dottedmag

It is answered at the end of my blog post:

> I don’t care about anything that’s not packaged by the distribution

> This is totally fine. Just note that you are using a niche OS with a limited set of applications available.

Even though in case of Nixpkgs "a limited set" is quite large, it does not include every application imaginable.

It is answered at the end of my blog post:

> I don’t care about anything that’s not packaged by the distribution

> This is totally fine. Just note that you are using a niche OS with a limited set of applications available.

Yes, Nixpkgs is large, but it does not package every piece of software out there, and you either at mercy of distribution maintainers to keep it packaged, or do it yourself. There is no way to disintermediate you and application developers.

FHS makes it more similar, but not compatible.

I'll quote from my blog post linked above:

> Different distributions make different choices, and therefore they are closely related operating systems, but not a single OS. Even Linux syscall interface subtly changes from distribution to distribution, as they pick and choose options to build their kernels.

> Every niche Linux distribution that does not follow the interface of a larger one is a unique OS, closely related but not compatible with other Linux OSes. This means the applications have to be ported.

> Application developers have to choose what targets their applications support. With Linux distributions being just a blip on the graph of operating systems popularity, the application developers may not invest significant amount of resources into porting and testing.

Basically, NixOS = zero QA effort from application developer -> nothing works.

Yes, that's what I meant.

> Using VS Code Remote SSH on NixOS systems

This is the main of issue with Nix and other niche distributions: they are new operating systems, with their set of file layouts, package managers, and even syscall variations.

Linux ecosystem is awfully fragmented. If you ever want to use any software outside of your not-very-well-walled-garden provided by distribution authors, you have to hope your operating system (that is, distro) is sufficiently similar to one of few distros software authors have built and QAed their software on.

I have written at length about it here: https://dottedmag.net/blog/linux-is-not-os/

I wish for a system that:

1. provides declarative configuration.

2. allows for easy local patching.

3. is ABI-compatible with a major distro.

Alas. Fedora Bluesilver delivers 1 and 3. Gentoo provides 2. NixOS provides 1 and 3.

This expedition gives us a peek at the future life of habitats outside of Earth. It makes one very thankful for the planetary environment we live in.

Рапира was provided (IIRC in ROM) with «Агат» computer, and then seems to have died the death of other Soviet programming languages, being replaced by Western imports.

Here's the scanned copy of ПП-БЭСМ book, in Russian: http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaindex.asp?lang=1&did=...

From the ToC it seems to be a complete description of the language.

Originally it was ПП-БЭСМ, «программирующая программа».

Ershov's archive: http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaindex.asp?lang=1&gid=...

I have one complaint about Ignition: its builtin file download functionality is too limited:

- there is a limited amount of retries (5?), so a network hiccup can easily cause the download to fail

- no control over which responses are fatal, so if you boot a VM with a config that references a URL that's still 404 due to async nature of something, then only a single attempt is made.

The company I work for uses Flatcar exclusively, but we don't use config chaining due to these limitations, and we have moved all file downloads to the shell scripts embedded into the config.

To the fellow ADHDers out there: the Pomodoro timer is not what you think it is!

Until I got diagnosed, I thought Pomodoro to be "keep focused for 30 minutes, do not context-switch, do not get distracted" timer.

After I got diagnosed (thankfully a mild case) and started taking medications, the use of Pomodoro switched to "don't sit more than half an hour focused on one task without standing up, streching and getting some tea" mode.

You can use this phase switch to your advantage, to measure the degree of ADHDness and efficacy of medication.

Have you got the precision of the regular mouse with this trackball?

I have tried a number of trackballs, and haven't been able to reach the precision of a regular mouse from any — after a week of usage of each of several trackballs I only got to the convenience/precision of trackpoint or bad touchpad.

Moving in straight lines, predictable directions and moving just a few pixels was the biggest issue.

This comes with its own set of problems though: I've done something similar and the mechanical stress from difference of temperatures caused the motherboard to crack.

How to find these boring problems? Every time I look at a boring problem in tech there is a pretty okayish solution, so I'm discouraged to even try to make something, as I know that okayish solution will be even better when I get mine to work.

There is one issue not mentioned in the article: authors of "old" tech quite often abandon it while developing a fancy new version, so the choice is not the imaginary one between old and new, the choice is real between abandoned and not-yet-ready.

Abandonment would not be a problem in a stable environment (see, Clojure libraries last touched in 2014 don't need any maintenance, and old Go libraries usually need just a bit of touch-up), but in a chaotic environment of most other languages abandoned library bitrots immediately.

> It's just that somehow techies seem to have gotten this meme into their heads that an unpatched life isn't worth living.

Do you wish to hear the endless stream of CVE numbers that allow remote exploitation, including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module vulnerabilities that don't even require an active Internet connection?

Have you ever tried to expose a new server to the Internet and watched the endless barrage of probing requests coming seemingly within seconds?

Have you been a target of DDoS coming from unpatched appliances and modems?

The only place for an unpatched phone is offline, within Farady cage.

Very nice piece of software, unfortunately Microsoft didn't port it to Mac.

I'm not affiliated with Bun either, however the my advice would be to freeze the Zig dependency, and treat Zig upgrade like you would treat any library update: do it explicitly.

The general gist of "yes, but" comments in this thread and in the post itself is that not every application works.

This is true and real, and we as a community should stop saying "yeah, it's a weird distro". We should look at it and say "Alpine (and Gentoo, and Nix, and Arch, ...) is a separate OS". Closely related to the OSes of other Linux distributions, but still separate, because of a different ABI and API.

I have written about it here: https://dottedmag.net/blog/linux-is-not-os/

It took 2 years to find out that a potential vulnerability actually exists. There's a lot of potential vulnerabilities that may or may not actually be exploitable.

For static binaries "crane append" + "crane push" eliminate the need for "docker build".

crane: https://github.com/google/go-containerregistry/blob/main/cmd...

This is so similar to BASIC on 8-bit microcomputers: easy to understand, immediate, without fluff.

Looks like it depends on the local regulatory agency.

I have never had a spam SMS or call in Norway, while on Malta it's a regular occurrence, thought not as bad as described by US folks.

It looks like an additional tool and a new remote service to talk to. Are there any CIs that don't support editable variables on scopes larger than a build?

The article talks about GH Actions, they have org/repo/env variables.

Even Jenkins has variables usable from the build.

Static binaries.

Cosmopolitan libc for poly-OS static binaries.

Amuzingly, this 80286-powered website is still up despite being on a front page of HN.

It requires discipline and good review practices to consistently use either marketing or technical identifiers in any given layer, including UI and API.

I do. In my current project there is a rule: if marketing touches it, it's not a name, it's a label.

Starting from the code repository and down to the variables names, only technical identifiers are treated as stable.

I'm going through it right now, refactoring https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk

honk, zonk, honker, dunk, xonk... the list goes on. This is supposed to be ActivityPub server.

Fun. Not.

I assumed it's an editor for Web that can run on m68k