There's an old saying: "Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows. BSD users use BSD because they love Unix." Obviously this is not true for every individual user, but I think it describes a trend or pattern.
There's an old saying: "Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows. BSD users use BSD because they love Unix." Obviously this is not true for every individual user, but I think it describes a trend or pattern.
Being able to run your own instance with any policies you want is a strength of lemmy.
How do you define "stable"?
A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.
break a lot of backwards compatibility or radically change the current way of doing things
Plan 9. We can still have textual interfaces without emulating the ancient use of teletypewriters.
"Hello, support? How do I get through the Gnomish Mines in Nethack?"
People will say "use this editor" or "use that window manager", but honestly it's just personal preference. There's no award for using ed to edit files, and almost anything you can do with one distro you can do with any other distro. You might get an urge to distrohop and compile the kernel, and that's fine, but imho far more useful is to learn how pipes work and what you can do with regular expressions. A tutorial for bash is always useful.
People use ed because they want an editor. They don't want an emacsitor or vimitor. Those aren't even words.
Long time ago, I did several villages where I grew up. This was before satellite images covered that area, so I did it the old fashioned way with a GPS, cycling up and down every single street, writing down name and surface in a notebook. Walked around every field, every patch of forest, creek, etc. It took years, but I've literally been everywhere in those villages. It was fun :) When aerial images came I could do private buildings too.
Have you thought about the implications and consequences if we start banning non-violent expressions of opinions because someone else might find it disrespectful?
While I do agree that the website is bad, nowadays the main iso includes non-free firmware, and it's the same installer for all DEs.
https://www.maketecheasier.com/assets/uploads/2020/08/debian-install-set-password.png.webp
Third paragraph. I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, I also installed Debian a few times without seeing it.
I see. I asked because "stable" means different things in different distros. In Debian it means that interfaces and functionality in one version doesn't change. If I set up a script that interacts with the system in various ways, parsing output, using certain binaries in certain ways etc, I should be able to trust that it works the same year after year with upgrades within the same release. To some people this is important, to some people it isn't.
I've used debian stable for a decade now. The things I care about are not dependent on new features, so I'm not in a hurry to upgrade to newer versions. I'm happy with security updates and a system that is reliable above all.
If you can understand written english well, there's translation/internationalization that isn't too scary. What is your native language?
Imho, the argument doesn't translate to countries. In Iran, the government has a monopoly on governing, and most people can't just hop over to another country with different laws. In effect, you can be stuck with a system you don't like.
In the digital world, and Lemmy in particular, the same is not true. If you have a computer, you can "start a new country" with your own rules. No one is forced to join, and you can't force anyone else to do anything. As a whole, Lemmy allows all opinions. The problem is central power, and free federated software is a solution.
This reminds me of a talk by Rob Pike that was made 23 years ago: https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html
The original vi has not been maintained for many years. Most distributions, including Debian, Fedora, etc, use a version of Vim which (mostly) is similar to how Vi was.
From Fedoras wiki:
"On Fedora, Vim (specifically the vim-minimal package) is also used to provide /bin/vi. This vi command provides no syntax highlighting for opened files, by default, just like the original vi editor. The vim-minimal package comes pre-installed on Fedora."
From the vim-tiny package description on Debian:
"This package contains a minimal version of Vim compiled with no GUI and a small subset of features. This package's sole purpose is to provide the vi binary for base installations."
Same for me, sort of. Started with Ubuntu in 2007 (I still feel nostalgic about the login drum "bu-du-bup" sound), then arch for a couple of years, all the tiling wms, endless polishing of dotfiles. I mainly used the computer to modify how I used the computer. Then I found things I liked doing, like typesetting with TeX, and after that I just wanted a system that let me do that without spending time on the system itself. Since then I've used Debian.
Yes, or one of the forks.
I think many linux users go through a similar journey. In the beginning you feel a need to tweak everything manually, you take pride in it being difficult and you polish your dotfiles. Modifying the OS itself is 90% of what you use the computer for. You have strong opinions on tiling window managers. But then that becomes kind of old when you need your computer for actual tasks and work. You want to work on your actual projects, not configure irssi or ncmpcpp. The joy of tinkering with the OS itself transforms into seeing it as a tool to do interesting things with. Still, now you have an idea of how to fix things, where to look, but configuring Xorg is not the fun part of using a computer.
I agree with that. Big players have too much power. In theory there's nothing that stops us from self-hosting e-mail, but in practice today it takes a lot to make it work and be accepted by the big players. I think free speech is desirable and wish that it was the norm. The best we can do is to use services that align with that ideal, and make sure that the system itself is built so that it is open for anyone to be in control over who they interact with. Even if that means someone choosing to not interact with certain others. As long as it's easy to use an alternative when there are restrictions.
You're describing that you want something that isn't the standard installer, with the ability to do offline installs. A new user with no clue about anything would probably just use the top link and run the graphic installer, ending up with the same system as if he/she had downloaded the dvd version. Is your criticism that internet is a requirement for the standard installer?
The installer says this when it asks you to type a root password. I don't know why, but for some reason the information is both right there and easy to miss.
It is, they have the same text.
The option to not set a root password and instead let the regular user use sudo seems to be mentioned in the installer for the first time around 2007, so it's been there for a while.
The things I've read (admittedly mostly from the OpenBSD camp) from BSD devs, they seem to not worry about corporations building from their source that much, instead they actively try to get rid of GPL code because it isn't permissive enough for their standards.
Theo wrote "GPL fans said the great problem we would face is that companies would take our BSD code, modify it, and not give back. Nope—the great problem we face is that people would wrap the GPL around our code, and lock us out in the same way that these supposed companies would lock us out. Just like the Linux community, we have many companies giving us code back, all the time.
But once the code is GPL'd, we cannot get it back."
Would a normie Windows user know how to install Windows on a computer without OS? Of course, this hypothetical user doesn't have to, because he/she probably bought a computer with Windows pre-installed. Is there any OS in the world that is easy to install if you don't know what an iso file is? Which measurement are we using when the claim is that Debian is difficult to install? What is an easy install?
Nowadays vi is just a symlink to vim.tiny, so you're actually running vim (in vi mode).
Where would you place Stalin in that compass?
I see, so then there are two options: 1) Make the full offline installer the default, or 2) put all options side by side and explain the difference.
The first option isn't good because any default will not fit everyone, there will always be someone looking for what isn't the default. The second option would just be confusing for the person who knows nothing about computers. "I have to read a wall of text to decide what to download? This is too much!"
I mean, there's no way to win here. Is there any OS avaliable that can have one installer that fits exactly everyone, or a way to have a list to choose from if the user knows nothing about the choices?
Also OpenBSD use different versions, I'm guessing their vi is the original since it can't handle utf-8. And iirc ex(1) is also a vim variant on Linux. I've never met anyone who actually uses ex though. ed(1) I think is just GNU ed. I am not certain about these versions though.
At my work they wanted better security, and made the rule of minimum 12 characters, must include all sorts of numbers, special characters, etc, no previously used password and it must be changed every month, 3 attempts then the account is locked and you have to call IT.
The result was that people wrote their passwords on post-its on the screen, so it led to worse security overall and they had ro relax the rules.
I think it's a valid concern in this case.
There is something "clunky" about the website, but to be fair, the first page has a big button to download the installer, which leads to a page where the first link is the version most people want, the second link leads to instructions how to get it onto a usb (or cd/dvd) for linux/windows/mac, and clearly visible a link to all the other versions of the installer that people might want, with explanations what they are for.
For me it's hard to put my finger on why the website is bad, all the information is there. I do agree that it just somehow feels bad, but I don't understand why.
I am not trying to gatekeep. It could be that I'm blind to why debian is hard to install, I think it's about the same as ubuntu or mint or fedora etc. Which means I'm not the right person to improve this area. I do want to lower the thresholds, and currently I'm helping out with that in other areas. This discussion started with the claim that it was hard to find the iso, which I disagree with, and now I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about.
As an experiment you could go to debian.org and see if you find the download link.
The wave of the reddit protests is over, now lemmy must grow on its own merits rather than being "not reddit".