The article’s “valuing your time” argument is problematic in certain contexts. My brother has had so much trouble with his dual-boot (Windows and Linux). Yes, he could learn how to solve something in Linux every time a problem arises, but he also has to deliver his projects on time. Because of that, he mostly spends time on his Windows dual boot. Yeah, it sucks ethically and has its own pragmatic issues, but he has never had issues resolving dependencies or hunting down the most recent version that can actually be run in NixOS.

I don’t doubt these will become issues that will not be as problematic in the future, but right now my brother cannot use Linux reliably for his assignments.

Edit: My brother has tried what I use: Fedora and NixOS. He has also tried PopOS.

In Fedora, he found some of his software didn’t exist as .deb, and struggled to make .tar files work smoothly for him.

He tried NixOS afterward. He really liked the whole immutability thing, as well as the idea that apps would have their own dependencies.

His dependency problem happened in PopOS. If I remember correctly, it was a code editor that required a version of something that was different to what a package he used in his software was.

I think the order he tried was Fedora -> NixOS -> PopOS -> NixOS -> ? (Haven’t talked to him about it recently)

I can’t see how AI can’t be done in a privacy-respecting way [edit: note the double negative there]. The problem that worries me is performance. I have used texto-to-speech AI and it absolutely destroys my poor processors. I really hope there’s an efficient way of adding alt text, or of turning the feature off for users who don’t need it.

The way string of any material is woven should be durable. But plastic can be a magical material. It doesn’t cool when wet, regardless of whether it’s got fat on it (unlike wool, which requires lanolin). And its cheapness makes it readily available to billions of people.

To be clear, yes, we should avoid overproduction and overconsumption of plastic. Yes, we should research cheap ways of making durable and waterproof/still-warm-when-wet clothes that are biodegradable. Yes, we should require good filters in every washing machine and dryer so that we don’t get full of microplastics.

Ah. This makes sense! Thanks!

I’m not sure adblockers change the OS they report. Other tools I know for a fact do it.

Edit: However, as @[email protected] mentions, adblockers don’t have to change what OS is reported to change the overall statistics. They explain how in a comment below.

I think most of the criticism on Telegraph regarding how Matrix handles rooms and events are addressed by the work behind linearized matrix: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en&q=linearized+matrix+messaging&t=web

EDIT BEINGS HERE

So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded “enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.

This does not mean that it’s not problematic that their code is closed-source.

EDIT ENDS HERE

I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.

For one, it’s based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.

It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.

Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.

It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

Just in case OP doesn’t know, this whole text comes from someone else. Some people prefer using words other than GNU/Linux.

I’ve been daily driving it for six months now. I wish I would’ve know the Nix language well enough before jumping in to attempt declarative configurations. Not that it’s hard.

I have had issues that have had me temporarily try Pop or Debian, but dependency hell is real and the Nix community is wonderful. I have been able to solve every single one of my handful of problems in less than a day or two (sometimes in minutes) with the community.

Edit: oh yeah, and documentation is not great… Again, the community has been my source of answers to many questions.

As many others have said, it’s hard to imagine life without NixOS once you get the hang of it.

Same here. My issues atm are that NixOS is just too darn complicated sometimes… But that doesn’t mean stuff gets borked.

Can you explain how category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive? 😅

I think it improved by changing the HDMI card thingy and with the new processors.

If anything, the opposite is prone to happen

• Nix (OS, the package manager, and the language) having excellent and exhaustive documentation.
• It being so easy to use that my grandmother could use it. Heck, a GUI to handle packages would be amazing!

The out of date problem you mention is something Nix contemplates. As of a couple hours ago, if you try to install Etcher (Balena Etcher, that is), you will get a message saying there’s an out of date dependency: Electron.

You can still try to install End of Life packages, but you have to type an instruction the ‘compiler’ tells you to type out. In other words, you have to be deliberate about installing out of date dependencies.

The other problem I understood it as “if I declaratively do this and then imperatively do that, how do I keep track of it all?”. If that is indeed what you’re asking, you’re right. That’s a problem. That’s why I try to keep everything in the config.

I’ve been using Nix now for a couple of months and the configuration file has been a great friend. Sometimes I don’t know how to configure something and I get lost and worried, but the community has helped me to fix my problems- .

I believe shared dependencies are not duplicated.

I remember a Mastodon thread where this same issue was brought to the table. The thread talked about how before there were classes of bugs that would mess up RAM. Today, we eliminated a whole class of bugs by checking RAM. That is why our software is less snappy.

I wonder to what extent zero abstraction languages like Rust could make software much snappier by minimizing memory-related problems at compilation time rather than run time.

Huh. Interesting. Do you have a source to understand why he believes so?