GPU drivers and DEs lagging behind, mostly.

Something like Fedora which releases newer code quicker will provide a better desktop/laptop experience. It’s the same reason other stable distros, like the EL distros, aren’t the best for desktops/laptops.

Historically, desktop applications would also be versions behind, but Flatpak really helps with this.

At this point, Debian is probably fine as a distro for a few year old computer that won’t be helped by fractional scaling. Pick a DE and install applications from Flathub.

The ridiculousness of hauling a RPi around everywhere I go so I can access files on a flash drive is exactly the point. LOL

Although, something like the NitroKey Storage is close to the same thing. It’s a small computer with flash storage. Packaging, I guess. LOL

Veracrypt would be one more thing to bootstrap when standing up a new computer, and I’d like to keep the amount of prep work I have to do to a new box before it’s usable to a minimum.

Endlessly tweaking systems to get it into a usable state is why I left Windows, and like to keep the complexity in my life to a minimum.

Honestly, it’s only annoying when moving between FOSS operating systems. MacOS not supporting luks, or whatever, is slightly annoying, but FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux not agreeing to make me shake my head.

I have, and it introduces a dependency, which can be a problem when software can’t be installed. I’d rather have support as part of the base OS.

Interesting. I’ll check those out. 🙂

I’ve looked at osquery. It was all the rage for a minute in the monitoring industry when Facebook released it, and then it didn’t really go anywhere.

Many of the chipsets used in older laptops don’t have Linux drivers or firmware for some chips. Oddly, more recently modern laptops have better support.

The 2012 MacBook Air uses the Broadcom BCM943224PCIEBT2 chipset, which is flaky under Linux when it’s working. At least that was my experience with my Mac Mini. Broadcom doesn’t like people using their hardware, especially that era, so they’re a problem.

Nvidia. I ordered a refurbished ThinkPad P1, and it showed up with a Nvidia card. There are problems waking up from sleep and sessions crashing that I don’t have with the iGPU devices which have FOSS drivers.

Electron apps. They eat RAM, but it’s the only way some apps are delivered.

MacOS can setup independent virtual desktops on each monitor, but Gnome has independent virtual desktops on only the main monitor with the others static. It can be set for all the monitors to change at the same time, but that’s not what I’m after.

LUKS is Linux only. There isn’t a cross platform way to do FDE on removable media.

Efi partitions use FAT FS. Why is this in the spec?

Only some manufacturers support LVFS. There isn’t a standardized mechanism for firmware updates, and many manufacturers don’t bother.

Gnome doesn’t have a profile export feature.

BTRFS is still a work in progress after all these years. Subvolume space quotas still aren’t recommended for use and encryption is “coming soon”. The tooling is a mess, no per subvolume mount options, no converting an existing folder to a subvolume. It mostly works, but ZFS is still nicer.

LibreOffice doesn’t have an “easy” mode similar to Google Docs and it doesn’t have a vim mode. Sometimes I just want to write, and not fiddle with every little detail.

This is heavily dependent on the printer driver used.

My bother does this until I install the CUPS PPD from brother.

Newer process are moving to a driverless IPP model, which should help with this.

I’m not sure what app that is.

Software upgrades package on Fedora without requiring a password, so that future is a reality for some.

Reading up on PolKit and ACLs would probably be good.

Desktop management wasn’t, and isn’t, a priority. Managing fleets of servers has been the focus, and the Linux vendors make most of their money selling server distros.

It can be done, but it has to be built using the raw tools available. This is a strength and a weakness. Strength because it’s super flexible, and a weakness because random IT person has to know what they’re doing.

There are some projects like FreeIPA, Gnome FleetCommander, SaltStack, and Foreman which have parts. There’s nothing turn key like Intune or Jamf though. Plus this is all based on on-prem stuff. We’re not even touching on Entra replacements.

FreeIPA covers most scenarios. Kerberos, Dynamic DNS/DNS, LDAP.

GPO equivalency would need some config management tool. Ansible is what RH would suggest, but something with an agent would probably be better.

One nit to pick for anyone who reads this later.

/srv is probably a more appropriate location than /mnt. /srv is for local data services are going to serve.

TSMC does have fabs in Arizona now. Next to the Intel fabs. 😆

It’s more about money and proprietary tech.

Cutting edge fabs are expensive and risky, which is why most chip companies are fabless, and they should be a state project because of the risk and expense. I’ve seen estimates of $15-$20 billion dollars to setup a new 3nm fab.

Intel, TSMC, and Samsung are the 3 companies left which run cutting edge fabs. Intel missed on a couple generations, and they are sinking. Samsung is lagging, so it remains to be seen how long they’re in the game.

TSMC figured out the new tech and Intel didn’t. TSMC picked the correct horse, and Intel didn’t. It’s my understanding Intel couldn’t switch to the TSMC process if they wanted to. The two are different enough to be incompatible.

the void is instantly filled by someone happy to oblige in propaganda.

That’s the part which makes this so hard. The position will get filled with some empty bootlicker eager to carry their water and curry favor.

It’s not so much about a second package manager as it is about having a base system and separating extra software from the base system.

Moving extra packages out of the base system allows the extra packages to be updated quicker. Fewer things get frozen when the stable point in time distro release is tagged. This also helps the base as it can move without having to worry about every piece of software in the repos being compatible with the changes.

The concept exists as 3rd party repos. However, most aren’t setup to be as cleanly separated as ports are.

There are none. Linux is a baseless system, which is its power and frustration.

You could install Debian or Alma Linux and run pkgsrc on it to approximate a base and extra packages setup like the BSDs.

There are parts of a tightly coupled userland forming, like iptools and systemd, but there are many things missing at the moment.

Yeah. These problems are why I left Ubuntu for Fedora.

Because I have to admin Windows boxes and M365. There are PS modules for lots of different MS things.

And here it is.

Small VMs, like everything else.

https://github.com/apple/containerization

Cool. Podman Desktop should be easier after this. Presumably, it’s still a Linux VM driven by something written by Apple instead of qemu.

No macOS containers though. Being able to spin up macOS containers would have been nice for builds and isolating things like pkgsrc.

As a Fedora user, I would go with Fedora. 😄

OpenSuse Tumbleweed is good, but I find Yast to be kind of overkill. I’m sure it’s great when people figure it out, but there are too many options before then.

Fedora is much simpler, which is weird to say.