Bad Opinion GuyI'm still constantly baffled by just how absolutely beyond shit modern computers are
kabel42
R.L. Dane 
🍵 
16-bit/early-32-bit was my favorite era. (Basically, the #68k era ;)
Computers were just becoming capable, but not too big for their britches.
@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane I had a good time with my first amd athlon 64 but sure, simpler times :)
I think computers were honestly better when they were limited to absolutely no more than 1GB RAM, no more than 256 colors, and no more than 1024x768 screen resolution.
1GB RAM: no LLMs
256 colors: no horrid low-contrast soupy interfaces
XGA Resolution: no horrid empty spaces and bloated interfaces
I keep wanting to make that as an OS 😄
(If only I had the skillz)
Yeah, and the pushback I get from statements like that is insane to me.
"But we don't want to go back to Windows 95."
I don't either, it was a crap OS, but the interface was better than the crap interfaces they're shipping today, so ?!?!????!?
pixxI'd rather w95 with its software suite and interface than w11 with its.
W11 is a worse OS than w95 was.
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42
It does have memory protection, though. That was Windows 95's most glaring weakness.
Edit: I meant to say that it doesn't. derp.
Edit2: No, I was saying that W11 has memory protection. lol
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42
Brofam, Windows 95 used to crash on me daily.
Linux? Basically never.
FreeBSD? Maaaaybe once a week.
Bitslingers-R-Us@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane @pixx @kabel42 Is it the OS that crashes, or applications running on the OS?
Are the crashes related to video output?
The OS should never crash. If it does, you most likely have defective hardware, or you’re finding issues with your video hardware support.
@AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42
I kinda wish computers had an OS-level reset button that was supported directly by the kernel.
You flip open a protective door, hit the button, and the kernel takes over immediately, unmounting everything and rebooting.
That would definitively answer your question.
I know Linux has the magic sysrq key combos. I used to know how to use them a few years ago when troubleshooting these kinds of bugs, but I haven't had to in a while.
I don't know if #FreeBSD has an equivalent.
@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42 hw.cnmagic, perhaps?
The idea of a set of shortcuts in the kernel debugger is a neat one.
@AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane
If a program crashes, 95% chance the OS crashes with it. Preemptetive/memory protected is a flat out lie.
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane uhhhhh no. just, no.
I have programs crash semifrequently and have had maaaaaybe two OS crashes on linux in the last five years
one of which was due to the hard drive failing
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
Admittedly most crashes are from come from running out of RAM/modern computers sucking at handling Swap latency. But even when programs properly crash without running out of RAM, even if the system doesn't _technically_ go out with it (which it often still does), there's still rarely any chance of recovering the system without (if you're lucky) a reboot or (more likely) a hard reset. Even xkill doesn't help all that much a lot of the time
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane You might have hardware problems, then.
I’m compiling perl on a system with 24 megs of memory, so the system is basically entirely in swap. If that can run like that for a week or two and be fully fine afterwards, then the VM system is doing what it should.
I can’t speak for Linux - it’s becoming the Windows of the open source world - but I also thrash the heck out of memory and swap on modern high memory systems, too, without issues.
@AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane
I used to be able to live out of swap both on Linux and the BSDs. But these days, neither Linux nor the BSDs like touching swap _at all_. Linux is still much worse about it. But on every computer I have, touching swap is like running through a minefield blindfolded.
It's way too widespread of a problem to be a hardware issue
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane Let’s reproduce it so it can be reported.
I have an amd64 system here running NetBSD. I can force the memory down from 32 gigs to whatever I want with a kernel config change.
Can you come up with a recipe for software to install and run, and perhaps sites to visit and do things, that you’re pretty sure will result in a non-responsive system?
@AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane
Yeah, if I load up firefox, log into all my chats and emails, and play a couple youtube videos, that's easily enough to use up all my RAM, dip into Swap space, and cause the system to start freezing and hitching, and eventually become completely unresponsive.
But erm, I'm guessing you meant that _other people_ could use to reproduce my issue. So uhm, let me find some sites that don't require other people to log into all my stuff...
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
...how much ram did you say you have? That's kinda ridiculous unless you have a _lot_ more chats than I think you do O_o
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
4GB RAM, 4GB Swap space. I have mastodon, matrix, gmail/gchat, protonmail (actually, usually close protonmail so I can have more youtube), and youtube is pretty much all I ever have open on this computer. I only ever have a web browser open, no other programs except terminals, and I reboot twice a day
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
...I know firefox sucks but 4G for that is a bit insane imo
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
Well, it runs fine on first boot. But after a while (A few hours, less if I'm doing research and opening extra tabs), all the webapps have leaked enough memory for it to really slow down.
Just as an experiment, I've opened some extra tabs to accelerate the usage (I'm on a fairly fresh reboot) and just 600mb of Swap used is enough for the system to lag really hard when switching windows
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
huh
Well I just ran out of RAM on Linux twice, _without swap_, and system recovered fine. Was responsive enough for me to go kill the system update (which was using all RAM to compile, uh, vscodium, i think. used that one fucking time lol.)
This tab in firefox got killed, as did steamwebhelper and several other FF tabs, but the system is just, fine
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
I wonder if swap makes it _worse_ lol
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
TBH I want to see a memory usage breakdown of your system when this happens, I think that's what you'd really need to know what's going on :/
Firefox shouldn't generally be leaking memory. I've left 100 tabs open for weeks and memory usage never just randomly goes up
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
Firefox is good about suspending inactive tabs to save RAM.
@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
agreed, other than the part where you started by saying "firefox is good" /snark
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
I think that Firefox is objectively, ethically the least bad among any modern web browsers that can load a page like youtube or amazon.
Horrible bar to pass under, of course, but it is what it is.
@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
sure, it's still shit software thuogh
I'm not even talking ethics, just as a pure matter of code
it's bad code
@pixx @rl_dane @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
Bad ethics, bad code, still better in both respects to Chrome imo :P
Still don't like it, though
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
I mean, all major web browsers are crap software, and the websites themselves? also crap software!
@rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
I don't know about the saving RAM part, but it sure is good at making sure I miss notifications :P
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
Really? I've been watching on computers with 16GB of RAM the exact moment when webapps hit their 4GB leak limit and reset. Sometimes the reset doesn't fix the leak, so the RAM usage will just sawtooth up and down by 4GB or so
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
.....I have literally never seen this, from anything
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
From anything in a browser*
I've seen shitty applications, sure, but never seen this in firefox.
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
I only see this on systems with 16GB+ of RAM. Any less isn't enough to let each and every webapp hit their 4GB reset limit, so the system just slowly bogs more and more :P
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
...I have more RAM than that. Firefox _never_ gets that high for any proc. Never even 1G.
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
Youtube is the worst about it. Although, that's probably just because I don't use things like discord, facebook, or teams.
Gmail and Protonmail though _both_ have this nasty habit of slowing down to an absolute _crawl_ EVEN WHEN THERE'S STILL PLENTY OF RAM AND CPU LEFT
But at least they don't bog the entire rest of my system as bad as youtube does.
Well, protonmail still does a bit, but
C++ Wage Slave@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
Try reducing the value of /proc/sys/vm/swappiness from its default value (probably 60) to about 10. That will make Linux less keen to dip into swap space, at the expense of having a smaller disk cache when memory is tight. (When memory is plentiful, the disk cache will be as large as it would have been with a larger swappiness.)
The optimal value of swappiness depends on your workload, but, since you're not running a DBMS or a file server, it's likely to be a good deal lower than 60.
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
> used to live out of swap
...it's possible that the drives are getting worn, if you were using the swap that regularly?
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
No, because I get new computers and drives with some frequency
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 @rl_dane
I've definitely noticed Linux is less.. well. It's _less_ than it used to be, but what you're talking about seems an order of magnitude worse than anything I've ever seen with it :(
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42
I remember when systems would aggressively load infrequently accessed regions of RAM into swap to have more room for cache.
Maybe they still do, I don't know. I don't think I have any swap. XD
No wait, I do have a little:
rld@Intrepid:~$ free
total used free
Mem: 7.61 Gi 2.28 Gi 5.32 Gi
Swap: 10 Gi 304 Mi 9.7 Gi
rld@Intrepid:~$ uname -srm
FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE-p5 amd64
rld@Intrepid:~$
@AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42
> I can’t speak for Linux - it’s becoming the Windows of the open source world - but I also thrash the heck out of memory and swap on modern high memory systems, too, without issues.
*sigh*
It is. Maybe the MacOS of the FOSS world is more accurate. But yeah.
@rl_dane @AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42
relatedly, I wonder how accurate this is
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42
Well, they're probably comparing ARM to Intel, so...
@rl_dane @AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42
1) supposed to all be the same hardware, I thought, at least for the left side
2) my point is less "safari good" and more "WOW firefox sucks"
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42
I wonder how old that benchmark is, because Firefox had some significant speed increases as they imported a lot of code from Servo. "Firefox Quantum."
@rl_dane @AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42
also I think that matters less than you would think
@pixx @AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42
Apple Silicon vs. Intel? Maybe very recent intel generations are giving (probably a couple year old) Apple Silicon machines a run for their money, but Intel was historically an absolute dog compared to Apple Silicon.
The difference was as notable as m68k (000-040) vs. equivalent x86 or PowerPC (601-G4) vs. equivalent x86.
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane If the kernel panics or becomes unresponsive because of a userland program, then it should be reported as a bug. It shouldn’t happen, and if it does, we (at least NetBSD) care about it.
@AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane
kernel panics are very very rare. The system becoming unresponsive is just called "using a computer in the 2020s" :P
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42
Yeah, no. Maybe 5% of the time, if that.
Some games and (*sigh*) bloated web pages can really test a system, though.
Also, I love how some random corporate social media pages can bring a fast box to its knees, and yet infinitmac.org will happily host an entire vm running IN your browser with just a teensy bit of CPU usage.
@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
I mean, infinimac is running like am 68k lol. Emulating a CPU that runs at ~1MHz and whose entire memory space fits in your host CPU's cache is not terribly expensive :P
The corpo pages literally _would not be possible_ on those older machines :)
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
Eh, 8-40Mhz, akshuyallly. ;)
The PowerPC emulators on that site do bog down a good bit.
I wasn't saying that the corpo hellsites could run on the emulated machines, but that Infinite Mac can emulate completely foreign hardware and be more responsive than crapsites that just use a circlejank of JS frameworks to display your dumb uncle's racist rants. XD
@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @kabel42 yeah my point was that running the crapsites is harder :P