• JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    I love how just…normal…Linus is. Like…humble. Content.

    Like, hey, I revolutionized the world with a pet project. Nbd.

    When I was a kid I worshipped Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I’m glad I realized later that Linus and Woz are the real heroes.

    • T. Hex@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      Never meet your heroes. Have you ever seen the way he rages at people on the mailing list? Don’t get me wrong, he’s made some incredible technical contributions that I’m thankful for, but I have to push back against claims that he is a well-adjusted dude.

          • 4am@lemmy.zip
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            2 months ago

            You also have to remember that he made an OS as a hobby project and suddenly everyone wanted to mess with it. It was the Wild West of decentralized project management in those days, I don’t condone any of that unprofessional behavior but I’m also not in the least bit fucking surprised that he had very personal rage-out moments as unsolicited criticism poured in from around the world, constructive and well intentioned or not. That’s a lot of unexpected pressure.

            He got better, which implies to me that he wants to be a good person; and that’s all we can really ask of anyone.

            • Mikrochip@feddit.org
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              2 months ago

              True that. Andrew Tanenbaum dissing on Linux in the early days just because it didn’t conform to his ideals of a microkernel is sufficiently uncomfortable to read, imo. It’s not like Linus kept anyone from making their own open source kernel.

              • ivan@piefed.social
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                2 months ago

                To be fair, they insisted that they were on good speaking terms. Seen from that one occasion where some article claimed that Linux was copied from MINIX and Tanenbaum dissed the article, defending Torvalds.

                • libewa@feddit.org
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                  1 month ago

                  Didn’t he say that he couldn’t have copied it, because then it would be good (as in, a microkernel)?

      • Agent641@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Bruh if everything I said to people was recorded and searchable, I’d seem like an unhinged egomaniac with anger issues too, but people can change, and get more mellow.

      • Fortunafors@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        People need to understand we are all humans and stop idolizing-idealizing people, aren’t you all bored of celebrities/famous people abusing their status?

      • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 months ago

        the way he rages at people on the mailing list?

        not really anymore for quite a while.

        he will absolutely tell someone that should know better, if they are doing a bad job, but the times of random shitstorms is over for quite a while now

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Counterpoint: Linus was all out in the open.

        I wouldn’t want to see what Bill Gates is like behind closed doors…especially as a kid.

        • ulterno@programming.dev
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          1 month ago

          Considering how I end up saying worse, when I get 100+ line changes of code with a commit message that only illustrates 1 of the changes, I don’t think I care about anyone being “adjusted”.

      • DeLancre@piefed.social
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        2 months ago

        Not to protect so called “toxic environment”, but sometimes people need to hear what others think about them and their work, preferably without pink glasses. Hiding truth behind fake polite smile is not correct approach either.

        As an example, Linus once harshly commented about breaking user space. Was it impolite to mog developer? Maybe. But nowadays in our “polite circle with pink ponies” people more easily do what they not supposed to, cause there no harsh feedback. My amdgpu crashing and taking full video stack with it each focking time. It can’t restart even if you trigger /sys/kernel/debug, like, it’s dead-dead. And that due to user space program, aka game. This shit should’t happen and yet here we are. Could it be different if Linus kept yelling at people, to reinforce fear of breaking stuff? My money on “yes”. There other examples of course, like compete disaster called “Concord”, where ultra polite environment became so forced that it kinda became toxic thing on itself and we all know the end result of it.

        So yea, not a fan of that.

        • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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          2 months ago

          From my experience as a new end user with basic questions and issues, it’s pretty normal for a decent chunk of other linux users in general. I’ve met more angry Linux people when asking for help than I ever have for any other OS or software.

          It’s a small minority I’m sure, but they’re extremely vocal individuals.

          • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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            2 months ago

            Where was this, reddit or something?

            The linux users here seem pretty chill. There’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating jokes about linux users being pretentious, but I don’t really see much of anyone being actually obnoxious in any of the techy comms here

            • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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              2 months ago

              Various distro and general forums and GitHub/similar sites. I’ve come across several over the last few years. The types of places you go for actual help from people with knowledge and experience. Not just various social media sites.

              It’s a small amount in the grand scheme, but they’re vocal. All it takes is one raging asshole for a normie first trying out Linux and looking for a solution to an issue to be driven away entirely.

              • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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                2 months ago

                That makes sense, I haven’t really interacted much on those sites. I’ve browsed them for help sometimes, and it seems like they get annoyed when people ask questions that are already answered. Either in the docs or somewhere else on the forum. They usually just say to do a search before posting to see if it’s already answered. But maybe if someone’s having a bad day and gets fed up with being asked the same thing over and over again. Or maybe someone’s just an asshole. I don’t know.

                I’m not saying it’s okay to be a jerk, especially on those forums where they’re literally representing the community. You’re right, it really can put a sour taste in newcomers’ mouths.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        If it’s any consolation I also worshipped Carmack and Zoid Kirsch (credited then by deadname)…

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Gates was a jerk. Jobs was a jerk that actually did make some positive impact on the world. Linus was a jerk who’s mellowed to a pretty normal state. Woz is a fucking tech Angel/God who just generally wants good things for people.

      edit: I guess to be fair, Windows did harbor us for a long time when nothing else was ready, Jobs pushed competition and some semblance of privacy. and Linus’ code is just about everthing that exists now mostly for free.

    • ∃∀λ@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      My local Microcenter has posters of notable computer pioneers up high in the back where you can see them from anywhere in the store. Each poster has the person’s name as well as a description of something they’re most known for. Bill Gates is there as well as Ken Thompson, Robert Kahn, Robert Metcalfe, Grace Hopper, Richard Stallman, etc. I always thought that was a nice touch. Even though it’s like the nerdiest of all stores, I suspect 90% of customers are probably Windows normies and just need a computer for work or to play games and wouldn’t recognize any of them with the exception of Gates. Even I don’t recognize some of the names, like Kahn (co-invented TCP/IP) and Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet).

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        I was actually going to comment on that as well but I didn’t remember the exact history of git.

        His newsgroup post announcing Linux is legendary, though.

        Or are you referring to his guitar pedals?

    • titanicx@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Dude linuses anything but humble if you know anything about him he is one of the biggest dicks on the internet. Some of his reasoning is right but some of it is just him being a complete asshole.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      While my setup isn’t meant to be showy, I cannot operate with a single monitor these days. At work I have my laptop screen, a USB monitor to the right, a 36" ultra-widescreen up high, and a landscape 32" monitor to the left.

      I still want more screens. I basically want a Neil Pert monitor setup.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Multi monitor setups arent bad but in my experience they are usually cludged together abominations with at minimum two desks in active use. Mine for example is consistent of a HP pavilion from around 02 if I had to make a guess, a HP monitor from 17, and then my 5 plus year old Asus monitor. My desks setup is an L desk plus a random corner desk for the CRT and the WW2 era speakers I have that I still need wires for.

      Anyone know where I can get wires and an amp for an antique pair of speakers? They use a positive and negative similar to what old car speakers have, not particularly picky just want to test them ideally using an aux input.

      • quadrant5835@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        Any home improvement store - > wires aisle - > buy “speaker wire” in whatever length you need.

        Lamp wire is also fine, often times they are the same / interchangeable.

        An amp? Well there’s a whole lot of options there from multi channel home theater units down to just a stereo mini amp.

        If you just want to power some old speakers I’d lean towards a stereo mini amp on Amazon. Then maybe a cheap bluetooth receiver so you can easily pair your phone for some modern streaming support.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    2 months ago

    looks at image with ten visible LED fans

    I don’t have a problem with people decorating their computers however they want. They paid for it. It’s their computer. Everyone’s got their own aesthetic preferences.

    However, the last build I did, I was getting a little exasperated with how increasingly-hard it is to just find desktop components that don’t have RGB lighting on them any more. I mean, to me, the desktop computer is a box that has a bunch of circuit boards in it. I’m generally not looking at my RAM sticks or motherboard segments, and don’t have a glass window on the side to admire it (it gets dust in there, and I’d rather have a sturdier case without glass). I could do without the extra light pollution in my life. Most stuff can be disabled, but it’s kind of obnoxious to be buying and figuring out how to disable hordes of little RGB LEDs.

    I’d also add that where LEDs exist, they have multiplied over the decades not just in number, but also in brightness.

    If I wanted to have my computer be a light show, which I don’t, I’d get a DMX512 controller for it, and real lighting effects hardware.

    Maybe going for rack-mount hardware is an option. It’s something that I’ve thought about sporadically over the years, and it does have certain benefits, if you’re willing to give up portability. But rack-mount builds generally command a premium due to the market being less price-sensitive, and noise is often a more of a factor, since datacenters don’t care about keeping things quiet for employees.

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Paraphrasing a tidbit of information from Northwest Repair, who’s a guy on YouTube that does board-level repairs on computer hardware:

      Apparently, reprogramming the firmware config and changing the RGB light status on a DRAM module are both done through the same SPI bus. Consequently, every time you change the RGB lighting, it has a tiny chance of accidentally bricking the stick.

      So not only is RGB an additional upfront cost that consumers might not want, it could even contribute to long-term costs by reducing the lifetime of some components.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I remember years ago there was a firmware source leak (or maybe the binary was analyzed or something) for gigabyte’s led controller firmware/drivers that basically just exposed the firmware programming bus to user land because that’s how they did lighting updates and the kernel mode driver just passed whatever the user mode driver gave it, which could include firmware updates to other hardware IDs.

        It was at this point that I stopped running a lot of those hardware control utilities (and I suspect that might also be why I barely saw any issues with the Radeon 5700 XT that was a bit infamous for “its” issues that I think might have just been incompatibilities with 3rd party “helper” utilities or shit written by companies that had gotten to the “just ship it” stage of development).

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Imagine if ransomware did a BYOVD and held your actual hardware ransom.

          Shit like that should never have been signed by Microsoft, let alone made it through developer review at Gigabyte.

    • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You don’t need multiple screens to code. You can split inside your editor if you need to look at two things, otherwise you just jump between things. Faster thank having to use multiple things

      • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I felt the same until I got a second monitor. Having each app on a full screen and glancing back and forth between them beats flipping back and forth IMO.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        Yeah, I’m very much Team Lone Monitor. You can only see sufficient detail to work with text in a limited area in front of you. I can flip between desktops in sway faster than I can look from side to side. Honestly, my current monitor is already probably excessive in screen space for productivity stuff.

        And the ergonomics are preferable if you’re using secondary monitors much. You ideally want the display in front of you:

        https://worksmarthub.com/monitor-ergonomics/

        If you only change four things today:

        Adjust your chair height first.

        Raise your monitor so the top is at or just below eye level.

        Position it about an arm’s length away.

        Centre it directly in front of you.

        These principles align with ergonomic research on neutral posture and reduced upper‑limb load (Rempel et al., 2007).

        I remember working on a dual monitor setup split in the middle back in the 1990s, and while it was never a huge issue, after a day of working, my neck was stiff from looking to the left.

        Added bonus of a single-monitor setup: less power use, and you can work on a (more-portable) laptop without extra screens without breaking your workflow.

        EDIT: Note that this is just talking productivity stuff. If you also play games or something on the machine, then having stuff in your peripheral vision can have value, just as in real life. VR rigs push that even further.

        EDIT2: If someone does come up with some sort of software that makes useful use of peripheral vision for office stuff, someone will be selling VR products aimed specifically at this in short order. I remember in…the early 2000s maybe, when Intel was trying to convince businesses to buy 3D hardware, and had ads talking about how 3D chart viewing would increase productivity.

        • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I think using tiling based windows is one of the things that makes it easier for single monitor. I use i3 and it’s way quicker to refer to something on another workspace compared to if I were to have them in separate monitors or stacked views. When using extra monitors i just have it open browser most of the time.

        • Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I use a single monitor but it’s 42" 4k.

          I do a lot of stuff where I need 2 or more documents visible side by side and it’s next to impossible to work efficiently on a single small screen.

    • morto@piefed.social
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      2 months ago

      More than one screen is too overwhelming to me. Too much light, too much information, I get tired too fast

  • DrStanleyGoodspeed@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    What tech innovation actually looks like. Sort of no frills, high efficiency, what works go with it type thing. That shit works. I did shit like that once. Most beautiful internship that was wasted on me. I had free reign of an electrical engineering lab at Oak Ridge as a summer intern between freshman and sophomore year of college. There were like shelves full of random devices and circuit boards. Like half built shit that someone said fuck that noise on, and wires, and circuit boards, and batteries. Random computer monitors. All that shit. It was a fucking disgrace and it was beautiful. My steward or whatever wanted me to test an Op-Amp? He gave me a book on how to program using excel, a book on op-amps, one lecture, and told me there were two grad students in the room that can help if you need it. He left everything I needed in close-ish proximity and says good luck. So that’s what I fuckin did. The grad students would help briefly from time to time if I begged, but it was clear this was my shit they aren’t to spoon feed me. He wanted them tested in an oven using known input voltage increased sequentially in a continuous run. I found a voltmeter/thing that emits and controls the volts and know’s shit about what’s going on. I had to wire qthat thing in a certain way. That part was actually sort of fun and surprisingly easy. Had a PC, a lab oven that looked like a broke ass piece of shit to me but it worked and did what it was supposed to, the volt whisperer, the chip, and some thing that the chip had to be in that a bunch of cords connected to it so the shit was like coming out weird from the oven. It was easy to hook up once you knew what you were looking for. Getting excel to talk to that hillbilly ass looking piece of shit took an entire week. Eventually got it to do what it needed to do but LMFAO the stupid piece of shit beeped every time it shat voltage and took a measurement. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. To this day I don’t know if this was some kind of test that I failed or just random fucking bullshit that happens when you tell a stupid fucking piece of shit college student like me to shit his brains onto a bunch of hardware. The shit worked! Everything worked and I got everything he wanted me to get. Excel made some pretty graphs that looked like they were supposed to. I think he sold the patents. My poster was fucking awesome at least in my eyes, but some dumb old surely bitch didn’t like the formatting but fuck her ya know. I give myself a b+ for that one. It looked damn good on paper. Ended up becoming a doctor. Sometimes wonder if I would’ve been more successful if I would have stayed with engineering. Who tf knows!?!? Blehhh

  • blimpkit@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Youtuber that has hyper “minimalistic productivity” setup, 10k subs, posts videos every week and has 3 digit views max:

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Yes they are awesome; The kind that adjusts for sitting or stnading.

      We had them at a company I worked at. You sit for a while ( like and hour or two) and then feel a bit uncomfortable so pull the level and slide to standing mode. Work an hour standing, then sit. It really helps you feel less fatigue, and is better for circulation and digestion.

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      I have one at the head office. I love how it’s adjustable, so I can stand up when I’ve been sitting for too long.

      Plus when I’m doing something that involves more than just keyboard and mouse (sych as plugging electronics and hardware around me) it’s very convenient to be already standing.

    • Smug_Marmot@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      it depends on the type of person, I feel like. My company has offered those adjustable desks since before COVID. If you walk through our office you’ll always see at least a few raised up. Most people prefer sitting down, but you’ll see enough people getting use out of these that they definitely have some benefit.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      When I worked at Fred Hutch I knew a guy who used his standup desk while walking on his treadmill. [I also knew a guy who sat on a big ball.]

    • ladicius@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You can. Standing for longer periods is very bad for your veins. Get a walking pad and also sit for at least the same time you stand.

  • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    pfff, no rgb on Linus’ setup. I have instantly lost every shred of respect for the guy. My hero, reduced to common trash in my mind…

    /s obviously