+1 for void linux, it has a great init (runit) and it is very unix-like in the sense that configuration is done through files. It's also very stable despite being rolling release.
If you want a layman'sol opinion between Arch Linux ARM and Void Linux I much prefer Void Linux partly because systemd. I don't hate systemd but it seems to add a layer of esoteric complexity that I have discovered I don't need through my usage of Void Linux.
For example, I had been trying to set up a wifi USB adapter on Arch. I have installed and configured iwd for this. In Void, this would have been enough. But in Arch, there is a one-shot service that checks if network is available and other services that need network/internet can use this service as a depenendency. This is a nice feature but it turns out I then also have to configure this wifi interface in some systemd folder otherwise the one-shot service does not care a out the wifi adapter. Until I did this, some services would not start until the one-shot service timed out and failed and these kinds of problems are hard to google or ask help for because it is hard to tell in the first place what is going wrong.
There are other things like how systemd comes with its own implementations of ntpd, dns confguration and even some cron equivalent. It is very confusing. I guess it's valuable knowledge if one uses systemd distros all the time though.
yeah systemd isn't for me, but I don't hate it. On debian so far it hasn't really affected me negatively. After xz vulnerability I see increasing problems with it, and am considering using other distros including void......or one of the bsd's........
Using OpenRC on Gentoo saved me from Fractureiser. There's some benefit from using less common tools.
Once I get my Gentoo setup back up and running, I plan to use OpenRC+s6. s6's developer talks about issues with different init systems here. I don't hate systemd, but I believe different systems fulfill different purposes with different requirements, and some tools are better suited for different requirements. Nonetheless, I would prefer there to be options unless a specific tool fulfills all purposes better than others.
All of that makes sense to me. I'm not using gentoo though lol. I'd probably keep a debian install around at all times out of habit.....For non systemd linux probably void, and for unix like probably one of the bsd's
To be fair, there was another thread discussing the same topic, and many people were calling out the vaxry, and pointing out the amount of brigading going on. Once any topic like this is brought up, the worst type of people come out......
Oh wow, that thread wasn't around last time I checked (when I made my post in the weekly megathread), it really does go to show how the other thread is just entirely brigading when there's a clear community consensus in the thread you mentioned of how fucked up it all is
Honestly, I think /r/linux is somehow less of a cesspool than the Lemmy equivalent most of the time lol, though at least it so far hasn't had this kind of brigading issue
literally just follow his "political musings" on RSS and you'll see the shortcomings of user freedom as a force of liberation even in one man's brain lmao
Every option other than banning Vaxry has been exhausted over the past year and a half. I personally spent several weeks following my last blog post on the matter discussing Vaxry’s behavior in confidence and helping him understand how to improve, and at my suggestion he joined a private community of positive male role models to discuss these issues in a private and empathetic space. After a few weeks of these private discussions, the last thing he said to me was “I do believe there could be arguments to sway my opinion towards genocide”.
Wow, the Hyprland dev is a total POS. Glad I use sway (at least I hope there's not fascists running it, too). I eventually want to migrate to river once I figure out how to extend it to my needs (probably need to learn Zig first, which is on my bucket list), but I really like sway's tiling capabilities now.
Hopefully Hyprland is forked with a better dev/team
Honestly, I wish there was an alternative to Wayland, given the number of toxic devs in that sphere and the drama that occurs over the most basic features that never get implemented for many years because the team wants to essentially dictate how people should run their computers, while ignoring all of the special use cases, such as multi-window layouts for scientific programs. (This statement is a bit hyperbolic.)
Yes, this is taken out of context. But, if you raise this objection, I struggle to imagine in what context you think this statement can be read sympathetically.
Regardless of what statement this sentence (said from the Hyprland dev) comes from, this is still unhinged and essentially Nazi/fascist-sympathetic. I haven't seen further context to conversation myself, but I still say the dev is deplorable.
Honestly, I wish there was an alternative to Wayland
I've been happily using the alternative for more than 25 years so far
Edit: Choosing to stan Poettering is a weird choice. You know he works for microsoft, right? The gigantic fascist software monopoly place that has been openly destroying human rights for decades, collaborates with the CIA/NSA/FBI and US state as a mass surveillance apparatus. He's also always been an arrogant child, picking fights with principled engineers and working against the efforts of unix philosophy to insert awful windowisms into our ecosystem. Poettering is a disease on FOSS and his legacy is using RedHat/IBM to insert systemd (which is basically CIA bloatware with a massive pid-zero attack surface) into Linux will never be forgiven.
I did not know much, if anything, about Poettering. That's good to know. My goal is to use OpenRC with s6, and I like how the s6 dev wants to create an init system to compete against systemd. I don't like systemd for its bloat and flawed design, and some recent features of systemd have been sus.
I don't pay much attention to dev manchildren, so forgive me if I am not aware of their histories.
Apologies if my Poettering rant was worded too strongly. I guess I just mean that there are very good reasons people dislike him so much. He's earned far less animosity than he deserves imo.
s6 is cool, though I've not played around with it too much. I've mostly stuck with runit on my Linux systems since it's simple, fast and I'm happy with it. You might take a look at dinit, too, if you haven't already. It's still maturing, but dinit is probably the most syntactically similar to systemd. Both are very fast.
If you can get a good job writing closed source software that gives you a decent quality of life and gives you the free-time to contribute to some open source projects outside of work I think you'll still do good for FOSS. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
At the end of the day we have to be realistic with ourselves about the world we find ourselves in and the limits of the power of an individual in it. Starving for the sake of some imagined purity or living a lower quality of life isn't Marxist. As long as you're not directly abetting the imperialism machine by working for some ghoulish NATO defense contractor I don't think you have that much to feel badly about.
That said there's things like programming around helping coordinate mass transit and provide info to travelers. Programming for industrial machinery including especially in areas not related to manufacturing of goods like power, utilities, and though that's pretty specialized if you can get your foot in the door you have a fairly interesting skill-set. Government jobs for government agencies are also an option.
There are companies that write open source software that isn't free to companies (e.g. they charge for use when used as part of a profitable enterprise or sell support packages to large enterprises) but they aren't that great in number and to get in the door you've a better chance if you have something on your resume already which means unfortunately working for a for-profit, usually closed source company.
Hypocrisy is good and well for the idealist to worry about. The realist however cares more about feeding the children, feeding themselves and doing what they can with what they have. There is in the FOSS movement a certain idealism among many that think via free computing they can free humanity when in reality you must via revolution free humanity to free computing. FOSS is a rebel insurrection against capitalism but not one that can ever change the superstructure or base in any meaningful way on their own.
Never forget under capital you are forced under duress to sell your labor, it is not your fault, you are not a bad person for doing so and for doing so under conditions less than ideal for people who uphold a way of doing things you find philosophically repugnant.
So try, try to find something that fits these ideals but if you cannot, do not feel too badly.
This is sad. I like hyprland and it’s currently my daily driver. I tend to stay out of communities other than this one so I didn’t know Vaxry was a terrible person.
NixOS is gaining among corporations so this was bound to happen at some point. I don't know much about it but it is becoming a popular choice for setting up development environments as a vagrant replacement.
I work for a company that writes software electric and gas’s utility companies use to coordinate power hungry iot devices like thermostats and evs to make power consumption less spikey and more predictable , which lets them supply demand more with solar and wind as opposed to coal peaker plants.
The utility gets a massive savings when peak demand of electricity and gas is controlled more, and pay our company as well as pass a portion of the savings directly to the device owner as a rebate on their utility bill (device owners sign a contract to let utilities manage their devices through us, but every control event has an opt out option so that the device owner can choose not to participate, but the less they opt out the more money they save on the utility bill)
There's a lot of work to be had doing maintenance and training in FOSS software rather than developing. It's not as glamorous, but it's of equal if not greater importance, since those using FOSS often need it due to low budgets (and therefore can't always expect highly trained employees).
But the bad news is that your bio says you're Brazilian, and the FOSS scene has been really bad in Brazil since Temer. Government has cut a lot of investment in developing national open source software, and even critical government bodies like the Receita Federal (IRS-equivalent for english-speakers) are now back to being fully reliant on windows licenses.
I've even heard that national banks want to migrate their ATM systems and networks to Microsoft systems, and they use shitty software like Teams for """security reasons""".
We're in a bad state, but if you want to work on FOSS, you should try to think small. Social Assistance centres, small firms, maybe even research, that sort of thing.
But in the end, free software is free infrastructure, so don't be surprised when you see big techs funding what's supposed to be their antithesis if it marginally reduces their internal costs.
Thank you for your reply (and everyone else's replies as well)
I have the privilege of being able to get out of the country, I'm currently in the US visiting family and working for a small business, it's been about a month. A family member living here managed to get me in the company. It's been pretty meh so far, only done some webdev work (they didn't even put the site live) and IT assistance (installing PCs and such). They have their own management software that (I think) they're selling, which is not ideal but capitalism™. I don't yet have the know-how to make any contributions to it, unfortunately. I'm entering my second year in university and I'll come back to Brazil when it starts.
Even in Brazil, is entering the academic or research field hard? I can get a (sorry if not right name in English) doctorate, post doc, master's, etc since I can find jobs that pay enough to provide for myself while studying due to my qualifications and my parents helping me if I need to. Honestly I'd kill just to get a job at Pine64, System76 or the FSF.
Sorry if I'm too naïve or enthusiastic about all this, I'm still very new to the job market and stuff. (20yo also)
Getting into academia in Brazil is arguably way easier than in the USA or other Global North countries (for foreigners) because our public universities are free and the competition is not too tight. We have a national test for computer science master's programmes, kinda like ENEM. Here.
But academia is its own particular brand of hell no matter which country you're in, so if you're thinking about it first try and get through most of the course with good grades (for selection programmes) and consider doing a Master's before getting set on a doctorate programme.
If you do an undergraduate, a master's and a doctoral degree back to back, assuming nothing goes wrong, you'll be stuck in academia for at least 10 years of your life, and that's not an easy decision to make.
There are possibly also undergraduate research assistant positions in your college, so you could check those out to see if the research lifestyle is right for you.
Since you're young, if you focus your interests on areas that are commercially interesting for open source projects (like the aforementioned Pine, or low-level systems that corporations depend on but can't be bothered to develop), it's possible you could end up working in the area. But along the way you'll have to work on lots of non-free software jobs in order to survive, but also just to learn how to become a better professional.
This is just the way it is right now. It's not a moral failure to engage with capitalism while living under it.
BTW, I'd advise you not to post too much identifying information on internet forums. You never know what kind of person might find it, and once it's on the web it can be really hard to erase it.
capitalism will make it impossible for me to exercise my profession in a good way, but is there no alternative that fits in the middle anywhere?
One possibility is to find organizations that you like and do IT work for them. Especially for budget conscious lefty groups or nonprofits, they would very likely appreciate any FOSS software recommendations.
This seems like a good opportunity to put a legal challenge to this system, though. I don't know canadian law, but I'm fairly confident there's no law on record that can compel you to use any particular operating system on your personal property. The implications of that would be far too big and problematic. Taken a basis for your argument, you are legally unable to comply and cannot be legally compelled to do so. Contacting your party administration shows a good faith effort to satisfy the disclosures through an alternate means. I'd also argue that closed-source/proprietary software meets the common definition of untrustworthy software. A web form might be a reasonable remedy, but I'd probably ask for paper forms because then there's no software requirement at all to participate in bourgeois electoralism.
I was about to give hyprland a try to see what the wayland offerings were like but after I saw that thread yesterday, I think I'm just going to stick to the screen tearing beauty of xmonad.
Thanks for the recommendations! Niri is very interesting as a proof of concept.
Vivarium looks like its not very actively developed which is sorta sad. I'm going to need to do more research into what's around. There's a lot of toy projects out there but not as many mature offerings.
Hm if I was more familiar with Haskell and Wayland I'd jump in on that. I barely learned enough Haskell to configure my setup and I've been going all in on learning Rust in the recent months. I fear I may actually be too dumb for a fully functional language.
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