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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 31st, 2021

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  • I did an experiment where I used Distrobox for many apps not available on Debian. I installed an Arch distrobox and exported the packages. I found that it works great with simple programs, but I run into a few issues when using more complex programs. Jellyfin Media Player for example tended to have a memory leak and have a core dump on the desktop whenever it is closed. It uses twice as memory as the Flatpak for some reason. I had the same issue with Stremio which is also a video streaming app. For command line things it’s mostly fine. But this too can get tricky. I tried to use Neovim (Debian’s is a bit old) in the Arch distorbox. The issue is that if you need plugins that require some dependency with a given version then you have to also install those and export them which makes things messy. For example you may have a version of Nodejs on your Debian install but you’ll need to install Nodejs on the distorbox too and export it. It’s the same with many packages like that. You’ll run into some issues and waste time trying to figure out where is it coming from. Is it your machine or the distorbox? I ended up just building from source. Overall it’s a great project and might work for some software that you need. But it’s not something you can always rely on for everything. The app devs are not testing for that specific use case. It’s so great for testing and installing stuff and then destroying when you don’t need it anymore.



  • nobloat@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    8 months ago

    FOSS generally puts more pressure on people to write better and safer code, because you know everyone is going to look at it. Even when vulnerabilities are found, they are usually fixed so fast compared to the proprietary side. There are stories of people waiting 6 months for Microsoft to fix a vulnerability, while an Openssh or openssl issue is usually fixed in a few days.











  • nobloat@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    11 months ago

    It’s not even available in many countries. Even if it were, the price is steep especially in third world economies. It’s probably not that big of deal for many in the US but most people in third world countries would find it so hard to squeeze it into their budget.



  • Piracy makes up for some huge inequalities in the world. The prices for digital goods do not usually take into account the economies of certain regions. I live in Morocco and our money is really low compared to the dollar. 1 dollar is like 7 Dirhams. The average salary for a normal job is really low if you convert it to dollars. So services like Netflix and HBO would cost 10 times more if you factor in wages and conversion to dollars. Why should we pay that just because we live in another place ? Why do these services pretend to be global and yet they are enforcing US prices on the rest of the world. You can’t even speak of physical goods because Amazon doesn’t give a fuck about Africa. Books would cost 3 times their price in shipping and you have to wait a month or so, not to mention that there are limits on how much currency you spend internationally. The fees for an international card are so high also. In short, without piracy 90 percent of the world wouldn’t be able to partake in anything.



  • But why is up-to-date always good though?I get it if you actually need the new version but that’s rare though. There’s a reason that critical infrastructure relies on more stable, older and tested packages. In the industry and where the money actually is, older is generally seen as better and more mature. For example the whole drama of RedHat with Centos Stream happened because people don’t want to use upstream Centos Stream because it’s the testing ground for RHEL. I am at a stage where I prefer older packages. The new and shiny doesn’t mean it’s better.


  • Well, Arch is not inherently better, it depends on your needs. If you want up-to-date packages and don’t mind the do it yourself approach you’ll love Arch. I’ve used Arch for a few years and learned a lot from it. I love the minimalism. Now I switched to a minimal install of Sway on Debian because I just want a tried and tested stable system. I am at a point of my life where I want a really boring install. Instead of tinkering with the system I use it as a base to learn more on the server side, and learn more coding, etc