A programmer with an interest in transit, making music, and building things of all types.

I have dysgraphia which makes writing difficult for me. I hope you can figure out what I mean despite my issues.

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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • bluGill@kbin.socialtoLinux@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    9 months ago

    Sure, when linux loads are process it follows a standard procedure to see how to run the file. If the file has ELF markers it runs the process via the ELF loader. If the file has #! as the first then it uses a different process to run that script. (I doubt a.out executable format is supported anymore, but that at least used to be an option). There is no reason you cannot hack this process to detect windows executable and then use wine to load/run the application. I’m not sure why nobody has done this, but the basic things have been supported in linux for decades.



  • A terminal is something like a DEC model Vt220, or IBM 3270. These are physical machines with a keyboard, and a display. Most often the display was a CRT, but some were just a printer, I supposed some must have had a LCD but I’ve never seen one. A few did have a mouse, but that was rare. They might look like a computer, but they do not have a CPU (or they do but the CPU is very under powered). The point is you can have 100 cheap (cheap as in 4x the cost of a modern PC, without factoring in inflation) terminals connecting to an expensive powerful computer (expensive as in millions of not inflation adjusted dollars, powerful as in a modern smart phone is faster by nearly any measure). Every terminal had some special commands that programs could use to do something more fancy than plain text, but different ones had different abilities.

    These days a powerful PC is cheaper than any terminal could be and vastly more powerful than those old computers, so it doesn’t make sense to have one except as a collectors item. However terminals themselves did leave a useful of program design. Most command line programs know how to control a terminal to do some pretty printing. Thus we often use terminal emulators which let our computer pretend to be one of those old terminals. The DEC vt100 for whatever reason ends up being the most commonly emulated terminal when someone says terminal emulator - there really was a model vt100 terminal at one time.

    Note that a web browser counts as a terminal emulator by the above definition. Nobody thinks of them that way, but they fit.



  • While technically you don’t need to study an hour every day, if you don’t put that much time into it you will eventually look back and see you have spend a year+ and don’t know anything and then give up. An hour a day means it is likely you have made progress between reviews of your life and thus the effort is worth continuing. At 10 minutes per day you will be dead before you know the language, so giving up is the right answer.

    Enough people fail to learn a language in school as to consider the whole idea of school bunk. (but some do learn, and some schools are better than others - but the better ones all feature time as a factor)


  • Docker gives you a few different things which might or might not matter. Note that all of the following can be gotten in ways other than docker as well. Sometimes those ways are better, but often what is better is just opinion. There are downsides to some of the following as well that may not be obvious.

    With docker you can take a container and roll it out to 100s of different machines quickly. this is great for scaling if your application can scale that way.

    With docker you can run two services on the same machine that use incompatible versions of some library. It isn’t unheard of to try to upgrade your system and discover something you need isn’t compatible with the new library, while something else you need to upgrade needs the new library. Docker means each service gets separate copies of what is needs and when you upgrade one you can leave the other behind.

    With docker you can test an upgrade and then when you roll it out know you are rolling out the same thing everywhere.

    With docker you can move a service from one machine to a different one somewhat easily if needed. Either to save money on servers, or to use more as more power is needed. Since the service itself is in a docker you can just start the container elsewhere and change pointers.

    With docker if someone does manage to break into a container they probably cannot break into other containers running on the same system. (if this is a worry you need to do more risk assessment, they can still do plenty of damage)


  • The duolingo format was never popular with polyglots. The game format makes it easy to feel like you did something which is a great thing, but the is the only pro people who have learned multiple languages find with it.

    There is a lot of debate about what the best way to start is, but all agree that you need to interact with the real language in real world type settings (watching a movie in the language with subtitles is real world, though you need to make an effort to listen not just read!) They also agree that time is important, you need to study at least an hour every day to make progress.








  • Because the people who developed X11 (that is Xorg) haven declared that. Maybe they should have named it X12, but they didn’t for whatever reason. However the people doing the work have already given up on working on X11 they gave up on X11 beyond the bare minimum almost 10 years ago because some real issues with X11 as a protocol are not fixable.

    There were other attempts to a successor to X11, but they never got the support of people doing the work on X11 (in part because they didn’t understand the problem with X11 and so kept many bad things while ‘fixing’ things that were not broken)

    Which is to say: you have two choices: get involved with continuing X11 development, or jump to Wayland. Throw a couple million $$$ per year at X11 (either pay developers, or convince a dozen developers to maintain X11) and I’ll retract my statement, until then X11 is dead. If you cannot do that then Wayland is your only option.