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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Sure, and there are some performance gains to be made from it I’m sure, but when my OS is doing that and my web browser is doing that and my browser based chat client and my browser based text editor are all doing that, it gets pretty sluggish.

    This is why Linux is a godsend for older machines, even running the exact same applications (Firefox, Discord, and vscode) on the exact same hardware, it still feels more responsive on Linux because there is less overhead from the OS itself.



  • You present a false dichotomy. Yes, things like uncompressed audio and HD video take up more storage space, but that does not negate that modern commercial software is very inefficient with how it uses resources. You could improve the efficiency of the system while keeping HD video, it is not a mutually exclusive choice.

    For example, booting up Windows and doing nothing takes up 4gb of RAM, while doing the same with a lean Linux installation would take up a quarter of that, despite both operating systems having identical functionality (run web browser, open applications, edit documents, play games, etc).



  • True, but that all exists on a spectrum, and a law which prohibits all children from using a device because you don’t want your kid using that device and they’ll get bullied if they’re the only one, seems a little excessive. Might as well ban expensive sneakers or shiny pokemon cards too.

    The root of the issue is parents controlling how much their child uses a device, and you just cannot legislate that away. Even if it was 100% illegal, you think parents wouldn’t let kids use the devices in their home if it made things easier? “Just ban it” never works, you need to incentivize alternate behavior.








  • Like are shell commands different between distros, or do I have to install something to have certain commands?

    Yes and no, kinda. So the most popular shell by far is Bash, which includes its own built in functions, and can also be extended with custom functions which certain distros may include in your bash config file by default. But generally, Bash and the GNU coreutils are standard, although some more “hip” distros will include other shell prompts such as zsh or fish by default, but even those tend to come with bash for script compatibility or easy switching for user preference. Some distros may include programs by default, but most of the time those are easily available in other distros through the package manager.

    How do I even know what commands I do have?

    compgen -c (or compgen -c | more for a scrollable list (press q to exit)) should do the trick, but that is a built-in bash command that may not be available on other shells, but generally you can find all the programs able to be called from shell inside the

    /bin

    /sbin

    /usr/bin

    and

    /usr/sbin

    directories. All these directories are added to a variable called $PATH, and when you type a command into your shell, these are the places that get searched for a matching program to run. You can use echo $PATH to see all the directories on your machine which are searched, or even add your own directory containing custom scripts or utilities so you can use them anywhere like an installed program.