this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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unix_surrealism

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Automatism in the age of the children of Unix. This community is for all things related to computers, content, surrealism and wizardry.

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This is also where pmjv posts his work

https://analognowhere.com

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Now that you're a surrealist, become a Techno-Mage:

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think there are examples of projects getting criticized for not recreating the corposhit. Take GIMP


sure some folks really like it, but there are huge swaths of people who basically just say, "why doesn't it work like Photoshop?!" and get very frustrated with its different approach.

Personally, I like Google Photos


the interface, not the product


so when Immich came along and basically cloned it, I was really happy (I think Immich is fantastic, and at this point calling it a Photos clone is kinda offensive tbh


it's way cool).

Some corposhit just sucks, yeah, but some is actually well thought out


no shame in taking the concept and running with it, IMHO.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I like GIMP and have never used Photoshop.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I've never used either, honestly, so I'm pretty sure I'm not entitled to an opinion, but I do know that every time someone says they 'use' or 'like' GIMP all I can imagine is the dude from Pulp Fiction going, "Eh, it's a living!" with a defeated sort-of shrug (a la the wooly mammoth-cum-showerhead from the Flintstones)

I mean, either way, you do you and all, I don't kink/platform-shame

[–] pyre 29 points 4 days ago (1 children)

so we can keep being stuck with corposhit products with no alternatives?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Yeah, there's room for both, but I think replacing proprietary software is actually a bit higher priority than just being different.

I suppose it depends on what you are replacing, tho.

[–] nul9o9 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Tiling window managers fit this for me.

[–] madthumbs 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The first version of Windows used tiling.

[–] TrickDacy 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not really. The tiling in windows didn't work in the same automatic "turn it on and watch it go" way that it does on Linux. But don't let that get in the way of your bizarre Linux trolling as I know you've been waiting all day for your moment to "shine"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I used Windows 2.something on an old Compaq 386 (16MHz) and it didn't automatically title anything. There was an option to tile (or cascade) the current window set, but a new window would not cause a retiling. Neither would a window closing.

[–] madthumbs 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Windows 1; not 2

-Because of a lawsuit from Apple.

Fwiw, I've seen some people demonstrate a robust and efficient keyboard based workflow using floating window management. Sometimes it's a simple matter of what you set out to learn.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I prefer tiled windows (XMonad) but I use my mouse for a lot of things, it's not because I need a keyboard based workflow.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 days ago (2 children)
Bell Laboratories

Murray Hill, NJ (dec!ucb)wav!research!rob

It seems that UNIX has become the victim of cancerous growth at the hands of
organizations such as UCB. 4.2BSD is an order of magnitude larger than Version
5, but, Pike claims, not ten times better.

The talk reviews reasons for UNIX's popularity and shows, using UCB cat as a
primary example, how UNIX has grown fat. cat isn't for printing files with line
numbers, it isn't for compressing multiple blank lines, it's not for looking at
non-printing ASCII characters, it's for concatenating files.

We are reminded that ls isn't the place for code to break a single column into
multiple ones, and that mailnews shouldn't have its own more processing or joke
encryption code.

Rob carried the standard well for the "spirit of UNIX," and you can look
forward to a deeper look at the philosophy of UNIX in his forthcoming book.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah there are some pieces of code that are super bloated in the FOSS community. I think it does not help overall because it mixes the primitive meaning for an application. Such as systemd or even GCC. I'm starting to like much more simple designs like GNU Shepherd. Or the idea of having a Hurd like kernel (which does not need to be Hurd). Or shifting to more simple CPU ISAs. Designs should have the necessary entropy, not more not less. Trying to allocate more stuff in a design does not help.

I think some part of the GNU community is starting to understand that.

Emacs is bloated? Probably more than it should be. Maybe it should be more minimalistic and move most of it to modules. But is LEGO bloated? Emacs can be regarded bloated because how it is shiped, but not for what it is. Not being modular and programmable would make Emacs not Emacs.

This is a topic very interesting to touch but probably not to talk about it in a comment section hahahha.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm pretty experienced in some technical ways, but still learning a lot on Linux / kernel level. I appreciate your comment as I learn more about lower level architectures like this.

Reading about the Hurd microkernal was really interesting, here's the wiki article for others:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd

Def open to other suggestions on good resources for these topics.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I'm learning too. I'm not so expert on technical ways because I come from an electrical engineering degree (we call it here Telecommunications Engineering, so tons of EM, Signal Processing, Numerical Methods, semiconductors, digital design hdl, tons of hardware digital stuff, tons of hardware analog stuff, tons of hardware microwave stuff, telematics, etc.).

I'm self taught on everything involved with computers that is above hardware digital architecture (digital design). Because of that (I think) I have planified a thematic list of topics I have to learn before digging into Hurd deeply (and be able to help).

I want to learn more about OSes by following this book/course https://xinu.cs.purdue.edu/ about a well documented fully minimalistic OS implementation (I bought myself a beagle bone black to test it out).

I've recently (for a year now) started fiddling with Guix (both system and package distro). I want to learn more about Full Source Bootstrap in order to understand how a system boots up (which is like magic) https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-building-from-source-all-the-way-down/ .

Because of that I'm currently following this book about programming a C compiler in order to understand the primary core parts of a program and what relations it has with bootstrapping https://norasandler.com/2022/03/29/Write-a-C-Compiler-the-Book.html . I've opted for Guile both for learning more about the language and using a "quick" "lab" language that I can program very easily.

Probably you would only need a few of those, but I hope it helps! GNU has very cool projects as you see!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Rob carried the standard well for the "spirit of UNIX,"

if (isatty(1)) {

	if (ioctl(1,JMUX,0) >= 0) {
		struct winsize win;
		if (ioctl(1,JWINSIZE,&win) >= 0) {
			screenwidth = win.bytesx;
			if (screenwidth == 0)
				screenwidth++;
		}
	}

	qflg = Cflg = 1;
	(void) gtty(1, &sgbuf);
	if ((sgbuf.sg_flags & XTABS) == 0)
		usetabs = 1;
}
[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Considered harmful.
It's the IRC channel for https://cat-v.org/ There are some very clever people there with very specific ideas and opinions about computing.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I open the site and see:

‘The Internet is not for sissies.’ -- Paul Vixie

It's always important to make a good first impression or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I think it's achieving the intended goal of gatekeeping the site to 50+ year-old graybeards with narcissistic tendencies and a persecution complex which have decanted over the decades into a nasty brew of unfiltered bitterness.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I looked at some of the other pages and the whole site has this charm.

Best example was "dangerous" software that no one even needs an alternative for and among them were GNOME and KDE...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well it's always nice to get an unbiased opinion

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

I guess being queer is an incompatible bias with whatever these curmudgeons have going on

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Clearly they can't adjust the CSS to make it fit for phones

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago

they can, they don't want to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Well, it cites Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell in the affirmative, so clearly, it is a place for 🤡

[–] finitebanjo 19 points 4 days ago

Clones are also great for publicity and awareness. People are searching for alternatives to (insert program here).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Maybe. Got any ideas? 🤷

[–] blackjam_alex 23 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You can always start your own project. Just saying.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

what's the white pin on her coat?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

tasteful, ty

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

@pmjv @npe And now, make #orca a weapon of freedom.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

I believe it's an axlotl

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sure, where's the clear design document?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Oh look, we got ourselves a comedian here

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Working on it.

[–] chonglibloodsport 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Open source projects create corposhit because the developers working on them work for corporations who pay them to create the corposhit. The fact that they’re open source is just so that the corporation can benefit for free from contributions by developers outside the company. That’s all.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

girl says FOSS not OSS. i think its about the FLOSS part of FOSS, thats most of the time not corpo driven

[–] Gradually_Adjusting 3 points 4 days ago

Might be my fav so far