We’ve been using those on Linux for a very long time. They just work.

Shit. I’ve been on Debian for decades now. Maybe I’m just an old soul… Or I’m just lazy. I don’t even configure my DE anymore. The OS install of today will be wiped in no time, so it’s not worth being too attached.

I did a tour with OpenBSD about 2000-2004. It works just fine, with a much reduced ecosystem of pre built packages, just because of the quantity of devs around.

I saw Dragonfly when it started and I’m glad to hear it’s still going. The idea held a lot of promise.

It works fine for the job it’s designed to do. It does it in a significantly more monolithic manner than historic UNIX architectures and approaches (System V, BSD init, etc) did similar jobs.

It doesn’t suck from a “does it work perspective” in my eyes. Whether it’s a good long term approach given the monolithic nature binding more tools and services to a single framework should be a continued debate among the community.

If you don’t want to use it, then pick a distro that doesn’t use it. If you can’t find a distro that doesn’t use it, start one. If your distro gets popular than Systemd will be sidelined over time.

Historical References: X11/Xfree86/Wayland, telnet, MySQL/MariaDB, Linux/BSD kernels, etc.

You joke, but I did something like that. I NFS mounted a disk off my desktop to a RPi. I then made a swap file on the NFS file system.

I could then build a C++ project directly on the RPi because the build normally hit RAM limits. This was a 1st gen RPi, so it had 256MB RAM.

The build took forever (many days), but the program ran fine once built.

Very fun. We should make a debian package to install the manpage via apt.

I managed to stumble through a whole restaurant experience in German. Nothing amazing nor phenomenally gramatically complex, but the words came when needed. I’m very pleased.

Thank you for the suggested reading. I’ll give them a look.

I had my German B1.2 course exam. I haven’t been a student for 15 years, and I’d forgotten how nervous an exam can make me.

Did I pass? I don’t know yet. Maybe? Being in B1.2 was a stretch to begin with, as I tested to B1.1, but it wasn’t offered by my program this term. I either went with A2.2 (boring) or B1.2 (stretching). I went big and it helped a ton, but I don’t think I really reached a proficiency level that I’d consider B1.2 ready.

My general speaking and listening to German is quickly improving. If people don’t speak at a million kph I can usually get most of it.

My reading and more complex grammatical structures are improving quickly.

I need to finish reading some B1/B2 books and keep speaking in public. I can feel my skills building, so that’s a nice arc to be on.

My daily epiphany: the commenter here who showed me:

^z fg; command

I didn’t know you could append a command to fg and essentially chain to an already built process! Awesome.

I did not know about the fg; (next command)

That’s amazing! So cool.

From the old world of UNIX: Using UNIX is always a series of small epiphanies. You will keep finding new options, tools, ideas, and shell snippets that will continually expand your skills.

I’ve been using UNIX and then Linux since 1996. I find new little bits any time I go look. It’s a lifetime of curiosity awaiting for you.

I forget about the flatpack stuff. That’s a great point.

Nice. Sudo once, then run the shell until done. Much more elegant.

If you can run sudo without a password, you could do something like:

sudo apt update && sudo shutdown -h 5

The && operator will only execute the next instruction if the first returns a zero (no error) code upon completion.

Then just run that command about every 5 minutes and it’ll shut down once the install dishes, which releases the lock so apt upgrade can go (presuming apt upgrade needs the lock - I don’t remember if it does.)

Alternatively, you could ps auxw | grep for the pid of the upgrade. Then keep running a ps for that pid, and once you don’t see it, shutdown.

I definitely agree. I have the luxury of coming from an Electrical Engineering / Computer Engineering background. I did microcontroller programming, designed ALUs, and transistor level work before moving into CS.

Nothing helps you understand a computer better then working with a small microcontroller and building up from there.

Not well. Had some family hurdles crop up so the focus has been elsewhere. The scale of work is also reaching a fever pitch so I mostly just push that through instead of learning German.

I have noticed my ear is getting better. I’m more able to pick out words when people are talking and if they slow down a bit I’m usually able to track many pieces of conversations.

My tracking on train announcements is getting downright routine. Unless the speaker is really busted I can usually get it now. Too much time in train stations, I guess.

Having taught a computer science course on Operating Systems it’s even tough to teach a room full of CS undergrads what one is.

“Accidentally” my ass. In his life, few photos will be better remembered than this one.

Many of these same issues of creativity vs crafting vs the meaning of how things are made were covered in Diamond Age. It’s a wild, classic Stephenson novel, but it’s themes are being explored in the real world today.