Ossification comes from os, ossis: bones in Latin. Turning into bones. Stops being flexible. Common behavior becomes de facto specification. There's stuff that's allowed by the specification but not expected by implementations because things have always worked like this.
It's not related to open source software. The seemingly matching prefix is coincidence :-)
> consumer versions of Windows didn’t get Unix-like pre-emptive multitasking until Windows XP in 2002
What does this mean? I didn't remember Windows 95 and 98 SE as having cooperative multitasking. I'm reading that 95, 98 and ME had preemptive multitasking on a Win32 kernel for 32 bit applications, and only went back to cooperative multitasking for 16 bit apps [1].
There was much marketing directed at the fact that as of Windows 95, applications developed with the 32-bit API onwards would benefit from preemptive multitasking. Legacy 16-bit applications coexisted in some kind of virtual machine (maybe it was called Windows On Windows, WOW for short, or maybe that was an NT thing) but they could accidentally trip each other up and bring each other down, but in theory the system and the 32-bit apps were safe. So yes, the text in the article is pretty confusing and misleading. I exited Windows in the XP SP1 days (2003) and by then most of the mishaps happened due to third-party drivers.
Not exactly, and kinda but definitely not at the same level.
Having to trust that random apps behave is very uncomfortable. If some bug makes an app enter an infinite loop, it's a freeze and you are good for a reboot. So we went to preemptive multitasking and we never went back to cooperative multitasking.
Inside an app written by one entity, why not? We have all the tools needed to manage apps that froze, restarting apps might be less of a big deal, and there is not necessarily the need for competing things inside an app.
To the exception of the GUI, which should remain responsive, so either (1) you make sure computations are always imperceptibly short, or… (2) you are back to a dedicated thread for the GUI, handled with the preemptive multitasking capabilities of the OS. Web apps and Javascript have been more or less (1), but workers have been introduced to have (2), because (1) is quite limited. So, even there, cooperative multitasking has its limits.
That was certainly not the case ~2 years ago, the last time I installed linux on a laptop.
It also doesn't appear to be the case even now. I searched for laptops available in my country that fit my budget and for each laptop searched "<laptop name> linux reddit" on google and filtered for results <1 year old. Each laptop's reports included some or other bug.
The laptop with the best reported linux support seemed to be Thinkpad P14s but even there users reported tweaking some config to get fans to run silently and to make the speakers sound acceptable.
You are going to find issues for any computer for any OS by looking things up like this.
And yeah, it's best to wait a bit for new models, as support is sorted out, if the manufacturer doesn't support Linux itself. Or pick a manufacturer that sells laptops with Linux preinstalled. That makes the comparison with a laptop with Windows preinstalled fair.
> You are going to find issues for any computer for any OS by looking things up like this
I wasn't cherry-picking things. I literally searched for laptops available in my budget in my country and looked up what was the linux support like for those laptops as reported by people on reddit.
> Or pick a manufacturer that sells laptops with Linux preinstalled
I suppose you are talking about System76, Tuxedo etc. These manufacturers don't ship to my country. Even if I am able to get it shipped, how am I supposed to get warranty?
You weren't cherry picking but the search query you used would lead to issue reports.
HP, Dell and Lenovo also sell Linux laptops on which Linux runs well.
I sympathize with the more limited availability and budget restrictions, but comparisons must be fair: compare a preinstalled Windows and a preinstalled linux, or at least a linux installed on hardware whose manufacturer bothered to work on Linux support.
When the manufacturer did their homework, Linux doesn't have the issues listed earlier. I've seen several laptops of these three brands work flawlessly on Linux and it's been like this for a decade.
I certainly choose my laptops with Linux on mind and I know just picking random models would probably lead me to little issues here and there, and I don't want to deal with this. Although I have installed Linux on random laptops for other people and fortunately haven't run into issues.
As a buyer, how am I supposed to know which manufacturer did their homework and on which laptops?
> it's been like this for a decade
Again, depends on the definition of "flawlessly". Afaik, support for hardware accelerated videoplayback on browsers was broken across the board only three years ago.
> As a buyer, how am I supposed to know which manufacturer did their homework and on which laptops?
You first option is to buy a laptop with linux preinstalled from one of the many manufacturers that provides this. This requires no particular knowledge or time. Admittedly, this may lead you to more expensive options, entry grade laptops won't be an option.
Your second best bet is to read tech reviews. Admittedly this requires time and knowledge, but often enough people turn to their tech literate acquaintance for advice when they want to buy hardware.
> Afaik, support for hardware accelerated videoplayback on browsers was broken across the board only three years ago.
Yes indeed, that's something we didn't have. I agree it sucks. Now, all the OSes have their flaws that others don't have, and it's not like the videos didn't play, in practice it was an issue if you wanted to watch 4K videos for hours on battery. Playing regular videos worked, and you can always lower the quality if your situation doesn't allow the higher qualities. Often enough, you could also get the video and play it outside the browser. I know, not ideal, but also way less annoying that the laptop not suspending when you close the lid because of a glitch or something like this.
> You first option is to buy a laptop with linux preinstalled
I have earnestly tried for >20 minutes trying to find such a laptop with any reputed manufacturer in my country (India) and come up empty-handed. Please suggest any that you can find. Even with Thinkpads, the only options are "Windows" or "No Operating System".
>Your second best bet is to read tech reviews.
Which tech reviews specifically point out linux support?
>Playing regular videos worked, and you can always lower the quality if your situation doesn't allow the higher qualities
The issue was never about whether playing the video worked. CPU video decoding uses much more energy and leads to your laptop running hot and draining battery life.
Can we at least agree to reduce the timeframe for things working flawlessly to "less than two years" instead of "a decade"? Yes you were able to go to the toilet downstairs but the toilet upstairs was definitely broken.
If buying with Linux is not an option at your place, you can always buy one of the many models found with this search without OS and install it yourself. Most thinkpads should be all right. Most elitebooks should do. Dell laptops sold with Ubuntu somewhere on the planet should do. I'm afraid I can't help nore, you'll have to do your search. Finding out which laptops are sold with Linux somewhere should not be rocket science. I don't buy laptops very often, I tend to keep my computers for a healthy amount of time, I can't say what it's like in India in 2025.
> Can we at least agree to reduce the timeframe for things working flawlessly to "less than two years" instead of "a decade"? Yes you were able to go to the toilet downstairs but the toilet upstairs was definitely broken.
No. I understand that it can be a dealbreaker for some, but that's a minor issue for me on laptops, even unplugged, and I do watch a lot of videos (for environmental reasons I tend to avoid watching videos in very high resolutions anyway, so software rendering is a bummer but not a blocker). There are still things that don't work, like Photoshop or MS Office, so you could say that it's still not flawless, still, that doesn't affect me.
Many results, including a US-specific page of the Lenovo website.
>If buying with Linux is not an option at your place, you can always buy one of the many models found with this search without OS and install it yourself.
>Finding out which laptops are sold with Linux somewhere should not be rocket science.
It should not. Given the amount of time I have already spent on trying to find one, it is fair to say that there are none easily available in India, at least in the consumer laptop market.
> I understand that it can be a dealbreaker for some, but that's a minor issue for me on laptops
Stockholm Syndrome was bullshit made up on the spot to cover for the inability of the person making it up to defend their position with facts or logic, and...that fits most metaphorical uses quite well, too, though its not usually the message the metaphor is intended to communicate.
> Many results, including a US-specific page of the Lenovo website.
Are you failing to see that this US-specific page gives you a long list of models you can consider elsewhere?
> Stockholm syndrome.
Yeah, no. It just appears I have different needs than you and value different tradeoffs. It appears that the incredible comfort Linux brings me offsets the minor inconvenience software rendered browser video playback causes me.
I'm done in this discussion, we've been quite far away the kind of interesting discussions I come to HN for for a few comments now.
On Windows, I don't have to pick my hardware accordingly.
I have to onboard a lot of students to work on our research. The software is all linux (of course), and mostly distribution-agnostic. Can't be too old, that's it.
If a student comes with a random laptop, I install WSL on it, mostly ubuntu. apt install <curated list of packets>. Done. Linux laptops are OK too, I think, but so far only had one student with that. Mac OS used to be easy, but gets harder with every release, and every new OS version breaks something (mainly, CERN root) and people have to wait until it's fixed.
> On Windows, I don't have to pick my hardware accordingly.
Fair enough. I think the best way to run Linux if you want to be sure you won't have tweak to stuff is to buy hardware with linux preinstalled. That your choice is more limited is another matter than "linux can't suspend".
Comparing a preinstalled Windows with a linux installed on random laptop whose manufacturer can't be bothered to support is a bit unfair.
Linux on a laptop where the manufacturer did their work runs well.
Yes, machines with Linux preinstalled normally work quite well. But it's still a downside of choosing Linux that the choice of laptops is so much smaller. Similar to the downside of Mac OS that you are locked in to pricey-but-well-built laptops, or the downside of Windows that "it runs Windows" doesn't mean the hardware is not bottom-of-the-barrel crap with a vendor who doesn't care about Linux compatibility. WSL allows to run a sane development environment even then :)
> Edit: for clarity, by "multiple OS" I mean multiple Linux versions. Like if one project has a dependency on Ubuntu22 and another is easier with Ubuntu24. You don't have to stress "do I update my OS?"
For this part, I just create systemd-nspawn containers.
Last time I wanted to test something in a very old version of WebKit, creating a Debian Jessie container takes a few minutes. Things run at native speed.
Early versions of KDE 4.0 were terrible, and it lasted for a couple of years, but I've found later versions quite solid. Early versions of KDE 5 were relatively stable but were lacking features. I find late 5.X versions and all 6.X version quite robust.
There are still bugs but they do seem to be ironing them out, they go in the right direction.
The only big bugs I notice these days are the occasionnal plasmashell crashes but it comes back on its own. KWin doesn't crash and that's fortunate because on Wayland, that would bring down non KDE apps.
I exclusively use plasma, I'm quite sensitive to instabilities, it's not an issue for me with KDE.
I did avoid the first years of KDE 4 and was using GNOME at that time.
FSF declined to make a statement either way - citing the fact that very little software uses this license and it all has xGPL alternatives, so there's no urgent need to make an official decision.
Debian didn't call it free or unfree, but rather decided not to include SSPL software in their distribution, which is an orthogonal issue, due to it having a higher risk of being incompatible with all the other stuff when used a certain way, which does not make it non-free.
Fedora calls it non-free, but just calls it their own belief, not something based on solid reasoning about meeting guidelines or not. Note that Fedora is a project of one of those open source reseller companies.
I found the points in your last comment to be true.
I still think you'd need to back the fact OSI rejected SSPL for commercial concerns of its members a bit more. Even if nobody else has formally rejected SSPL on convincing grounds, major parts of the free software ecosystem distrusts it and OSI is not that special in this. I found nobody making the case that SSPL is a free software license. Nobody likes it except mongodb, and formerly redis and elasticsearch. That would be an interesting revelation to me but I need more convincing evidences.
I do think that open source is the watered down corporate version of free software that attempts to get rid of the end user rights concerns (which I care about most, but the corporations around the OSI don't care about much or at all), and that the OSI is governed by big corps and is not the most trusty organization when it comes to protect free software. One only needs to see the definition they came up for open source AI models which is not quite restrictive (and thus useful) to see the least. So I'm actually somewhat inclined to believe this.
Distrust is different from non-free. SSPL happens to be a free software license - that is a fact - which many people dislike - that is also a fact. The latter fact doesn't invalidate the former fact.
The incompatibility between *GPL and SSPL is a very good reason to dislike SSPL. I don't like it either, but I still think it's open source. Perhaps SSPL version 2 could be written to require that the source code for other parts of the service could be released under some particular set of licenses, which would make it much more compatible.
> OSI is not that special in this.
OSI is special because it's taken as an authority on what the term "open source" means, and it's special because it has actually written an official press release full of actual bullshit in order to justify its objectively wrong statement, while still claiming to be an authority and still being seen as one.
> I still think you'd need to back ... a bit more.
No competent capitalist entity will ever say outright "we lie for profit." It always has to be inferred from their actions. Look at what happened to Ratner's jewellery chain. If you outright say what everyone already knows, you can still get punished for breaking the suspension of disbelief. Same thing when Musk did the salute.
We can see that a capitalist entity did something which looks stupid on the face of it, but obviously advances its business interests. We conclude that either the board of directors were infected by brainworms, or they are advancing their business interests. The latter is much more likely. Burning social capital to gain financial capital is a tried and tested strategy.
Since OSM is, among other things, a list of building, will there be exchanges between the two projects? Are the licenses of the two projects compatible?
Well, we have some connections with the community and we are discussing how to incorporate our buildings IDs in OSM. The other way around (OSM to national registry) seems more complicated for license reasons.
Last summer we tested the open approch by doing a "RNB Summer game". Basically, anyone could come on the map and send some error reporting, we had a score per player, per territory and a shared global score. The OSM community absolutely rolled ont the game :)
Yes, sexism is not a new thing from today, and such sentences are witnesses of this. We might be interpreting stuff from the past with today's eyes, true, but that doesn't make the interpretation wrong. There are a lot of things we know now and didn't before. It's even totally possible we have reading keys that might have been unavailable back then.
We should not interpret stuff out of context though, but here I'm not sure taking the context in account would not make the point even stronger. I would be quite surprised about any context changing things for this particular phrase (but happy to be surprised...)
Not sure about the reduction, but "Wine, women and song" somewhat assumes the point of view from an heterosexual male and could feel offensive just for this.
"Wine, man and song" would sound weird, but it should not sound weirder than the "women" version. That's because we are all used to the male pov assumption and that's the core of the issue.
And of course, to add insult to injury, the phrase will feel like the reduction the grand parent describes to many.
So I think we'd be better off dropping those old phrases in favor of things like your version, which doesn't have these issues.
Note: not a German nor an English native speaker so I might be missing some cultural subtlety that could make my POV a bit wrong and disconnected from reality.
It's not related to open source software. The seemingly matching prefix is coincidence :-)
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/ossification
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