Slack still exists, but it’s not particularly popular. Arch is one of the big ones now.

Can confirm, have an old entertainment PC with an NVidia card. I converted it to Linux, and it’s fine.

How is it with Windows applications?

My experience was 100% different. I bought a new laptop, plugged in my Linux USB drive, wiped Windows, installed Linux, and did exactly none of the things you went through.

And that’s largely down to two things:

• The fact that I bought a laptop specifically known to have excellent Linux support.
• The fact that I’m a software developer.

So everything I want to do on a computer tends to work better in Linux than in Windows, rather than the other way around. My compile times are faster, my IDEs are more stable, and my OS just… gets out of the way, which is exactly what it should do.

Mind if I ask what programs and services you were trying and failing to run on Linux? You’ve got me curious, because our experiences are so different.

If anything will finally result in the “year of the Linux desktop,” it’s shit like this. No one wants their operating system actively working to make it harder and more annoying to use their choice of applications.

The OS isn’t the reason anyone uses a computer, it’s the applications it can run.

Is this that reality/Fallout crossover I’ve been reading about in my nightmares?

Amen to that! I also spend a fair amount of time thinking about new features and how they would plug into our vast ecosystem, no part of which could Copilot possibly know anything about.

“Him” at the end should be “her.” (“Lui” can mean either.)

Story time:

I’m a software developer for a large, multinational company. Yesterday, I needed to update the Knex migrations for the project I’m assigned to. We needed three new PostgreSQL tables, with several foreign key constraints. I added the migration to our existing migrations in a backend plugin we’re building out.

I use Copilot for developers regularly. It was helpful in this case, generating the table migrations automatically. Of course, it hallucinated a few methods Knex doesn’t have, but I’m used to things like that, and easily corrected them. Once I was done testing, I created a pull request to merge the commit in my working branch with the main branch in git.

Now, look at what I just wrote. If you’re not a developer, you probably have no idea what “Knex” or “PostgreSQL” mean. You probably recognize the words “foreign,” “key,” and “constraints,” but you haven’t got a clue why I’m using them in that order or what I’m referring to. It likely looks like I’m using the word “migrations” completely incorrectly. You don’t know what it means for “Knex” to have “methods.” Words like “git,” “pull request,” and “commit” just read like gibberish to you.

You wouldn’t know how to ask Copilot to do anything. You wouldn’t know where to place any results you manage to get from it. If your boss came to you and said, “here’s this feature requirement, make it happen,” you would fail. You wouldn’t know why, either. Hell, you wouldn’t even know what it is your boss is trying to accomplish. You could spend the next six months trying to figure it all out, and maybe you’d succeed, but probably not. Because you aren’t a developer.

I’m a developer. All of what I wrote above makes perfect sense to me, and it’s one of the simplest tasks I could tackle. Took about fifteen minutes to accomplish, from creating the migration file to getting the PR ready to merge.

I’ve been lambasted for insisting that large language models aren’t going to replace actual professionals because they’re not capable of joined-up thinking, meta-cognition, or creativity. I get told they’ll be able to do all of that any day now, and my boss will be able to fire all of his employees and replace them with an MBA - or worse, do the work himself. Depending on the attitudes of who I’m talking to, this is either a catastrophe or the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It’s neither, because that’s not going to happen. Look at the story above, and tell me you could do the same thing with no training or understanding, because ChatGPT could do it all. You know that’s bullshit. It can’t. LLMs are useful tools for people like me, and that’s it. It’s another tool in the toolbox, like IntelliSense and linters - two more terms you don’t know if you’re not a developer.

The bloom is beginning to come off the rose. Businesses are gradually realizing the pie-in-the-sky promises of LLM boosters are bogus.

Yep. And it should go to Ukraine.

This is a huge business opportunity for someone with the know-how. They should offer a consulting service that does the following:

1. Catalogs the software your company is using.
2. Identifies which ones have native Linux versions, which ones work well under WINE, and which ones will need to be replaced with either a different native application or an online equivalent.
3. Installs and configures Linux with a Windows-like UI on your old systems, and gets them set up with the replacement software.

Offer a support contract that severely undercuts anything Microsoft is gouging selling. Offer basic training, too.

Anyone who does that can make bank.

Your right.

Really? Goddamn it, Pierce. Don’t tell me, he’s an anti-vaxxer, too?

Because it means Linux is gaining enough credibility as a desktop operating system for PC and parts manufacturers to work harder to ensure compatibility.

Everyone seems to want off the Microsoft upgrade train. Consumers don’t want to constantly fear that the OS will stop getting security updates because Microsoft doesn’t want to make them anymore. Manufacturers of PCs don’t want to pay the Microsoft tax. Parts manufacturers know it’s actually easier to write drivers for Linux than it is for Windows.

But until Linux shows signs of being a credible and attractive alternative, it’s not going to break Microsoft’s stranglehold on all three.

Apparently I’m playing/watching The Talos Principle 2.5: Solo Leveling. I guess 1k is gonna stop solving puzzles and thinking about philosophy, and just use his newfound powers to blast his way to Athena.

Yep, it’s Cognizant, and they don’t have a particularly good reputation.

Still sucks for those workers, though.

No, no, it’s French. Macro ce phallique. It means “macro this phallic.” Obviously.

For the record, I disagree with you somewhat. I think the plastics industry in particular has had a great deal of success by doing things like convincing consumers that recycling is up to them, instead of rethinking the nature of their products. Did you know that a lot of the anti-littering campaigns from the 1970’s onward were bankrolled by the plastics industry? It was an effort to offload the responsibility to care about the environment onto consumers.

That said, this can be discussed civilly. The person who was arguing with you wouldn’t do that, though.

They’re temporarily banned.

Hey guys, can we keep the slapfights to a minimum, please? Just had to delete a whole thread where everyone was just insulting the fuck out of each other.

Cut it out.