On 2024-12-06, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> I was recovering from a tumour operation at that point and was on
> seriously concrete butt plugging pain relief.
>
> I drank a couple of points of pear juice. Delicious. And unbeknownst to
> me Natures best laxative...

Interesting. I've found that peanut butter acts as a mild laxative,
at least for me. This is a Good Thing - I love peanut butter.
I had a knee replacement yesterday, so I'll get to test it.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 2024-12-06, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> (The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a paradox and
> a common thought experiment about whether an object is the same object
> after having all of its original components replaced over time,
> typically one after the other.

Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced
everything with exact duplicates. When I pointed it out
to my roommate, he said, "Do I know you?"
-- Steven Wright

This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for
almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it
needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new
handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing
of the ornamentation... but is this not the nine-hundred-
year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed
gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know.
Pretty good.
-- Terry Pratchett: The Fifth Elephant

And of course, our bodies go through much the same process.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 12/6/24 2:43 AM, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 01:13:40 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Fedora still seems ok - as far as Fedora is OK. The
>> Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch end is still OK. Never a fan of Slack, but,
>> who knows ...... gotta keep evading suckitude.
>
> Slack was my first distro. Download in pieces and copy to about 40
> floppies.

Hey - REMEMBER that !!! :-)

MIGHT still have those disks ...

NOT sure if it had 'X' ... that might have been
the early early RH I bought a little later. I do
remember having to tweak a LOT of config files
and download a lot of drivers just to get 'X'
to understand I had a mouse and keyboard.

Ah, the Bad Old Days :-)

> I've got Fedora 40 on one machine. Not bad but it updates frequently
> compared to Ubuntu or Debian.
>
> Debian us on my work machine. I wanted stability, not cutting edge.

Therein my gripe with Deb now ... it really really
smells like they hired a bunch of Canonical rejects.
Deb was supposed to be The Foundation, solid and
stolid, no BS, stick with What Works.

But the LATEST one especially ..... !

NOW it's not Deb, just another 'Buntu

I'll stick with previous versions for as long
as possible. If they don't backtrack and mend
their ways then it's Fedora or Arch derivs
forever.

On 12/6/24 4:12 AM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 01:13:40 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>
>>>    Fedora still seems ok - as far as Fedora is OK. The
>>>    Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch end is still OK. Never a fan of Slack, but,
>>>    who knows ...... gotta keep evading suckitude.
>>
>> Slack was my first distro. Download in pieces and copy to about 40
>> floppies.
>
> Was my first distro too. After that, I can't remember if I went to
> Mandrake or if I had netbsd in between.

Was NetBSD out in that time-frame ???

>> I've got Fedora 40 on one machine. Not bad but it updates frequently
>> compared to Ubuntu or Debian.
>>
>> Debian us on my work machine. I wanted stability, not cutting edge.
>>

On 12/6/24 9:30 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-12-06, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 01:13:40 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>>
>>>> Fedora still seems ok - as far as Fedora is OK. The
>>>> Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch end is still OK. Never a fan of Slack, but,
>>>> who knows ...... gotta keep evading suckitude.
>>>
>>> Slack was my first distro. Download in pieces and copy to about 40
>>> floppies.
>
> When I decided to try Linux I went to the local bookstore and browsed
> the Linux books, comparing all the ones that came with an install CD.
> I liked Patrick Volkerding's book best, so I wound up starting out
> with Slackware 3.5. I continued with it for several years (and
> upgrades), but the lack of a package manager required lots of
> application builds from source, which grew tiresome.

Slack IS very "raw". There's some good, but a lot
of bad, in that. You kinda have to be an OS fanatic ...

But I'm not 16 anymore.

> I tried several other distros, e.g. Mint and CrunchBang.
> Ubuntu was very easy to bring up, but when they switched
> to the Unity desktop in release 10, I decided it was time
> to move on. I finally settled on Debian.

Well, you COULD get past Unity ...

My biggest objections were the 'services' they kept
pushing hard - indeed could barely install it anymore
without signing up (shades of M$ !). They also changed
and/or moved around a LOT of config stuff for NO real
gain IMHO.

Deb - WAS the Solid Foundation - but suddenly became
just another 'Buntu.

So now it's Fedora and Arch derivs.

I've heard GenToo is kinda interesting ... and
there are always the BSDs.

On 12/6/24 4:06 AM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> On 12/5/24 4:25 AM, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>  the suggestions, check a few boxes ... saves like
>>>>  an hour. Ever set up RAID The Hard Way ? With Yast
>>>
>>> Yast? Are you another opensuse user? I thought I was the only one!
>>
>>  USED to be my fave from LONG back. Found a distro
>>  in WalMart of all places. Had used Red Hat, but
>>  SUSE (now OpenSUSE) had many advanced tools that
>>  made the long and tedious NOT so long and tedious.
>
> It's been rock solid for me for at least a decade. More probably. I had
> a consulting gig at a cloud company and I used opensuse. Never had any
> problem at all. The engineers all had ubuntu and had problems with the
> wifi all the time. Ubuntu does not seem very good.
>
>>  Alas after IBM and RH ... that whole group of
>>  derivs ... you're kinda reduced to their beta
>>  testers now. SO sad.
>
> This is not so good. I hope IBM won't kill redhat in the end.

Alas I think they will. As said, you are now IBMs
beta tester. This is valuable for working out a
number of kinks - but eventually the kinks will
be kinda dealt with. Then RH and its downstream
parasites will Go Away.

>>  Switched to Deb - but now IT seems to have hired
>>  a bunch of Canonical rejects .....
>
> Deb has been on my list to try, in case opensuse finally dies. I also
> thought about trying Alpine linux but I do not know how much trouble
> musl will cause me. Finally, if those do not deliver, I thought about
> actually going back to some of my earliest experiments and try FreeBSD
> for day to day use. Since I'm not a cutting edfe developer, I only need
> some basics, which I think all are in the FreeBSD packages, so if they
> fixed their wifi problem (I tried it 1 year ago and had to run a small
> linux VM for a working wifi driver) it could definitely be a serious
> option. Oh, and that would mean it doesn't drain the battery as well.
> But let's see. I think I can stick with opensuse 15.6 for at least
> another 2-3 years, and then they might kill the project in favuor of
> some container based crap.

Deb WAS the Solid Foundation ... until now. It became
just another 'Buntu IMHO. Tragic !

The BSDs are "usable" - really Not Bad. However remember
they are Unix, not Linux, so a lot of little stuff is
different. They also tend to be a few years behind when
it comes to drivers. The real target is SERVERS, not
desktops.

OpenSUSE/Tumbleweed ... DID get it to run on a Pi-4,
albeit a bit clunky sometimes because it isn't a
"light" distro. Pi-5s are WEIRD ... can't even get
a Fedora for those even a year on. Apparently the
boot-up chain of events is a huge kludge. HAVE
found instructions - pages and pages and pages
of them - WAY too old for that shit and half of
it would probably disappear on the next update.

If you really want an alt, consider Arch and
derivs. Endeavour is nice. Manjaro works well
(but, like Tumbleweed, kinda updates the ENTIRE
system at the slightest change).

>>  Fedora still seems ok - as far as Fedora is OK.
>>  The Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch end is still OK. Never
>>  a fan of Slack, but, who knows ...... gotta keep
>>  evading suckitude.

On 12/5/24 3:49 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Dec 2024 01:03:09 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> I kinda know how Apache thinks, what goes in which config files /
>> folders.
>
> Apache conceptually only has a single config file. Everything else is
> (directly or indirectly) included from that file.
>
> Yes, I was using Apache back when distros shipped it with everything in a
> single config file.
>
> The common layout nowadays is not hard to get to grips with: put each
> virtual site into its own config file, and use macros and your own
> includes to avoid repeated cut/paste of the same boilerplate.

I'm fine with Apache. You DO need to tweak more than
one config file these days alas - and HTTPS should be
just a DEFAULT alongside HTTP.

It's NOT as efficient as some of the up and comers,
but there IS something to be said for "standards".

Hoping for an Apache3 eventually ...

On 12/6/24 8:09 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 06/12/2024 06:31, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>> On 12/5/24 2:34 AM, rbowman wrote:
>>> On Thu, 5 Dec 2024 01:28:57 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>>
>>>>     Had a .44 Mag lever carbine - it was ideal for boar in dense brush
>>>>     ... strong enough and easy to whip around real quick. The boar
>>>> hunts
>>>>     YOU as much as you hunt IT. I think someone offers a .50 S&W
>>>>     carbine/handgun combo now, but only use the handgun if you want
>>>> fused
>>>>     wrists in yer old age
>>>
>>> A friend bought a .454 Casull which was the big dog at the time. He was
>>> pissed when S&W upped the ante. I draw the line at .357 and even then
>>> for
>>> target practice I load closer to .38 Special specs.
>>
>>    .38 +P is about all ya need for general/defense work.
>>    Just generally go for the lighter bullets, not the
>>    traditional 158s. Fer sure those old "police loads"
>>    did NOT impress.
>>
>>    NOT sure I'd like .357 for wild boar. It'd take TOO
>>    perfect a hit. The .44 gives you a little slack.
>>
>>    I've fired a .454 ... and decided I didn't want to
>>    fire one anymore. The .50 ... nah ! MAYbe for extra
>>    large people. There's some point in there where you
>>    go for a carbine/rifle.
>>
>>    Hmmmmmm ... if you necked-down the .50 to 10mm - a
>>    sort of modernized 44/40. Might make a really good
>>    revolver/carbine combo.
>
> Interestingly in the UK we cannot use handguns at all. For anything
> outside single shot target shooting at a registered range.

That's left-wing totalitarianism for you.

Alas, I think the UK is just about to go DOWN.

Hope you have a place way out in the countryside.

> Legal firearms range from 12 gauge and even 20 gauge shotguns down
> through 410 'crow guns'  to game approved rifles. .22 is allowed for
> small game like rabbits, but a .25 is mandatory for deer and many people
> use larger.
>
> Naturally Britain being a very small country with a lot of people,
> strict codes of practice accompany game shooting.  It is illegal to
> shoot anything but bird shot upwards...

And you don't find this suspiciously Big Brotherish ?

WHO is being protected with all that - YOU ?

Try the USA. You can own almost anything - and even
get a license for .50 machine-guns. Probably won't
even need that once Trump's people are in.

In the PAST I'd have said the UK was 'less hazardous'
and therefore less need for strong weapons ... but
the news the past several years .........

At minimum dude :

https://www.allbeststuff.com/chain-mail-armour/aluminum-brass-titanium-chain-mail-shirts/titanium-chain-mail-hauberks-the-strongest-chainmail-for-sca-full-contact-fighting

https://www.ringmesh.com/

https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Gears-Titanium-Chainmail-Riveted/dp/B00ZYYPNZE

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 22:40:18 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> But the LATEST one especially ..... !

My Debian machine is still Bullseye. Raspberry Pi OS is based on Debian
Bookworm but it's stripped down.

On 12/6/24 3:33 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 13:09:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> Legal firearms range from 12 gauge and even 20 gauge shotguns down
>> through 410 'crow guns' to game approved rifles. .22 is allowed for
>> small game like rabbits, but a .25 is mandatory for deer and many people
>> use larger.
>
> Over the years .223 has become acceptable in more states. Part of that has
> been the NRA promoting AR-15 style rifles as the 'modern sporting rifle'
> as a counterweight to the ignorant leftists screaming 'assault rifle'. I
> have a bolt action .223 which is very accurate and pleasant to shoot but
> if I were deer hunting I'd go with the 7.62 x 54R.

The 5.56/.223 is a fairly good cartridge, in the right
rifle it's quite accurate as well. It has the advantage
of being 'military' - meaning large stocks will always
be found even after a Zombie Apocalypse.

Consider the Ruger rifles - not AS accurate but quite
strongly built and less likely to jam up.

But larger cal is better for 'hunting'. 6.5mm to .30
for northern Europe. The old 6.5 Swedish is a great
cartridge.

Canada/Alaska ... consider .375 H&H for some needs.
Kicks like a bastard though ....

> The traditional deer rifle where I grew up was the .32 Winchester Special.
> That was a regional preference over the more popular .30-30 one the theory
> that .32 trumps .30. The ballistics are similar however. Some of the more
> populous counties were restricted to 12 gauge slugs or buckshot.
>
> In this state anything up to .50 caliber is legal. There was an attempt to
> supersede Federal laws for firearms manufactured in state that would allow
> up to 1.5" for man portable smokeless powder weapons. It was actually as
> 10th Amendment states rights challenge more than a 2nd Amendment.
>
> https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/firearms-freedom-act-
> constitution-gary-marbut/

Frankly, a 20/16/12/10-guage SLUG is equiv to "over .50".

You can only go for SO much energy without breaking bits
of your body. Did fire some 10-ga slugs once ... DON'T
wanna fire any more. Ain't built like The Rock.

https://www.federalpremium.com/shotshell/power-shok/power-shok-rifled-slug/11-F103F+RS.html

https://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/federal-classic-10-gauge-3-1-2-1-3-4-oz-rifled-slugs-5-rounds?a=1594540

For "overall best for most purposes" I'd again pick
an oldie ... the 7x57 Mauser (with 150gr bullets, not
the old heavy mil).

Sorry, no not so much a magnum fiend :-)

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 23:43:31 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> Try the USA. You can own almost anything - and even get a license for
> .50 machine-guns. Probably won't even need that once Trump's people
> are in.

I don't need one of those. .50 BMG is about $4 a pop if you load your own.
Even .45-70 is a little rich for my blood.

On 12/6/24 9:30 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-12-06, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> (The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a paradox and
>> a common thought experiment about whether an object is the same object
>> after having all of its original components replaced over time,
>> typically one after the other.
>
> Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced
> everything with exact duplicates. When I pointed it out
> to my roommate, he said, "Do I know you?"
> -- Steven Wright
>
> This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for
> almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it
> needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new
> handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing
> of the ornamentation... but is this not the nine-hundred-
> year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed
> gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know.
> Pretty good.
> -- Terry Pratchett: The Fifth Elephant
>
> And of course, our bodies go through much the same process.

Humans are Fuzzy Thinkers. It's not Mr. Spock logical,
but it's a lot more FUN ! :-)

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024 00:19:14 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> Consider the Ruger rifles - not AS accurate but quite strongly built
> and less likely to jam up.

I'm a Ruger fan but I went with Savage for the .223. It's better than I
am.

> But larger cal is better for 'hunting'. 6.5mm to .30 for northern
> Europe. The old 6.5 Swedish is a great cartridge.
>
> Canada/Alaska ... consider .375 H&H for some needs. Kicks like a
> bastard though ....

I don't think so. Even the 7.62x54R gets real old after 2o rounds or so.

On 12/6/24 4:11 AM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> On 12/5/24 7:17 AM, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 5 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 05/12/2024 09:31, D wrote:
>>>>> There is great good and great evil in man. That's what makes him so
>>>>> fascinating and why fighting is such a necessary sport to give an
>>>>> outlet for all that aggression.
>>>>
>>>> Only man creates the categories of good and evil.
>>>> Science does not include them
>>>
>>> I think you know what I mean. In order to avoid nitpicking, let's say
>>> creative and destructive energies.
>>
>>  To "Nature" ... I think it's all just superstrings hummin'
>>
>>  WE make of it all as we will.
>>
>>  Joe Alien ... he many have entirely different ideas ...
>>
>
> I know. Natural and I have discussed this violently and agreed to
> disagree. I'm a huge fan of the material world. As for the ultimate
> nature, laws and composition, I am agnostic, and we'll see how far
> science will take us. I lean towards instrumentalism/cognitive empiricism.

IMHO, 'material' owns it - 'reality'-wise anyhow.

However the Quality Of Life depends on what we DO with that.
It generally stops of short agreeing to the Nietzschean extreme.

Sci-tech will eventually take us All The Way insofar as
power over our environment. But, again, how do we FEEL
such power and insight be used ?

If it was easy they'd have resolved all this 25,000
years ago.

The Buddha understood there was a Real World - but
WE could never ever really see/perceive it because
of what we were, how nature put us together, our
native environment, our IQ range. We will always
have a key-hole view, seeing things through
"human-colored glasses".

Plato's "Allegory of the cave" kinda touched on the
same stuff - but, maybe for political reasons, left
off the last paragraph or two.

ANYWAY, at the cold cold root - it's just all
superstrings hummin' ... calculating a 'reality'
as WE can sorta perceive it. Wolfram seems to
have grasped this.

On 12/6/24 2:54 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 18:23:09 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> I once experimented with the concept of agnostic monism, by which I
>> mean,
>> a unified underlying construction or explanation of the world (of which
>> we are a part), but, that we cannot (at the moment, and probably, never
>> will)
>> determine the nature of it.
>
> It's all water.

Containing turtles .... :-)

On 12/6/24 12:12 PM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On 06/12/2024 06:48, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>> On 12/5/24 4:36 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> On 05/12/2024 09:31, D wrote:
>>>>> There is great good and great evil in man. That's what makes him so
>>>>> fascinating and why fighting is such a necessary sport to give an
>>>>> outlet for all that aggression.
>>>>
>>>> Only man creates the categories of good and evil.
>>>> Science does not include them
>>>
>>>    The Real World exists. What any of that MEANS,
>>>    entirely our own inventions.
>>>
>>>    And those inventions tend to CHANGE over time.
>>>
>>>    Yea, kinda Nietzsche-esque ...
>>
>> More Kant-ian.
>>
>> His metaphysics draws a clear distinction between the
>> 'world-in-itself' and how we perceive it. His point being that the
>> objects we reify it into are not actually there as discrete entities,
>> they are simply how we describe it to ourselves and to others.
>>
>> Which immediately solves the 'Theseus' ship' paradox*, as such a ship
>> doesn't exist, it is merely how we refer to a collection of rotting
>> bits of wood.
>>
>> (The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a paradox
>> and a common thought experiment about whether an object is the same
>> object after having all of its original components replaced over time,
>> typically one after the other.
>>
>> In Greek mythology, Theseus, the mythical king of the city of Athens,
>> rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the
>> Minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the
>> Athenians would commemorate this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to
>> Delos to honour Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers:
>> After several hundreds of years of maintenance, if each individual
>> piece of the Ship of Theseus were replaced, one after the other, was
>> it still the same ship? )
>>
>> Modern philosophers still get their knickers in a twist over this. If
>> you are a died in the wool realist and materialist it is a problem
>> because you believe there exists such a thing as 'Theseus' Ship' in
>> reality.
>
> I would argue that the ones who most certainly do not have a problem
> with this are materialists. It's a bunch of atoms, and we can then make
> up labels. The problem guys are the platonists with their ideal heavens,
> concepts etc. which are forever beyond proof. The ding an sich is an
> absurd konzept an sich. If you postulate something which can never be
> known, it is kind of useless. It goes the same way as god, or a
> postulated first mover etc.
>
>> Kantians say that it's just a label: Distinct from the object that it
>> refers to. Meta data. A pointer.

Kant ?

Try Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" tome.

OK ... you'll go brain-dead after just a few
chapters ..... and it's like 1000 pages ......

BUT, he kinda DID prove that our "physics" can be
an emergent property of ultra-zillions of 'strings'
humming along with simple interaction rules -
cellular automata math.

Ultimately, all 'materialistic'.

But what WE make of it all, how we LIVE in it all ...

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 23:33:14 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> I'm fine with Apache. You DO need to tweak more than one config file
> these days alas - and HTTPS should be just a DEFAULT alongside HTTP.

Do it with macros. I have a setup for a client involving running about
half a dozen virtual hosts on a single machine. Each site definition is
only two lines in the Apache config: one for HTTP, the other for HTTPS.
The macro for HTTP adds an automatic redirect to HTTPS if enabled by a
single parameter setting.

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024 00:55:10 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> Plato's "Allegory of the cave" kinda touched on the same stuff - but,
> maybe for political reasons, left off the last paragraph or two.

Then he went off he deep end with Platonic realism and set Western thought
to chasing its tail for 2000 years.

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 10:09:11 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Don't even go there. Natural and I had very lively discussions on that
>> theme. But yes, I'm in the camp of the people who accept the real world
>> as a fact, and that without humans, there's no ethics, math, true or
>> false.
>
> Buddhism has the concept of two truths, conventional and ultimate.
> Conventionally I went out this morning to feed two cats. Ultimately 'cat'
> is a construct I imposed and there aren't two of anything.
>
> https://thebuddhistcentre.com/system/files/groups/files/heart_sutra.pdf
>
> Nietzsche condensed into a couple of hundred Chinese ideograms...

Buddha seems to have been far ahead of his time. I really like his
position on god, that instead of speculating, they should "shut up and
meditate". ;)

On the other hand, I do not know if this is what he actually thought, or
if it is just hearsay.

I tried for a bit, to try and "distill" original buddhism, and although it
was difficult to find anything specific, my feeling was that original
buddhism was more about doing, rather than speculating, so heavily
meditation focused, and not very speculation focused.

Another thing I found out was also that original buddhism was heavily
adapted to the individual (naturally) where buddha tried to tailor the
techniques and teachings to the individual he was talking with, and that
is why it started to diverge over the millennia.

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 21:39:58 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 10:00:47 +0100, D wrote:
>>>
>>>> I mean, there are companies making ridiculously expensive meat
>>>> substitutes, but they have all neglected the grasshopper route.
>>>
>>> It wouldn't be vegan.
>>>
>>>
>> Ahh... so that is their target group. Then it makes sense, thank you.
>
> That's Impossible Burgers claim to fame. I've had vegetable birgers like
> the black bean varieties and they aren't bad but they're not pretending to
> be meat and they aren't expensive. Somehow a vegan eating something that
> looks like a bloody hamburger reminds me of Jews chowing down on faux
> bacon.
>

Yes! I don't think I ever had faux bacon. My father, who for a time in his
life travelled a lot in arabia, had faux bacon and said it was disgusting.

Once, he stayed at a hotel that actually had bacon!! But he couldn't find
it. So he asked in the restaurant, and a guy said "follow me, I will show
you". They were walking for a loooooong time and in a very empty, secluded
and roped off corner there was a small tray with bacon. It wasn't good,
but at least it was there.

But arabians can change! He worked with a swedish/arabian guy who was a
homo. He was very unhappy all his life, until he moved to sweden where his
mother was from. There he discovered his homoness and his love of bacon,
and his quality of life improved enormously. He was a very nice guy and
pleasant to work with.

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-12-06, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 01:13:40 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>>
>>>> Fedora still seems ok - as far as Fedora is OK. The
>>>> Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch end is still OK. Never a fan of Slack, but,
>>>> who knows ...... gotta keep evading suckitude.
>>>
>>> Slack was my first distro. Download in pieces and copy to about 40
>>> floppies.
>
> When I decided to try Linux I went to the local bookstore and browsed
> the Linux books, comparing all the ones that came with an install CD.
> I liked Patrick Volkerding's book best, so I wound up starting out
> with Slackware 3.5. I continued with it for several years (and
> upgrades), but the lack of a package manager required lots of
> application builds from source, which grew tiresome.
>
> I tried several other distros, e.g. Mint and CrunchBang.
> Ubuntu was very easy to bring up, but when they switched
> to the Unity desktop in release 10, I decided it was time
> to move on. I finally settled on Debian.

Same here! At the dawn of time, I bought a slckware double cd in a local
computer shop. One cd was the os and the other the package collection.
Those were the days!

I wondered sometimes, in these days of woke linux projects who are very
militant when it comes to non-woke people, if I should try slckware again
or move somewhere else.

I do like opensuse, but their way of acting towards non-woke people, as
reported on by Lunduke, really makes me want to stop supporting them.

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> On 2024-12-06, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I was recovering from a tumour operation at that point and was on
>> seriously concrete butt plugging pain relief.
>>
>> I drank a couple of points of pear juice. Delicious. And unbeknownst to
>> me Natures best laxative...
>
> Interesting. I've found that peanut butter acts as a mild laxative,
> at least for me. This is a Good Thing - I love peanut butter.
> I had a knee replacement yesterday, so I'll get to test it.
>

Knee replacememt? I have heard of hip joint replacement, but had no idea
they do it with knees as well! In truth, science is mighty!

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> On 12/6/24 4:12 AM, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 01:13:40 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>>
>>>>    Fedora still seems ok - as far as Fedora is OK. The
>>>>    Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch end is still OK. Never a fan of Slack, but,
>>>>    who knows ...... gotta keep evading suckitude.
>>>
>>> Slack was my first distro. Download in pieces and copy to about 40
>>> floppies.
>>
>> Was my first distro too. After that, I can't remember if I went to Mandrake
>> or if I had netbsd in between.
>
> Was NetBSD out in that time-frame ???

Let me have a look... 1993, and I think this was possibly between 94 to 95
(not sure) so yes, seems like it.

>
>>> I've got Fedora 40 on one machine. Not bad but it updates frequently
>>> compared to Ubuntu or Debian.
>>>
>>> Debian us on my work machine. I wanted stability, not cutting edge.
>>>
>
>

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> On 12/6/24 9:30 PM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
>> On 2024-12-06, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 6 Dec 2024 01:13:40 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Fedora still seems ok - as far as Fedora is OK. The
>>>>> Manjaro/Endeavour/Arch end is still OK. Never a fan of Slack, but,
>>>>> who knows ...... gotta keep evading suckitude.
>>>>
>>>> Slack was my first distro. Download in pieces and copy to about 40
>>>> floppies.
>>
>> When I decided to try Linux I went to the local bookstore and browsed
>> the Linux books, comparing all the ones that came with an install CD.
>> I liked Patrick Volkerding's book best, so I wound up starting out
>> with Slackware 3.5. I continued with it for several years (and
>> upgrades), but the lack of a package manager required lots of
>> application builds from source, which grew tiresome.
>
>
> Slack IS very "raw". There's some good, but a lot
> of bad, in that. You kinda have to be an OS fanatic ...
>
> But I'm not 16 anymore.

Thank you for the review. Then it is not for me. I don't mind _some_
tinkering to improve things, but like you, I'm not 16 anymore and I have a
business to run, so this I will remove from the list of my opensuse
replacements.

>> I tried several other distros, e.g. Mint and CrunchBang.
>> Ubuntu was very easy to bring up, but when they switched
>> to the Unity desktop in release 10, I decided it was time
>> to move on. I finally settled on Debian.
>
> Well, you COULD get past Unity ...
>
> My biggest objections were the 'services' they kept
> pushing hard - indeed could barely install it anymore
> without signing up (shades of M$ !). They also changed
> and/or moved around a LOT of config stuff for NO real
> gain IMHO.
>
> Deb - WAS the Solid Foundation - but suddenly became
> just another 'Buntu.
>
> So now it's Fedora and Arch derivs.
>
> I've heard GenToo is kinda interesting ... and
> there are always the BSDs.

I was very impressed with FreeBSD when I tried it out 1 year ago. The only
thing missing for me was that in order to get anything faster that G-wifi,
you had to run a small alpine VM with passthrough, since native drivers
did not exist for FreeBSD.

I tried to run a snapshot version, and faster than G-wifi did work, but
something else was unstable, so I had to leave it for the moment.

The laptop I tested it on was a (then) 1 year old Asus ExpertBook B5, and
everything except the wifi worked flawlessly.

The Freebsd handbook was absolutely amazing. The documentation is in my
opinion, far, far ahead of linux. Suse does have some good guides
actually, but I feel BSD is better.

On Fri, 6 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

>> This is not so good. I hope IBM won't kill redhat in the end.
>
>
> Alas I think they will. As said, you are now IBMs
> beta tester. This is valuable for working out a
> number of kinks - but eventually the kinks will
> be kinda dealt with. Then RH and its downstream
> parasites will Go Away.

This is very sad. I know a guy who is an EMEA level manager at Redhat, so he
benefited from the acquisition with a nice promotion. According to him, what IBM
is currently doing to destroy it is to mess around with licensing, to make it
more draconian and more expensive. Ceph has moved to IBM, so that will probably
go downhill, since IBM will always push GPFS over ceph.

At redhat, the only things that is focused on is Openshift, as the ultimate
lock-in tool, so the OS just lives to the side in its own world.

What is sad is that SUSE is doing the excat same thing. Their strategy seems to
be to copy everything Redhat does, and do it worse. They now only focus on
rancher, and are leaving the OS to the side. They closed down their openstack
and their ceph.

What they sadly don't realize is that the OS is their jewel. I would focus on
that in the embedded space, they had a hueg lead in the SAP space, and see if I
could grow up. But no... rancher and containers it is, and there redhat is
blocking them well with openshift.

>
>>>  Switched to Deb - but now IT seems to have hired
>>>  a bunch of Canonical rejects .....
>>
>> Deb has been on my list to try, in case opensuse finally dies. I also
>> thought about trying Alpine linux but I do not know how much trouble musl
>> will cause me. Finally, if those do not deliver, I thought about actually
>> going back to some of my earliest experiments and try FreeBSD for day to
>> day use. Since I'm not a cutting edfe developer, I only need some basics,
>> which I think all are in the FreeBSD packages, so if they fixed their wifi
>> problem (I tried it 1 year ago and had to run a small linux VM for a
>> working wifi driver) it could definitely be a serious option. Oh, and that
>> would mean it doesn't drain the battery as well. But let's see. I think I
>> can stick with opensuse 15.6 for at least another 2-3 years, and then they
>> might kill the project in favuor of some container based crap.
>
>
> Deb WAS the Solid Foundation ... until now. It became
> just another 'Buntu IMHO. Tragic !
>
> The BSDs are "usable" - really Not Bad. However remember
> they are Unix, not Linux, so a lot of little stuff is
> different. They also tend to be a few years behind when
> it comes to drivers. The real target is SERVERS, not
> desktops.

True. BSDs are a bit behind, but since my main use case is office + light
scripting + some light servers stuff (backup, web server, etc.) BSDs should be
fine I think. We will see in about 1-2 years when the time comes to leave
opensuse 15.6 behind.

> OpenSUSE/Tumbleweed ... DID get it to run on a Pi-4,
> albeit a bit clunky sometimes because it isn't a
> "light" distro. Pi-5s are WEIRD ... can't even get
> a Fedora for those even a year on. Apparently the
> boot-up chain of events is a huge kludge. HAVE
> found instructions - pages and pages and pages
> of them - WAY too old for that shit and half of
> it would probably disappear on the next update.

I have a radxa zero for my kodi/tv use, and I tried to get opensuse to run on it
and it was not possible. The radxa zero, being some kind of chinese raspberry
copy had horrible documentation, so in the end, the only thing I managed to get
working was some kind of dev snapshot of debian in their git repository.

I would loooose for raspberry to develop an updated version of the pi zero. That
is what the radxa is. I have 4 GB ram and 16 GB built in flash storage on the
tiniest board. It was wifi and bluetooth, and kodi and 1080p runs well on it.

If raspberry updated their zero to those specs (or beyond) I would drop the
radxa in a second since I expect that the git repository will become
unmaintained in a year or two.

> If you really want an alt, consider Arch and
> derivs. Endeavour is nice. Manjaro works well
> (but, like Tumbleweed, kinda updates the ENTIRE
> system at the slightest change).

Thank you for the pointers. Have made a note of this.