Caretaker of DS8.ZONE. Free (Libre) Software enthusiast and promoter. Pronouns: any

Also /u/CaptainBeyondDS8 on reddit and CaptainBeyond on libera.chat.

  • 0 Posts
  • 12 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
Cake day: March 27th, 2021
  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zonetoFree and Open Source Software@beehaw.org•what's your current linux distro?
    2·
    5 months ago

    The most obvious difference going from Debian stable to GNU Guix is that Guix is a rolling release distro, not stable (in the Debian sense) at all.

    Package management is also very different as it’s fundamentally a source based distro, although sometimes the build servers can provide prebuilt packages if they’re available. Also, Guix has the concept of “profiles” which group sets of installed packages; typically, there is a system profile as well as a profile for each user, but users can also create their own separate profiles. This means that a user can install packages to their own profile without needing root permissions.

    Profile updates are done in an atomic manner, such that changing the set of installed packages (installing, updating, or removing a package) actually creates a new generation of the profile, and it’s possible to roll back to a previous generation if something breaks. This is true of the system as well as the user profile(s), of course. A profile generation can also be exported as a manifest, which can then be imported to create a profile generation on another system, allowing package management to be done in a declarative manner.

    Finally, Guix has a commitment to ship only free software, and uses linux-libre as its kernel. Debian has a clear separation between free and non-free components but does ship non-free software, including firmware blobs, and I believe as of recently the installer provides them by default. There are unofficial Guix channels (=repositories) that provide these things.

  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zonetoFree and Open Source Software@beehaw.org•what's your current linux distro?
    1·
    5 months ago

    Currently I run GNU Guix on my desktop, laptop, and servers. I like the dedication to software freedom and the way package management works. Before that I used Debian until 2019, Trisquel until 2014, and Ubuntu until around 2010. Debian and Trisquel are fine and I don’t have anything against them, I just like the Guix package manager more. I’ve used Xfce with all of these (and before then, GNOME 2). I set it up the way I like it and it never changes.

    I typically run LineageOS on my mobile devices, without microG or any proprietary apps. As I’ve said before my preferred OS would be some variant of GNU/Linux, preferably Guix as well, but LineageOS works well enough.

    I run OpenWRT on my router, and had a previous router than ran LibreCMC (a variant of OpenWRT using Linux-libre).

    Windows games are made for Windows so I prefer to use Windows for them. I don’t particularly want to turn GNU/Linux into Windows, I think it deserves better than that.

  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zonetoFree and Open Source Software@beehaw.org•What non-FOSS software have you been unable to quit?
    1·
    7 months ago

    A tool with fewer features that is harder to use is by definition an inferior tool.

    That’s only your opinion, not an objective truth, and I only partially agree with it. Having the most features is not as important as having just the right set of features, and there are anti-features to consider as well. Feature creep can actually impact the usability of a tool, so these two criteria are sometimes in contradiction.

    Ease of use is subjective and depends on the user, because users’ needs, ability, tastes, and concerns differ. Of course, I don’t think anyone deliberately chooses a tool because it is hard to use.

    I don’t agree that freeness is purely an ideological concern. I don’t think a tool that works against me, or imposes arbitrary restrictions on me is a good tool by any measure. A good tool doesn’t enshittify, or spy on its user, or refuse to work for arbitrary reasons. If a tool doesn’t work and you are legally not allowed to fix it (as in the printer which inspired the movement in the 1980s), it’s not a good tool. If a tool punishes you for something you didn’t even do (as BitKeeper did to the Linux developers) it’s not a good tool, even if it has the right features.

    I don’t tell you that your opinion is wrong, only that I don’t agree with it. We are told our concerns are invalid and don’t matter.

  • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zonetoFree and Open Source Software@beehaw.org•What non-FOSS software have you been unable to quit?
    17·
    7 months ago

    I don’t understand why we spend so much time praising proprietary software in these communities.

    As to your question, I have a separate Windows machine for gaming, but that’s it. I keep one foot in the free world and one in the proprietary. As for productivity tools I can’t think of a proprietary tool I “can’t quit” or that I would pick in favor of a free tool.

    Fans of proprietary software have this weird belief that free software users choose inferior tools for purist or idealist reasons. This is offensively ignorant. No one chooses bad tools on purpose; we just consider freedom to be part of the criteria of a good tool.