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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • As you’ve mentioned in other threads, bash is a hard requirement for the OS, so if it’s already installed, and the default on most Linux distros, bash is probably the best option.

    The dash shell isn’t designed to be user interactive. It’s a lightweight scripting shell/language.

    The ksh shell is an older standard shell. Years ago I worked for a company that ran corporate Unix systems and on those systems only ksh and tcsh were available. Ksh was the default, and as someone only familiar with bash it was a bit different but mostly the same. So there is at least one point for maybe choosing ksh.

    However my personal shell preference is zsh. When I write scripts I do so using bash. The two shells are 99% similar on a day to day basis, but I prefer zsh for a user interface. So I use one for day to day and the other for scripting.

    Other threads have also mentioned fish, which is also a great choice if you don’t know where to start.

    Are zsh or fish “heavier” or “bloated”, maybe. But remember to consider your attack surface. If your house is on fire it doesn’t matter of you fix the leaky faucet in bathroom or the kitchen.




  • For #4 if the Random instance weren’t “new”, then calling the nextInt() function would definitely have side effects, since the next integer would pull one away from the random stack.

    However unlike the first three which will run within a consistent amount of time, #4 will take an unknown amount of time to run, so you can’t just collapse it and eliminate the loop.

    For example a very simple race game where a participant moves a random number of steps each turn, we may want to time how long that race takes. We can’t just say that they will reach the end immediately. In fact technically we don’t know that they will ever finish the race… But that’s the halting problem and a whole other issue.






  • MimicJar@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlWhy?
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    4 months ago

    Computers were either Windows or Mac, they couldn’t be anything else, that was a fact. Then I saw someone using Linux and had so many questions. How? I was given a Knoppix live CD, went home, and booted my home PC into Knoppix and it changed my perception of computers.

    I didn’t change over immediately but eventually Ubuntu was handing out install CDs and YouTube was full of wobbly windows and desktop cubes. It wasn’t useful but it looked cool.

    I still needed Windows for gaming, but for day to day it was so much easier to use Linux.

    Eventually my gaming was exclusively on the Switch and then was I was looking to play certain PC games the Steam Deck was available, so I bought that.

    I think Windows 8 was the last one I used and I’ve never had any desire to go back. Linux is just easier.









  • Before Arch that role belonged to Gentoo.

    To add, before the change the Gentoo wiki was a top resource when it came to Linux questions. Even if you didn’t use Gentoo you could find detailed information on how various parts of Linux worked.

    One day the Gentoo wiki died. It got temporary mirrors quickly, but it took a long time to get up and working again. This left a huge opening for another wiki, the Arch wiki, to become the new top resource.

    I suspect, for a number of reasons, Arch was always going to replace Gentoo as the “True Linux Explorer”, but the wiki outage accelerated it.