https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe/

You do not seem to want companies to be part of Linux. This, despite the fact that the majority of code we Linux users enjoy is corporate sponsored. And the fact more software in a typical Linux distro is MIT licensed than is GPL ( and don’t forget BSD and Apache).

The best free routers are based off FreeBSD which of course is BSD licensed. BSD and MIT are extremely similar.

I cannot think of a worse example (or a better example that proves you wrong).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPNsense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PfSense

Both the above are primarily driven by companies that contribute to the software. Your thesis is that they would never do this unless the license forces them to. They do.

I assume what you are talking about is OpenWRT.

Of course, OpenWRT does not even use GNU Utils. It uses BusyBox which was written for Debian. BusyBox would be available with or without Cisco. As would GNU Coreutils of course.

And OpenWRT uses musl as the C library (core of the whole system). It is MIT licensed. It has not only remained available but has benefitted from many corporate contributions.

The LinkSys WRT54 routers were great. I had several. But I am not sure what amazing Cisco code we are benefiting from today as a result of GPL enforcement. The reaction from LinkSys was to switch over to VxWorks and so we have no further contributions from LinkSys, Cisco, or Belkin as a result. The WRT54G had a Broadcom SoC in it and they remain one of the most closed companies out there. I wonder if this lawsuit cemented that. Contrast that to the FreeBSD based routers that continue to see active corporate contribution.

With the AUR, there is an “it depends” since AUR packages are unofficial and variable in quality.

That said, I have a strong bias for installing the distro package over using AppImage or Flatpak.

There are three reasons not to use the distro package:

• the package is not available
• the package is too old
• the package maintainer cannot be trusted

My #1 reason for using Arch is to eliminate 1 and 2. In my experience, the AUR is almost always fine for #3.

Even when I use another distro, I put Distrobox with Arch on it and get any of the packages that the distro does not have from there.

The only Flatpak I have had to install has been pgAdmin.

Performance is not the ISA. It is just the culmination of historical investment. It will get there.

Remember, it is not about licensing costs, it is about minimizing risk and maximizing flexibility (control).

Open always wins.

It is a shame this was so obvious. Even though I saw it a week late, it was so obviously an April Fool’s joke that it was not worth reading past the headline.

I feel bad for whoever put the work in.

I love that RiSC-V is already so well supported in the Linux kernel even though the hardware is not really out there yet. When decent hardware does arrive, a fairly mature ecosystem will be waiting for it.

Compare that to ARM which took quite a while. There is already more of a culture of getting device support into the mainline for RISC-V than for ARM even now.

I do think decent RISC-V kit is coming. The existing players like SciFive are getting there, we know big players like Qualcomm and Samsung have projects, and future disruptors like AheadComputing see RISC-V as their attack vector on the current industry. And for sure China is going to surprise with a decent RISC-V offering at some point—maybe Alibaba, maybe Huawei, or maybe someone else.

With Win 11, you still get the security updates though right?

I hope many of us are able to pick them up cheap instead.

I always think the same. But everybody knows Bill Gates by sight. Do you think everyone instantly recognizes Satya Nadella?

The only issue with LFS is maintenance. It is one thing to set it up but having to manually keep it all up to date does not sound like fun.

I use Chimera Linux which is musl based. Compatibility is great. If you have the source, you are probably fine.

It can be a pain for projects that ship binaries as part of the build. Two examples that I have run into:

• The Ladybird browser uses vpkg and the version their scripts download assumes Glibc. You can build vpkg itself on musl but the whole process is a pain.
• dotnet requires a binary build of dotnet to bootstrap from. There are musl builds available but they assume GCC and Chimera uses Clang. Not really a musl problem now that I think of it.

Anyway, I use a Distrobox of Arch on Chimera. If I do run into something (like the two above), I just pop into that and problem solved.

Flatpak is essentially the same solution as they run in a container and the freedesktop base is Glibc based.

Not only is musl not generally a problem but, these days, it is trivial to work around it.

You are using Turnstile on Void? Cool.

You don’t like the AUR? I have moved to Chimera Linux but I still use Distrobox just for the AUR.

Older MacBooks and MacBook Airs (pre-2018 or so) make awesome Linux machines and have really come down in price. If you can find one cheap, I highly recommend them.

Intel machines later than that have T2 chips and are still good but take a bit more research.

M1 Macs are pretty well supported now but that is a different universe.

Manjaro because it is a bait and switch trap. Seems really polished and user friendly. You will find out eventually it is a system destroying time-bomb and a poorly managed project.

Ubuntu because snaps.

The rest are all pros and cons that are different strokes for different folks.