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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Linux has two ways of drawing pictures, the old way (Xorg) and the new way (Wayland).

    The old way is like a giant box of crayons with the crayon sharpener built in. The box is all marked up, the sharpener is full of gunk, and a few crayons are melted together. Nobody really wants to touch the old box of crayons, although it does work for the most part, it’s a familiar box.

    The new way is like a smaller box of crayons. The clean sharpener isn’t built in but it is available nearby, although some people say it doesn’t work as good. A few crayons are missing, but are available in most cases, they’re just not in the box. Most people are working to improve the new box.

    If you’re using Linux, the new box of crayons is generally the better choice. It’s ok to stop using the old box.



  • See but I would argue that five different version numbers across five different operating systems is broken. (Ok two of them do match up.)

    Specifically the watchOS version is the important one that stands out. watchOS version 1 works with which version of macOS? Which version of iOS or iPadOS?

    Also when it comes time to end support for devices, how do you keep track? If Apple provides 5 years of updates, do you know if your phone is still supported?

    If my phone is running iOS 14, is that supported? Is that new? Is that old?

    The key thing to keep in mind is that the entirety of this ecosystem is based on yearly releases.


    Just for “fun” let’s look at Windows. The current version is 11. It was released in 2021. So I guess as long as I have Windows 11, I am up to date. But… That’s not true. Windows 11 does have a version number that’s not directly end user facing. That version is 24H2.

    Now the “24” is the year, that’s useful. Now what’s stupid is the “H2”. Because sitting here in June 2025 I would expect “25H1” to be released anytime now. But Microsoft only used the H1 once, about five years ago. Now “Window 11 version 24H2” is better SEO vs “Window 11 version 24”, so maybe that’s why they kept it.


  • How would you prefer they handle it?

    Just to look at macOS version history,

    The first public release was “Mac OS X 10.0”, this continued until “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion”. The “big cat” became part of the marketing name because the OS & version were a mouthful and throwing numbers around wasn’t helpful.

    We drop the “Mac” next year, then switch to mountains, but it’s not long before we reach, “OS X 10.10” aka “OS ten ten ten”.

    Well it wasn’t long before we simplified further and just said “macOS”, but then took a while before we dropped the “10”. Now we just get “macOS 15 Sequoia”.

    For nearly 18 years the Mac operating system had an unnecessary “10” that conveyed zero information.


  • It’s not a matter of biggest number, it’s a matter of consistency.

    They have five operating systems, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS.

    So currently we have macOS 15, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 & visionOS 2. That’s absolute confusion. Do I have the latest version? Dropping support for an older version, how many years ago was that?

    A version number should convey useful information, and the year it was released is useful information. Especially when major updates come every year.

    Edit: I forgot tvOS, also version 18. So six operating systems.



  • Pretty much. It was decided that tablets should be little laptops and not big phones. Phones got bigger, so tablets had to get bigger, plus because they were “laptops” they had to get bigger to support larger and larger keyboards. It’s really annoying.

    My phone used to be 4.7 inches, now it’s 6.7 inches. So my 7 inch tablet, long since dead, doesn’t make sense. So now my tablet is 10 inches and honestly it’s too big to be comfortable as a tablet.



  • AI as auto complete is exactly what I was thinking.

    I’ve seen lots of cases where AI appears as an auto complete suggestion and I can just hit <TAB> and it finishes the current line. It’s essentially filling in the boilerplate text. Heck in some cases it isn’t even right, but it’s close enough that I can change a few values.

    I also want to point out that this isn’t particularly new technology. This existed before AI. It has perhaps expanded more, but it isn’t a revolutionary improvement, it’s an incremental one. So when we talk about usefulness, I think it is actually more useful.

    Now if it could do all the magic planning and thinking, that would be more useful, but we’re not there yet.



  • Knoppix. I didn’t see it listed yet so I had to chime in.

    I saw it and was confused that computers could run something that wasn’t Windows and wasn’t Mac. Then I was handed a Knoppix LiveCD and suddenly MY computer was Linux. Absolutely blew my mind.

    I then explored Mandrake (now Mandrivia?) for a while but it never really stuck.

    A few years later Ubuntu was handing out LivdCDs to everyone running Warty Warthog and soon after window managers started to use Beryl (?) which let you have a fancy cube desktop. Absolutely pointless but that’s how it all started.




  • Basically, yes.

    If I were an alien and you walked up to me and said, “Good Morning”, and I looked around and everyone else said “Good Morning”, I would respond with "Good Morning ". I don’t know what is “Good” or “Morning”, but I can pretend I do with the correct response.

    In this example “Grok” has no context on what is going on in the background. Musk may have done nothing. Musk may have altered the data sets heavily. However the most popular response, based on what everyone else is saying, is that he did modify the data. So now it looks like he did, because that’s what everyone else said.

    This is why these tools have issues with facts. If 1 + 1 = 3, and everyone says that 1 + 1 = 3, then it assumes 1 + 1 = 3.


  • As you mentioned elsewhere it’s encrypted.

    Take a look at /etc/crypttab and creating and adding a key file that can unlock the drive.

    Essentially your additional SSD will have both a password and a file containing a password that can unlock the drive. When you unlock your root filesystem (I’m guessing at boot) it will then have the key file that can unlock the SSD.

    Something like cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/pathtossd --new-keyfile /etc/newpassword

    Systemd might make this easier to setup nowadays.

    Edit: Also, yes, the password to unlock your SSD is just sitting in a file in your root drive. Be sure to restrict it to only be readable by root.


  • Oh I completely agree. There is a reason it took me a while and careful observation before I figured it out.

    I assume it’s part of, or started as, a little password dance. Something like, “abc123DEF”.

    Or maybe it just comes from the idea that only a single key can be pressed at a time?

    Either way I completely agree, insane.