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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I’ve been using Linux since ~1996; I used to wonder about this a lot.

    The tl;dr answer is, it’s too much effort only to solve the problem of making life easier for new users, and it can be a disservice to users in the long run.

    As others have pointed out, there are limited GUI tools for common administration roles.

    Power users are much, much faster at doing things via CLI. Most administrative tasks involve text file management and the UNIX userland is exceptional at processing text files.

    A graphical tool would have to deal with evolving system software and APIs, meaning the GUI tool would be on constant outpatient care; this is counter to the UNIX philosophy which is to make software simple and well-defined such that it can be considered “done” and remain versatile and flexible enough to live for decades virtually unchanged.

    It wouldn’t be that much easier for things like network rules unless a truly incredible UI was designed, and that would be a risk since the way that’s implemented at the system level is subject to change at any point. It’s hard enough keeping CLI userland tools in sync with the kernel as it is.

    It would need to be adaptable to the ways different distributions do things. Administration on CentOS is not always the same as it is on Debian.

    And ultimately, the longer a user spends depending on GUI tools, the longer it will take them to learn and become proficient with the CLI, which will always be a far more useful skill to have. You’ll never learn the innards of containers or VPS’ if you only know how to do things from the GUI.


  • I’m a JetBrains person. I like vim, but I also heavily use IDE features and VSCode just never scratched the right itches. I’ve worked with many people who use VC but when I pair with them and watch their workflows, they simply aren’t as efficient, as if they’re unaware of what a proper IDE can actually do. They also complain when VC extensions get mature and become paid extensions, which hasn’t been a problem with JB.

    I use Copilot with JetBrains, but it’s only “cool”, not “awesome”. When I really need help with some code Copilot rarely does the right thing, and JB’s code completion already works really well. I know Copilot for VC is better than for JB and they claim they’re going to bring parity to JB at some point, but this article makes me suspect they’re lying. If they don’t I’m going to start shopping for competitors.






  • I’m undefined? 😟

    Otherwise known as managing success. Once you have a successful cash flow you need to diversify it and build your business to have multiple cash flows.

    Semantics I guess. Di-worse-ification isn’t always the answer. They had a large product lineup, which was probably more expensive for them than it needed to be. They went under because they failed to fortify their balance sheet… rates went up and their debt crushed them.

    Capitalism works fine just turning a profit while plenty of companies die chasing growth. It’s just part of it.







  • This is a good thermometer reading. I’m pretty sure many communities are prepared to extend this indefinitely if current plans aren’t reverted. I do believe him when he says

    We absolutely must ship what we said we would.

    I don’t know who the angry VCs are who get to pull his strings but if this gets their attention - it may or it may not - reddit might budge on things a bit.

    At the end of the day the company is hopeless to make a profit with him at the helm. This memo sounds slightly nervous and lacks confidence. He has no clue what he’s doing.



  • Has that happened with Mastodon?

    Orgs spending volunteer money have to be careful, they have to allocate money to their stated causes or they could get in trouble. A Lemmy instance would have to coincide with their agenda.

    A philanthropist can do what they want, but they could still attract criticism for not donating to world hunger or some more optics-friendly cause. They’d also probably end up with a fairly popular instance which would require effort spent on maintenance and moderation.

    I think people who actually want to run instances will end up running them. I’m considering starting one. Some of those will end up running really good, stable and desirable instances which can then attract donations for the cause.