Another rant

[Liam Proven]

On 16 November 2017 at 21:31, Xen <list at xenhideout.nl> wrote:
>
> It's just that the learning curve of anything will always dwarf the needs I
> have at any moment.

IWKYM. But rolling-your-own often brings other problems.

> For instance Ansible is described as a deployment tool that activates
> _other_ hosts.
>
> My main requirement is not other hosts, but repeatable configuration on the
> same host.

Mine too. I'm investigating it. It can run perfectly well locally; a
friend uses it for configuring both home (Mac) and work (Lenovo,
Fedora) laptops. He maintains playbooks just for his own machines,
used a few times a year. He says it's worth it.

> Time spent "deploying" is merely a git clone and I do not have a central
> "hub" from which I can "infest" other hosts.

Easily solved.

> To capture the configuration of a machine so I won't ever have to do the
> manual work again :p.


Of course the problem with doing that is that you can capture
mis-config, crap you don't want, etc., as well.

> I rather spend time "saving" my progress while I am okay, then having to
> redo it while I am in a rush.

Well all do.

> So Ansible seems perfect but I might not even have a controlling machine.

Not needed.

> (Also it is yet another Red Hat product... :( ).

It is now. They bought it in. It's unrestricted FOSS AIUI.

> Okay good point, but ESC always worked.

Ah well.

> Not useful if your system doesn't boot.

:-D True!

> The world is full of morons these days.

Yep.

> That didn't use to be the case.
>
> I never experienced such a world before.

Me either.

> Either I know better what a moron is because I have become wiser myself, or
> the world has changed.

I think the real issue is that the soc.nets give /everyone/ online a
mouthpiece. They let everyone speak. Result, the idiots outnumber the
sensible. And in masses, we're all stupid and easily manipulated.

> I suspect the latter more... ;-).

;-)

> Although I must say that I never knew
> that people in general were this underdeveloped.
> In their minds.
>
>
> Even talking judges.
>
> Public prosecutors.
>
> Everyone dealing with anything.
>
> Lawyers.

IKWYM. But I think it was always so, but until cheap ubiquitous
broadband Internet, they had no way of speaking to the masses. Just
occasionally electing dangerous madmen.

Now, everyone can speak to the world. Most are only heard by a tiny
number, but collectively, in our billions, that means that the jumble
of voices occasionally coaslesces to something coherent... and mostly,
that is stupid and nasty and mean.

> Stuff you are not told by the people who were supposed to tell you and then
> later you read the "source" (law) yourself and you are amazed at all the
> illegal stuff that has been happening.

That too.

> The law is broken so many times each day.
>
> And no one seems to notice.
>
> I always say: the corruption always goes deeper than you think.

Which is the reason for the increasingly surveillance we're all under.

> I have found that in general as a person you have more rights than the
> people in power want you to know.

Yup.

> But the people that are supposed to defend you are sometimes dumb as bricks.

Yup.

> If you call a government consumer support line or something like that, you
> are told falsehoods.

Yes, but remember Hanlon's Razor. It's a very important rule.

>> The bootloader has to go into a primary. I think the rest can go
>> elsewhere. I haven't tried; I stopped fighting its preferences many
>> years ago.
>
> Me too.

It's the only way. Or the easiest way to be happy, anyway.

>>> The annoying part is that usually in kuch Windows it is a breeze to get
>>> it
>>> running and stable too.
>>
>>
>> "kuch"?
>
>
> Ehm. As a sense of saying something that some people here wouldn't like.

:-)

> That's fine but that doesn't explain the spartanist attitude.

Well, it does. If it's simple and it can be easily automated and it
does what you need inside a VM which only contains a single OS, then
you're good to go.

Servers don't dual-boot. Server OSes never have to share hardware.

> For instance there is an OpenSUSE guy who is big in servers or at least good
> with it who typically thinks that more user friendliness is a need somewhere
> at the end of the ladder when all other stuff has already been dealt with.

Do tell?

> And which thus will never happen because that's how things go.
>
> He also appears to be "tone death" with regards to written communication and
> often does not get what a person is saying even though other people always
> know exactly what I or they mean.
>
> This always then produces a sarcastic or cynical attitude on behalf of that
> person who then blames me for not being "clearer" in what I say and mean.
>
> As in "If something comes across to me as incomprehensible or stupid, it's
> probably because the other person is a moron, not because I don't understand
> something."

Sadly, it does happen, yes. It is what used to be said about Debian
people. Now things have changed there, but it's still a Linux world
problem.

> This attitude in feeling superior even though this impression derives from a
> lack of comprehension

*Nods sadly*

> is really pervasive among the Linux crowd, maybe because there are so many
> technically inclined people, and not very socially inclined people.
>
> So you are always fighting an uphill battle against people, or with people,
> who are actually stupider than you, but they insist the problem lies with
> you.
>
> Which also happens in real life.

Yes, yes and yes.

> Yes I wanted to say that this person also loves C and cannot see that...

[Stuff about C clipped]

Agreed with all of that. It's caused a whole world of problems, too.

> And then these same people say "Bugs are not caused by the language, they
> are proportional to lines of code."

That bit was over my head, but yes, I think you're right.

> The above is often my Linux experience ;-).

Mine too.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053