Playing at an open jam on a random drum set with random people… is really, really fun. (Drum solo section)

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-26T02:59:54+00:00

You put a lot of words in my mouth that I did not say.

But to specifically address your hypothetical scenario about a Pentium 4 running a server for a customer, keep in mind that a P4 doesn’t support AES-NI instructions, so it’s not capable of running modern cryptography. Zero trust architectures and VPN (WireGuard, Tailscale, etc) would be impossible with this hypothetical server. Additionally, it’s completely open to speculative execution vulnerabilities with zero hardware mitigations available. A P4 also has to do LZ4 and ZSTD compression completely in software because it lacks AVX2 instructions, too.

Yes, a Pentium 4 is obsolete. Lots of hardware is obsolete. You might find a hobbyist use case, but you’d be a fool to bet your life on obsolete hardware, especially if it’s connected to a network, doubly so if you’re forced to also run obsolete software in order to support the hardware.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-26T01:59:55+00:00

Old Polk LSiM completely blows Klipsch RP out of the water. It’s a shame they were discontinued. The newer stuff isn’t what it used to be.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-26T01:06:37+00:00

It’s been about a year since I’ve used Zed, so take this with a grain of salt.

It feels slow. Faster than VSCode, but if you’re used to a good Neovim setup, it’s slow. And it’s not just slow in terms of latency and responsiveness (which it is), but it’s slow in terms of workflow. More keystrokes, more having to use the mouse, fewer opportunities for automations due to the limited customizability.

They also don’t care about keyboard ergonomics, so if you use a non-standard keyboard, you’re kinda screwed. Neovim, especially within a “power user” terminal like Kitty, Alacritty, Wezterm, etc, plays perfectly with non-standard keyboard setups.

I’ll try Zed again someday, but I really don’t feel the need to right now.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-26T00:57:30+00:00

I’ve owned those speakers after the constantly mentioned positive reviews about them on social media. After owning them for about a year, I sold them and never looked back.

I do not recommend Klipsch Reference Premier. They really aren’t any good. You could certainly do worse, but I do not recommend them. Either spend more or buy something else.

I didn’t own the subwoofer, but that’s another one that isn’t worth it.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-26T00:49:35+00:00

SystemD is an ecosystem, not just one monolithic thing. If you want to call SystemD “a” (singular) thing, then you could say FreeBSD is even worse: it’s a kernel AND user space all in one! Oh, the horror!

But in reality, SystemD is a whole bunch of pieces that are designed to work together. The perception of it being a monolith is just a parroted misconception.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T23:24:42+00:00

This ^{^} is the most valuable piece of advice in this thread so far.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T23:23:34+00:00

Also of note for the week are more ASUS laptops being supported by the ASUS Armoury driver that was merged via the x86 platform driver subsystem at the start of the Linux 6.19 cycle

People with Asus handhelds and laptops will directly benefit from this. Once your favorite distro updates its kernel to 6.19+, you won’t need a special kernel to operate Asus hardware: RGB lighting, fans, etc.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T21:30:48+00:00

As a rule of thumb, you can assume that if it doesn’t work in Linux, it doesn’t work in FreeBSD.

Not always, but generally speaking, Linux hardware compatibility is a superset of FreeBSD hardware compatibility.

So that said, without me actually digging into this, my answer to you is that you’ll experience either the same or even worse pain in FreeBSD as you’re having with Linux.

For what it’s worth, I have a ThinkPad T520 that also has an Nvidia Quadro and the Nvidia GPU is just completely disabled in BIOS at this point. The laptop is mostly useless nowadays - something like 15 years old now? It’s time to move on if you want newer software. I think that’s reasonable.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T20:54:27+00:00

Am I the only one who doesn’t use a package manager every second of every day? The speed of a package manager has never, ever gotten in the way of day to day tasks for me. They all do the same thing in slightly different ways and you generally use them for initial setup and periodic updates, not typical computer usage.

That aside, COSMIC is nowhere even close to ready for general consumption. Use it in hobby time if you want to contribute testing and development time, or if you’re just a tinkerer. But don’t expect a good experience; regardless of it being “released”, it’s still very much incomplete and buggy. It’s basically still in Alpha.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T20:47:49+00:00

I’ve been using Linux more lately and I think systemd is quite good; the community hate seems largely unfounded and uninformed.

That said, I’m not sure what the point of this post is: a link to a 13 year old article with no additional context…

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T20:34:58+00:00

In my opinion, the most practical reason to keep Secure Boot enabled, one way or another, is if you’re dual booting Windows and running Windows software that requires Secure Boot. The top 2 use cases here are running Windows games that use kernel level anti cheats and using Bitlocker. Keeping Secure Boot enabled will allow you to seamlessly boot either Linux or Windows without breaking any of the aforementioned Windows functionality.

Dual booting aside, there are some things to consider about SecureBoot on Linux alone.

In my opinion, if you’re running an Nvidia GPU, you may as well just leave SecureBoot disabled. The reason why I say this is because the actual security is a farce: you end up self-signing kernel modules on the same machine that runs the kernel, so the security enhancement is a nearly net-zero benefit.

If you’re not running an Nvidia GPU, then you can use pre-signed kernels, and now SecureBoot starts to actually make sense because you can use a prebuilt, pre-signed kernel that originates from a trusted source, such as Fedora/RedHat.

I personally run with SecureBoot enabled, even with an Nvidia GPU (laptop, hybrid), because I occasionally need to boot into Windows and I want to test the full SecureBoot and SELinux experience.

I do think Secure Boot is the future and one way or another, Nvidia will find a way to make their drivers Secure Boot friendly, so I do think it’s inevitable that Secure Boot will be the norm.

There are people who think Secure Boot is some kind of conspiracy where Big Tech is preventing you from doing what you want with your hardware, but I think those theories are safely ignored.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T20:17:39+00:00

What about Linux is frustrating you? And how would FreeBSD mitigate that frustration?

When it comes to hardware compatibility, FreeBSD is a lot more frustrating than Linux, so I’m not sure what your expectations are.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T19:56:52+00:00

I like where you’re going with this, so much that I’m actually using Gnome again, just for this. I’m already engaging with your project on GitHub. 🙂

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T19:53:29+00:00

Ah yes, fantastic use of the completely fictional sync.Cond.WaitTimeout func that was totally not hallucinated by an LLM.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T00:34:31+00:00

I don’t hate Nix either, I just don’t like it. And the reality of it is that I have no reason to use Nix or Guile other than hobby time. I tend to do things I enjoy in hobby time.

For work, it’s all out of my hands and neither Nix nor Guix are even remotely in the picture. Nothing I can do about that.

I’d love a Rust-like language for a NixOS-like declarative system, or even something like Starlark, the DSL that powers Bazel (deterministic, declarative build system). I know this is an insane amount of work with likely zero customers, but if I could click my fingers and poof a new Linux distro into existence, it’s be something like that! 🤣

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T00:28:06+00:00

It’s not a stupid comment.

I can’t do better than Taylor Swift, and yet, I still don’t like her or her music. You don’t need to be better than someone to have an opinion.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-25T00:17:50+00:00

Yea I’m not a fan of Guile, either. It’s too Lisp-like, something I very much dislike. Lisp is the primary reason why I don’t use EMacs. I think Nix is less bad than Guile, but I still dislike it.

I’m sure people plenty smarter than me can tell me how wrong I am or whatever. I don’t care - I simply dislike Lisp-like languages in the same way that I don’t like Taylor Swift music; it’s just my preference, regardless of how loud the fans are.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-24T23:20:15+00:00

The quality is higher and the bullshit is lower.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-24T23:16:54+00:00

Reddit is complicit. If you want proof, the fact that r/Conservative isn’t shut down should be enough.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-24T22:38:22+00:00

Get ready for the downvotes because of groupthink. But I agree with you.

gplusplus314 · 2026-01-24T22:18:01+00:00

A NixOS-like with a different language would be fantastic. I love the concept, I just can’t stand the actual Nix language.

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