Ryzen is for Programmers - old-gregg http://timothypratley.blogspot.com/2017/03/ryzen-is-for-programmers.html <comment><USER2> I just recently completed a build myself. It was pre-Ryzen so AMD wasn't an option at the time. I went with the Intel i7-7700 (quad core) at 3.6 GHz.

I was surprised by two big things: high-performance devices are extremely affordable nowadays and processors have gotten a lot better despite minimal changes in clock speed.

I went on PC Part Picker and built my 'budget' device and my 'fantasy' device. It turned out they were just about the same. I couldn't really spend more than $1500 for anything better without jumping to server-grade parts.

Yesterday I played Halo Wars 2, listened to Spotify, kept Word, Excel, Edge, Chrome, & WEKA open, and was running an embarrassingly inefficient data mining program in Python via WSL, while running a Jenkins build server in an Ubuntu Server VM, and running TeamCity in a Windows Server VM.

Even on the Intel chip, which is presumably less good at multitasking than Ryzen, I just can't throw enough at it to experience anything resembling slowdown. 8 logical cores still seems to be plenty for most users, but I could see with even more VMs that one might need more. As an aside, it is incredibly nice to be able to run VMs without even thinking about their resource consumption - it's like having my own little cloud.

I wonder if maybe Intel's marketing for their chips could use improvement. On paper, my MacBook Pro with 16Gb RAM and 3GHz i7 shouldn't be that much worse than my desktop with 32Gb RAM (most of which is unused) and 3.6GHz i7. The difference in practice is night and day. I'm losing faith in the concept of a laptop as a developer's primary device (especially with SSH & Remote Desktop being so good these days).

<comment><USER3> My impression is that Moore's law is totally dead and CPUs have not changed in any meaningful way in 4 years. My old i7-4771 feels just as fast as my new i7-6950x. The 10 cores are nice when you need 10 cores though.

<comment><USER4> I have an FX 8350, and I really want to upgrade. Performance per core of the newest processors are approaching 2x of mine. Trouble is, except for Civilization, no game actually needs a faster processor. It's really hard to justify. Processors just last a really long time these days.

<comment><USER5> Cities: Skylines with large cities benefits very much of a higher core count, as the citizen/vehicle simulation parallelizes nicely. No experience how well it behaves with Ryzen though, but at least it is utilizing all cores on my trusty old Sandy Bridge i7.

<comment><USER4> The 8350 has no shortage of cores, at least as long as there's little floating point calculus going in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dis-sys Bought my Q6600 quad core processor 10 years ago. 10 years on, Intel still refuses to make 8 core processors mainstream to PC. Lucky enough, I don't have to listen to Intel's stories on why 8 cores are not useful for PC, I can pay AMD $300 and get Ryzen.

Just bought Intel Optane memory this morning, installed it in my AMD Ryzen DEV machine and it works perfectly without any issue. Interestingly, according to Intel, this is not suppose to happen - you are expected to use both of their latest processor/chipset to run Optane memory!

Now you tell can me who is preventing people from accessing the best techs at reasonable prices.

<comment><USER6> > Just bought Intel Optane memory this morning, installed it in my AMD Ryzen > DEV machine and it works perfectly without any issue. Interestingly, > according to Intel, this is not suppose to happen - you are expected to use > both of their latest processor/chipset to run Optane memory!

How are you measuring Optane working? AFAIK it's supposed to improve boot times and application load times as it learns after a few times without configuration. Are you observing this improvement or does the Optane just show up as a regular storage drive?

<comment><USER7> The Optane Memory hardware is a NVMe SSD. The caching is done in software, and Intel's caching software is locked to their most recent consumer-grade platform (and Windows 10 64-bit, and only caching the boot volume). Using caching is optional; it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB. Or you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to.

<comment> dis-sys You mean Intel doesn't want to tell the _full_ story? I have to agree with you on that. Official statement from Intel included below -

"A system that is Intel® Optane™ memory ready includes: a 7th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, an Intel® 200 series chipset, M.2 type 2280-S1-B-M connector on a PCH Remapped PCIe* Controller and Lanes in a x2 or x4 configuration with B-M keys that meet NVMe* Spec 1.1 and System BIOS that supports the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) 15.5 driver."

[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- tech...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and- technology/optane-memory.html)

Did they mention things like

"it also makes for a very fast primary storage drive, if you can survive on a mere 32GB"

or

"you can use non-Intel caching software for Windows or Linux and then the only system requirement for Optane Memory is that you have PCIe lanes to connect it to"

<comment><USER8> They use "Intel® Optane™" to refer to the whole "solution" including their awful Windows-specific hardware-supported caching hack (Rapid Storage Whatever), because that's how they're going to sell it to consumers. Of course the drives are normal NVMe and you can use them as L2ARC+ZIL in ZFS :D

<comment> dis-sys I won't call it a normal nvme. Companies don't make/sell nvme SSD with such awful sequential R/W performance. On the other hand, its random write performance at low QD is not matched by any competitor.

It is $45 unit price is another interesting factor for me - I only need 16GBytes but I need 16GBytes each on many machines. I am not really aware of any other tier-1 brand nvme SSDs that are available in such size/price. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who's been near server space, seriously fuck Intel. Blocking ECC memory from consumer CPUs is monopolistic bullshit, my next PC will be AMD even if it's a bit slower. At least AMD doesn't switch socket every 6 months and cripple my hardware on purpose

<comment><USER10> Have you actually experienced enough memory errors that you need ECC?

<comment><USER9> You can't run a production database without ECC. Well, you could, but you probably wouldn't have a job very long.

Memory gets less reliable with each process shrink. They keep raising the DRAM refresh rate with various tricks but we're always right on the edge of having memory with so many errors that it's unusable. The size of memory cells has decreased to the point that a stray subatomic particle could cause multiple bit errors.

Just wait for the next big solar storm. We don't know how often they strike the Earth but it seems to happen every 20 years or so. When it does we're going to have a massive flash of corrupt data from machines not using ECC. Probably worst than y2k issues

<comment><USER10> > Just wait for the next big solar storm.

So when that happens, it will be important to have the option.

Until then, since I have no reason to run a "production database" on my _workstation_ , why would I want ECC?

> we're always right on the edge of having memory with so many errors that > it's unusable.

That's fine by me. Living here on "the edge", even with _overclocked memory_ , my system is the _most stable_ system I have ever owned.

I really can't see any reason to use ECC on my desktop apart from fear of hand-wavy potential issues.

Is my personal experience so unique? Are any of you _actually_ experiencing instability that you are sure is caused by physical memory errors that are fixed by using ECC memory?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While the solution here works, the alternative is you can find a used Intel S2600CP from some random data center together with one or two E5 CPUs. You can get much more possibilities of upgrading the rig this way.

I recently built such a PC with roughly $950, it includes one used E5-2650c2, used S2600CP board, 750W power supply, 32GB DDR3 ECC memory(I'm buying CPU, motherboard, power supply and memory from one vendor so I didn't know if the memory is new), brand new GTX 1070 and a brand new 128GB SSD. The good part is the board has 2 CPU slots, 16 memory slots and 6 PCIE slots, so if I feel the need, I can easily by another E5-2650 CPU, or 12 8GB memory sticks to make the total memory 128GB(or more if I choose to upgrade current 4*8GB memory sticks as well), or add more graphics cards for machine learning purposes.

Of course this won't cover all use cases since server CPUs tend to have more cores than high frequencies(mine has 8 cores, and 16 threads after HT, but only at 2.00GHz), which might be bad for high end games, but for programming tasks as described by the article here, this might be a better choice

<comment><USER12> Nice build. I've been considering something similar every now and then.

The argument that makes me pull back though is my fear that its power draw would be considerable.

How much power does your system draw? Idle, and/or under load?

<comment><USER11> TBH I haven't tested it yet since the GTX 1070 card is still in shipping state, but I guess ihattendorf has provided detailed information :) If I can complete the setup before HN locks me from editing, I will edit this post

<comment><USER11> Okay so I manage to complete the build, on idle this is about 80w, but notice I have a 1070 card, which costs around 37w according to nvidia-smi, so if you don't need a graphics card, I'd say 40w - 50w is more than enough in idle.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for taking the time to reply :-)

Very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article reads like a rewrite of the wiki over at /r/buildapc, and I'm not sure I see how much of it leads to his conclusion---any modern, $1500 desktop is going to outperform a two-generation-old laptop with a quarter as much ram. That doesn't make the Ryzen `for programmers.` I came in expected some crazy assembly insights, but instead this is just a PC build log. Nothing really supports the title of this article: it's just clickbait without any real support. And, at this point, most people reading hackernews know it's cheaper to build a PC than buy another PC / laptop---and those that still don't are doing it because a thousand dollars usually buys you a lot of warranty and convenience.

<comment><USER14> The multi-core angle is the main "programmer" bit of Ryzen. If you are writing heavily multithreaded code you will get 2x the cores for your $.

<comment><USER15> I still don't really see the pro to Ryzen in this case. It would be cheaper/better to get a couple used sandy bridge era (or newer in some cases) xeons off ebay with a dual socket motherboard in the multithreaded case, or get an i7-7700 for single threaded performance while still having a reasonable amount of cores+threads to play with.

<comment><USER16> For me it brings a lot of benefits: easier to find parts, consumer-level parts pricing, and lower TDP.

I'm running a dual Xeon as you mentioned, through buying ex-fleet parts at less than half price of new ones. Several issues I experienced:

\- Lack of motherboard options. I had to purchase new motherboard at a high price since the ones that support dual Xeons are either in an incompatible form factor or simply out-of-stock. I settled with Asus Z9PE-D8 WS with an SSI-EEB form factor.

\- Outdated BIOS. I had to order a new, pre-flashed, BIOS chip since the BIOS that came with the motherboard refused to boot with the CPU and memory combo.

\- Hard to find suitable ECC RAM. The motherboard only supports limited RAM (speed + latency) configs, and finding those is becoming harder. Availability looks seasonal at times.

\- Needs capable power supply. One thing that people often look past is the need of a proper PSU. I had to upgrade to one which support two CPU power connectors.

<comment><USER17> I'm running a similar setup to yours (IIRC I have the same mobo even), but I'm quite happy with it. I got new Xeons (1630 e5 @ 3.7 ghz), RAM compatibility was not something I found an issue (we're talking +/\- 5 months ago here), power supply - I got a 1000W PS anyway to power several GPU's, I guess at that level they come with several connectors standard and I just didn't run into it as an issue. To be honest though I went for Xeon to get ECC, so if these new AMD's support that, then maybe next time...

What is SIMD support like for Ryzen? Does it do avx2 or something similar?

It's true that server components are generally loud. If you have the room, I recommend my setup - which is to have a (home build) rack in the basement, and run long DisplayPort cables (and USB extension cables) to the desk. Or build a closet around a rack in an office, which can be soundproofed. This does push it to the next level in terms of work involved, obviously (and cost as well if you don't have tools or time to DIY most of it).

<comment><USER18> It does AVX2 at half speed, AVX1 at full speed, but in return it runs at full clock rates with AVX, so it's not as bad as it sounds.

<comment><USER19> Most programming related workloads I can think of hardly benefit from avx2. Also, the additional power draw while using avx on intel is considerable, despite the clock rate drop; so perf/watt may not be as much behind as one might initially think.

This downside is likely to become slightly more serious as time goes on and more software uses avx2; but it's certainly not crippling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Funny, I just finished building mine - same Ryzen 7 1800X, switching from MacBook Pro/iMac to Ubuntu as well, got 3200MHz RAM also, which booted into 2333MHz as well (will need to wait for motherboard update to get full speed I guess), M.2 SSD... I wonder if it's becoming a trend (to move from macOS to Linux)?

<comment><USER21> > got 3200MHz RAM also, which booted into 2333MHz as well (will need to wait > for motherboard update to get full speed I guess)

The highest official DDR4 frequency is 2400MHz. Anything beyond that is technically overclocking.

Testing has shown that there is very little performance benefit above 2666MHz. [0]

The long and short is that manufacturers are happy to sell you 3200MHz RAM, but you're paying for speed you'll likely never use: your CPU memory controller needs to be stable at those overclocked speeds, and the performance gains are minimal.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Yt4vSZKVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Yt4vSZKVk)

<comment><USER22> While it may be technically overclocking, the default ram clock of Ryzen boards is DDR4-2666. If you look at the right benchmarks you will see that faster ram can bring enormous performance benefits, even in games, which is an area where the contrary was claimed in the last few years. Some examples are [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ejBlynOV8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ejBlynOV8) and [https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/5agh8f/skylake_cp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/5agh8f/skylake_cpu_and_ram_gaming_impact_benchmarked/). That's for Intel, but the same is true for AMD and Ryzen.

<comment><USER21> _> you will see that faster ram can bring enormous performance benefits_

Okay, so looking at the spreadsheet of results from the Reddit thread [0]:

\- Overclocking the RAM from 2133MHz to 3000MHz resulted on average an 8% increase in FPS. This is a 40% higher frequency netting on average 8% more performance

\- They only tested two speeds: 2133MHz and 3000MHz

I would imagine that the difference between 2400MHz (officially the top speed of DDR4) and 3000MHz would be even less than the 8% they found.

Let's assume, based on no evidence whatsoever, that the performance gains are linear. For 40% increase in RAM clock, you get 8% performance gain.

So from:

\- 2400MHz->3000MHz: 5% increase in performance

\- 2666MHz->3000MHz: 2.5% increase in performance

You also have to account for the fact that:

\- Higher speed RAM costs more

\- Overclocking will consume more power and generate more heat

Based on the above, where the average benefit from a 40% RAM overclock was a mere 8% performance gain, I'm just not seeing how "enormous" the performance benefits are.

[0] [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LKmt9FDEjFXeu3USK1bz...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LKmt9FDEjFXeu3USK1bzjzRidhg3frgwWx7mPUlOWEc/edit#gid=1267098471)

<comment><USER22> 8% are huge for something that was said to be of no relevance at all in that specific workload. And it is 8% for a small price difference. Ram prices are in flux currently, but right now I see 16GB DDR4-2400 for 119€ and 16GB DDR4-3000 for 139€. Some time ago the price was almost identical.

Also, please watch the video as well. The practical effect of having faster ram on frametimes is immense and sometimes a lot bigger than what you'd expect. Moving from just barely reaching 60 FPS in the Crysis train sequence to comfortable 80, with an i3, is very nice. There is also the Ryse sequence (~ at minute 7) where performance of the i3 doubles, just because of the faster ram.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's ridiculous how well the 2013 MBP does.

Of course, the last four years have had much less focus on core performance, or even on putting more cores into pro-sumer machines. Apple in particular is all about thinness, battery life, and passive cooling.

That's not a complaint. For most people, including me, those are good trade- offs.

<comment> old-gregg Hm... Not sure I agree. I have a 2015 MBP and I was blown away by nearly 2x difference vs a comparable desktop with identical amount of RAM and CPU cores. My workload is compiling Golang code. The desktop is twice as fast and without the heat + fan noise drama.

The laptops, or at least the MBP, seem to be built to mostly run on idle IMO.

<comment><USER24> I use Chrome, JetBrains IDEs and emacs all day and recently made the switch to a beefy Linux desktop after 13 years of Apple laptops and I'm blown away by how much faster everything is. I guess I was living in denial about the performance differences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I also built a Ryzen machine for development. It's great when it works, but I've found that Ryzen is unstable on Linux (Ubuntu 16.04). Every once in a while, I get kernel errors like

       NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#9 stuck for 23s!

which requires a hard reset. This behavior doesn't occur on Windows, though, so if you use Windows for development, you should be good.

<comment><USER26> Did you try a later kernel? out of the box ubuntu 16.04 is on the longterm 4.4 kernel. It looks like some ryzen features and patches have been added to 4.10, and they probably were not back-ported to the longterm kernels.

<comment><USER24> Not OP, but just built at Ryzen 1600 box. I've had _more_ instability when running 17.04 and settled on 16.04 which has been mostly fine, but hard crashes occasionally.

<comment><USER27> > hard crashes occasionally

This sounds disturbingly unacceptable yet accepted

<comment><USER28> Nothing out of the ordinary with a new platform. While Linux often takes longer to work this stuff out, Windows often has had similar issues in the past as well.

<comment> shady-lady Not sure if intent but this is AMD issue.

Having experienced first hand AMD driver instability on both Windows & Linux, AMD have lost my custom for the next 10 years..

Multiple re-occurring driver crashes using their main graphics card product line(RX380) on Windows 10.. So, pretty mainstream and yet having driver crashing (even when doing non-intensive tasks e.g. web browsing)

For the record, I'm not so sure Nvidia is any more stable either. The only (constantly) stable graphics provider over the years has been Intel's on-board graphics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Am waiting for Naples to ship before assembling my workstation. Hope it shows up soon.

<comment><USER30> 32 cores / 64 threads?

<comment><USER6> 8 memory lanes too, just over 150GB/s with 2400MHz RAM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have a Lenovo y510p with 3rd generation core i7. I wish I could get a new laptop/desktop, but my laptop performs just so damn well. The only changes I made are the addition of a good ssd, putting in more RAM and replacing the cd drive with the 1TB hard drive. For my workloads (typical web dev stuff) it performs quite well.

<comment><USER32> I have the same laptop. In the future I'd never buy one like it again - <AUTHOR> think it's at a bad point in the power-mobility trade-off for me. But like you it's just too good to warrant replacing anytime soon. Everything is extremely fast since I put in an ssd and I get super confused by the posts we see all the time saying that as computers get faster software gets proportionally more bloated. Using this machine is way smoother than anything I grew up.

But in the future I want a desktop and a highly mobile laptop, not an awkwardly immobile laptop. These large laptops were nice for LAN gaming in college but I just don't do that anymore.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, I've had the same experience mobility wise. It is a pretty heavy laptop. I always have it plugged and on a table, Never in my lap :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Cooling $100 Cooler Master MasterLiquid Pro 280

99% of programmers don't need a machine with liquid cooling. Even if they are targeting high performance hardware, development work can be run from a more modest machine.

<comment><USER34> He appears to be trying to build a fairly silent machine as well, so the liquid cooling will help.

Does he need that much power, though? I certainly wouldn't, but for what he is doing I can see it. He's running 12 containers in VirtualBox. Avoiding VirtualBox would help a lot, but depending on what he's doing, he may not be able to (and on Mac, I think you have no choice -- he may not realise that he'll get tons better performance without it). On top of that he's doing Closure (presumably with power hungry development toys) and lots of video conferencing. I often pair program remotely with video conferencing and it can eat half of your CPU(s). Mumble and Tmux is a _much_ better way to go, but again setting up and getting used to the tooling is not trivial.

$2K and building your own machine vs doing some pretty serious work trying to lighten the development environment -- I can see an argument for it, even if it's not the way I would choose to go.

<comment><USER35> All-in-one watercooling systems are not more silent. The pump is audible and the lack of radiator surface means you'll hear the fans when they ramp up.

<comment><USER36> My motherboard has a liquid cooling setting for managing fans. I can rarely hear the pump and fans are very silent. It's an AIO system from corsair with 2 fans (I'm outside & can't remember the name now).

<comment><USER37> Is it anecdotal evidence time? I have NOCTUA CPU coolers in multiple Fractal R4/R5 cases and all 4 of these machines run at 100% CPU for weeks on end and you also can't hear anything. I considered going the water cooling route, but from what I could gather from various reviewers, is that like the parent you replied to, the pump makes noise as well as the fans when going overtime (not to mention a lot more expensive and time-consuming to install). Maybe it has something to do with the case? What case do you have? Did you do anything extra to silence it?

<comment><USER36> I have a mid-range Cooler Master case, don't have the model name in mind but I don't remember it having anything specific for sound isolation.

When it comes to these things, I can't find anything but anecdotal evidence. Even the most respected reviewers usually have a sample size of one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't see this as a comparison between Ryzen and Intel. He compares a custom built PC with a 2017 3.6 GHz 8 core Ryzen to an older 2013 2.3 GHz 4 core i7. He could have replaced his Ryzen CPU with a similar priced intel processor and seen the same performance.

<comment><USER39> Not really, as 8 core intel chips cost significantly more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interesting article, and nothing surprising. With an 8 core CPU - and NVME storage, the more interesting test would be to run docker compose _whilst_ profiling a page or whatever. The author hints at it, but hard numbers would be even more fun. I would fully expect the laptop to grind to a halt in scenarios where the Ryzen just chugs on as if nothing special was going on.

I built my own 6850k system last June (4.2ghz +32gb ram + samsung 950 pro nvme), and find it great for programming - well, everything, really.

</comment><comment><USER41> As much as this isn't for me (it was during the celeron 300a era), I really appreciate the detailed writeup and specific workflow example benchmarking.

</comment><comment><USER42> Building a PC is fun but there's stuff that can go wrong.

In case you are not familiar with what can go wrong, here there is a vastly incomplete list:

\- You can damage the PSU by selecting the wrong voltage, you might have a PSU doesn't supply enough wattage.

\- You can buy incompatible components that won't work with each other.

\- You could have static electricity, and you won't notice until you turn the computer on and you hear a little spark sound... that means something died.

\- Causing a short circuit by leaving a metallic object lying around (e.g: a screw)

\- Getting a thermal problem by applying the thermal paste wrong or connecting a fan spinning to the other side.

\- Crushing the processor by installing the heatsink with too much muscle.

\- Connecting light cables to pins that are not for lights causing unintended behavior.

In short, there's a lot you can get from building your own system but it can also go wrong... and when it does: no warranty, you are on your own.

<comment> ryan-allen For a small fee, shops usually will build the PC for you, and you can pick from a set of their builds. Some shops will do fully custom ones for you.

Also there is this: [http://www.logicalincrements.com/](http://www.logicalincrements.com/)

<comment><USER43> A few years ago, my little sister decided to buy a herself a gaming PC, built to spec. The shop provided two tiers of building service, and she went with the more expensive "Pro" service. When the machine arrived, it did not boot. CPU error on board lit. Peeking through the back IO panel, I caught a glimpse of CPU pins. Yes, AMD. CPU wasn't seated properly _sigh_. They still had managed to force the heatsink on it, and the metal bracket was a little bent so after reseating the CPU properly, the sink would sit on rather loose. I'm surprised the pins were intact and the CPU still worked just fine.

<comment><USER44> Just out of curiosity, which shop was this? In my opinion what they did is basically fraud, any legitimate "Pro" service should run benchmarks and tests to ensure the hardware is in 100% working condition. Unfortunately, a lot of places prey on students and the budget conscious and do a slap-dash job no matter what kind of build you select (speaking from personal experience).

Storytime: I bought my newest computer a couple weeks ago from Puget Systems. Along with the PC, they shipped a 30-page custom binder that included the results of all the benchmarks and tests they ran, plus thermal images they took during the process to ensure optimal airflow. When I hit the power button for the first time, my desktop appeared within 5 seconds, with all Windows updates and the latest drivers/firmware installed already. The cabling job inside the PC was immaculate, and the PC is whisper quiet even though it's overclocked.

Moral is, if you're going to pay a premium for a pre-built custom PC, do it from a high quality vendor.

<comment><USER43> SystemaStore OY. Cost of building service was 70 eur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> 8 core / 16 threads CPUs for sane prices are tempting. Building big projects in less time is useful.

</comment><comment><USER46> I was a bit disappointed to hear that Libreboot will likely never support AMD hardware :(

[https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd)

<comment><USER47> There's still hope!

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5xvn4i/update_corebo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5xvn4i/update_corebootlibreboot_on_amd_has_ceo_level/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What really blows my mind is that we seem to be stuck in terms of single-core performance. Passmark score of Ryzen 1800X is only 25% higher than middle- class, low power i5-6260U[1], despite over 1GHz difference in maximum frequency. Given that, it is really suprising that 8 core processors didn't become popular earlier

[1] [https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2966&cmp[]=26...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp\[\]=2966&cmp\[\]=2671)

</comment><comment><USER49> My only worry is they don't seem to have very many PCIe lanes. But they're cheap enough that you might be able to get a motherboard that supports multiple CPUs, and still save money compared to going 1 high-end Intel CPU. And it might perform better too, if the workload has mixed computation & IO.

Web development like the article mentions is probably the perfect fit there. Analytics is probably good too(R, Python, SQL). Careful if you need a video card in there, though.

<comment><USER8> Having a fuckton of PCIe lanes only really matters for multi-GPU setups. You can run two GPUs completely fine on an X370 board though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm pretty sure the read write speeds of the newer ssd make a much greater difference in the performance than the CPU, a pci ssd would make an even greater difference

</comment><comment><USER51> I am wondering if the benchmarks were made Linux vs. OSX...

I mean the author writes that "The Ryzen remains fully responsive and completely usable." and some years ago there was this magical patch that greatly improved the responsiveness of Linux systems: [http://marc.info/?l=linux- kernel&m=128979084506774&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=linux- kernel&m=128979084506774&w=2)

</comment><comment><USER52> My new build has the same case, PSU, and SSD. I went with Xeon and ECC however. My final price was very close as well. That case is HUGE - but I do like having room to maneuver in there. And it's quiet and has air filters. For reasons of stability, my "desktop" is a Windows 10 VM. Moved all my dev VMs on from my now retired machine, which I'll keep as a backup for a year.

</comment><comment><USER14> True! Basically 2x the cores Intel will sell you, at the same price. IPC is "only" at broadwell levels but that's still pretty solid.

</comment><comment><USER53> The author states he runs his docker images as if they were production. But in production the load of those images is larger than in development. Isn't there more insentive to run lower spec images in development to find noticible performance issues?? I've always thought that dev/test should be smaller env to prod

<comment><USER54> You don't really wanna limit your daily grind. When you need to performance test you spin up a staging environment and throw benches at it.

<comment><USER55> Absolutely this, I want to throw as many resources at the development machines as I can fit onto a single machine.

I hate any kind of latency between "this should work" -> "does it work?".

I've even considered buying beefy server hardware at home but electricity is expensive and it's a rented place so I can't exactly start install server racks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The 1800X is bad value though. It's the "I'm rich and afraid of overclocking for some silly reason" option. It's only _slightly_ better binned. Most 1700s will reach 3.9 GHz easily (77% of them, according to siliconlottery.com). The R7 1700 is the real deal.

<comment><USER56> That's fine if you want to overclock. I need performance for work and I'm not going to dick around with overclocking - one work day lost to overclocking or an error caused by overclocking means that it's less value that just buying top-of-the-line from the beginning.

<comment><USER57> Guys, the x-ryzens are not overclocking stuff, sure good for it, but what they do is increase the speed as much as possible on the fly meaning if you cool them, they run faster (read liquid cooling). This is true also at stock clocking/speed. So yes ryzen 1700 is great with it's 65 tdp, but 1700x is even greater also WITHOUT overclocking, but well cooled. No picking, just wanted to make this obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> What is the video card in this setup? I missed it if he mentioned it. I suppose he's just using something that was built in to the motherboard? Yes I understand he's using it for editing text.

<comment><USER47> Ryzen doesn't have iGPU, so he had to be using a dedicated GPU of some sort.

<comment><USER57> The ryzen may have no apu(igpu) no, but if the mobo has graphics (as many ryzen mobos do) there is no need for a pci-e gpu unless a heavy one is needed. Indeed not for editors and compiling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My understanding is that the workload was more memory bound than CPU bound? Since the author only went with 32GB, wouldn't a laptop with 32 GB result in comparable gains?

<comment><USER59> No, most laptops will throttle down or reduce boosting quickly under a real workload. This also reduces effective memory bandwidth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Interesting.

I have a 1700X/16GB/SSD build and a Dell XPS 15 9560, both of which are very fast, but the Ryzen just flies!

<comment><USER61> Is the XPS 15 good? I went on Amazon to buy one, but the reviews are 50% 1-star, and I got scared.

<comment><USER60> I have had 0 issues with it except some Audio stuttering due to DPS Latency issues.

I'm getting a replacement (Model Up actually, Dell did a 12% off offer) so we'll see how it is. I look forward to UHD Touch & Fingerprint Reader.

<comment><USER61> Thank you, I got the smaller (not base) model but added the fingerprint reader, as it was only $20ish and it might prove useful. I'm glad you had no issues.

<comment><USER60> Have fun! They are really nice tbh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I second this. I build PC with Ryzen 1500X + GTX1070 and it works flawlessly with TensorFflow and Torch7.

</comment><comment><USER63> I would love a laptop with 8-core Ryzen with a decent integrated GPU in the SoC :-)

</comment><comment><USER64> My learning with tuning computers in several companies with a lot of money for faster turn around speeds:

1\. IO is not as important as your gut feeling tells you (e.g. 5x faster IO often led to <2x faster compiles)

2\. Programming languages tout the parallelism horn, but their compilers and tools are really not optimized for many cores.

<comment><USER65> For #1, why would it be? Programs are a bunch of text files, read from beginning to end, that almost always fit in a small part of RAM.

2x faster compiles is still too big an improvement, something there is badly optimized.</comment></comment>


My favorite tech salary negotiation tip (that recruiters love, too) - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/my-favorite-tech-salary-negotiation-tip-that-recruiters-love-too-f8898b2cc680 <comment><USER2> I never ever name a number first. Doing so puts me in a weaker negotiating position, and if my number is too high, it could disqualify me from consideration even before I get a chance to interview and make a good impression.. not to mention that everything is always negotiable (remonstrances to the contrary not withstanding).

Even if I wind up not getting the job, if I had an interview, I'd have still had a chance to make a good impression, and the people who I impressed might want to hire me later on when they have a bigger budget or perhaps when they're working for another company. If I disqualify myself by naming too high a number, I might never get the interview or the chance to connect or impress, never mind negotiate. It's a lose-lose for me and the company. So, no, I never name a number first.

Some recruiters have pressured me very hard to name a number, some even telling me that they were paid by the employer to get that number. Well, I'm not getting paid to give out that number, and I'm not going to participate in a free salary survey that puts me in a weaker negotiating position. Fortunately it's still a seller's market for IT talent, and there's no shortage of recruiters, most of whom respect to keep my current and desired salary confidential.

<comment><USER3> _it could disqualify me from consideration even before I get a chance to interview and make a good impression.._

I'm not going to waste my time interviewing if they can't meet my minimum salary requirements. I know my market. I doubt that I would be off by more than $3K - $5K.

<comment><USER2> I never consider interviewing to be a waste of time.

First, no matter what happens, it's great practice.

Second, if I impress the people I interview with I could get another job offer from them in the future.

Third, I get to meet some interesting people and find out a bit of how their systems are set up.

Fourth, they might be able to be negotiated up -- after the interview, and after they decide they like me and they want to hire me. There's comparatively little negotiating power before the interview.

Fifth, even if they finally can't meet my salary requirements, they might be able to offer me something else I value in compensation. That's what negotiation is all about.. and that's what you won't get to do if you disqualify yourself from consideration by naming too high a number before you've interviewed.

Finally, even after the interview, I don't name a number first. I wait for them to make me an offer. Then we go from there.

<comment><USER3> _I never consider interviewing to be a waste of time. First, no matter what happens, it 's great practice._

Last time I looked for a job -- even after filtering for salary- I had 15 jobs that I was actively pursuing -- meaning somewhere in the process of phone screen-> in person -> waiting for an offer -> company waiting for me to accept the offer. I've been successfully interviewing for 20 years and the one or two times I didn't get a job was solely because I lack the qualifications. Not because of my interview skills.

Besides if I'm already working, I have to be careful about how many "appointments" and "personal situations" I have before it becomes obvious I'm interviewing.

 _Second, if I impress the people I interview with I could get another job offer from them in the future._

If they aren't willing to offer you a job then, why would they offer you a job in the future?

 _Third, I get to meet some interesting people and find out a bit of how their systems are set up._

During work hours when you're already trying to juggle your current job and job hunting....

 _Fourth, they might be able to be negotiated up -- after the interview, and after they decide they like me and they want to hire me. There 's comparatively little negotiating power before the interview._

If you have the skill set the market wants and you are in a competitive market, supply and demand gives you your leverage. If my resume is good and accurate, and I know I meet the requirements I've always felt that once I start the interview process, the position is mine to lose.

 _Fifth, even if they finally can 't meet my salary requirements, they might be able to offer me something else I value in compensation. That's what negotiation is all about.. and that's what you won't get to do if you disqualify yourself from consideration by naming too high a number before you've interviewed._

I work every day exclusively for the salary. I'm more than willing to "disqualify myself" from a job that won't meet my compensation requirements. No I don't consider either stock options or 401K matching (unless you are immediately vested) part of my compensation.

 _Finally, even after the interview, I don 't name a number first. I wait for them to make me an offer. Then we go from there._

How much more do you really feel that you can negotiate for outside of what the market will bare unless you have a really specific skill set? I know my local market very well. I don't lose sleep at night over a few thousand if I know I'm getting paid competitively based on the market and my skill set.

<comment><USER2> _" If they aren't willing to offer you a job then, why would they offer you a job in the future?"_

Because they might not have the budget right now. Or maybe one of the interviewers liked you yet he/she was overruled by someone else. They might hire you when they have a bigger budget, when they move to another company, when there's a different opening that you might be a good fit for, or when other factors at the company change.

 _" If you have the skill set the market wants and you are in a competitive market, supply and demand gives you your leverage. If my resume is good and accurate, and I know I meet the requirements I've always felt that once I start the interview process, the position is mine to lose."_

Having a good resume is just the first, minimal step in getting a job offer. You still have to interview well and make a good impression. The company will evaluate your fit in person much more accurately than they can based off of just a resume and a salary number.

 _" I work every day exclusively for the salary. I'm more than willing to "disqualify myself" from a job that won't meet my compensation requirements. No I don't consider either stock options or 401K matching (unless you are immediately vested) part of my compensation."_

There are other things you can negotiate for. How about a day off every week? Or a longer vacation? Or a bigger starting bonus? Or more money towards relocation? Some people can negotiate loans, or have the company pay for their apartment, guaranteed promotions or salary boosts after X months on the job, the list goes on and on, and very much depends on your needs and circumstances.

The company may also agree to boost compensation for all sorts of things that they might not even think of until the negotiation process begins. Perhaps you had some extra applicable skills or experience that you hadn't listed on the resume, or maybe there were things extra that the company wants you to do that weren't part of the job description. Maybe you applied for a certain role, but after the interview it turned out you were a better fit for another role with a higher salary attached. Those could all be factors in arguing for and getting a bigger salary than they intended on paying when they just had your resume and you hadn't interviewed yet.

 _" How much more do you really feel that you can negotiate for outside of what the market will bare unless you have a really specific skill set?"_

That really all depends on your negotiating skills, what you have to offer, and the needs, budget, and negotiating skills of the people you're negotiating with. Depending on all of the above, you might get nowhere with some people, but far with others. It's really impossible to say until you try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The tip: "If you can get me X, I'll accept the offer right away."

<comment><USER5> I did something similar when I negotiated my first job after grad school. I responded to the initial offer with: I can start on ___ date for $___/yr (more than the initial offer), they countered about a tad lower than what I asked and I accepted. Seemed to work well. I didn't have multiple offers but had a year left on my current post-doc contract so I didn't need to go anywhere right away.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> my favorite tip is to say "I really want to work for your company, but the salary isn't where I would like it to be. What can you do to improve the number." Often employers have some room to move and this way you don't have to give a hard salary requirement.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's specifying a hard salary requirement.</comment>


Anatomy of a Classic - Grim Fandango - <AUTHOR> http://www.geero.net/2008/11/anatomy-of-a-classic.html

<comment><USER3> Now that is just cool. Grim Fandango was absolutely awesome. I'd love to see the same thing for Day of the Tentacle though!

Now I've got to go find my old copy and play through again...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, a Day of the Tentacle equivalent would be amazing! I think there's just something really special about seeing history in the making like this - <USER2> some such great games were made

<comment><USER4> I'd love to see the original Maniac Mansion design doc, too. The influence of the choice of characters on the solution path gave it one of the most complex game designs in the adventure genre.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _into such a simple representation that conveys so much information in such a succinct way._

 _Techniques such as the puzzle flow diagram is an incredibly useful tool_

I hope he knows that all game designers have to "convey so much information in a succinct way". He can commend Schafer for his craftsmanship, but the format of the game design document is hardly Schafer's own genius invention.

To his merit, though, we mere mortals hardly ever get to see this sort of internal documentation, even decades after a game is released. The gaming industry is unfortunately one of the more secretive industries in the tech world. Carmack and others have open-sourced their code, so it's nice to see the designers stepping up and offering their work as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Now I just have to spend some time reading the pdf and replaying the game....

I'd love to get the equivalent for zak mac kraken, day of the tentacle, monkey island and basically any of the old lucas art/lucas film games ....

</comment><comment><USER7> Link to the pdf:

[http://www.doublefine.com/themes/site_themes/default/freestu...](http://www.doublefine.com/themes/site_themes/default/freestuff/GrimPuzzleDoc_small.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Thank you.</comment></comment>


Geek Social Fallacies (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html <comment> le-mark This is a shining example of old web content we've lost in the current era of walled gardens and social graphs. People writing honestly about their journey and observations. Sure people still do in some form or another, but I personally don't see, or it's hidden in the flood of memes, tweets, shares and likes.

<comment> GuB-42 It is not lost. 15 years later, it is still up, and it is even featured on Hacker News ;)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=link:http://www.plausiblyden...](https://www.google.com/search?q=link:http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) revealed 370 results, including social networks, blogs and the like.

What may be true is that the global signal to noise ratio is lower than before. A consequence of the web being cheap and accessible. However, that kind of content is not only present but there is more than before. And while it is buried under piles of noise, we have much better tools to deal with it.

Search engines like Google, Wikipedia, Hacker News, etc... will get you loads of quality content. Platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, etc... can get very instructive if you follow the right accounts, or give you some mindless fun and memes if you so choose. The two are not exclusive.

<comment><USER2> Something can be an example of what was lost without itself actually being lost.

The pyramids are an example of this distinction.

However I think, from your examples, that you see the world in a fairly similar way to @le-mark and your distinction is more one of labels than anything else.

<comment><USER3> > The pyramids are an example of this distinction.

The pyramids were never lost. They were in plain sight the entire time. Local people knew about them. They were 'discovered' by European colonizers and integrated into a pop culture phenomenon back in Europe, which included racist tropes and undertones.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptomania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptomania)

<comment> qu4z-2 I can't find a way to read the grandparent's comment that implies that the pyramids were lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great post, and an opportunity to talk about something that some in our community really need to hear: _Don 't neglect person hygiene._

I have literally stopped attending group events because of extreme B.O. that one or a few people have (and I'm not typically sensitive to odors). I don't expect you to care about me, but I guarantee there _are_ people you care about who feel the same way.

Please just do these things. I know sometimes they are a hassle, and issues with depression and such can make them even harder, but please try:

1\. Take a shower every day. Preferably in the morning. You may still stink even if you can't smell it yourself. This still applies even if you didn't work out or otherwise don't think you sweat.

2\. Wear deodorant. Trust me, you need it, even if you can't smell yourself (others can)

3\. Long hair and beards are cool, but they need to be kept clean or they become cess pools of funk.

4\. Do your laundry. Taking a daily shower won't matter much if you put on a B.O. riddled shirt from the day before because you don't want to do laundry.

5\. Your co-workers are often afraid to tell you when you smell, but they are trapped and helpless when they are forced to share a space with you. Don't do that to them.

6\. Cigarette smoke and cologne do not cover B.O. They blend together to create a whole new type of nasty funk. But you should put on cologne after your shower. It smells good and makes other people happy. It will also raise your confidence and put you in a better mood.

7\. You are an awesome person, and I love you.

<comment><USER5> > But you should put on cologne after your shower.

I agree with everything else but this. The people that wear cologne I know ALL wear too much of it, and its really offputting. Don't trust that you'll be different, especially if taking advice from this list. Just be clean.

<comment><USER4> Yes cologne is definitely something to be conservative with. Much better to smell like nothing than to smell like too much cologne.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have an entirely different result. I certainly felt ostracized as a child. For a VERY long time. For me at one point the desire to belong to a group at all just snapped and let go. I distinctly remember it being there, and being a very strong desire. But it just disappeared, very suddenly, I think when I was 15 or 16 years old and I've been much happier since.

Now I simply have zero interest in people. I mean I can see people as a puzzle that needs solving, or a means to an end and this I can find very interesting and can result in a lot of attention from me. This is always misinterpreted. But I just don't care. I work with people for years, I "know" my neighbors and so on, and I do the necessary social events and such, but it's fake. It's a calculated move, so to speak. Like doing groceries, just somewhat more involved. I don't enjoy doing this, and it drains my energy. People generally find this very surprising, especially when suddenly that attention totally disappears.

I feel like all my social interaction is mechanical. People's reactions are very predictable, and if you want to get what you want, you have to go through some motions. I may want to learn from someone, figure something out, and they have a wife and kids, they may have a boyfriend/girlfriend, may want to have a drink, etc. Fine. I do that, but it feels like work and drains my energy just like work does. I also don't care and generally don't really remember much of that.

There are some exceptions to this. My wife and my kids, and a few, very few people around us. In total, 6 people.

</comment><comment><USER7> This kind of subgrouping has little value as it tends to manufacture elaborate myths about the 'ingroup' and alienate and dehumanize the other leading to a fictional narrative of the world.

So for instance we get the myth of 'freedom', 'liberty' and 'dissent' by a particular subgroup but in reality what we have seen is complete lack of moral compass, crass opportunism or quietly falling in line. There is only one Snowden.

We also get authoritarian and ignorant perspectives like all 'users are stupid' to facilitate opportunistic exploitation, imagine if people in government as a group thought all citizens are stupid or all professionals thought their clients are stupid. This is dehumanization and is the building base of authoritarianism.

It would be easier to understand how human groups behave when they have status and power both real and perceived and when they don't. That follows a predictable path. Self appointed 'smart people' are always dangerous as they are quick to assume a monopoly on wisdom and lack empathy for the 'other', and are unable to perceive errors in their ideology and thinking and course correct.

</comment><comment><USER8> Excellent article, just wanted to point out that I've seen most of the stuff described by it in non-geeky social groups, too.

<comment><USER9> With the possible exception of GSF1, I'd say _all_ of them are done by some people from all groups.

<comment><USER10> GSF1 appears among artists, hippies, and that sort of crowd in addition to geeks.

It's a common response to social bullying, and not limited to geeks — though it tends to manifest in marginalized social groups, for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER11> GSF1 is also exploited by sociopaths in those crowds. Even if everyone knows that so-and-so is an asshole you're always the bad guy to call them out on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember reading this when it was first posted! Hard to believe it's been more than 15 years! Still a great piece of writing though!

</comment><comment><USER13> Fallacy is a rather poor word choice here. Fallacy is a logical mistake. I think these attitudes are values which might have some unintended consequences which might be enough to overpower the value's worth to its holders. Or they might not. It very much depends on what people want.

</comment><comment><USER14> I cannot relate to any of these. Is this phenomenon unique to the American culture?

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a classic, but per rules the title should include "(2003)". I remember this doing the rounds on Livejournal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call, just changed it.

<comment><USER16> But it was changed to 2013, not 2003.

<comment><AUTHOR> Derp. Now it's too late for me to modify it. I'll email the mods to correct it.

<comment><USER17> Done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't get it.

This just seems like an attack on an entire group of people that I'm guessing have annoyed or belittled the author at one time or another.

For what purpose?

I don't believe he is genuinely trying to advise and help here. The tone isn't right for it.

<comment><USER19> > _This just seems like an attack on an entire group of people that I 'm > guessing have annoyed or belittled the author at one time or another._

It's an attack on an entire group of attitudes/behaviors.

Unless people that exhibit them are entirely defined as personalities by those attitudes (which I don't think is the case), it's not an attack of a "group of people", and even less so, an attack on particular persons.

> _For what purpose?_

To help stomp out attitudes/behaviors that are not good (at least not good according to the author).

> _I don 't believe he is genuinely trying to advise and help here. The tone > isn't right for it._

You are mistaken, or don't have a clear grasp of what it is said in that post.

<comment><USER10> All of these are common social fallacies, and associating them with "geeks" in particular seems like stereotyping, and seems to me to be reflecting the authors own poor experiences with a subset of geeks coupled with a lack of exposure to the same problematic elements in other social groups.

I believe the author meant well, and these are social fallacies, but attaching them to "geeks" seems more out of bias than fact.

<comment><USER20> "geek" is a meaningless genericized hypervague word, like "smurf".

<comment><USER10> I disagree, and would say that was even less true in 2003 when this was written — but there's a fair bit of variance in how the word is used, and it's on a trend towards improved status now that, well, (some) geeks seized substantial assets and syncophants have to suck up to (some of) them now.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geek](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/geek)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dead Smurf Software - <AUTHOR> http://cvnweb.bai.ne.jp/~preston//other/deadsmurf/index.html <comment><USER2> It would be nice if the title is a bit more descriptive of what the website and article are about.</comment>


Fastest ever commercial Internet speeds in London: Download 44 films in a second - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fastest-ever-commercial-internet-speeds-in-london-download-44-films-in-a-second-9077061.html

<comment><USER2> coudn't you write the speed ?</comment>


Ask HN: One website that isn't popular but is your favourite? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Don't really have a favourite, but there are many not so popular that I saved in my tiny bookmark list!

Physics: [http://www.asimmetrie.it](http://www.asimmetrie.it) \- [http://www.smartfish.ch](http://www.smartfish.ch)

Cyberpunk: [https://www.neondystopia.com](https://www.neondystopia.com)

Computing: [https://calomel.org](https://calomel.org) \- [https://www.michaelwlucas.com](https://www.michaelwlucas.com)

I particularly enjoyed the clever presentation of the concept design @[[http://www.smartfish.ch/file/SmartFish_Design_10.wmv](http://www.smartfish.ch/file/SmartFish_Design_10.wmv)] and the total overwhelming hilarity of Michael @[[https://www.michaelwlucas.com/autobiography/the-porn- star](https://www.michaelwlucas.com/autobiography/the-porn-star)].

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Comics on existential philosophy [http://existentialcomics.com/](http://existentialcomics.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seasonal and regional, but whenever there is a hint of snow in western Washington state, I start reading posts by a UW meteorological professor: [http://cliffmass.blogspot.com](http://cliffmass.blogspot.com). He's acutely focused on the "perfect storm" of conditions needed for any significant amount of snow in our region.

<comment><USER4> Before I moved to Texas I followed Cliff almost daily for new posts. He was especially detailed when any "pineapple express" or snow storms would come along. Way more useful info than komo4/king5/etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For music discovery and history:

\- Ishkurs Guide: [http://techno.org/electronic-music- guide/](http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/)

\- [http://radiooooo.com/](http://radiooooo.com/)

for timezones of co-workers and clients:

\- [http://localtimes.info/](http://localtimes.info/)

sci-hub / libgen (should be known quite widely now)

<comment><USER6> More time goodness: [https://time.is/](https://time.is/) <name of place, timezone, etc>

Examples:

[https://time.is/San_Francisco](https://time.is/San_Francisco)

[https://time.is/Norway](https://time.is/Norway)

[https://time.is/EDT](https://time.is/EDT)

[https://time.is/UTC+8](https://time.is/UTC+8)

[https://time.is/Unix_time_now](https://time.is/Unix_time_now)

<comment><USER5> Ah, my link was bad, the useful part is bookmarking something like this: [http://localtimes.info/difference/?lcid=GMXX0087,USCA0987,US...](http://localtimes.info/difference/?lcid=GMXX0087,USCA0987,USCA0638&h=USCA0987#)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Digg.com is really great these days.

Their "front page" is mostly interesting and curated long reads which I really enjoy.

<comment><USER8> Wow, it has really changed. Thanks for recommending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have been fascinated for many years by the website of math professor and puzzle-maker Erich Friedman; I can still spend hours looking at the optimizations of interesting packing problems.

[http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/packing.html](http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/packing.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.metafilter.com](http://www.metafilter.com) a discussion site that charges a one time fee for accounts and has paid moderators. Works brilliantly, except that they deserve more money.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.fonerbooks.com](http://www.fonerbooks.com) \- because of the "content first" design, and because its demise was caused by a major change in the Google search algo that promotes social media hype and interaction more than readable and valuable information. It has been an inspiration for many years.

*I'm not affiliated in any way with the author

</comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.swiss-miss.com/](http://www.swiss-miss.com/)

<comment><USER13> Sorry, the content might be good, but my first reaction was that's an awful looking site for a design-focused blog.

<comment><USER12> I read it with an RSS reader (feedly.com) so I'm actually almost never there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty much one of the best resources for maintaining a Mazda rotary... www.aaroncake.net

The RX-5 Cosmo restoration video series on his youtube channel is very worth watching if you're even remotely interested in working on cars.

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://textsfromsuperheroes.com](http://textsfromsuperheroes.com)

Un-informative and distracting. Probably doesn't make me a better founder. So funny.

</comment><comment><USER16> Fractals and things by the co-creater of the mandelbulb fractal.

[http://www.bugman123.com/index.html](http://www.bugman123.com/index.html)

<comment><USER17> Nice site, the gears and engineering stuff is cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Warning: This is not an ad.

My own product that I built 7 years ago. I visit it every single day. Built as one individual from everything - SEO, Sales, Lead, PM, Development, QA, Product-website

[http://enroller.in/a/](http://enroller.in/a/)

</comment><comment><USER19> www.smbc-comics.com</comment>


JQuery Case Study: How WordPress uses jQuery & jQuery UI - <AUTHOR> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/02/case-study-how-wordpress-uses-jquery/

<comment><USER2> For me (newbie to jQuery), the number of possible plug-ins & the decisions to be made about which jQuery UI features are worth tapping... is rather mind- numbing.

It's helpful to get an introduction to how folks as well-established as WP are attacking it.</comment>


Lobotomizing Gnome - <AUTHOR> https://eklitzke.org/lobotomizing-gnome <comment><USER2> The author wants to remove JavaScript from their desktop and does this by disabling all extensions in the hope that it will also disable Gnomes JavaScript engine. What the author does not appear to understand is that extensions are written in JavaScript because Gnome shell is written in JavaScript.

Gnome works very well for my workflow, and I find much of the "bloat" to be quite useful in day to day usage, but can understand the desire to remove things like maps and Tracker if you don't use them. My single biggest issue with Gnome stems from the performance of Gnome-shell which lags and stutters its way through animations leading to a desktop which often feels like it's struggling even on powerful hardware.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the author fails to understand that, They know that Gnome Shell is written in JavaScript and are not trying to eliminate JS from their desktop -- they are trying to _minimize_ the amount of JS running and thereby limit the scope of the memory leaks.

<comment><USER4> Actually, it does seem the author is unaware of the extent of JS usage in Gnome Shell:

> User extensions are a mechanism that allow users to write GNOME extensions > in Javascript, similar to how Chrome and Firefox extensions work. In my > opinion this idea has dubious merit, and my personal feeling is the less > Javascript in my life the better. I felt somewhat vindicated about this > decision during recent coverage of a memory leak in GNOME Shell. The > underlying issue was related to the Javascript garbage collector in GNOME > Shell not collecting object references in a timely manner. I'm not sure that > disabling user extensions actually disables the Javascript engine > completely, but it definitely minimizes it to the least possible scope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently switched to Linux (from Windows 10 - forced upgrade took 45' in the middle of an extremely important moment)

Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2/3 extension?)

I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it's way better than I expected. Super fast, minimal, and no annoyances.

Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years, since I last tried it.

<comment><USER6> Wait ~6 months, and you will encounter a case where simple package update will cost you more than that 45 minutes ;)

<comment><USER7> Maybe, but it's never going to force you to reboot to install some shovelware that you don't want and can't opt out of.

<comment><USER6> Migration of many distros to systemd forced many people to do exactly that ;)

<comment><USER8> Did it? I must have missed that.

<comment><USER9> There was a little bit of pain but it was nowhere near as bad as some make out. I migrated all my arch boxes at the time just fine and the main work was writing unit files -- which compared to writing init scripts was mainly trivial.

Is systemd the best init system? No. But to some of us it was an improvement over what came before it and it really hasn't given us the trouble that others claim it has given them.

I remember a colleague who ran Linux From Scratch on his laptop who was abhorred by the changes. We spent an afternoon trying to remove the stuff from an Ubuntu VM image he didn't consider necessary and a lot of it was really alien to him. As an fvwm user he really couldn't understand why almost everything needed dbus and pulseaudio. I couldn't understand a lot of the strange packaging dependencies either. And yet these are things that to me have improved real pain-points in linux distros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Open-source desktops are never perfect for anyone, but everyone expects them to be. For everyone who says they are too bloated, someone else says they are too spartan. That's probably why there are so many of them.

I would expect working on Gnome (or KDE or Cinnamon or Mate or XFCE or LXDE, the list goes on) to be a thankless task. You try to please everybody and yet please nobody. The imperfections of Linux desktops are more grating because of the knowledge that alternatives exist.

On Windows or Mac OS, you are stuck with the desktop you have, with little ability to do anything other than basic customizations. But people soldier on and get used to it because they have no choice.

I wonder whose users are truly more satisfied in the end.

<comment><USER11> I tried to switch to Linux for philosophical and customization reasons. Found it nearly impossible to configure stuff reliably and such it wont crash in new interesting ways. For example: Create a new keyboard layout and have it appear in KDE keyboard settings. Good luck. Input Manager for macOS: done.

<comment><USER12> It's interesting how different people can have completely opposite experience. I've modified my Microsoft keyboard that zoom slider works as Spotify control buttons play/stop/next. I doubt I would be able to achieve something like this in macOS or Windows. It works all the time, super reliably.

[https://gist.github.com/mauron85/5f4b640aa4e5e968e0496ac5a08...](https://gist.github.com/mauron85/5f4b640aa4e5e968e0496ac5a0878715)

<comment><USER13> You can probably use Autohotkey to achieve the same thing on Windows. It's a great tool to be aware of should you ever have to use Windows for any reason – you can also use it to push windows to virtual desktops and others, approaching a more Linux-y experience. Someone even wrote a tiling WM in AHK: [https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n](https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n)

<comment><USER14> AHK is the kind of thing that should have been built into desktop environments since '95\. Why go through the trouble of adding all these workflow features that may or may not align with what actually makes the user's workflow better when you could add a scripting environment that allows the user to do that for themselves and a few pre-configured defaults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of the issues stem from a tendency of Gnome to want to "manage" your stuff for you. Evolution sticking its fingers into other things, something indexing files, apps wanting to manage your photos. I've had trouble with my music collection. You'd think it's possible to copy some folders with .mp3 files into your home directory and point the music app at it. But no, files have to be imported or some crap and I actually had so much trouble with this on F26 or so that I gave up. Seriously, apps have to get dumb again in order to work. It's like IDEs for software - a folder structure with .c .h and make files should define a software project, but so many IDEs want to "manage" things in a proprietary project file of some sort and it tends to make things less portable or functional outside that paradigm. I get that there are advantages to all of these things if you do things the way the developers intended, but it ends up feeling like Apples attitude of "we know what's best for you" and iTunes wanting to take over your system.

<comment><USER16> BeOS. The BeOS filesystem had some nifty metadata features and the company was keen to show those off. Plus, I suspect they had to get creative to seed the OS with apps back in the day.

As a result, many apps ended up feeling like a pretty thin veneer around a file explorer. My memory is a little foggy, but the music player and the email app come to mind.

The opposite model was the iTunes model: a monolithic app that reproduced a bunch of functionality of the file system, but ultimately nerfed the power.

I'm otherwise not too crazy nostalgic about BeOS (NeXT was the better OS in many ways). But man, some things were really great with that system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did this guys just completely ignore Plasma (KDE)?? I'd say they are the ones ahead on high DPI and Wayland... Seriously, install it, even on old hardware. Plasma is really fast and stable these days. Also, Mate has no problems with High DPI and given the right theme look beautiful with rounded corners all over the place.

Edit: Ok, I may have misread the piece as a critique at first but it's just his way of getting Gnome more functional. Anyway, his assumptions regarding "Gnome being ahead" are outdated and it seems like one is ready for DE switch, if one must lobotomize her/his DE after every install.

<comment><USER18> Not the author, but I just tried KDE for two weeks, and coming from Gnome, I couldn't acclimate. I found the Plasma experience unpolished, inconsistent, and prone to error. I also ran into quite a few bugs (at one point, Plasma just stopped giving me window previews when alt-tabbing, and not a single alternative alt-tab style from the built-in installer worked for me).

Two examples of things I missed coming from Gnome:

\- I really appreciate the gnome-shell's unified "Activities" overview: I tap Super and I get a single experience that combines Plasma's Quick Launch Bar, Present Windows, and Desktop Grid features. I find that to be a faster, more fluid experience than the Plasma equivalents.

\- KWin expected me to resize windows by, somehow, hitting a border that's exactly 1 pixel wide. I evidently don't have the motor control to do that quickly or reliably. Gnome adds a ~10 pixel wide invisible border to each window which is quick and easy to hit regardless of input device.

That's not to say everything is all roses in Gnome land, either, but what's there just seems more reliable, consistent, and intentionally designed. Still, there's no panacea. I _wish_ Gnome's screen zoom was half as fast and fluid as Plasma's. I wish Gnome still supported desktop icons. And AppIndicators. And a 2D grid of virtual desktops. I wish Gnome felt as responsive as Plasma.

I'm planning a switch from Fedora to OpenSUSE later this year, at which point I'll give Plasma another shot and be more diligent about recording and reporting bugs I run across.

<comment><USER19> IIRC on kde you can also resize windows with alt + right click, without needing to hit exactly the border. (Or maybe its middle click I don't remember. ) this is similar to alt + left click to drag a window without clicking the title bar.

On gnome you can use Super + middle click to resize things and super + left click to drag them

<comment><USER20> I am on KDE 5 and TIL! Thanks.

Alt+right click resizes window and Alt+left click drags the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This mentality "lets add a daemon to run in background 24/7" to provide some service thats sits mostly unused is unacceptable. Its not only gnome developers, its widespread in open-source. The competitive edge of Linux is reduced quite a bit when there is enough bloatware running around by default.

<comment><USER22> If such a daemon does not use cycles unless called out to, then the only problem is that it's one more attack vector. Oh wait.

<comment><USER23> not sure if it's still a thing but akonadi / baloo on kde manages to even saturate slower sata-ssd random io and fills a mysql database. Lot's of fun if you have several kernel tree / buildroots laying around in your home. baloo also really likes to segfault when parsing content and is not sandboxed afaik.

I really like KDE but this part is sadly a good in theory but pure pita in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> OP's experience is based on Fedora. If you're on Ubuntu, a couple of cautions:

1\. A fair amount of the OP advice is Wayland-specific -- but Wayland has been disabled by default in Ubuntu 18.04.

2\. Ubuntu layers its own tweaks on top of GNOME's. See /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.{ubuntu,canonical}*

Those caveats noted, the author's approach to GNOME desktop parallels my own current working solution for Ubuntu, arrived after at after way too many hours in tedious experiment with KDE, XFCE, LXDE, OpenBox, gnome-look.org themes, gconf-editor, dconf-editor, and even gnome-tweak-tool. These approaches all proved to suffer from one or more critical failings:

1\. Not easily archive/documented, for repetition with later Linux reinstalls. 2\. Not easily reviewable/reversible, in case of trouble later. 3\. Monolithic or coarse-grained, and introduce infelicities of their own. So then you try to tweak the tweak ... oy vey. 4\. Weak documentation, version skew risk, and doubtful developer commitment. 5\. Interact badly with other tweaks. 6\. Incomplete, as judged by my needs. Tweaks from other sources required, each coming with other variations of [1-5].

To remedy failings (1) and (2), with customizations expressible in text, Ansible is a solution for people invested or ready to invest in learning Ansible. Similarly Git, or Quilt.

To expose the actions of `dconf`:

      $ strace -f -e trace=network,ipc,process,write dconf ...
      $ file $HOME/.config/dconf/user

To begin to understand some of the dynamics that have shaped GNOME:

      https://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/GAR2016-web.pdf
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14945871
      https://bugzilla.gnome.org/

</comment><comment><USER25> A lot of the comments here are arguing for or against the author's specific choices, but I would like to point out how great it is that Linux desktop environments are this customizable in the first place.

I recently switched back to Linux after using a Mac for a couple of years, and was blown away with how far Gnome has gotten in terms of customizability -- even if most of it is done through extensions. Moreover, if you can't tweak it to your liking, perhaps xfce or i3 or KDE will prove more accommodating...

</comment><comment><USER26> Meanwhile on KDE I can change all my configuration to my personal tastes without needing to edit a single text file or doing obscure and magic things with third party tools.

<comment><USER27> That's not always a good thing, everytime I've tried a post-plasma KDE version I've always ended up spending too much time regularly tweaking the whole setup.

<comment><USER26> I find that the GNOME way of doing this, need a lot more of work that simply doing : Preferences -> "Change stuff here"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > I have pretty basic needs from my desktop. I do 99% of my work using just > three programs: a terminal emulator, Emacs, and Firefox. I don't want a lot > of bells and whistles in my desktop, and I really just want it to get out of > the way so I can do my work.

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that TFA starts with this, then spends a couple of paragraphs talking about how modern Gnome is, then spends a few pages presenting what looks a lot like a chapter from an old "Removing Windows XP Annoyances" book?

</comment><comment><USER29> I've tried to use Gnome a lot, it's IMO a great desktop but it also has problems. Personally, I've simply been sitting on XFCE, despite wanting to switch to Wayland a long time ago merely because XFCE has been proven less resource intensive on both laptop and desktop...

I do hope there will be a wayland-based XFCE-like Desktop for Linux at some point...

</comment><comment><USER30> That was an awful lot of work compared with "install XFCE".

</comment><comment><USER31> First time I heard about the user.js feature. That should save me some time going through umpteen about:config preferences every time I install Firefox (and it seems I do more and more stuff there, whenever they add a new useless feature).

</comment><comment><USER32> I recently came back to running Linux on the desktop after using Mac OS for a decade or so, and while the article is interesting from a technical point of view, it seems like a lot of work with little reward considering that the needed apps are a command prompt, a text editor and a browser.

I'll just stick with my standard Debian Gnome desktop. It works well, doesn't get in my way, and i can spare the ~0.5GB RAM for running evolution, tracker, plugins etc.

<comment><USER33> I think one of the major points is that this configuration is easily reusable/replayable on another machine, as it also sets up the wanted/unwanted packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> For folks who don't like the idea of a javascript-based DE, ElementaryOS is worth a look. An Ubuntu variant with a DE built with Vala which is similar to C# but compiles to C.

[https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/)

[https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Vala)

</comment><comment><USER35> If I was actively using Linux on the desktop still -as I was for well over a decade- this would have been extremely useful. I always shied away from Gnome as far too heavy for my tastes, and used a custom built FVWM config. Since my workflow also consisted of mainly a web browsers, a mail client (now subsumed by the web browser), and many, many terminals, I really just wanted a single click to start a terminal, and Ctrl-Alt-{direction} to move virtual desktops which I devoted to a single task at a time.

For the last few years I've been using Windows 8/10\. It started as a work software requirement, but as of Windows 10, Microsoft has figured out how to make Windows feel fairly minimal most of the time. As long as I have a browser and PuTTY, I'm pretty content. I'm doing my best to ignore what I assume are some privacy concerns I'll have to deal with at some point in the near future, but for the time being I'm able to deal with the cognitive dissonance.

</comment><comment><USER36> There's an easier way than using dconf dump twice and looking at the diff: You can use dconf watch. [http://catern.com/2014/12/21/plain-text-configuration- gnome....](http://catern.com/2014/12/21/plain-text-configuration-gnome.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> Hmm, author doesn't seem to know about dconf-editor to explore available settings.

That reminds me of why I despise much of what gnome3 has produced however. Instead of improving the applets and file manager and adding to their anemic feature set, they are constantly fucking around with the title bars and removing menus and things. For the same reason I hated 'skinz' in the 90's I dislike that every app is now a custom snowflake that has to be handled differently. For example, look at what dconf-editor has become, like the Disks program---an abomination.

Gnome (all the desktops really) is still not as consistent and integrated as the Windows 2000 shell was, and is harder to use. IMHO, the only useful innovation to come out since then has been the "Super-key search," the rest has been downhill.

<comment><USER38> As someone who heavily uses the super key in Emacs, I disagree with you.

It's getting pretty difficult to turn off that feature (is it even possible in recent versions of Gnome?).

Also, the Super-o shortcut to lock screen rotation (on a compute, really?) is hardcoded in the window manager and can't be disabled at all. That's really great when you have APL symbols mapped to it.

<comment><USER37> Thought emacs used Ctrl?

I use Mate, though gnome3 has infected many of the apps, such as the two mentioned above. Think you have to enable super-search by opting in to one of the advance start menus under it.

<comment><USER38> Emacs uses Control and Meta. That makes Super a very useful key to map custom functions to.

<comment><USER37> Mine still works, just the bare key press that opens the start menu.

<comment><USER38> That's true, but when you use the key a lot it often happens that you press it and then release it. It's very annoying

Also, the hardcoding of super-o is even more annoying.

I also noticed that in recent versions of Gnome, super-s doesn't work anymore. I have no explanation for that one.

<comment><USER37> Bummer. Well perhaps Mate is a good choice then. I'm enjoying it though still a bit lacking compared to Windows 2k, sigh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If anyone uses gnome and github, and happens to follow their github notifications I made that:

[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1125/github- notificat...](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1125/github- notifications/)

source code:

[https://github.com/alexduf/gnome-github- notifications](https://github.com/alexduf/gnome-github-notifications)

</comment><comment><USER40> > … my personal feeling is the less Javascript in my life the better.

I couldn't agree more. But I also feel much the same way about GNOME; that's why I use StumpWM[0]. It doesn't do everything out of the box which GNOME does, but it's extensible in a dynamic language, which means that it's easy enough to add most everything.

0: [https://stumpwm.github.io/](https://stumpwm.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't understand what's the need to go on with this (probably unstable) path. I would rather try XFCE or LXQt before trying this.

<comment><USER42> Read again. He said he likes the workflow GNOME provides, he just wants to reduce a bit of the bloat. Maybe, unlike you, he does _not_ want to use a more traditional desktop …

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I expected to see custom compiled version with some code removed. Because lobotomizing sounds far more drastic than a pat on the hand.

Now that I'm thinking about this it would be something. Maybe profile it to see unused code after described configuration change. Then remove it and use Profile Guided Optimization to go further.

</comment><comment><USER44> While there is a lot of bloat in gnome, it personally doesn't really bother me as it doesn't get in my way.

Although I agree it should probably be easier, it's great that it is possible to cut a lot of unwanted bloat from Gnome. Try that with Windows or MacOS.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm very happy on a new T480S running Pop_OS - if any System76 devs pass by here - thanks!

</comment><comment><USER46> PSA: GNOME Software is a frontend to flatpak repositories. It's not a frontend for your package manager.

Since flatpak provides security benefits, instead of removing Gnome software, he should have been removing duplicate packages from his package manager.

<comment><USER47> GNOME Software is a frontend to a lot of things: flatpak repos, your system package manager, GNOME extensions, firmware updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The registry on Windows gets tonnes of hate, and mostly rightly so, but I kinda like dconf. I wish more programs would use it, just one format, and really easy to programatically change without individual pipelines per config file format.

</comment><comment><USER49> I agree on a lot of things, but not on the extensions, I have about a dozen installed that make my desktop much more organized and snappier to use.

Also don't understand the uninstalling totem part, then again I watch a lot of movies.

</comment><comment><USER50> On Arch Linux installing GNOME does not install all of the GNOME apps, just the shell. The rest I only install if I want it. What I like most is their calendar and their address book.

<comment><USER51> Switching to Arch was revelatory, and I've been using some form of Linux at work or home since 2001.

It's hard for me to describe, or quantify. But it's almost like, with a distro that embraces the Linux-ness of Linux, one that's not trying to be like Mac OS or Windows, you're able to cut to the heart of your user experience and make it your own.

Plus, rolling release, bro. I don't need monolithic version releases, I just have Arch now.

<comment><USER52> Arch is insanely stable given it uses rolling updates. I'm not quite sure how they pull it off. I've had far worse problems with Fedora and Ubuntu, which sometimes are not even fixable because you can't easily update to the latest upstream releases (most noticeably with the kernel). On Arch, I run `pacman -Syu` every month and my system stays up to date with basically no downtime.

<comment><USER34> Does Arch have anything similar to Ubuntu/Debian's Alternatives System [1][2]? This is very useful for managing different versions of the same package/s and I tend to rely on it for a number of things.

[1]:[https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAlternatives](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianAlternatives) [2]:[http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man8/update- alte...](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man8/update- alternatives.8.html)

<comment><USER52> You can freeze package versions, and there are also archives of older packages. But generally most of the repos only have the latest released packages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Perhaps tangential but does anyone know if you can run Ableton Live on Linux using some emulation layer?

This is maybe the one piece of software keeping me from ditching Mac OS X.

<comment><USER54> Here's a current thread regarding Ableton Live registration via Wine - [https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18590](https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18590) \- apparently it's not the easiest.

Alternatively, Bitwig runs natively, though costs. It's about the only native software that does the clip launching style of production/performance well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It is a bit of controversal article. There is need for 2 applications a terminal and a browser. Why do you need gnome for that?

<comment><USER56> I'm using i3. I still keep Gnome around, because from time to time I need to hold presentations, and randomly appearing and disappearing monitors (=beamers) is not something i3 deals with gracefully.

<comment><USER57> I use i3 on my laptop, where I routinely connect and disconnect external displays. I wrote a small program to deal with that: [http://github.com/mortie/dedaemon](http://github.com/mortie/dedaemon)

That tool also handles input stuff (like setting the keyboard layout when a keyboard is connected, or setting the mouse speed when a mouse is connected), and setting the wallpaper (because the wallpaper has to be re-applied when a display is connected). Here's the config file I personally use: [https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/master/.dedaemon.hcnf](https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/master/.dedaemon.hcnf)

If you do end up trying it out, feel free to pm me (firstname.lastname@example.com) or open a github issue if you have any questions or problems.

<comment><USER58> Where has this been all my life?

So far I've been making do with shellscripts I call ad-hoc, but dedaemon looks super convenient.

Thanks for creating it, I'll certainly give it a try!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I refuse to believe this is not satirical. "I have few new needs. Gnome is cool. I store my config in ansible.".

</comment><comment><USER60> Article gave me a strong desire to start managing my desktop with Ansible...

<comment><USER61> I do this with my computers (laptops, desktops, and servers) and while it does have some drawbacks on the desktop I feel the reproducibility far outweighs them. Whenever a new version of OS X comes out, I just clean install it on my machine, run ansible and then have a working environment back up in under an hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> An easier way: try XFCE or another GTK based desktop environment.

</comment><comment><USER63> If you want something this simple just use sway...

<comment><USER64> this Sway? [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sway](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sway)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> it's simplified to a fault. it is also too complex to a fault. basically when you want to do something it does get in the way.

</comment><comment><USER66> ...or you can just use Mate and save yourself a lot of these troubles.

<comment><USER67> How does Mate do with: Connecting and disconnecting projectors and external displays on the fly? HiDPI displays?

<comment><USER68> > Connecting and disconnecting projectors and external displays on the fly?

It's been doing this fine since back when it was Gnome 2.

> HiDPI displays?

AFAIK, basically, just as well as Gnome 3. They use the same UI toolkit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> > I want my laptop to work correctly when connecting it to external displays > or projectors without a lot of futzing around. I want vsync to work with my > monitor out of the box, I want to be able to watch video without tearing, > and I want a desktop that has first class support for high-DPI displays.

Buy a Mac :) Honestly. The Gnome and systemd became entangled mess with no chances of getting better, yet they made it into all major distros. Linux kernel size increased exponentially in last few years, without visible added value.

But article is real good!

</comment><comment><USER70> Evan I love you

</comment><comment><USER71> 100% on the same boat as the opening statment, but he lost me at "systemd".

</comment><comment><USER72> First I thought 'Fedora?!? seriously???'. Last time I used Fedora (several years ago) I was pissed off when I had to learn that they didn't support system upgrades. So with every major release you had to reinstall the whole system, which is not that much fun.

But it seems they support system upgrades since a few releases now [1]. So maybe I should try it one day again, but as I fell in love with (stable) rolling releases, that might still be an issue :-/

[1]: [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade)

<comment><USER73> I've been using dnf to continuously upgrade my Fedora installation between 24 and 28, and it's worked pretty much flawlessly.

It's gotten to the point that system upgrades are as boring as the regular stream of updates that you receive daily, the only difference being that every 6 months you get more updates than usual being pushed.

Remember when the first real tool you had to perform system upgrades on Fedora was called FedUp? It was quite amazing, not to mention unexpected, seeing Fedora go from being one of the worst distros to upgrade to one of the best.</comment></comment>