Level1Techs Forums

level1: > That’s exactly what “Linux” is. It’s the kernel and everything that gets packaged with it… Every distro is “Linux”. Currently a diverse ecosystem that some people seem hell-bent on homogenising and turning into a mono-culture. And there it is folks - the mask slipped. Claiming that Linux is “the kernel and everything that gets packaged with it” instantly nukes any pretense of being the elite systems purist you’ve been cosplaying this whole thread. Linux is strictly the kernel. Period. You’ve spent pages arrogantly lecturing people about “normies” and “dumbed-down slop,” only to expose that you don’t even understand the architectural boundary between the kernel and the userland. It is pure, unfiltered projection. The reason Linux isn’t turning into a “monoculture” is the exact separation you apparently don’t grasp: because the kernel doesn’t dictate userland policy, distros remain free to build whatever stack they want. This is what happens when someone cares more about winning internet arguments and setting semantic traps than actually understanding the tech. You’re so desperate to lord superiority over everyone else that you tripped over the most basic definition in the entire ecosystem. Stop acting the part of the grizzled Unix guru to farm forum clout. It’s completely fine to learn from others and admit you don’t know everything, but trying to lecture people on system architecture when you don’t even know what Linux actually is just destroyed whatever credibility you had left.

An already extensive list that i see many valid points in. the first three are the ones where i see it differently. I don’t get what you have against UIs following common and proven patterns to improve interaction and usability for everyone. That includes disabled and impaired people. Not just childish and primitive gorillas. Or allow (good) touchscreen usage. I am there with you if i can’t navigate through it cleanly with a keyboard. Even with gnome, i remember being able to to do that. But my last gnome experience is back a while, things might have changed Now SystemD is not a monolyth, period. And you still have alternatives so you can opt out partially or fully. How well depends on the alternatives, not exaxctly systemd. lastly, immutability and containarization. I simply think that times are over where you could blanket trust applications from any source. With recent supply chain attacks, it is becoming obvious that the less access something has, the better you are protected from that thing being taken over. Having an immutable system means that it can’t be hijacked either. Modern and evolving Threats need modern and evolving answers. I would not be surprised if we even see “antivirus” for linux become a really common thing. Not in the invasive kind of windows but more in line of behavior. Does the application behave weirdly? Is it trying to break set boundaries? Etc etc.

This thread stopped being an actual technical discussion a while ago. It’s pretty obvious at this point that @level1 and @Fabel aren’t here to build better tools or solve real problems but instead are just playing “internet debate-club.” Slicing up quotes line-by-line, googling semantic gotchas, and setting cheap logic traps is the entire game for them. As long as they keep everyone arguing in circles, they feel like they’re winning. They don’t want solutions, they just want to snake in between progress and everyone trying to move things forward because - attention? (jury’s still out). Throwing around “enshittification” to describe an open-source project becoming more accessible and modern is completely detached from reality. Nobody owns Linux, nobody is monetizing your configs, and this melodramatic whining about “normies invading our 7%” is ridiculous. You happily take the benefits of modern GPU drivers, Vulkan, and Proton, things that only exist because the user base expanded and brought real investment with it - while treating the people who justified that investment like an invading pest. Then the goalposts get moved the second someone points out a streamlined workflow. You can’t scream that Linux is too hostile for regular people, and then turn around and whine the moment administrative tooling is modernized and easier to use (oh no! look out for that gui attacking your way of life!). Nobody took your text files or your init scripts away. If you genuinely want a stripped-down, non-systemd environment, Gentoo, Alpine, Void, and Slackware are all right there waiting for you and actively maintained. The real grievance here if you’re truly not acting out like children (which is my bet) isn’t a lack of technical choice, it’s that the broader developer consensus moved on without asking for you, and the social clout of being an indispensable command-line wizard evaporated while you are losing / have lost a (if not the only) form of intellectual superiority that you hung your hat on. If you want to live in 2004, the distros exist to let you do it. Just stop acting like petulant whiny children toward everyone else. Although it’s entertaining to watch you all bicker.

Well, it will mean different things for different people, so I don’t want to limit the scope, but some of the aspects that I think qualify: - Childish interfaces, with large fonts, lots of white space, and hamburger menus — clearly designed to be used by primitive and uncoordinated gorillas with their fingers on a trackpad. Marginalisation of keyboard/mouse users (e.g. GNOME). - Monolithic subsystems that entangle completely unrelated core services into a single construct which cannot reasonably be — completely or partially — opted out of. Tightly-coupled suites of system software. (e.g. SystemD.) - Structured to assume either immutability or “containers” of some sort, so that everything ends up in a walled garden — with the owner of the machine having little to no ability to bypass or dismantle. Much like iOS already is, and Android is becoming. SilverBlue, also. Software only available from a central store. No side-loading permitted. Developers must upload personal details to a central registry before being allowed to develop/distribute software. - AI consuming substantial amounts of storage, memory and compute to do basic things that anyone with half a functioning brain cell should have been able to work out how to do themselves. “ChatGPT|Siri|Gemini|Claude|… do [this] for me.” - Ads and other revenue-generating crap inserted at every opportunity. On boot screens, on crash screens, at the top of search results, auto-installed software that you never asked for… - Corporate capture of the kernel and/or key services — turning the entire OS into privacy-invading spyware and malware. Encrypted connections continuously sending data back to dodgy servers. All trust gone that what you do on/with your computer stays on that computer. Including becoming a surveillance tool or enforcement arm of corrupt governments (e.g. age verification/digital identification). - Subscription-based cloud software. And so-on. Not, by any means, an exhaustive list. Just some of the things that I consider to be making the OS worse.

Jimster480: > Well if that were truly the case there wouldn’t be so many clauses now about ridesharing and there wouldn’t be dead Teslas after 2 years of ridehsaring and such. They would just keep working because fast charging isn’t a problem. However on every device I have ever seen with a battery; the faster you charge the more capacity loss happens in a faster period of time. Honestly, a lot of people are either ignorant about how to treat a lithium ion battery, or intentionally abuse their batteries. This can likely explain the overwhelming majority of early failure cases. I’ve seen many accounts of Tesla’s lasting upwards of 400k miles on their original battery. Granted with a reduction in capacity, but not as much as one might think. There will of course be some manufacturing variability from unit to unit (there always is) but I feel rather convinced that a lot of the difference we see where some users have great longevity and others don’t simply has to do with how much the owner abuses their batteries, particularly in regards to charging to above 80% and then letting it bake in the sun. It is difficult to overstate just how much harm charging the battery to over 80% and then letting the car sit in baking in the heat really does. It is not a subtle difference. It is huge. I almost guarantee you that 99+% of those who suffer premature failures are either ignorant about, or don’t care about battery charging best practices which include: - keeping state of charge below 80% unless absolutely necessary (like before a long drive that requires it) - only DC fast charging when on rare long road trips - not letting a battery with a high state of charge sit in the heat. This doesn’t mean you can’t ever charge the battery to a high state of charge, but you do it rarely, and when you do, you use a timer to make sure you are getting in the car and driving off (to bring the charge back down below 80% again) as fast as possible. If you take even a minor amount of time to read up on and practice these rather minor precautions, the overwhelming majority of EV batteries will last a very long time. In the overwhelming majority of cases, as long as these minor precautions are practiced, the cars will be off the road for other reasons long before the battery ever becomes a problem.