Flamekebab

I messed around trying to get Redhat 7.2 or 7.3 working but gave up (Q1 or Q2 2002). I later experimented with SuSe (or however it was stylised in Q1 2005), messed about with Knoppix and a few other distros, before properly going all-in on Ubuntu 5.04 when I was 18.

Silly me, looking at the About page.

A technical description?

I don’t know the first thing about Bonfire. I literally only know its name, and even then, I’m not sure if it’s even an it.

It might be an organisation, a single tool, a framework, a development environment, a service, I genuinely don’t know.

A “mission-driven project” is a meaningless phrase that can be applied to almost anything.

For you it’s buzzwords, for other people it means a very specific positioning.

Positioning what?

Looking at the about page because the concept sounds like it might be really cool…

Started in 2020, Bonfire is a mission-driven project creating
sustainable open-source tools and building blocks for communities to
engage meaningfully, coordinate as peers, make collective decisions,
and cooperate effectively – all interconnected with countless
federated apps across the web. We’re dedicated to nurturing digital
spaces that encourage vibrant community participation and impactful
collaboration.

We endeavour to foster a transparent, inclusive, and empowering
environment. This ethos drives us to build connected, democratic, and
vibrant digital spaces, supporting communities around the world to
connect, grow, and flourish.

Who writes this stuff? It’s meaningless buzzword drivel.

What’s the point in an about page’s first text block if not to give a high level overview of what the thing is?

It might well be something I could be enthusiastic about but I took one look and thought “You’ve given me no reason to try to decode this and there’s better things I could do with a sunny Saturday”.

About pages are super important and this project is being let down by it.

They’re a tad bigger than that (100 GB per disc), and I’ve lost enough hard disks over the years to not want to have to deal with backing up files that big. Not when I can have a small collection of shelf stable discs that won’t suffer mechanical failure short of deliberate damage.

Anyway, you can disagree all you like. If it’s not inconvenient for you, excellent, but for me it is. Hard disks sit in the back of my mind as ticking time bombs that I need to keep an eye on if I want to trust them. Ugh, I’ve done enough of that in my life. So many dodgy disks!

Oh and that also assumes a load of infrastructure in my home that I don’t have. I know how to set it up, but I don’t want to. Been there, done that. I’d rather check the second hand UHD shelf at CEX and pick up the occasional disc when the price isn’t silly.

Of course, eventually my UHDs will decay, but the timescale is decades rather than years.

Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology. The most basic speaker setup for it is 5.1.2: 5 = front left and right, centre, rear left and right 1 = subwoofer (bass box) 2 = ceiling speakers

So a soundbar - a single block sat in the centre below the screen - claiming to do immersive surround sound is up there with gold-plated fibreoptic leads.

I’m always tickled when I see soundbars that ostensibly support Dolby Atmos.

Speaking only for UHD blurays - to get similar quality requires large files. Storing a collection of giant files is a hassle.

I asked why: “we didn’t think about it”

I have Simon Pegg in Hot Fuzz ringing in my ears: “IT’S YOUR JOB!”

Symlink each individual file, obviously.

It’s still doing better than Krita - which I had to bail on because its levels tool doesn’t support setting the white point.

Is there a version of this that wasn’t awkwardly resized?

Interesting. That makes sense. Thanks for explaining. It doesn’t appeal to me but I can certainly relate to the frustration of changes breaking established workflow.

Who says that?! I’ll kill them with my power!

That’s what I’m getting at. It’s not that I have no interest, I do, but if it’s too inconvenient it’s a bad fit for me. Much like I don’t make my own shoes, I suppose. If I had infinite time then, sure, but realistically the opportunity cost is too high.

Vulnerabilities found in packages? The maintainers aren’t omniscient.

I think you might be interpreting my comment a little too literally. Perhaps I could instead word it as “I don’t know what the appeal is - to me it doesn’t seem anything other than an oddly archaic OS”. What’s its USP, so to speak?

I had something similar when I tried running SUSE in about 2005. Shortly after I discovered Ubuntu and found that it made package management and maintenance easy and from there I was able to start using the system to get things done. Whilst I don’t currently use Linux on my personal machine, I do use it on my work machine inside WSL2, on servers at work and at home.

I’ve never even entertained the notion that Slackware would be something I might use - because it seems clunky for the sake of clunk. Am I missing something here? Or is the clunk the appeal, like how lots of people like really awful B-movies?

That’s something that I don’t understand. I have a computer to do stuff. Performing maintenance is a necessary evil, not a hobby, at least for me. If I have to do any significant maintenance more frequently than about every three years, it’s too often. Sure, I’ll install updates (usually using a package manager, so the work is a command or two), but this stuff gets in the way of me doing what I turned the machine on for.

It’s much like when I launch a program and it immediately asks me to install updates. Uh, no, I launched you to *do* something, get out of my way! (I’m confused as to why more software doesn’t prompt on close - I love it when they do that!)

I did once try to get started with Slackware when I was a teenager. It was on a cover CD for Linux Format about twenty years ago. I never managed to get it running and gave up on Linux for a while as a result.

I’m a little perplexed as to what it exists for, to be honest.