Linux

[pierrot]

I am now an owner of an HP Prodesk 400 G3 Mini PC. The seller had originally put Windows 11 on it (and it ran okay) but I swapped to Linux Mint (cinnamon). I'll use it to brush up on my coding skills. I enjoyed learning Python/C++ but didn't have an opportunity to continue studying at the time. Hope to rectify that with a dedicated machine. I already installed Thonny as my Python IDE (a pretty simple, no-frills environment).

What distros are y'all currently using? I believe this is the first time I've tried Linux Mint. Seems pretty sleek with a tasteful / minimalist design.

Hell yeah!

I hijacked the thread about it for a while, but I've been going pretty strong with Fedora (KDE) on my desktop and Fedora (GNOME) on my laptop. They do what I need them to, and more, without the invasive bs. It's nice to basically own my machine (although I'm not fully FOSS, and I'm using the Nvidia drivers on my desktop).

I also spend a bit of time in the desktop mode on my steamdeck for primarily non-steam game related things, and for mods, but that is also a pretty nice environment (SteamOS with KDE, which I believe is Arch based).

Way back in the before times (before I was using Windows, when I was still just using Mac OS) I had a dual boot with Mint for a while. This was close to 15 years ago, so a very different experience than it is today, I'm sure, but it was definitely a very easy OS to work with. Using Fedora today kind of feels like it's about as simple as it was using Mint back then. I've had to do a little bit more to troubleshoot some niche system issues, and I choose to use the terminal considerably more than I did then, but overall I think it's kind of comparable.

[o.pwuaioc]

Way back in the before times (before I was using Windows, when I was still just using Mac OS) I had a dual boot with Mint for a while. This was close to 15 years ago, so a very different experience than it is today, I'm sure, but it was definitely a very easy OS to work with. Using Fedora today kind of feels like it's about as simple as it was using Mint back then. I've had to do a little bit more to troubleshoot some niche system issues, and I choose to use the terminal considerably more than I did then, but overall I think it's kind of comparable.

We paralleled then, too. I was using Mint c. 2008-2012/2013? I went fully Mint after they announced the end of Windows 7 support, but after trying Fedora 25, I've been with it ever since.

Usually people say things like "I can't believe it's almost been a decade", but actually I can believe it. It's so engrained in how I use a computer I can barely remember the Before Linux times. Using Mac or Windows at work is a very unpleasant experience compared to how I have my laptop set up now.

I do have fond memories of Mint, though. I was really all in on it for a few years. I even found these old Sega-16 posts here and here about it from 2016.

[o.pwuaioc]

I am now an owner of an HP Prodesk 400 G3 Mini PC. The seller had originally put Windows 11 on it (and it ran okay) but I swapped to Linux Mint (cinnamon). I'll use it to brush up on my coding skills. I enjoyed learning Python/C++ but didn't have an opportunity to continue studying at the time. Hope to rectify that with a dedicated machine. I already installed Thonny as my Python IDE (a pretty simple, no-frills environment).

What distros are y'all currently using? I believe this is the first time I've tried Linux Mint. Seems pretty sleek with a tasteful / minimalist design.

I don't love it, but for Python you should also check out PyCharm community version. I haven't used Thonny in a long time, but I remember it being good only for learners way back when. I'm not really satisfied with the modern state of IDEs. I hate Electron, use Gnome, so avoid Qt, and miss that early 2000s IDE style with BloodShed's Dev-C++ and Visual Studio pre-.NET. I miss that old Dev-C++ style, though I haven't tried Embarcadero's fork out yet. Code-Blocks and Code-Lite I've dabbled with here and there, but I don't typically code in C anymore.

The only IDE I regularly use now is RStudio, and it's primarily for its dataframe viewer. If I get back into C or finally learn Rust, I might try a new IDE, but for what I code these days, Sublime is perfectly sufficient. I just copy from Sublime, paste into the console, tweak the code, and try again.

[opa]

I have used Pycharm in the past and I liked it. Going to the site now seems like they've integrated the community edition in with pro to push people to pro features? But at least it seems you can keep using community for free.

[o.pwuaioc]

I have used Pycharm in the past and I liked it. Going to the site now seems like they've integrated the community edition in with pro to push people to pro features? But at least it seems you can keep using community for free.

Ah, yeah, I've been neglecting updating. I'm still using PyCharm community 2023. I guess I should update at some point.

[marurun]

For Python I use Spyder. As for Linux, just have not had time to do that to my PC, yet. I need to buy a cheap backup drive to backup all my nonsense before the nuke and pave.

[o.pwuaioc]

I don't know how I missed this last year, but Positron has just come up on my radar:

https://positron.posit.co/

It looks like they tweaked RStudio and added Python. Pretty nifty. I'm giving it whirl now.

Edited: Oh, wait, it's a VS Code fork. I generally avoid Electron apps, but I'll try it out anyway.

[pierrot]

Not entirely Linux related, but since the topic is sort of on Python, I spent ~15 hours over the weekend testing out my microprocessors/embedded systems professor's contention that once one knows C and Assembly, learning a new language can be done in a good weekend of study. Y'know what? I think he might've been right. I had this Boot.dev trial kicking around from last month's humble choice--I was going to use the one back in December, but didn't get around to it before it expired--and started the Python coding section over the weekend. Barrelled through it, finished last night. It didn't cover pointers, and a lot of other general CS concepts weren't touched (object oriented is also a separate section), but my main takeaway from 'learning' Python is that I think I hate it--.

Just for starters, dictionaries fucking suck, and simple syntax? I feel like the only ease of syntax is that you don't need to delineate lines of code with a semicolon, but then white space is parsed--. I don't really see it as 'more readable,' and the final chapter of the Python section was this "Zen of Python" happy horse shit that sounds kind of like a python dev huffing his own farts. What in the fuck is "beautiful" or "elegant" about this shit:

Code: Select all

{
    "entity": {
        "character": {
            "name": "Kaladin",
            "quests": {
                "bridge_run": {
                    "status": "In Progress",
                },
                "talk_to_syl": {
                    "status": "Completed",
                },
            },
        }
    }
}
status = progress['entity']['character']['quests']['bridge_run']['status']

From a personal perspective, I just don't see Python as all that valuable for me. Julia already seems to do most of what Python does, but more intuitively and more flexibly. I don't really see what I would gain from Python other than the popularity meaning wider availability of libraries for certain tasks. Honestly, I might just rather write my own libraries for stuff. Anything where performance matters, I'd be sticking to C or Assembly anyway.

At least now I have the ability to say, 'Yes, I can build your dumb script in Python if that's really what you want, even though I'd probably rather just do it in a lua.' Yeah, I'm big mad. Sorry for my outburst. ^^;


Anyway, on the actual thread topic, the next two sections are on Linux and git, and they're pretty short, so I was going to blitz through those to see what interesting tidbits I might be able to pick up, and maybe finally learn how to actually do some revision control through git.

Btw, anyone use Go at all? There are a bunch of sections on Go, also, but if it's anything like Python, I feel like my time is better spent on some of the other sections that would be more useful to me, and picking up Rust on my own.
EDIT: From a brief look, sounds like Go is a lower level language. I'm curious, but I'd probably rather just spend my time on Rust. Kind of vaguely remember hearing about some low level vulnerability introduced by Go recently, now that I think about it.

[marurun]

Python is popular for a reason, but I suspect people who've tasted assembly or stan PERL are not the target audience.

[MrPopo]

The main benefit of Python is how quickly you can slap together a script to do some small task. Trying to extend it to larger and larger stuff you run into problems like the lack of strong typing and the hatred you will develop for "we dislike curly braces so here you go, whitespace". It's especially bad when you refactor and cut and paste something to a different block with different scoping; with curly braces your indentation is fucked but it all compiles, whereas with Python now you've fucked the logic.