get a Kriek or whatever, but where can I go now to get a pure, unadulterated beer rather than beer+E numbers?
      
      3 1 Reply
      1. Saturday 5th May 2018 06:42 GMT jake
        
        Re: Reinheitsgebot
        
        "where can I go now to get a pure, unadulterated beer"
        
        Make your own. People have been brewing at home for thousands of years. It's not exactly rocket science. Here's a good place to get started.
        
        2 2 Reply
        
        Saturday 5th May 2018 15:42 GMT GIRZiM
        
        Re: Make your own.
        
        Yeah, that's all well and good when I'm at home.
        
        How about when I'm not though?
        
        I can't carry two to four litres of beer around with me every day in case I spontaneously decide to have a drink with friends/family/colleagues. And, even if did, I couldn't keep it cold. Nor could I drink it on the premises if my companions want a drink and we go to a bar/pub. And if I can't carry enough for myself just on the off-chance, what hope is there of me carrying enough extra for everyone else who might turn up, so that we don't need to go to a bar/pub?
        
        Your solution is better than nothing, yes; sadly, however, it's not a universal solution to the problem that repealing the Reinheitsgebot has introduced - namely, that I can no longer rely on anyone else's beer to be pure.
        
        3 0 Reply
        
        Saturday 5th May 2018 19:16 GMT jake
        
        Re: Make your own.
        
        If they don't carry good beer (or worse, only carry BMC products), I don't drink beer. And let 'em know that I don't drink crap beer. So do many of my friends. And a lot of other people. End result? Many more places here in Sonoma/Napa/Mendocino/Lake counties now carry palatable brews. The ones that don't? Either I don't venture there, or I drink water. It's not exactly a problem, unless you feel that you have to have beer. Note that "all my friends are drinking beer, so I must drink beer too!" isn't a good answer, unless you're a frat boy ... and even then it's not a good answer, not really.
        
        1 1 Reply
        
        Thursday 17th May 2018 09:32 GMT GIRZiM
        
        Re: Make your own.
        
        I don't mind what my friends drink, I want to drink beer - proper beer. But, as it happens, so do my friends - we like beer. And, if everywhere sells the same tired old beer-flavoured E-numbers then the choice of "don't go there then" or "just drink water" is not really a solution, is it?
        
        Unfortunately, simplistic != simple.
        
        0 0 Reply
        
        Thursday 17th May 2018 17:14 GMT jake
        
        Re: Make your own.
        
        "And, if everywhere sells the same tired old beer-flavoured E-numbers then the choice of "don't go there then" or "just drink water" is not really a solution, is it?"
        
        Of course it is! Are they holding a gun to your heads, forcing you to go there and purchase their swill? Or are you CHOOSING to go there and purchase their swill? Shirley the proverbial "thinking man" would say to himself "fuck that, I can do better!" and then proceed to do same.
        
        Get your friends together and form a homebrew club. The cost of admission is not all that high if you share the costs. Make beer together. Drink beer together. Save money drinking EXACTLY the beer you want to drink. It's how I started. But be careful, it's addictive. I'm up to 6,000 gallons once or twice per month ...
        
        0 1 Reply
        
        Saturday 19th May 2018 15:35 GMT GIRZiM
        
        Re: Make your own.
        
        Are they holding a gun to your heads, forcing you to go there and purchase their swill? Or are you CHOOSING to go there and purchase their swill? Shirley the proverbial "thinking man" would say to himself "fuck that, I can do better!" and then proceed to do same.
        
        What?
        
        Of course it's a choice. But that's meaningless when the choice is junkfood or living in a mobile haute cuisine kitchen. I'm afraid that, in the real world, the fantasy that it's a free market and everyone can offer what they like is just that: a fantasy; try opening a 'free house' pub and see how quickly the major breweries put you out of business by engaging in a price war and taking a hit you can't afford yourself.
        
        Your argument falls down the moment you substitute the word 'beer' with something that you personally would like to be able to avail yourself of but don't have the inclination to make for yourself. Let's see how inclined you are to say "just make your own, nobody's holding a gun to your head" when you're away from home, want to go out to eat with friends but not one restaurant serves the kind of food any of you like, just junkfood.
        
        No, nobody is obliging me to go to a pub/bar and drink beer I don't like, but that's not the point.
        
        Get your friends together and form a homebrew club. The cost of admission is not all that high if you share the costs. Make beer together. Drink beer together. Save money drinking EXACTLY the beer you want to drink. It's how I started. But be careful, it's addictive. I'm up to 6,000 gallons once or twice per month ...
        
        That's an option I could avail myself of in addition to the other one, yes. It still does't resolve the problem of when I'm not at home with access to my own beer. Nor does it solve the problem when I'm with people who want to go out and drink beer, not travel all the way back to my home to drink my beer.
        
        Really, your approach is far too simplistic.
        
        0 0 Reply
        
        Monday 21st May 2018 09:18 GMT jake
        
        Re: Make your own.
        
        If you're that determined to drink swill, who am I to argue? Enjoy.
        
        0 2 Reply
      2. Sunday 6th May 2018 06:19 GMT big_D
        
        Re: Reinheitsgebot
        
        @GIRZiM many of the traditional breweries are still brewing using the traditional methods.
        
        I was drinking Flensberger yesterday and that is 20% malt from the coast and water and hops. No Es or other additives...
        
        1 0 Reply
        
        Thursday 17th May 2018 09:37 GMT GIRZiM
        
        Re: Flensburger
        
        That's good to know, but it's no guarantee that things will stay that way.
        
        Heidelberger Schlossquell, for instance, is pisswater. Many moons ago, my favourite beer was Valentins helles Hefeweizen. Then, one day, Schlossquell got the licence to brew it. The next day, Valetins was pisswater and just couldn't drink it any more.
        
        *sigh*
        
        0 0 Reply
2. Friday 4th May 2018 10:28 GMT ibmalone
  
  There is no way you run an up to date desktop using ./configure and make, a server maybe, but even then I really doubt you build every library on it. You'd spend most of the time compiling and the rest of it making small fixes to build configurations. It's hundreds of times more efficient to use a packaging system and have those tasks taken care of once and by somebody else.
  
  18 0 Reply
  1. Friday 4th May 2018 13:44 GMT fluffybunnyuk
    
    I run my own linux. Not LFS , my own toolchain setup,my own unique setup, its binary incompatible with linux distros so you cant infect it by trying to run your own binary on it. It doesnt run JIT of any sort either.
    
    Yes I have built every library on it. im running kde 5.10 on kernel 4.16. So its hardly out of date either.Builds are executed by script file, and i can rebuild a system in less than 12 hours from the toolchain up.Usually its just a package and thats anything from 1 minute to 3 hours(firefox). I dont care about efficiency, its internet facing so i do worry more about security.
    
    4 9 Reply
    1. Friday 4th May 2018 15:34 GMT GIRZiM
      
      Re: Not LFS
      
      Technically it's not LFS, no.
      
      But "I run [...] my own toolchain setup" is LFS in all but name, isn't it really?
      
      Unless of course you factor in the whole "its binary incompatible with linux distros" which is a bit unclear, really.
      
      Do you differentiate between linux and GNU/linux?
      
      If not then do you mean it is binary incompatible with the kernel - in which case, wtf, how does it even work? If so, in what way is it binary incompatible with the GNU aspect and how on earth do you manage to keep up with every update to ls, cp, mv, etc.? That's gotta be a nightmare to maintain!
      
      FreeBSD is 'binary incompatible' with linux and yet it can still run unmodified linux binaries without virtualisation or even emulation per se - are you doing something similar?
      
      3 0 Reply
      1. Friday 4th May 2018 19:50 GMT fluffybunnyuk
        
        Re: Not LFS
        
        No because unlike LFS I use a hardened toolchain, and I integrate advisories into the patching process. I also get to choose whether i want systemd or init. Those are the flexible choices i like.
        
        How is my system binary incompatible? Read the binutils documentation. It makes it quite clear ways in which you can make a system binary incompatible with any pre-built linux distro. I have selectively chosen option/s that meet my requirements. I've built thousands of toolchains over the years, eventually you hit on the sweet spot of what you desire.
        
        The kernel is built using the incompatibility built into the toolchain, therefore I end up with a binary file that is unrecognised by any other system unless you select similar options in your toolchain.
        
        The simple truth is you dont need every update to everything, what you need is a stable set of source code, and to patch the advisories as you see fit. Programs arnt generally an issue, nor standalone libraries its when you get to a clib vulnerability thats when the dependency chain gets to the point a quick system recompile is less hassle. Generally due to hardening the system usually passes tests like return to C vulnerabilities.
        
        The biggest problem I had was getting rid of X Windows , too much legacy code, too much junk kicking about in it, always made it a nightmare reading back and forth through all the dependencies code. I moved to wayland as soon as it was available and resolved most of my security issues doing that.
        
        I maintain a source code folder, a patch folder, and a custom libraries folder for replacement memcpy etc.
        
        Nowadays I can compile a whole system in a few hours (a linux base system in 1 hour), and I dont even notice it running in the background on -j16.
        
        3 1 Reply
        
        Friday 4th May 2018 20:41 GMT GIRZiM
        
        Re: Not LFS
        
        So, it's an HLFS (sort of)?
        
        I'll take a look at the binutils docs - thanks for the pointer.
        
        What immediately springs to mind as a potential concern, however, is incompatibilities that arise due to upstream development that relies upon hardcoded values, offsets, etc. - drivers and firmware in particular.
        
        Also, keeping up-to-date with all the CVEs for standard elements is probably fine if you're on the kernel devs' mailing list but what about all the external elements and apps - your in-box must take some serious management, no?
        
        I'm of two minds vis a vis systemd: on the one hand I find its monolithic mission creep disturbing but, on the other, the 'nspawn' function allows me to pivot to a sort of second-stage initramfs that lets me to use lvm on dm-cypt without the usual limitation to the pool size - boot an encrypted system that then mounts an image containing a standard lvm schema that maps encrypted devices, so you can add as many additional encrypted devices as you like at runtime, save changes, shutdown and protect your lvm schema with encryption too! I haven't found a way to do this with a init so, despite my misgivings about eggs, baskets and single points of failure, it has a very big plus going for it as far as I'm concerned.
        
        I haven't been paying much attention for the last two years for various reasons, so my last knowledge of Wayland was that it was still the future - no-one but Canonical was giving it sufficient development support for it to be anything more last time I looked and Ubuntu is not my distro of choice; not even as a base from which to spin. Iirc, however, it seemed a bit like systemd to me, insofar as you ended up with some hybridised frankenWM whereby apps controlled their own window management without reference to anything else, thus doing more than should be within their remit as apps - which struck me as a bit dubious security-wise and also to pose a potential danger of runaway threads using up resources like a logic bomb. I assume you're going to tell me I needn't fret but I'd be happier with a pointer to some good documentation on Wayland, if it's all the same to you ; )
        
        1 0 Reply
  2. Friday 4th May 2018 14:52 GMT Alistair
    
    @ibmalone:
    
    ----> Gentoo!
    
    3 0 Reply
  3. Saturday 5th May 2018 16:33 GMT handleoclast
    
    Make vs package manager
    
    @ibmalone
    
    There is no way you run an up to date desktop using ./configure and make, a server maybe, but even then I really doubt you build every library on it.
    
    No, I wouldn't build applications individually on a server. Especially not on a server. Fifteen years ago, yes, because back then packages didn't handle common use cases. When RPM won't give you apache with everything you need, and not even in a form where you can add the modules, then you have no option but to build from source. But that was back then, this is now.
    
    The big problem with building applications from source is that you then have to track all the bugs in every application and its dependencies. Because if you don't you end up with security holes that never get patched. That is a lot of effort. You have to maintain a dependency list so that if a bug is found in X you know that you have to rebuild Y and Z, and it's a very big list. Only it gets a lot more complicated than that. There are a lot of tools you use infrequently to the extent that you forget about them until you need them, but you have to ensure they're up to date too.
    
    It's too much work to build everything from scratch and keep it up to date. It's the keeping up to date part that's hard, not the initial build. These days it takes a hell of a lot to justify (to me) installing something by building it from scratch rather than using a package manager, because that's just fashioning a rod for my own back.
    
    3 0 Reply
    1. Sunday 6th May 2018 06:22 GMT big_D
      
      Re: Make vs package manager
      
      @handleoclast we use Gentoo on many of our servers, with everything built up from scratch... That said, that is built up from source repositories, not sourcing from individual projects and having to track down dependencies ourselves.
      
      That said, a Debian is much quicker and easier to set up, if we need to test something quickly or for things like the terminal server, where you can't take bits of it offline for hours on end.
      
      1 0 Reply
Friday 4th May 2018 09:02 GMT Tigra 07

Don't want non-free software? Don't install it. Some of us like the choice though

38 0 Reply
Friday 4th May 2018 09:34 GMT Tom 38

Linux tip: Avoid Nvidia graphics cards if possible

Yeah, who likes everything functioning exactly as the manufacturer intended, with perfect performance, zero glitches and perfect hardware video decoding.

18 3 Reply
1. Friday 4th May 2018 17:24 GMT thames
  
  I have an AMD APU in the PC I am typing this on (CPU and GPU in one chip package). Before that I had always used NVidia graphics cards.
  
  For my next PC I would definitely choose an AMD APU again. I have had zero problems with it in several years of use. It's fast, glitch-free, and reliable, as are the open-source drivers used with it by default (I'm using Ubuntu).
  
  In contrast I always had some problems with NVidia graphics cards used with multiple Linux distros, especially when using the proprietary drivers.
  
  Considering the AMP APU comes with CPU and GPU in the same chip package for considerably less money than I would have paid for a comparable CPU plus separate graphics card, it is pretty difficult to justify anything else for typical desktop applications.
  
  I don't play video games so I can't speak to that field of use. I use mine for software development, full screen video playback, and web browsing. I have no complaints whatsoever about AMD APUs in my applications.
  
  8 0 Reply
Friday 4th May 2018 09:39 GMT TrevorH

> Linux tip: Avoid Nvidia graphics cards if possible

Really? That may have been true about 10 years ago but these days they pretty much just work. Besides, the main alternative would be AMD and theirs are far far worse.

12 3 Reply
1. Friday 4th May 2018 10:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Really? I bought a RX580 last year - Debian 9.1 or some such install - just worked - I had to do nothing extra to get it working with 3d acceleration and such.
  
  So yeah - nvidia can enjoy the landfil.
  
  3 3 Reply
  1. Friday 4th May 2018 10:24 GMT big_D
    
    How times have changed. I can remember getting an Acer Penium M laptop with ATi Radeon X800 graphics. None of the distributions would even boot to a VESA boot screen, let alone run the installer. In the end I managed to do a plain text install and then had to download the proprietary ATi drivers and manually install those, before it would boot - and I had to wait nearly 6 months after I bought the laptop, before the drivers were made available...
    
    3 0 Reply
2. Friday 4th May 2018 15:35 GMT Gene Cash
  
  > Linux tip: Avoid Nvidia graphics cards if possible
  
  Hm. My GTX-1060 and Debian drivers would disagree. It works just fine in Kerbal Space Program.
  
  Granted, they did break xrandr in the latest release, if you're turning off/on monitors.
  
  But then I wouldn't have to turn monitors off/on if all my ill-behaved Java apps didn't shit their pants at the sight of more than one monitor.
  
  1 0 Reply
3. Friday 4th May 2018 15:37 GMT GIRZiM
  
  Re: Besides, the main alternative would be AMD and theirs are far far worse.
  
  On the other hand, in my experience at least, they last longer - all the Nvidia cards I've had have burned out within two years, whereas the AMD cards kept going.
  
  1 1 Reply
4. Saturday 5th May 2018 17:36 GMT Dazed and Confused
  
  > Linux tip: Avoid Nvidia graphics cards if possible
  
  Back in the late 90s the Nvidia Linux drivers were way ahead of their Windows ones.
  
  I used to dual boot my laptop, most of the stuff I was forced to use for work was Windows only, but when I was able to reboot and come up in Linux the screen was just so much nicer I often had other engineers stopping by and asking how I managed to get things like fonts displayed that nicely.
  
  0 1 Reply
Friday 4th May 2018 09:44 GMT alain williams

The Mate spin

Gnome has long been unuseable. I'll download the spin that uses the Mate desktop over the weekend.

9 0 Reply
1. Friday 4th May 2018 17:04 GMT joma0711
  
  Re: The Mate spin
  
  Indeed - I prefer Cinnamon, but only just,m the last time I downloaded a mate spin it was pretty good too :-)
  
  What is it with Gnome 3? Are they _really_ still trying to follow the Win8.1 paradigm?
  
  4 1 Reply
Friday 4th May 2018 10:21 GMT Spudley

That problem with stable distros providing a fixed version of everything is the biggest bugbear I have with using Linux as a platform over Windows.

I like that most of the software on my box is stable well maintained, but there are some applications for which I absolutely need the features in a newer version. Most of the time it's possible to install the newer version if you need it, but it almost always involves a lot more effort, and relying on third party repos that you may or may not want to trust.

This Modules feature sounds like it fixes that problem for me. I will be very very happy when this feature rolls out to Centos (and Debian too...? we can hope, can't we?).

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1. Friday 4th May 2018 10:28 GMT big_D
  
  Yeah, I was trying to create Metaploitable 3 on a Debian Stretch system last week. First add the external VirtualBox distro, then install vagrant from the repo, then copy a compiled binary for packer over (so I put that set-up in a VM!!). Only VB can't run 64-bit VMs, if it is running under VB, so I spun up a Stretch under Hyper-V to run VB in 64-bit mode...
  
  Anyway, after about 2 hours, the whole thing went tits-up... It turns out that the version of vagrant in Debian Stretch doesn't work with the version of VirtualBox for Stretch, so I had to add a repository from Hashi and update to the latest version and re-run the creation process again...
  
  3 1 Reply
  1. Friday 4th May 2018 10:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Anyway, after about 2 hours, the whole thing went tits-up... It turns out that the version of vagrant in Debian Stretch doesn't work with the version of VirtualBox for Stretch, so I had to add a repository from Hashi and update to the latest version and re-run the creation process again...
    
    This kind of thing really annoys me. Distros' curation of packages is a kinda promise that it should all work, and it all gets messy when it doesn't.
    
    This kind of cross-package version dependency is painful enough to manage as an ordinary user on platforms like Windows, where at least it's generally piss easy to install / uninstall any software you want. They have little hope of resolving them on most Linuxes
    
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    1. Friday 4th May 2018 17:54 GMT keithpeter
      
      "This kind of thing really annoys me. Distros' curation of packages is a kinda promise that it should all work, and it all gets messy when it doesn't."
      
      Agree.
      
      That is why I use Slackware. No promises, and no extensive modifications from upstream.
      
      Void linux is similar if you prefer the rolling distribution model (but their BDFL has gone awol so fork soon I guess).
      
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      1. Friday 4th May 2018 21:47 GMT JohnFen
        
        I switched away from Slackware years ago, because distros were doing a decent job and saving me a ton of work. But over the past couple of years, distros have also been exacting a price for that in the form of reduced ability to stray from Their Preferred Builds, and I've been seriously considering moving back to Slackware.
        
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2. Friday 4th May 2018 10:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  The Modules thing just underlines the major problem in the Linux world; too many different ways of distributing software. It sucks, it has always sucked, and no one seems at all interested in fixing that. Modules might help in the RPM world, but what about the DEB world?
  
  It is ludicrous to have a large number of different ways of distributing software on Linux when all the distros ship kernels with identical system calling interfaces. It's like they're saying, "if you can install it, it will run, but don't expect me to help you install it!"
  
  The Python community has made the same mistakes - people are now being actively put off using Python because it's hard to make pip / wheel / whatever installations work on platforms that people actually want to use (Windows, Mac). This is about the only thing keeping Mathworks in business against the onslaught of PyLab et al; their installers work.
  
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