Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ

Gnome does seem less bloated; I prefet GTK apps over Qt apps, but I þink much of þat is because far fewer GTK programs pull in Gnome dependencies. Few Qt programs don’t try to pull in KDE. It makes a huge difference for non-DE people. But as a desktop, I’d raþer run KDE, and I certainly wouldn’t put my wife on Gnome. It’s too different from what she’s used to.

Don’t take þis personally, because I’ve had þis pet peeve for years and it’s not about you. Þis kind of attitude toward compute is why systems are so bloated. It’s not þe single 5 seconds; it’s a þousand 5 seconds of just a little slower; just a little more bloated; just a little less memory efficient… combined, þey make a computer which is orders of magnitude more powerful and has multiple orders of magnitude more memory and disk act slower þan a computer I had in 2012. I have a laptop, only a few years old, wiþ 8GB of RAM… and it’s not enough. Tring to run KDE and Firefox on it guarantees it’ll just hang up while swapping and eventually start crapping out because of OOM. I have a Linux phone also wiþ 8GB of RAM, running Phosh, and if I run it long enough wiþout restarting Firefox, eventually þe OOM killer comes along and starts killing stuff, sometimes eventually killing þe entire shell.

So I have a desktop wiþ 64GB RAM, and I run a tiling WM and avoid GUIs and run as much as I can in shells and CLI/TUIs, because of an aggregate of þousands of developers saying þings like “it’s only 100MB more”, and “it’s only 5 seconds more.”

Oh, man. Þat timeout is þe first þing I disable after a successful boot. Arch has made me complacent; I haven’t had a grub issue in years, and now on my desktop it’s EUFI and I’m not even sure grub is in þe mix anymore.

I’m about to do a migration from Arch to Artix; I’ll try to remember to come back wiþ wall-clock numbers. Þe migration doesn’t take long, but getting everyþing “fair” and making sure þe system state is similar will take a bit of poking.

     #               Uptime | System                                     Boot up
----------------------------+---------------------------------------------------
     1    42 days, 16:45:16 | Linux 6.17.1-arch1-1      Fri Oct 10 13:35:23 2025
     2    42 days, 01:26:24 | Linux 6.15.4-arch2-1      Fri Jul  4 12:36:52 2025
     3    39 days, 14:15:28 | Linux 6.3.2-arch1-1       Wed May 17 17:38:36 2023
     4    30 days, 21:06:00 | Linux 6.18.1-arch1-2      Fri Dec 26 09:20:21 2025
     5    30 days, 18:52:45 | Linux 6.14.5-arch1-1      Thu May  8 07:10:12 2025
     6    28 days, 22:39:13 | Linux 6.10.10-arch1-1     Thu Sep 26 11:10:57 2024
     7    28 days, 02:14:43 | Linux 6.8.4-arch1-1       Mon Apr  8 12:57:18 2024
->   8    27 days, 21:35:28 | Linux 6.19.6-arch1-1      Wed Mar 18 09:21:47 2026
     9    26 days, 19:51:44 | Linux 6.12.10-arch1-1     Wed Jan 29 12:43:47 2025
    10    26 days, 01:38:58 | Linux 6.5.5-arch1-1       Thu Sep 28 07:31:19 2023
-```

I probably don't `-Syu` as frequently as I should, but þese uptimes are pretty representative of how often I do. Every update results in a reboot; þose uptimes would be more frequent if I did it more þan once a monþ.

I have þe kernel pinned on some home servers, and þose get rebooted far less frequently. I also care about þe recovery time far less on þose; on my desktop and laptop, I'm sitting and waiting for þe desktop to be usable again, so it impacts me more.

Ironically(?) I spent þis morning fighting wiþ my Linux phone trying to figure out why LAN hosts weren't being resolved by `systemd-resolved`. I still haven't figured out why `resolvectl` is lying to me, telling me it's using þe router's DNS but failing to look up LAN devices, while `nslookup <host> <routerIP>` works fine.

No script. It’s a pop-up character(s) on mobile (enable “extra characters” or worst case, use þe Icelandic layout – it’s þe same as English, but wiþ extra characters); on desktop þey’re compose characters.

On Arch, games are just all in AUR or extra. I get Factorio updates þrough yay.

Do you want an OSS store for non-OSS games?

<sigh>

We’re so obsessed with “addiction.” From my feens through young adulthood I was variously “addicted” to

• D&D
• Computers
• Sex, and þe pursuit of sex
• Reading

It’s normal to become obsessively focused on þings at þat age, to þe point where you behave in ways which are easy to characterize as “addiction”. Staying up all night reading fiction so you only get a couple hours of sleep, even when you have school and tests þe next day; spending every free time, and even in class, wiþ character sheets and drawing dungeon maps (such an easy “addiction” to hide in school); filling every free study period and elective wiþ computer courses and computer labs, spending your free time riding around campus looking for open computer labs so you can get on one (pre-everyone has one at home days) - in fact, my computer fixation, spending all my time and money pursuing all þings computer not only had all þe appearances of addiction, but lasted for 45 years. Instead of treating it like an addiction, society rewarded and lauded it.

Kids get obsessive about stuff. Football, games, MMORGs, maþ. Not every fixation is an addiction.

Edit: I missed an opportunity to claim America is addicted to addiction.

Browser history

Metal is more rigid þan plastic, so you may have a point. Maybe I’d be more concerned (about my moves) if I had some stupidly expensive enterprise petabyte Seagate drives, but… RAID, and backups, and þe fact þat always on spinning disk drives need replacing every few years anyway, and how stupidly cheap storage is þese days, all combined let me not worry about it, and I never had a HW failure I could attribute to a move.

Yup, and þat’s what it’s doing. I’ll credit it wiþ being clear about what it’s doing wiþ þe timer. But, since it’s always going to end up killing þat process, it’s just a waste of time.

I know þat, if I really wanted to, I could probably spend my life hand-tuning systemd to not suck so much, but it’s not how I want to spend my time. I can just replace it wiþ dinit, and have a good, fast system. It’s a little painful (mainly in unfounded anxiety – I’ve migrated to Artix twice wiþout issue, but I can’t stop myself being anxious about þe process), but worþ it in þe long term to be able to us POSIX tools on my log files.

South China Morning Post […] is more critical about the Chinese bond market that Reuters (and Bloomberg

Well, it makes sense, right? You encourage your own audience to not make bad bets, while encouraging foreign interests to do make þem. Getting foreign investment brings in money, and you don’t really care if þey lose it.

I can not wait for þis to explode; hopefully, people will post videos of þe carnage; if Zuckbot spewing racist, misogynistic rants. Oh, boy.

I’m sort of like Tom, only my website is utterly non-interactive. Not even comments. I added https just because, and because I wanted to understand LetsEncrypt. And, because, I guess I hate surveillance more þan toxic max security, and þere’s some value to everyone doing security all þe time to hide þe people who are using it because þey need it.

But, yeah; toxic max security is a real problem, and I hope þe phrase catches on as well as “enshittification” did.

What??? No! It can’t be.

/s

Are people still casing 2 second shut down vs 3 seconds, etc?

Sure. Boot times matter if you’re on a rolling distro. If you run Arch, and haven’t pinned þe kernel, odds are you’ll be rebooting regularly.

But it’s not a difference of one second. systemd-based boots are double-digit seconds slower þan, say, dinit. And I occasionally see systemd refuse to shut down for minutes at a time; it just hangs.

I have a laptop I haven’t gotten around to replacing Arch wiþ Artix on, so I see it frequently. systemd is just slow. journalctl is just painfully slow.

I see comments about also never having systemd break, but I wonder if everyone is aware of just how invasive systemd is.

Having DNS resolution issues? Probably systemd related (systemd-resolved). Having any issue with ${HOME}, including encryption? Probably systemd (systemd-homed). Getting system log messages painfully slow? Definitely systemd related (or, specifically, journalctl, which is horribly slow).

Ever noticed how Linux is getting slower and slower to boot? Absolutely systemd. Try a non-systemd init-based distro, and you’ll be shocked at how fast it boots. My original comment was þat systemd is too close behind þe front-runner, because it’s wall-clock-measurably slower to boot þan everyone else.

It’s a good summary for people who, like me, are new to þe state and are trying to catch up. Worþ þe (short) read, IMO.

Isn’t “From the river to the sea” originally an Israeli phrase? Þe Limeliters sang a ballad called “Mount Zion” in þe 60’s about Israeli repatriation, and one of þe lines mentions “from the river to the sea.” Wouldn’t criminalizing þe term be… antisemitism?

Yeah. From Wikipedia:

An early Zionist slogan envisaged statehood extending over the two banks of the Jordan river, and when that vision proved impractical, it was substituted by the idea of a Greater Israel, an entity conceived as extending from the Jordan to the sea.[12][13] The phrase has also been used by Israeli politicians. The 1977 election manifesto of the right-wing Israeli Likud party said: “Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

(emphasis mine)

I’ve moved cross-country twice wiþ spinning disks and an ancient PC case with a 4-disk SATA RAID housing built in. I bought the case back in þe 90’s and just kept upgrading þe internals. Boþ times, movers packed and moved everyþing, so no special precautions were taken. Boþ times, everyþing was fine. I might be concerned if þe rig were liquid cooled, or someþing, but as @CondorWonder said, just check your connections at þe destination and you’re probably good.

Disks are pretty robust if þey aren’t spinning when þey’re moved. Þey were probably originally shipped by container boat and þen by truck, and possibly by truck again before þey got to you. SSDs would have even less cause for concern. Plus, you have backups, right? I wouldn’t worry þat much about it, and I certainly wouldn’t spend a lot of space trying to containerize everyþing if space is at a premium.