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 @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
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
I'm not so sure that Firefox is better code than Chromium. But definitely more ethical. Or at least, up until a couple years ago.
@rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn @kabel42
I dunno, chromium based browsers have always been buggy as _fuck_ in my experience. Yes, even worse than firefox.
@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
when I use chromium it it usually is pretty ok except for roll20 that somehow manages to crash the waylands session
when I use chromium it it usually is pretty ok except for roll20 that somehow manages to crash the waylands session
@kabel42 @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Too be fair, wayland is also absolute _crap_ :P
@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Yes and an app crashing the whole session is defenetly a wayland problem
Yes and an app crashing the whole session is defenetly a wayland problem
@kabel42 @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Hey, as we've all been told, on a preemptive multitasking system, it is _impossible_ for one crashed app to effect the rest of the system. So you must just be imagining things, anyway :P
@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
No, preemption isn't memory protection and every thing that communicates can fuck up handling it's input buffers
No, preemption isn't memory protection and every thing that communicates can fuck up handling it's input buffers
@kabel42 @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Does wayland not use memory protection?
@OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Linux has memory protection, not sure if wayland is adding anything?
But Wayland still has to parse data that is send to it to then render.
Could also be a problem with amdgpu not being grat yet, it does sometimes spam dmesg
Linux has memory protection, not sure if wayland is adding anything?
But Wayland still has to parse data that is send to it to then render.
Could also be a problem with amdgpu not being grat yet, it does sometimes spam dmesg
@kabel42 @rl_dane @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Did not everyone get the memo about sanitizing inputs?
@OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Well, yes, but the memo was html with css, which then crashed the html viewer plugin of the email program I was using, and... and... and... and... and... XD
@kabel42
Amdgpu is far from perfect, and I've had it crash my wayland sessions a few times, but never the kernel, and it always recovers (as of recently anyways. It used to be a lot worse.)
@pixx @kabel42 @OpenComputeDesign @rl_dane …and to be fair, if Wayland, or any other GUI program, for that matter, dies in such a way that the only sensible way to get the system back in to a running state is to
ssh in and reboot, that’s a pretty big shortcoming and bug or set of bugs.@pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane @AnachronistJohn
Well, I generally find that wayland crashes wayland
@OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @pixx @AnachronistJohn
But we're not talking about the kernel crashing, we're talking about the Wayland session crashing.
So, a bad web "app" does something wonky with the browser, the browser does something wonky with its parent process (desktop or compositor), the wayland session goes belly-up and all of its children go *POOF*.
NOTHING has happened to the kernel, or anything not a child of the wayland session.
This is a wayland problem, not a kernel problem. It's not even a preemption or memory protection problem.
@rl_dane @kabel42 @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Well, the end result is still the same of an unstable system :P
@OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Yes, but not an unstable kernel. It's an important distinction to make, since we're speaking in the context of kernels and schedulers.
@rl_dane @kabel42 @pixx @AnachronistJohn
Well, sort of, but I feel like the main point is that it doesn't really matter how the kernel works if the entire system, you know, doesn't
Exactly. It's still bad, but it's a "freedesktop.org is shit" problem, not a "linux is shit" one
There's plenty of both lmao
@kabel42
Yeah preemption only prevents cpu hogging. Memory protection is orthogonal
@kabel42 @OpenComputeDesign @pixx @AnachronistJohn
> No, preemption isn't memory protection and every thing that communicates can fuck up handling it's input buffers
* Windows 95 has entered the chat
@OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @rl_dane @pixx That’s a bit disingenuous.
Obviously, on a Sinclair QL or an Amiga, a rogue program can take down the whole system.
On Windows, with tons of design issues and decades of bad decision history, a rogue program can take down the whole system.
With Linux and the BSDs, this shouldn’t happen, but it’s possible, and most often it happens when trusting stuff like video hardware to do its thing where the rest of the OS has not as much control over things as it does with the rest of the computer.
With Linux and the BSDs, if you can reliably crash the whole computer using a userland program, that’s a big bug and should be reported.
On the other hand, sometimes it feels good to vent, and if that’s the purpose of what you’re saying, that’s fine, but understand that your generalizations aren’t correct.
@AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane
*Thinks back to the tech support I've given family as they've switched to Linux, and my own experience with it over the past ten years*
No, it's deffinitely a fair generalization
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane It’s a non-technical generalization.
If you don’t even know whether the whole OS has locked up / become unavailable or if it’s just the window manager / a GUI program, then can you really say that the OS has locked up?
@AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42 @rl_dane
The metric I generally use for whether or not the system has locked up is if pressing ctrl+alt+f2 changes anything, or if pressing any of the lock keys and waiting a few minutes for a light change. If neither of these do anything, the system is probably locked up. Or at least, it's totally unrecoverable
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @pixx @kabel42
Lol trying to switch virtual consoles in wayland on freebsd kills the UI XD
@AnachronistJohn @OpenComputeDesign @pixx @rl_dane
I think since the NT days a lot of windows bluescreens were bad drivers. Not sure if thats 10% or 70%
I think since the NT days a lot of windows bluescreens were bad drivers. Not sure if thats 10% or 70%
@kabel42 @AnachronistJohn @pixx @rl_dane
Ok too be fair drivers are literally the worst thing ever and it would genuinely be better for everyone if we just standardized hardware so drivers could be abolished completely
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @pixx @rl_dane no drivers is gonna suck, but something more modern than vesa would be great
@kabel42 @AnachronistJohn @pixx @rl_dane
What possible downsides could there be to no drivers?
@kabel42 @AnachronistJohn @pixx @rl_dane
PS/2 is better
@OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @pixx @rl_dane but PS/2 doesn't do crappy webcam over "standard" protocol
@kabel42 @AnachronistJohn @pixx @rl_dane
ngl I've never seen a webcam good enough to be worth using anyway
Afaik they exist but few under a hundred books are any good at all
@OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn @pixx
You should've seen the very first webcam+digital camera I got in 2000.
To say it's potato does a disservice to potatoes.
It's powdered mashed potatoes in a 30-year old Swanson's microwave dinner that wasn't heated properly.
@OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn @pixx
Lower latency, too, but less flexible.
@rl_dane @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @pixx
Depends, High Speed should be faster but most keyboards and mice are probably Full Speed
Depends, High Speed should be faster but most keyboards and mice are probably Full Speed
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @rl_dane
You could have a standard for that, you just probably need a new one for every new codec :)
You could have a standard for that, you just probably need a new one for every new codec :)
@kabel42
Theoretically you wouldn't even need that but really, part of the problem with standardization is that if the standard way is bad, you'll just have people ignore it
Opengl is a standard and we still need drivers.
The only way around that is what rpi and, apparently, nvidia?? are soing, where the hardware has a coprocessor in it that implements the driver and then the api on the cpu is just a proxy
Which means you still have a driver but now you're dependent on the vendor for it and it's opaque and hidden
This is not better
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn @rl_dane
With a standard youd have a generic driver in the os, but then google anounces VP10 and defines thats now codec id V10 but at the same time MPEG5 comes out and that also uses coded id V10 and then everyone is happy :)
With a standard youd have a generic driver in the os, but then google anounces VP10 and defines thats now codec id V10 but at the same time MPEG5 comes out and that also uses coded id V10 and then everyone is happy :)
@kabel42 @pixx @AnachronistJohn @rl_dane
kinda wish new codecs would stop coming out tbh
@pixx @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn @rl_dane
would be hard to make a worse standard than current drivers. even if your standard system doesn't boot at all, youre still on par with nvidia driver XD
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @AnachronistJohn @rl_dane there is a strandard, VESA with up to 1024x768 with 256 colours at maybe 3 fps?
@pixx @kabel42 @OpenComputeDesign @AnachronistJohn
Disagree. If there's a single hardware standard, and the vendor's implementation is crap, then the blame is on the hardware/firmware, rather than the OS/drivers.
Yeah but it doesn't *matter* who the blame is on
When the standard is implemented as a driver in software it can be _fixed_
When it's a driver in firmware then bugs are permanent the instant the vendor stops caring
A valve dev has been improving Amdgpu support for older cards recently
If the driver was in firmware then that wpuld be completely impossible
@pixx @rl_dane @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
Counter point:
If there were no drivers, and everything was standardized, then there would be no moving targets, and application optimization could be perfected in perpetuity without the threat of obsoletion that currently plagues the computing world
No, because now you've just shifted bugs into hardware where they're harder to fix
Drivers aren't buggy because drivers are a bad idea, it's because it's a hard problem. Implement an algorithm entirely in hardware and it's impossible to fix if the silicon is wrong.
The only possible way to have bugs be fixable is to have software controlling the hardware, so that you can route around bad or incorrect hardware. You can't just say 'well stop fucking up the hardware then,' that isn't how anything works
@pixx @rl_dane @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
Well, given that drivers keep bricking hardware, I don't really trust drivers to fix anything.
I think the fundemential problem is, humans are unfixably incompetent
@OpenComputeDesign
I've never seen drivers brick hardware lol
I've had many gpu crashes over the years. The long term trend for both intel and amd gpus - the two most complicated drivers i interact with - is higher performance _and_ fewer bugs (crashes, glitches, misrendering) over time, and it's pretty obvious.
For a normal computing experience, mesa and the linux drivers are, uh, pretty good actually.
A lot of the code is a stinking pile. Not all, but a lot.
But to sit here and act like it doesn't work and isn't getting better seems patently absurd to me
@pixx @rl_dane @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
Well, the main way drivers make hardware not work is by flat out not existing, and being virtually impossible to make exist. But there have been genuine instances of drivers not only screwing up Flash ROM and and excessively wearing out batteries and stuff like that, but even going so far as to melt hardware. (printers, GPUs, and depending on how you define a driver, CPUs)
Sure but "doesn't work on my os" is not the same as bricked and that's a really ridiculous equivalence
Rpis gpu does the coprocessor proxying driverless thing; it's just as useless to me as tje amd ones, on 9.
Not having the ability to talk to hardware is not the same as the hardware being trash
@pixx @rl_dane @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
Well, I've had a fair amount of hardware where the drivers were just lost to time. As is an unfortunately likely fate for a lot of hardware that requires drivers
@OpenComputeDesign
I live on a niche OS. All drivers are lost to time for me 😅
@rl_dane @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
I live on a niche OS. All drivers are lost to time for me 😅
@rl_dane @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
@OpenComputeDesign @pixx @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
No, the problem is that capitalism drives quantity over quality all day long.
Get everyone to adopt NASA-level coding standards and then get back to me about bugginess and incompetence.
> capitalism rewards quantity over quality
Disagree, here. Plenty of good software wins.
Go back 20 years and the leading proprietary solutions were by and large _good_. Better in some cases than equivalent foss is now.
The markets reward quality, in the short term, the problem is that once you've won you largely stay won
Google won for good reasons. Adobe won for good reasons. Microsoft maybe not but a lot of people seemed to think their software was good back then.
Hell, discord largely won on quality. Quality that was subsidized by the investment class to lure people in, but they were genuinely better than most mainstream alternatives as a platform five, ten years ago.
@pixx @rl_dane @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
Seems even FOSS is not very resistant to the problem of "Oh good, I'm the default now; That means it's time to start _sucking_"
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
But the course of enshittification is always to start with quality and value and turn things crappy and user-hostile over time.
So does it matter that Adobe and Google admittedly started out as amazing companies, if they're ugly, bullying behemoths now?
@pixx @OpenComputeDesign @kabel42 @AnachronistJohn
I dunno, I still think it's better to offer standard interfaces than have every piece of hardware work in a bespoke way.