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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Reminds me a little of the old Jonathan Shapiro research OSes (Coyotos, EROS, CapROS), though toned down a little bit. The EROS family was about eliminating the filesystem entirely at the OS level since you can simulate files with capabilities anyway. Serenum seems to be toning that down a little and effectively having file- or directory-level capabilities, which I think is sensible if you’re going to have a capability-based OS, since they end up being a bit more user-visible as an OS.

    He’s got the same problem every research OS has: zero software. He’s probably smart to ditch the idea of hardware entirely and just fix on one hardware platform.

    I wish him luck selling his computer systems, but I doubt he’s going to do very well. What would a customer do with one of these? Edit files? And then…edit them again? I guess you can show off how inconvenient it is to edit things due to its security.

    I just mean it’s a bit optimistic to try and fund this by selling it. I understand he doesn’t have a research grant, but it’s clearly just a research OS.






  • I’m going to reframe the question as “Are computers good for someone tech illiterate?”

    I think the answer is “yes, if you have someone that can help you”.

    The problem with proprietary systems like Windows or OS X is that that “someone” is a large corporation. And, in fairness, they generally do a good job of looking after tech illiterate people. They ensure that their users don’t have to worry about how to do updates, or figure out what browser they should be using, or what have you.

    But (and it’s a big but) they don’t actually care about you. Their interest making sure you have a good experience ends at a dollar sign. If they think what’s best for you is to show you ads and spy on you, that’s what they’ll do. And you’re in a tricky position with them because you kind of have to trust them.

    So with Linux you don’t have a corporation looking after you. You do have a community (like this one) to some degree, but there’s a limit to how much we can help you. We’re not there on your computer with you (thankfully, for your privacy’s sake), so to a large degree, you are kind of on your own.

    But Linux actually works very well if you have a trusted friend/partner/child/sibling/whoever who can help you out now and then. If you’ve got someone to help you out with it, Linux can actually work very very well for tech illiterate people. The general experience of browsing around, editing documents, editing photos, etc., works very much the same way as it does on Windows or OS X. You will probably be able to do all that without help.

    But you might not know which software is best for editing photos. Or you might need help with a specific task (like getting a printer set up) and having someone to fall back on will give you much better experience.





  • As @BCsven@lemmy.ca mentioned, the talk about stable distributions is not right at all.

    Also, the commands you gave in “secure directories and dotfiles” are not doing anything. sudo chmod 755 ~/.bashrc doesn’t change the ownership of the file: it’s still owned by you. So setting the permissions 755 just makes it writeable by…you. You will still be able to modify it without sudo.

    If you want to make your dotfile require root access to change, you would need to augment the chmod with a sudo chown root ~/.bashrc



  • duncesplayed@lemmy.onetoLinux@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    1 year ago

    Educator here. This is called “discovery learning”. (The alternative to discovery learning, “direct instruction”, would be if someone had told OP about these permissions before OP got themselves into a pickle)

    When discovery learning is successful, it leads to better learning outcomes. Compared to direct instruction, you learn the material more deeply and will have better recall of the material, often for the rest of your life. The downsides to discovery learning are that it’s very time-consuming, very frustrating, and many students will just fail (give up) before learning is completed.

    Consider yourself one of the lucky ones, OP.


  • The last chip was manufactured 3.5 years ago and the last serious user was probably several years before that. Obviously no one’s running Itanium with modern hardware.

    But just because the hardware isn’t modern, doesn’t mean the software can’t be modern. Tonnes of people run the most recent Linux kernels on 15 year-old laptops, so why not 10 year-old servers? Itanium is only for the hobbyists these days, but so what? Hobbyists have done a good job of ensuring modern Linux can run on 40 year-old 68k. Itanium can theoretically be done, too. It’s just a question of whether the hobbyist community has enough of the right people that can actually maintain it.



  • Honestly, a colour picker is the last piece of software you should be translating names for. Even everyday colour names don’t have a direct translation. The line between “blue” and “green” is very slightly different than the line between “bleu” and “vert”, and the same goes for any other two languages. If you’re serious about your colour picker accuracy and you want to localize to another language, it would actually be more correct to have a completely different set of colour values, rather than trying to translate them. (Though “Liquid Nyquil” may be perceived the same across languages. I haven’t seen any studies on that one)