𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍

The most popular Linux distros are binary based. Gentoo upgrades build all new software from source. If you don’t want long install times, don’t usr one of these compile-everything-from-source distros.

There’s no option to install Windows from source, and it doesn’t really come with anything more than the OS, anyway, so it’s apples yto oranges. Windows might not even be compilable on consumer hardware.

Yeah, I wasn’t saying it was bad; I meant only that Linux didn’t have to worry about device drivers for it, because the fob handles reading the fingerprint chip.

I dunno. I have a fair number of packages installed from AUR, and the Rust ones take forever to compile. CPUs may have gotten faster, but some popular languages have gotten much slower to compile.

Yup! It’s very much like mpd, except streaming without an additional component.

They use the SoundCloud API. You only need either gonic or Navidrome, plus a client (like ostui).

It’s not, really. All of those programs are Go, and single executables. There’s no “install” for either gonic or ostui (IIRC, also Navidrome): you download or compile the executable and run it, and you’re off and running.

Someone mentioned Docker; in this case it’s unnecessary unless you’re doing it for security. They’re just each a single binary. You’ll have to either create a config for gonic or Navidrome, or run them with commands telling them where your music lives, but that’s it. Running on the same machine, you don’t even have to open the ports on your firewall. However, if you do, Tempo for Android lets you stream the music to your phone from gonic or Navidrome, too.

These are very, very simple programs to run. ostui is a TUI, so if you prefer GUIs you’ll want a different client, but both of the servers are easy to run and nothing to install - just run them as you, not even root.

I think that’s because Yubikey handles the fingerprint reader part, not Linux, right? As far as Linux goes, it’s a black box security fob - but I might be wrong about that.

CUPs is simply ancient. It’s due for an overhaul; I keep expecting someone to come along and Poettering it, only I’d hope without also making it take over cron jobs and logging.

Herbstluftwm. It’s one of the main reasons I use it.

You can run commands on the command line to create your layouts for one or more desktop (tagged spaces), assign programs to appear on tagged spaces, and then run the programs. Put it all in a shell script and hlwm runs it when it starts.

I use xtoolwait for programs I want multiple windows on different desktops for, like terminals.

I have three monitors; one is a status window, and the other two are grouped together in 8 different tags. Mod4+9 focuses the status screen, Mod4+[1-8] switch the other two monitors in sync to the other workspaces. It’s all set up when I log in, including the creation of several terminals each running tmux from sessions restored by trum-session. The only thing I have to do is enter a password to unlock my secrets so background processes can start doing their thing.

That would make a huge difference.

I ran Gentoo back in the early aughts; it was hella better than Redhat, but it felt like I was constantly compiling stuff, and new installs and upgrades could sometimes take more than a day. I don’t remember what I jumped to after Gentoo, but I’ve never considered it again because of the lack of prehbuilt binaries. It seemed bitcoinish to have thousands of people wasting CPU cycles compiling the same package when it could be compiled once and redistributed.

Where Gentoo is nice is in the build flags: there’s really no way to get around compiling yourself if you want to exclude optional dependencies, and Gentoo had that in spades. I am just not sure how much that’s actually used anymore, but having binaries gives you the best of both worlds.

Thanks for posting that; I may have to re-investigate Gentoo.

An alternative would be to run gonic or Navidrome - both are OpenSubsonic servers, and provide synced lyrics support. Then use the ostui client which plays music and displays synchronized lyrics.

My experience with Brother was also good, until it got tipped during a move and came out simply covered in toner. We don’t really need a new printer, but I’d buy another Brother LaserJet in a heartbeat.

My Canon regularly gives me grief. My Epson Ecotank, OTOH, has been painless.

Broadcom, as you’ve discovered. That’s the one brand that I’ve always had trouble with; they go out of their way to be closed source: never publishing specs, never responding to developers. They’re horrible to the point where I will not buy any product that uses Broadcom chips. Which used to be a PITA because they were also common.

Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.

One of my computers has a MediaTek wireless chip where WiFi isn’t supported but Bluetooth does.

A lot of people have problems with NVidia cards; I’ve not had trouble with either AMD or Intel GPUs (although, I think all Intel GPUs are CPU integrated?).

Multifunction printers are still iffy, and even just plain printers can give grief; I’ve come to believe that this is simply because CUPS is ancient and due for a completely new, modern printing service. It’s an awful piece of software to have to work with.

I agree. Arch has been my current favorite distribution for several years now, but it’s almost impossible to maintain without having to drop into the shell occasionally. I have EndeavourOS installed on my wife’s laptop and she’s been happily using it for nearly a year; bauh helps with software installs, but I still generally drop into a shell for the full -Syu upgrades, and you have to use the shell at least once just to install bauh as it’s not a core package.

You might be able to avoid the shell to use bauh if you use the AppImage; I haven’t tried that. bauh can apparently do system upgrades, but I haven’t tried that yet and I need to see how it handles news; Arch is fairly cavalier about pushing out breaking changes that require extra user steps which need to be discovered by reading the news posts.

I agree that Arch isn’t the best “first linux” distribution.

Or maintain a repos. Which would force people to create an account on one of the free VCS servers, pay for an account on a non-free one, or run their own.

I worked at a place once that had a system that was all bash that would take hours to run. I rewrote it in Ruby and got the run down to about 10 minutes.

This was 2000; I don’t recall anymore how much of that was the runtime and got much was just refactoring and hindsight - god knows how old that jumble of bash scripts were. A lot must have been the interpreter; even just looping is far slower in bash than probably anything else.

Not a comment on your script; just remembering that win.

If you’ve never heard of ConnMan, yeah, I only know it from Enlightenment, too.

I used it for a while trying to wean myself off NetworkManager, which has a lot of optional dependencies that distributions tend to link in. So, you don’t want Gnome on your system, but you want NM? Too bad, you got Gnome.

Anyway, connman is pretty fussy and not very intuitive. I think it’s better for systems that are always on the same network; it’s a pain to travel and connect to open networks with.

Does that include network latency? Is it faster with install media?

Not Matrix itself, but the new call mechanism.

They’ve chosen Matrix; they’ve just chosen something else for the video calling. Maybe because the anonymous video call link feature is too recent an addition, and is unproven.

That’s one I don’t remember, but I probably wouldn’t have: the config file is in Lisp. Not only is Lisp something I never use anymore, which gives it a high cognitive load, but I don’t particularly care for Lisp-like syntax.

I’m certain there are several less common WMs that I haven’t tried. It’d probably be almost impossible to try every WM every written for X; it seems to be a common hobby project for folks interested in the X protocol.

I did say “almost every”, but perhaps even that was exaggeration. I do think I’ve tried the majority, though.

My differentiator for hlwm, the killer feature, shared by only two other projects that I’m aware of, is that hlwm has no configuration file. All configuration is performed through client commands. Every command interaction that can be performed by a user input - and much that can’t - can also be performed on the CLI. All (?) windowing events can also be monitored on the command line, and therefore scripted. The other two WMs that share at least some of these features are bspwm and river.