Didn't Sony also use a modified form of BSD for the PS4?
Didn't Sony also use a modified form of BSD for the PS4?
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Yes. BSD can be used commercially, as long as the license requirements remain intact.
Not to mention, that I thought I'd heard MS were tinkering with a Linux-based Windows, as far back as the 2000's. Besides which, I don't think it's unheard of for software companies to have boxes running other OSes for programming and research purposes.
At the same time all the distributions can work against linux on the commerical world - it can be an utter mess when you're trying to sort out dependencies for an application.
Perhaps we need to a few more distributions to follow the LTS approach of Ubuntu.
Apple uses FreeBSD Kernel (based on Berkley Unix) and hired a guy named Jordan Hubbard from the FreeBSD Project to lead the development combined with a Mach kernel just as it's ancestor NexSTEP did.
Still a version of Unix, whatever it is, which means it's not outside the realm of possibility for MS to do something similar.
Another old machine video... Interesting beast from the 70s
I have a triple boot monstrosity -- Windows 10 on one SSD, Mint and Manjaro on another -- with all three OSes sharing Document/Music/Pictures folders on the Mint/Manjaro drive. I have documentation on how to rebuild stuff on my Linuxes, and when I figured out how to connect my Linuxes to the office VPN, so I can work remotely in Linux, I wrote myself a manual that's longer than short stories I've sold for money. I keep going back and forth on whether to give that manual to IT. Maybe someone else at work wants to work out of Linux, too...
In short, I feel your pain.
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So you hit your head on your desk, asking your computer "why? why?! why aren't you just giving public access to this folder like I asked you?! Damn you, Linux Torvalds and Bill Gates!" too?I have a triple boot monstrosity -- Windows 10 on one SSD, Mint and Manjaro on another -- with all three OSes sharing Document/Music/Pictures folders on the Mint/Manjaro drive. I have documentation on how to rebuild stuff on my Linuxes, and when I figured out how to connect my Linuxes to the office VPN, so I can work remotely in Linux, I wrote myself a manual that's longer than short stories I've sold for money. I keep going back and forth on whether to give that manual to IT. Maybe someone else at work wants to work out of Linux, too...
In short, I feel your pain.
You're closer than you think!
When my company went remote in March 2020, they gave us Windows and Mac instructions for getting our computers at home connected to work and sent us on our way. The office VPN uses Microsoft's SSTP protocol. Getting that connected from my then-Windows 7 machine wasn't difficult at all. How hard could it be to get Mint connected? I started doing the research. Okay, so I'm going to need these plugins, there's instructions for Ubuntu/Mint, I can do this...
I could not do this.
Eventually, I resigned myself to doing CMS work, which was accessible outside of the network from Mint.
Then we locked down the CMS. So, now I really did have to get Mint connected to the VPN if I wanted to do any any work from Linux.
I got close. Close enough that the two-factor app on my phone pinged, but not close enough that okaying the two-factor would make the connection.
So, when I built the triple-headed hydra -- the Windows 7 machine finally gave up the ghost after a decade -- I decided to get serious about it. So I asked IT. Surely, in two and a half years, someone had done it. Someone had VPNed in with Linux.
Apparently not! They had no advice at all.
Well, suddenly my litte problem became a challenge!
I studied the old instructions. I studied Wndows Networking pretty closely. I figured out some things needed to be set.
So, with a pretty clean install of Mint 21 and the SSTP packages installed, I was going to do this. I was going to connect my Linux install to a Windows VPN.
Yup. Boom. Two-factor pinged. I okayed the connection, and I connected.
The key was turning off IPv6 in the VPN connection in Linux. If I didn't, it would connect enough to ping... and then drop. There's something in the Linux networking protocols that doesn't handle the network shift well if IPv6 is on.
My Manjaro uses KDE (and the LCARS DE), and the KDE implementation of the SSTP packages doesn't expose the setting to turn off IPv6. You have to edit the nmconnection file directly, or create the whole connection from the command line.
That's what takes up pages of my documentation. Besides the screenshots, I explain to myself the command lines and the way to edit nmconnection and the freerdp command lines I use and why. I can set up a connection and pull up my desktop about as long as it would take to set up the connection in Windows -- less than five minutes -- but I have it all written down in case I forget.
But yeah, I titled at that windmill a long time before I could get Torvalds and Gates to talk.
I worked for Payless ShoeSource in the 90s when I was in college. The back office computers were PS/2s. They had style. I'm pretty sure we used Model 50s.True. Our keyboarding classes had the IBM PS/2s (I mentioned them before). For anyone else curious, they looked like this:
Except it had two disk drives (you had the boot disk in one drive and the program disk in the other), and the lettered keycaps on the keyboard were all missing, and all you could see were gray buttons. I loved those damn computers. I remember seeing them for the first time and saying "wow, two disk drives!"
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Oh my GOODNESS I wouldn't have the patience for that.You're closer than you think!
When my company went remote in March 2020, they gave us Windows and Mac instructions for getting our computers at home connected to work and sent us on our way. The office VPN uses Microsoft's SSTP protocol. Getting that connected from my then-Windows 7 machine wasn't difficult at all. How hard could it be to get Mint connected? I started doing the research. Okay, so I'm going to need these plugins, there's instructions for Ubuntu/Mint, I can do this...
I could not do this.
Eventually, I resigned myself to doing CMS work, which was accessible outside of the network from Mint.
Then we locked down the CMS. So, now I really did have to get Mint connected to the VPN if I wanted to do any any work from Linux.
I got close. Close enough that the two-factor app on my phone pinged, but not close enough that okaying the two-factor would make the connection.
So, when I built the triple-headed hydra -- the Windows 7 machine finally gave up the ghost after a decade -- I decided to get serious about it. So I asked IT. Surely, in two and a half years, someone had done it. Someone had VPNed in with Linux.
Apparently not! They had no advice at all.
Well, suddenly my litte problem became a challenge!
I studied the old instructions. I studied Wndows Networking pretty closely. I figured out some things needed to be set.
So, with a pretty clean install of Mint 21 and the SSTP packages installed, I was going to do this. I was going to connect my Linux install to a Windows VPN.
Yup. Boom. Two-factor pinged. I okayed the connection, and I connected.
The key was turning off IPv6 in the VPN connection in Linux. If I didn't, it would connect enough to ping... and then drop. There's something in the Linux networking protocols that doesn't handle the network shift well if IPv6 is on.
My Manjaro uses KDE (and the LCARS DE), and the KDE implementation of the SSTP packages doesn't expose the setting to turn off IPv6. You have to edit the nmconnection file directly, or create the whole connection from the command line.
That's what takes up pages of my documentation. Besides the screenshots, I explain to myself the command lines and the way to edit nmconnection and the freerdp command lines I use and why. I can set up a connection and pull up my desktop about as long as it would take to set up the connection in Windows -- less than five minutes -- but I have it all written down in case I forget.
But yeah, I titled at that windmill a long time before I could get Torvalds and Gates to talk.
I worked for Payless ShoeSource in the 90s when I was in college. The back office computers were PS/2s. They had style. I'm pretty sure we used Model 50s.
When I was younger? Yeah, I would have dug right into it, taking down each problem as I went. These days, if my UI glitches, I get a panic attack thinking I might have to do something.
Also, yeah, the PS/2s had so much style. I wanted one so badly at the time. Honestly, I still do.
It sort of tracked a trajectory in March 2020 of "I'm going to do this because it'll be a cool thing to do when I'm at home" to "Well, it is what is" in 2021 to, finally, in September 2022 when I finally buckled down and got it to work, "Goddammit, I'm smarter than this! This can be done!"
It wasn't like I had any great affection for LInux when I started. Yes, I've kept a Linus partition on my PC since 2008 (Ubuntu 8.04 was the first I tried, IIRC) and I eventually gravitated to Mint for various reasons, but I never really did anything with it. It was there. I'd do digital art restoration in GIMP in my Mint install, which I could do in Windows just as well, but it gave me an excuse to boot up Linux, y'know. But the casual indifference also made me haphazard in updating my distro, and every so often (every 18-24 months or so) I'd blank it and reinstall fresh. In a way, the pandemic gave me a reason to start using it as a working environment. True, I couldn't do the bulk of my work, but I could so some work, so I'd plan out my days by what I could do in which environment -- these things I can do offline entirely, these things only need the CMS so I can do them in Mint, these things require remote desktop access so I have to do those in Windows. Since I figured out the VPN problem, now I have whole days where my only interaction with Windows is inside my remote desktop on Mint. I will never be able to ditch Windows entirely -- I have too much custom written VBA code for Office -- but I also feel freer because I don't need it for everything.
And, y'know, if the VPN connection breaks because IT does something, it breaks and I'm okay with that. I flew too close to the sun, but at least I can say I flew at all.
I had a panic attack a few months because Nemo (the Cinnamon file manager) wasn't opening. I kept clicking on the icon, and nothing.
It was because I booted up with my phone plugged in and hadn't switched it from "Charge" to "File Transfer," so the file manager wasn't sure if the phone was mountable or not.
I learned: "Okay, plug phone in after I boot up and log in, and Nemo is fine."
I saw one in a charity shop maybe two years ago, but they couldn't tell me if it worked and I wasn't going to pay over a hundred dollars for machine that might not even work. Still, I was tempted.
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I prefer Linux to the point where I trashed my Windows dual boot because I was using Windows so rarely it was dead weight. Plus, I despise Microsoft's invasive software, and so I moved my family's accounts over to my Linux install and wiped it. No more dealing with that, and while there are some issues on my OS, it's vastly preferable to Windows.It sort of tracked a trajectory in March 2020 of "I'm going to do this because it'll be a cool thing to do when I'm at home" to "Well, it is what is" in 2021 to, finally, in September 2022 when I finally buckled down and got it to work, "Goddammit, I'm smarter than this! This can be done!"
It wasn't like I had any great affection for LInux when I started. Yes, I've kept a Linus partition on my PC since 2008 (Ubuntu 8.04 was the first I tried, IIRC) and I eventually gravitated to Mint for various reasons, but I never really did anything with it. It was there. I'd do digital art restoration in GIMP in my Mint install, which I could do in Windows just as well, but it gave me an excuse to boot up Linux, y'know. But the casual indifference also made me haphazard in updating my distro, and every so often (every 18-24 months or so) I'd blank it and reinstall fresh. In a way, the pandemic gave me a reason to start using it as a working environment. True, I couldn't do the bulk of my work, but I could so some work, so I'd plan out my days by what I could do in which environment -- these things I can do offline entirely, these things only need the CMS so I can do them in Mint, these things require remote desktop access so I have to do those in Windows. Since I figured out the VPN problem, now I have whole days where my only interaction with Windows is inside my remote desktop on Mint. I will never be able to ditch Windows entirely -- I have too much custom written VBA code for Office -- but I also feel freer because I don't need it for everything.
And, y'know, if the VPN connection breaks because IT does something, it breaks and I'm okay with that. I flew too close to the sun, but at least I can say I flew at all.
That said, I completely get why you can't just switch. I can honestly thank the devs at Steam who have made it so easily to play games and apps not made for Linux. They've done fantastic work. All of my games on Steam play on my Linux install thanks to Proton compatibility. Hundreds of games.
I do miss Paintshop Pro, though. Krita and GIMP are good, but I am still so used to Paintshop Pro's setup, as I used it for 25 years.
Oh yes, Cinnamon is a terrific DE, but they're still working out kinks, which is perfectly fine. No DE is perfect. I use Gnome 43, having switched from KDE because of my multi-monitor setup. KDE's a great DE, too, but it's still wonky with some of my preferences.I had a panic attack a few months because Nemo (the Cinnamon file manager) wasn't opening. I kept clicking on the icon, and nothing.
It was because I booted up with my phone plugged in and hadn't switched it from "Charge" to "File Transfer," so the file manager wasn't sure if the phone was mountable or not.
I learned: "Okay, plug phone in after I boot up and log in, and Nemo is fine."
Yeah, the prices are absurd. You go on ebay and they want $400 - $800 for one.
Oh my GOODNESS I wouldn't have the patience for that.
When I was younger? Yeah, I would have dug right into it, taking down each problem as I went. These days, if my UI glitches, I get a panic attack thinking I might have to do something.
Also, yeah, the PS/2s had so much style. I wanted one so badly at the time. Honestly, I still do.
I guess that Model 30's won't be too expensive, thing is that they're only 8086 or 80286 at best.. the higher end ones are probably going to be expensive.
I generally really like IBM stuff except one machine... I own a IBM Netfinity 3000 server which is the spawn of satan when it comes to OS's, it will run Win2K or Xubuntu 6.06 LTS nothing else, also it needs IBM memory, nothing else works and will leave the machine beeping and throwing a hissy fit at you.
Specs:
Overdesigned IBM enclosure with an overdesigned IBM mainboard which is the home of a Intel Pentium III 650Mhz, it has 128MB RAM which I can't expand.. tried between 15 and 20 DIMMS on it but nope, no, nein, niente, njet, nee..
It has a lovely Adaptec AHA 2940 ultra wide SCSI adaptor which is connected to a Quantum Viking II 4.5GB HDD
It is running Xubuntu 6.06 LTS, haven't looked at this machine in ages, might see if it stil boots.
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Oof! I'd have tossed that thing overboard ages ago.
Reminds me of those HP Kayaks I used to try and rehabilitate back in the day.
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Eh, I can't say anything. If someone offered me a Power Mac 5200, I'd probably take it. Those things were great.LOL I named it "TEH EVIL" and I'll keep it, it does work and it's just so nice and weird..
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Probably, and it would be hell for me to spend time replacing all of those capacitors, but for me the unibody design is half the attraction. I'd imagine, or at least I hope, that part of the reason the prices on eBay are so high is because they've done the work of addressing those issues, and are essentially presenting the buyer with a "like new" 40 year old computer ready to go, which I can't argue with, honestly.
Indeed. The Commodore 8032 is cool as fuck, you can't change my mind.And yeah.. I like strange computers too..
Oh! In more modern news, KDE 5.27 is being released today. They've added a whole bunch of updates, upgrades, and bug fixes, and it looks pretty damn good!
GNOME will be releasing 44 next month, and it will FINALLY come with the updated file picker that allows images to be viewable without having to either guess or look for a little side window preview. I can't wait for that, as I moved to GNOME as my DE last month and am really enjoying it.
Personally, I can't wait until Fedora 38/39, where we're supposed to get DNF5. If they can get that out the door, and it works half as well as they say it will, then I will have no more actual quibbles with Fedora.
The old IBM keyboards were really nice. Clicky and a pleasure to type on
Man, you have so much more patience than I do. It reminds me of a situation I ran into several years ago, one which I have to keep reminding myself years later whenever it reoccurs.
First off, I'll say that I used to be a big fan of Logitech and their peripherals, but because of market stagnation and a general lack of competition, they haven't felt the need to improve on their products for decades. They pretty much have a monopoly on mainstream PC gaming peripherals, and why they were allowed to merge with Saitek years ago is beyond me. There's a lack of choice in certain products.
Couple this with the fact that from W10 onwards, there hasn't been very good support for peripherals, especially older ones, but as I've said, sometimes there's no choice, and products don't get updated. And you get a situation where Windows will tell you to check with the manufacturer, but the manufacturer will tell you to check with the OS, vice versa. But what happens when you hit a situation that needs a deep dive? Is it any wonder users easily get frustrated these days? And good luck with the Chatbot support.
In my case, I like to use a Logitech F710 for my gaming needs. It's a wireless gamepad. But plug it in, and it won't get recognized. Don't think Windows even has drivers for it. Getting it to search for drivers ends with nothing. In the control panel, it gets listed as a Logitech Rumblepad which is an early version of their wired gamepad, but trying to use it won't do anything. Any normal user would likely be frustrated enough to give up. And remember, this is Logitech's supposedly premium controller, one that hasn't been updated in its design in at least over a decade, and is still being sold and supposedly supported by Logitech. Sounds like a Catch-22. It kind of is, because I heard but couldn't find out directly from their support pages mind you, that you had to install their software. Well, I personally don't like installing software I that I don't really need for just one thing.
I ended up finding a workaround that works great! The trick is to use Microsoft's drivers for their own controllers, namely their wireless gamepad, and then and only then does the controller get correctly identified as the F710. But you'd never know this by browsing Logitech's support. It's something they just don't tell you, maybe because they want people using the software. But why is it this way out of the box? It feels like a dumb decision that could lead people to simply return it or stop using it.
But the second part of this is that sometimes after a Windows Update, the controller will stop working. This again can lead to lots of frustration if you don't realize what's actually going on. In the past, I thought I'd have to uninstall the controller and go through the earlier steps of getting it to use Microsoft's drivers again, only to lead to the same non-responsive results, which lead to puzzlement. I put the gamepad away for many months, as I couldn't figure out how to get it working again. But curiosity made me do some extensive searching months later, to find out that Logitech had a small piece of software (wireless connectivity utility, I believe) that essentially re-paired the controller with the wireless dongle. So, I tried that, and I couldn't believe it, but it worked. So simple, yet for some reason Logitech doesn't mention this on their support pages.
