
Linux sucks, and there’s nothing you can do about it - ethanwillis
https://ryanjohnson.website/2019/11/06/linux-sucks-and-theres-nothing-you-can-do-about-it/
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qxga
"The UNIX command line and most programming languages are ineffective and slow
tools, because they do not make use of the brain’s ability to process visual
inputs quickly in parallel and contextualize large amounts of details into a
cohesive idea."

"Too much reading!"

"Linux programmers are stupid."

This reads like satire. Surely this must be satire?

~~~
dexen
It's not satire, it's somebody with high education and low experience.

To quote from the 'About' section,

 _> To achieve this goal, I am developing a file system to replace the
hierarchical file system paradigm used on every computer since the 1970s. I am
also developing a human-computer interface to replace and extend the mouse and
keyboard, which have kept the desktop experience from moving forward for
nearly 50 years. I am working hard to move the desktop computing experience
forward, breaking it out of the confines of tradition and integrating the full
potential of advances in technology into the desktop experience._

It's essentially the cathedral mindset (vs. Linux' bazaar mindset). It's about
designing a system according to the author's best knowledge vs. evolving a
system according to both known and also unknown constraints.

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goohex
Golly. Persistent live usb has been a thing for like, ever right?

It makes me feel a little bit like open source projects aren't doing
documentation right when someone could have easily googled for this if they
only knew the right vocabulary.

But, I'm not super worried about having lost this specific person since
they're so quick to call linux as a whole "crap" and developers "stupid."
Maybe after undergrad and some time in the field they will come around.

~~~
zozbot234
> Golly. Persistent live usb has been a thing for like, ever right?

Not only that, but it's definitely possible to install, e.g. Debian onto an
external drive and _not_ touch the internal bootloader. It seems that the
author ran into a limitation with either Linux Mint or perhaps Ubuntu.

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speakwithalisp
Its bizarre how often I see programmers complain about CLIs given the nature
of the work. A CLI is just higher-order programming. At what threshold does
the author find programming an appropriate solution? Perhaps we should do
everything on paper in metal filing cabinets to maximize the stimulation we
provide our visual cortex.

I'm not personally averse to GUI usage. It just seems to me that complaints of
"too many options" are common in regard to CLIs. And yet to me it seems that
CLIs have significantly fewer practical permutations than a Turing-complete
programming language.

~~~
em-bee
that's a good point. if only the CLI had the consistency of a real programming
language. even PHP for all its flaws is more consistent than the commandline.

don't get me wrong. i live on the terminal. and the problem with inconsistency
of commands, a GUI won't fix those. on the contrary, GUIs are probably worse,
especially the web based GUIS we are getting everywhere now.

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Lio
Could this article be summed up as “someone tries to install Linux onto
hardware that wasn't designed for it and did reasonably well considering”?

IMHO if you want to use linux as a day to day operating system you are better
off buying it pre-installed on supported hardware from someone like Dell or
System76.

That it runs on a mac at all is a testament to a volunteer community.

The argument made that everything should be in a GUI sounds like a throwback
to the 90s.

I think that Microsoft’s recent efforts to improve their CLI support on
Windows are a good indicator that for a certain set of problems CLIs are just
less restricted.

GUIs were there first on windows if you prefer otherwise but still Microsoft
needed to add decent CLI support to stay competitive.

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fargle
OMG.

1\. UNIX != Linux

2\. Painful to you does not mean universally qualified "SUCKS". I'm at a loss
what the alternative is, maybe you can't understand a CLI, or something.

3\. I figured it out. Here I fixed the headline: "Understanding what the
computer does is too hard SUCKS, and the only thing that can be done is to
learn stuff"

~~~
Lio
If only _GNU_ would somehow make it clear that _G_ nu/linux’s _N_ ot _U_
nix...

~~~
fargle
To an idiot, apparently, it is.

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equalunique
Thinking one could use Linux on Apple's proprietary hardware without non-
trivial problems was the first mistake. Really should have thought twice about
installing Linux to an external drive _on a system with it 's own internal
drive & bootloader_ too.

~~~
em-bee
i did the same, it worked just fine. the only downside was that the USB device
i used was to slow, so the result wasn't practical. and, i just can't deal
with dual booting. i want my systems to be always on (or quickly restore state
from sleep or hibernate)

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jacknews
Surely a better solution in this case would be to run linux inside a VM?

I ran this way for a couple of years on a black macbook, and it has a few
advantages, such as the VM just suspending rather than rebooting if for some
reason the host OS reboots, eg to install updates.

Now, there's docker et al too.

Personally I've always found setting up any complex dual boot configuration
fraught.

And linux makes some things quite complex to configure (eg sound), requiring
you to look online for solutions. Unfortunately those are often in the form of
rambling and often outdated forum topics, or "educational" blog posts that
start with "First, an introduction to computer sound hardware ...", when all
you want is the cli command to change volume.

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jerome-jh
Wow, a computer something-ist trying to be a neuroscientist.

So maybe the visual cortex is 30% of the brain, it is also very coarse and
imprecise. It sometimes ignores large part of the visual field. It is very
immune to noise and that's why it is imprecise. It does much processing
without you being conscious and that's why there are so many "optical
illusions".

On the other hand audition (when working, not my case) is very precise
(sensitivity), has very good frequency selectivity, huge dynamic.

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esotericn
This is precisely the sort of way in which "user friendly" installation
methods fail.

I have a theory that most desktop Linux users, after a number of years, end up
in one of two camps:

a) giving up and going back to $PROPRIETARY_OS

b) settle on something like Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, Debian or similar whereby
the system is less 'opinionated' and just gets out of your way.

Mint seems like the worst of all worlds to me.

And the poster here is insufferable. If it's supposed to be satire, it's not
funny either.

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slphil
This was genuinely painful.

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simonblack
If you want to run an OS from a removable external hard drive, you put the
bootloader on the external hard drive too.

In his case, taking the easy option when he wanted a complex solution was his
error. He should have selected the 'something else' option. Yes, he needed
extra knowledge to pick that selection, but that is where Google is your
friend.

Linux _is_ User-Friendly. But it is _very_ selective in choosing its friends.

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mnm1
Maybe this moron could have answered "no" to the question asking if he wants
to install the boot loader on all drives but clearly, he's to dumb to do so
just as he's too dumb to restore the uefi boot loader in os x (system
settings-> syrup m startup disk). I stopped reading after that. People this
clueless should not use computers without supervision especially Linux.

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gnarlysasquatch
Can anyone positively confirm any OS that handles the scenario described here
seamlessly?

It seems like a rare use case that, while feasible, is totally unsurprising
that it would require a good bit of research and manual intervention.

~~~
n0rbwah
I think linux would do fine. As long as the different hardware you want to run
it on is compatible with the version installed on your external disk. Which
wasn't the case here apparently.

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mackrevinack
"other entrepreneurs"

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thewinnie
Ryan john sucks and there's nothing he can do about it ...

