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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Most of the criticism I have seen online stems from how Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) plays fast and loose with the FLOSS ethos. The earliest controversy I can recall was the inclusion of the ‘Amazon shopping lens’ in its Unity desktop environment. There may have been earlier issues, but this one made mainstream headlines in the early 2010s. More recently, the push for Snap (its application bundle format), which relies on proprietary server-side components, which invited criticism.

    That said, I still find the OS ideal for most users. It has been (and still is) a gateway OS for many Windows and macOS refugees, thanks to its strong community. It was for me nearly two decades ago, and I prefer to remember Ubuntu for the good it has done for the community.


  • How do you view diffs and merges when you say you don’t use git GUIs? External tool or terminal/command line?

    Terminal.

    I use Jetbrains IDEs and most of my life has been IDE based git interaction. And I honestly love it, easy access to see my diffs, the most common commit, push and stage(or shelve as Jetbrains does it, which is better than visual studio). Hassle free and available beats writing anything to me.

    Perhaps, it is a mix of learned behaviour and cognitive fixation, as I started out my development journey predominantly using a terminal, that I cannot fathom Git GUI being hassle free.

    Nice to read a different perspective on such a fundamental thing that I take for granted while working. Thank you for sharing it.


  • I always found Git GUIs, especially the ones built into IDEs, to be more confusing and clunkier than working with Git on a terminal. It often feels like unlearning what one knows about Git, and relearning it the way that specific GUI demands.

    Heck, I am going through the aforementioned feeling as I force myself to use Magit on Emacs. It just does not feel intuitive. But I will not give up until I have made an honest and full attempt.

    The only sensible Git GUI I ever used is Sublime Merge[0], after a coworker praised it immensely. Even that is reserved for the rarest of the rare times when the changes in the workspace gets unwieldy and unruly. For every other instance: Git CLI on a terminal.

    [0] https://www.sublimemerge.com/

    E: typo, and link to mentioned GUI.









  • I have experienced this myself.

    My main machine at home - a M2 Pro MacBook with 32GB RAM - effortlessly runs whatever I throw at it. It completes heavy tasks in reasonable time such as Xcode builds and running local LLMs.

    Work issued machine - an Intel MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM - struggles with Firefox and Slack. However, development takes place on a remote server via terminal, so I do not notice anything beyond the input latency.

    A secondary machine at home - an HP 15 laptop from 2013 with an A8 APU and 8GB RAM (4GB OOTB) - feels sluggish at times with Linux Mint, but suffices for the occasional task of checking emails and web browsing by family.

    A journaling and writing machine - a ThinkPad T43 from 2005 maxed out with 2GB RAM and Pentium M - runs Emacs snappily on FreeBSD.

    There are a few older machines with acceptable usability that don’t get taken out much, except for the infrequent bout of vintage gaming