I just took an old Optiplex with a GTX1650 and got it going with Ubuntu 24.04 and my experience was mostly okay but I saw a number of issues which could confound a newbie. Firstly, I had to go to the command like to run the ubuntu-drivers auto install because the card wasn’t set up properly. If I hadn’t then games wouldn’t run properly. But then I was able to install Steam and get some games going. Acceleration looked okay and I tested games which were running under Windows emulation and natively with some success - however there was a long delay launching some games, like it was having to transpile shaders or something. Still, when they worked they seemed to work well.

The most egregious issue I had is that Ubuntu defaults to an X11 desktop and the desktop is slightly off but the games work well. If I change to a Wayland desktop, then the desktop is buttery smooth but the games are very choppy. I suspect that’s the driver for this old card just doesn’t work properly with the window manager for some reason in that mode, that the wm is not giving the game a proper surface to render in or is somehow interfering with performance.

I don’t really buy the “small incompatibilities” argument. The project strives for total compatibility, even down to the most esoteric parameter that nobody has ever heard of. And even that seems like overkill to me - there are alternative implementations of core commands on Linux and other *nix systems like BSD, Solaris etc. where the compatibility is way worse. For example, busybox is used in embedded Linux, and a containerized images like Alpine Linux.

It also seems a bit rich to complain that uutils might get extended. GNU coreutils came into being because of dissatisfaction with the commands that came with the default *nix. Same for bash (vs sh), GNU cc (vs cc), GNU emacs (vs emacs) and so on. Was there somebody back then complaining about devs “spamming commits” that extended functionality?

And other Rust applications won’t only work with uutils. That’s absurd. They’ll test the capabilities of the OS they’re built to run on either at build time with feature flags or at runtime by probing commands. Just like any other high level application.

As for license, MIT is used for plenty other things in a typical Linux dist, e.g. X11.

The biggest point of concern for a Rust rewrite is dependency integrity. Rust uses cargo to manage dependencies and absolutely everything in the Cargo.toml/Cargo.lock files has to be reviewed. The crates.io repository is beginning to support package signing and The Update Framework initiative but every single dependency of uutils would need to be carefully reviewed and signature validated for it to be considered trustworthy. Basically everything needs to get locked down, and wherever possible dependencies expunged altogether.

I think most people associate Mercedes with “expensive” and their electric offerings are even more so. And they’re not particularly good EVs either cited for problems with reliability. I think that’s the real issue for the brand. The value proposition isn’t there, not even for people looking for a luxury car.

No, Europe’s car market won’t “collapse”. The companies which have spent the last 10-15 years planning & investing, and the next 10 years building & rolling out will make the transition and those that haven’t will go to the wall.

In fairness to Mercedes they are making some effort. They do offer electric versions for most of their range but they also suck compared to the competition by price & performance. Probably because they’re compromised by sharing a platform with ICE vehicles. This isn’t the fault of the technology, it’s the fault of Mercedes for drawing conclusions from their own bad decisions.

It is also Mercedes fault that they’re not knuckling down and solving this issue. Mercedes had better pull its finger out. Or it could whine, spread FUD, or waste money on tangents like “synthetic” fuels. If it chooses the latter, it WILL go bust and have to be bailed out by a competitor.

My experience with Linux with Nvidia drivers was basically - hey execute this “.run” file and you get drivers. Okay that worked but then if the kernel updated, the drivers broke and had to be reinstalled. And if the dist upgraded to a new version then the drivers broke completely. And NVidia gave up providing drivers at all for their older GPUs and I was stuck with Noveau which is better than nothing but useless for gaming.

Conversely, some dists are supported by graphics manufacturers with proper packages but there is always that gap where the driver dependencies and the kernel dependencies are out of sync. Or the graphics driver only works on the last couple of dists and support disappears after that. Or you upgrade the dist and then discover there are no drivers for it yet.

I know it rankles some purists, but really there should be an long term, versioned ABI for graphics drivers on Linux. There is sort-of is one with Gallium3D but it’s still not supported properly by all vendors.

The success of Steam Deck has helped a lot. Prior to that Linux ports tended to be very perfunctory and they weren’t tested or supported very well. I guess that now there are actual Linux gamers (via Steam Deck), that support has improved. That said, I think outside of Steam Deck and SteamOS, your experience of gaming is going to be extremely dependent on your GPU, driver support and a number of other factors. Things are far more likely to work well on Windows than they would for Linux.

So what you’re saying, is you’re renaming the word to “rent” to “land contract” and move a few conditions around and somehow it’s not rent? It is rent, by a different name.

I can only speak of personal experience but I rented when I went to university. I rented during my first 3 jobs. I rented when I relocated to another country. I rented when I was contracting for 6 months in another city (I had already purchased a house elsewhere). In every case I had no intention of buying a(nother) house. I rented because I wanted to, not because of greedy corporate overlords forced me to.

Most people renting are in similar situations. They want to be somewhere for a year or two, to make plans or move on, but not be tied down with debt or obligations if they want to leave. There is nothing stopping them buying a property but there is a commitment and obligation they don’t want to get into.

So rent is not going away any time soon. Legislation is necessary to curb the worse abuses, but pretending people don’t want to rent is is a failed argument.

Renting is an option and convenience for a lot of people, that’s why it exists. Some people don’t want to be tied to a mortgage and might have reasons they only need a place for 6 or 12 months - temporary employment, contracting, studying or whatever.

Anyway renting can work as a model. Germany has a very large proportion of property which is rented. But they have strong tenant protections and place limits on rent hikes, evictions and so on.

I don’t think an outright freeze is a good idea but rent controls and tenant laws would help. As would making casual letting (airbnb etc) a bullshit onerous proposition so that more housing stock is sold or converts into long term rent which lessens rent pressure.

Probably easier way of defeating pick pockets is to carry a decoy or purse wallet with a painful surprise in it.

While I wouldn’t want flakpak going deep into the OS I think the advantage of using them on the desktop is obvious. Developers can release to multiple dists from a single build and end users get updates and versions immediately rather than waiting for the dist to update its packages. Plus the ability to lock the software down with sandboxes.

The tradeoff is disk consumption but it’s not really that big of a deal. Flatpaks are layered so apps can share dependencies. e.g. if the app is GNOME it can share the GNOME runtime with other apps and doesn’t need to ship with its own.

Not surprised. Many of these high end GPUs are bought not for gaming but for bitcoin mining and demand has driven prices beyond MSRP in some cases. Stupidly power hungry and overpriced.

My GPU which is an RTX2060 is getting a little long in the tooth and I’ll hand it off to one of the kids for their PC but I need to find something that is a tangible performance improvement without costing eleventy stupid dollars. Nvidia seems to be lying a lot about the performance of that 5060 so I might look at AMD or Intel next time around. Probably need to replace my PSU while I’m at it.