I don’t use AI when I’m learning a new system, framework or language because I won’t actually learn it.

I don’t use AI when I need to make a small change on a system I know well, because I can make it just as fast and have better insight into how it all works.

I don’t use AI when I’m developing a new system because I want to understand how it works and writing the code helps me refine my ideas.

I don’t use AI when I’m working on something with security or copyright concerns.

Basically, the only time I use AI is when I’m making a quick throw away script in a language I’m not fluent in.

Trader Joe’s registers run Suse.

I’m pretty certain at this point that I’m about to be forced to buy some programming socks.

I kinda love it in winter mornings when I’m a bit chilly and then I kick off a big compile or play something and there is this lovely warmth flowing from my main desktop and then I make a big cup of chai.

I bought two old Thinkpads on eBay for $20 each. They run Debian + i3 great and have become my daily portable drivers.

Edit: a new battery and ssd did bring the total up to $100 for the pair.

So you’re saying systemd is the emacs of init?

Systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success.

Look at this rich guy who’s thinkpad is only 11 years old and has 8GB of RAM. Must be real nice to have been born with a silver spoon.

😉

topgrade

That’s how you learn to use it better!

alias up='topgrade'

E-waste Thinkpads are quickly becoming my favorite laptops.

I recently picked up a couple of e-waste laptops, Thinkpad x130e’s with an AMD E-300, 4GB RAM and a 320GB spinner. For the pair I paid $60 shipped. These were low-end semi-ruggedized laptops meant for students released around the time that HBO started showing Game of Thrones.

I’ve put Debian on one and it runs great. All the hardware just works, everything is pretty quick after boot, and I love how rugged and portable it is. Email, writing, basic productivity, hobby development and 2D gaming all work great. Web browsing takes a hit if I open too many tabs, the video card is too underpowered for most 3D games that came out after 2010, and large compiles are slow. I’m a bit worried about the aging HDD so I’m going to replace it with a cheap SSD which should help with boot and compile times.

The other one I’m not sure about. I’ve tried HaikuOS and the video and wifi work well and the whole system feels very snappy, but there’s no audio or webcam support. Redox seems interesting but needs a whole lot more hardware support. I’ll probably just end up cloning the first one unless I can get a better suggestion.

All that is to say, Linux is great on old cheap hardware.

Watch out for sharks!

Ok, there seems to be a lot of confusion here about what POSIX is.

A long time ago, there were a lot of systems by various companies and groups that all claimed to be Unix, or at least Unix compatible. But, since there wasn’t a standardized definition of Unix, they weren’t all compatible with each other. The US government and other groups decided this was a problem and asked the IEEE to come up with a standard that the vendors could certify to. This standard is named POSIX and is composed of low level OS APIs, C language support, shells, utilities and a bunch of other components.

This meant that anything that targets POSIX should run on any POSIX system with nothing more than at most a recompile. There was a time, basically until the early ‘00s, that every major OS targeted being able to be certified POSIX in some way. This was great!

However, since Linux has won the Unix wars, with MacOS in a technical second place, the importance of POSIX has mostly gone away. It is still an important spec. Linux, MacOS and even Windows more or less maintain compatibility with it, but there isn’t a push for certification the way there once was. If it runs on a couple Linux distros and MacOS, that’s probably good enough.

EDIT: The jokes that you might see having to do with POSIX generally are about the fact that MacOS is certified POSIX compliant, but nobody really cares, while Linux has never been certified POSIX compliant but is the de facto standard UNIX and therefore the most common POSIX target.

With mine, I’m working on a few things:

• Getting better at CLI, specifically tmux and helix. I’m ok at it now, but could use the practice.
• Learning Rust. It’s nice to not have distractions when I want to focus.
• Experimenting with some alternative OSs. I’m extremely conservative with my main machine, but I don’t really care about these laptops.
• Enjoying simplicity.

Uhh… I just picked up a pair of old Thinkpad x130e and have a put Linux on them. If I run Debian instead of Arch and keep the sticker collection small can I avoid having to find socks like that in my size?

You might have been using dd to burn an ISO image onto a USB stick or some such, but sincerely doubt that you were writing just the kernel to the first sector of a 3.5" floppy disk and then booting off of it, while it found your ISA hard drive.

Hannah Montana Linux, or HM/Linux as I’ve taken to calling it, is the sign of true civilization.

I’ve been using Linux since you created a boot floppy by using dd on the kernel. I use Ubuntu because I just want something that works, is stable in the LTS sense of the word, and I don’t have to futz with. I’ve heard enough about Mint now that I’ll probably switch over to it when I build my next machine in several years.