The linux kernel doesn’t have enough contributors because it’s really difficult + the entire organisational side of it works on antique tech (IRC and mailinglists). The majority of the project itself is also in C which has a horrible developer experience: linting, documentation, debugging, code completion, and the lack of a proper IDE. The entire development cycle is convoluted. How do you seriously want to attract people to the project if everything looks like it’s still in a development cycle of the 90s?
If I were to discover a one-line bug in the kernel by reading it, actually testing the one-line fix would take me, as a newbie probably a solid week. Getting it into the kernel itself would probably take even longer.
The kernel is also known for Linus’ outbursts and being filled with neckbeard elitists. The project in my eyes has an image problem.
As for rust, if that’s what you meant, I’d be interested in knowing the source for not having enough contributors.
Execs are getting paid millions! They DGAF. Once they drive one thing into the ground, they can just move on after landing very softly with their golden parachute.
I was getting emails about pull requests and issues all night. It’s like some people just took advantage of everybody being outside of the house to code 😅
If you have a stable IP, there also free top level domains .TK / .ML / .GA / .CF / .GQ over at www.freenom.com . Their frontend is down sometimes, but once you have a domain and are point it to an IP, you should be dandy.
My experience with the linux boot has never been flicker-free. It’s bugged me for years, but I don’t have the technical knowledge to fix it. There’s a black screen between BIOS and plymouth, then a black screen between plymouth and the login screen, then another black screen between the login screen and the splash screen, and finally a black screen between the splash screen and when the desktop shows up.
Mac and windows do a much better job at having a seamless experience from boot to desktop.
Tuxedo Computers can get you a very good dev laptop for ~1500€ (64GB RAM, AMD/Intel CPU, NVIDIA/AMD graphics card). If you will be working in AI, I imagine you’ll need CUDA (?) aka NVIDIA.
If you don’t go for anything on linuxpreloaded (which I wouldn’t recommend), it’s good to check whether what you’re buying has linux hardware support by checking the Linux Hardware DB. Even if you don’t look, it’ll probably work, but better safe than sorry if you’re going to dump 1/3 or 1/2 of your months salary into something (depending on where you are).
For a distro, I dunno what level you are, but Distro Chooser can help you out with making a choice. My recommendations:
linux beginner
Linux mint. nice desktop environment, looks like a mashup between windows and mac, still missing advanced options, but quite customisable. comes with suitable standard software and cloud integrations (you can connect to a bunch of clouds), relatively up to date
Ubuntu is well-known, some proprietary companies even consider it “the linux” and only make linux versions for it. It’s quite stable. However, it isn’t my first recommendation anymore as they are going down a proprietary route. I’m not sure if they have ads yet, but wouldn’t surprise me if they started.
desktop environment
This is the desktop suite, a bundle of packages that work well together on any distro, with its own look and feel. There are basically 3 camps:
windows look n feel
KDE: is the most known, is very customisable, has an abundant amount of themes, icon sets, login screens, fonts, and a well-sized userbase. They prefix many app names with “K”. Ubuntu even has a distro version called “Kubuntu” with KDE on it
Cinnamon: main user is Linux Mint
LXDE and XFCE: look closer to windows 95 and windows XP, consume minimal resources. configuration is through the interface, advanced configuration through files
mac look n feel
Gnome: they are well known and source of flame wars (gnome vs KDE). windows don’t have title bars, things are very rounded, not very configurable, heavily mac inspired
tiling window managers
these aren’t desktop environments, but sit more in the middle, they manage windows. best to watch a video about tiling window managers. they are very geeky and perfect if you love using nothing but your keyboard
I’ve love to watch a realistic hacker movie, because the shit that hackers get into is genuinely bonkers. For example, some white hats got all the way into Apple’s inventory system and IIRC they could’ve disrupted all of Apple’s logistics. Imagine if a black hat got into that. Or the Ukrainian hackers that got into the taxation system of the Russians and were there for a few months. Or the USAians who got into the biggest Belgian telecom and were kicked out years later by a Dutch security company.
Movies or even better TV series showing the time it takes to get into such systems would be amazing. Day 1 phishing, day 40 established beachhead, day 120 gained access to internal system X, day 121 triggered internal alarm and was nearly discovered but was able to cover up traces, etc.
Nobody watches 90 minutes of football matches. Everyone watches the highlights and that’s what movies could be too.