/dev/chat - 2016-08-28

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1:52 AM

@FaheemMitha - sorry, went to bed after posting that (was after 3am - busy night writing my "fakecloud" cloud-init metadata server in perl Mojolicious, so I can use pre-built cloud VMs on plain old libvirt-daemon). I'm good. I've started doing some volunteer systems & dev work at infoxchange.org ("Technology for Social Justice") - worthwhile doing for its own sake, plus it's part of my plan to get back to paid work after 3 years illness. that's why i haven't been here much lately.

@StephenHarris after SLS, i switched to Slackware, then played with RedHat for a short while when it came out and finally settled on Debian in 94 (became a DD at the same time, it was the first distro that not only allowed contributing packages, it made it easy AND encouraged it).

Until '95 my only internet connection was a 9600 baud UUCP dialup. It wasn't until my next job that I had real internet access, but was primarily in a Solaris shop so didn't get to play with Linux too much. And then my job from '99->'16 had restrictions which meant I couldn't contribute to opensource :-( So, instead, from '95->'01 I provided free mail/usenet to the UK via spuddy; that's how I paid forward :-)

6 hours later…

8:32 AM

@cas Hi. Glad to hear you are doing well. So the transplant is a success?

has been so far. . hopefully will continue that way.

@cas Yes, when I used SuSE for a bit in the late 1990s, the only form of feedback was an email address called feedback, or something. And it was a black hole. No bug reporting system. I wonder if SUSE has one now.

@cas Ok. Fingers crossed.

@StephenHarris Wow, you've certainly seen some changes.

my experiences with SuSE have not endeared it to me.

(that'll be my winning entry in the "understatement of the year" competition)

@cas Experiences when?

at various $jobs

8:38 AM

@cas Ah. I meant in what time period.

i think the last time i had to use it was in 2010 or so.

I used SuSE 6.2 (I think) from 1999-2001.

@cas Ah. Relatively recently then.

I wonder if they are still using that wacky broken YAST thing.

Not sure who decided that thing was a good idea.

9:01 AM

@FaheemMitha I think they replaced it in 12

@JennyD That's a relief. I wonder if they replaced it with some other broken thing.

@FaheemMitha Probably

I was just watching TBBT S09E19, which mentions something called a Thunderbolt port.

Thunderbolt (interface)

Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface developed by Intel that allows the connection of external peripherals to a computer. Thunderbolt 1 and 2 use the same connector as Mini DisplayPort (MDP), while Thunderbolt 3 uses USB Type-C. It was initially developed and marketed under the name Light Peak, and first sold as part of a consumer product on February 24, 2011. Thunderbolt combines PCI Express (PCIe) and DisplayPort (DP) into one serial signal, and additionally provides DC power, all in one cable. Up to six peripherals may be supported by one connector through various topologies...

Is this any good for anything?

@FaheemMitha TBBT? EXPN

@JennyD The Big Bang Theory. EXPN?

9:02 AM

@FaheemMitha Yes. It's what I use for pretty much all peripherals on my Macs

@JennyD Is it an Apple thing, then?

It says it was developed by Intel.

@FaheemMitha It's in use by Apple, at least. And Macs have intel processors nowadays.

@JennyD Ok.

Still trying to understand what it's for. Is it a USB replacement?

Looks like it is. Basically a faster USB.

@FaheemMitha I've got adapters to plug in DVI, VGA and ethernet in addtion to more standard USB thingies (e.g. external disks). It's much faster and more versatile.

But I'm not a hardware expert so I won't try to go into details.

@JennyD Ok. And supports something called daisy-chaining, which USB doesn't.

@JennyD I don't know anything about hardware. Sometimes I plug stuff into stuff.

9:08 AM

@FaheemMitha OK, then to put it on a level that we both can understand: it plugs more and faster stuff into stuff :-)

@JennyD Excellent. So USB doesn't support video feeds, but Thunderbolt does? I guess they're converging on a truly universal interface.

I look forward to the day they are able to plug humans and small domestic pets into computers. I wonder what they'll call that interface.

So, you're an Apple user?

I guess they make good, though possibly overpriced hardware. But I find their attitude off-putting.

@FaheemMitha Yes. It's a usable desktop OS, and then I use VMware to run the work stuff.

@JennyD Ok.

You prefer it to Linux or *BSD on a laptop?

I suppose power management and hardware integration is better.

@FaheemMitha Yes.

How's the horsey? Is he behaving himself?

9:25 AM

@FaheemMitha Yes, he's been very good lately. I'm going riding in a couple of hours.

@JennyD Nice weather? It's been raining here.

@FaheemMitha It's cloudy but doesn't look like it's going to rain

@JennyD Cool. Well, have a nice afternoon riding.

@FaheemMitha Thanks!

It's still the monsoons here. But we haven't had much rain in the last couple of weeks.

Ok, here's a possibly dumb question. If I want to buy an LED TV, would it make sense to buy an LED monitor instead?

(That's a question for anyone who feels like answering.)

9:44 AM

@FaheemMitha Our previous TV didn't have a TV antenna, it was basically just a big screen that we connected to a computer from which we played stuff.

@JennyD Was it basically the same thing as an LED display, then?

@FaheemMitha Pretty much, yeah. Except with lower resolution and thus much cheaper than a monitor of the same size would have been.

I read somewhere that the main difference these days is resolution. And a LED display can't get TV reception. But I'm not sure many people do that these days, anyway.

So, I wonder if a LED monitor would be better than a TV. That way it could be used as an LED monitor too.

@JennyD Right.

I'm looking at this:

The current TV does have an antenna, but it's not connected. It was still a lot cheaper than a similar size monitor.

amazon.in/Asus-MX239H-23-inch-LCD-Monitor/dp/B00B1IAL7W

Does ASUS make good monitors? It's linked to the US page, which has good reviews.

9:49 AM

I don't know much about them.

@JennyD Direct TV reception is kind of useless here. There's also cable TV or satellite. But those are kind of useless too. Netflix arrived here recently, but I don't know how it is.

@JennyD Ok.

2 hours later…

12:05 PM

@FaheemMitha i use a TV as a monitor (a 42" LG TV 1920x1080 connected to my main myth box) and a monitor as a TV (Samsung 24" 1920x1200 connected to my secondary myth box, next to my comfy recliner chair, that used to be my dialysis chair). The LG has speakers built in. The Samsung doesn't, so I have an old amp with an AUX port plugged into the myth box. Both work fine. and the text is quite readable at a distance with large fonts.

Both myth boxes are running mythfrontend on top of XFCE, so I can just Alt-TAB to get a browser, terminal, etc. Both are set to auto-login to the mythtv account with 30 second timeout using lightdm. The main mythbox is also running mythbackend with a 4-port PCI-e DVB-T tuner card. I almost never watch live TV any more, just set it to record anything that looks interesting and watch it when i get around to it. I've got a lot more recordings stored than i'll probably ever watch.

and i watch a LOT less TV now that I no longer have to spend 5+ hours hooked up to a dialysis machine every 2nd day. I'm back to my pre-kidney-failure habit of ignoring TV entirely for weeks or months and then have a 3 or 4 day TV binge.

BTW, the Samsung was recycled. It used to be on my main desktop, but i wanted a TV for dialysis. I didn't want to waste $700 or so on a second big TV, so spent about $600 to upgrade my desktop monitor to a 27" 1440p monitor.

1 hour later…

1:18 PM

@cas Interesting. How old are those displays? I had a bad experience with an LG fridge (details available on request) so I've decided not to buy LG. I don't think they make the best quality electronics, anyway.

@cas I can't imagine who watches TV live these days. What a waste of time. Ads - ugh.

I bought a Sony monitor in 2004. It looked exactly as it did when I bought it till a month or two ago. And then the display started flickering. Now it's stable, but much more faded than it used to be. I wonder if it is repairable. Still, 12+ years. Not bad.

It's not my main display any longer - it's on my left as a sort of auxiliary display.

can't remember. at least 5 years old, at a guess. a quick check of file dates in my /etc/X11 directory says that I've had the "LG 42LD560" since at least April 2011.

@cas Ah. You didn't buy them online then?

Any opinion who makes the best monitors?

Well, dinner time.

no, i don't buy much online. online retailers are too intrusive and think they have a right to spam you just because you buy some shit from them. and i'm certainly not going to spend over $1000 on a TV without seeing it with my own eyes first.

no opinion on best monitors. they're all pretty much the same imo. dell make some nice ones, with nice extras (some of their medium to high end models even have a built in display-port KVM switch. wish i had known that before I bought my current 1440p, I would have paid more for that).

i didn't stop to think that my ATEN KVM only does DVI single link (so can't do any better than around 1920x1200@60Hz). 1440p is 2560x1440, so I can only use the KVM for mouse+keyboard+audio switching and have to switch the actual monitor between DVI-D and DP ports using the switches on the monitor. I'd replace the KVM but displayport KVMs are absurdly expensive, $600+....far more than it's worth just to avoid pressing a few buttons to switch from my linux desktop to my win7 games machine.

steam on linux can stream games over the network from steam on win7 anyway, so i don't need to switch as much.

MyBushisaNeonJungle

2:02 PM

Damn right , go look at the shit befo you buy it baby

They could be sellin you foam in a nice lookin box they will

2:34 PM

@cas Can you explain what a displayport KVM switch is? Searching just gives me a bunch of stuff for sale etc.

@cas I buy online all the time, but mostly from Amazon. They don't spam much, mercifully. Hardly at all, really.

And I buy stuff sight unseen all the time. For electronic equipment, it isn't usually a big deal. If I only bought stuff I can see first, I'd be very limited.

I was looking at amazon.in/Asus-MX239H-23-inch-LCD-Monitor/dp/B00B1IAL7W

23 in means diagonally across, right? How large does a screen need to be to be comfortable TV viewing?

Depends on your eyes and how far away you are. This page has a chart that seems pretty consistent with other values I've seen - crutchfield.com/S-8mG0dy6lsQB/learn/learningcenter/home/…

I don't agree with this one being closed. It seems like a reasonable question.

0

Q: Why don't man pages have sample commands?

Is there a reason why most man pages don't include a few common examples? They usually explain all the possible options, but that makes it even harder for a beginner to understand how it's "usually" used.

@StephenHarris Well, I'm thinking of a TV for a small room. Maybe 6-10 feet?

According to that chart, 10ft would be somewhere between 48-80""; 6ft would be 28->48"

2:50 PM

@StephenHarris Hmm. Probably best to err on the larger side. Nobody ever complains about a TV being too large.

If it's too large or if you're too close then you might see the pixel structure

Weird, Thomas Dickey both answered and voted to close.

That can be distracting

@StephenHarris Hmm. But aren't pixels really small these days?

If you have a 1080p TV then you have a fixed 1920x1080 pixels. The bigger the screen the bigger the pixels.

2:51 PM

I wonder if 4K TVs are very expensive.

@StephenHarris Yes, good point.

However, to quote from the link you posted:

> We occasionally hear people wishing their TV's screen was bigger, but rarely hear them wishing their screen was smaller.

There's two ways of looking at that... (i) people tend to have other limitations (eg space or budget) and so aren't currently at the higher end of the sweet spot; (ii) people don't always know what they're doing :-)

I have a 50" TV; I'd like a 55" or 60" but the corner the TV is in just won't handle one that large.

@StephenHarris I have a small guest room. It will have to go into the corner. There's nowhere else it will go.

I guess I need to measure to see what might reasonably fit.

So that may end up determining the maximum size you can get.

@StephenHarris I'm definitely in the category of people who don't know what they are doing. So I try to be careful.

@StephenHarris Yes, it might. Though I don't want to spend huge amounts of money either.

It surprised me how cheap things have got. In 2007 I paid US$1200 for a 42" TV. In 2013 I paid $1000 for a much better 50" TV. Today you can get cheaper brand ones (eg Vizio) for $400 or less.

2:59 PM

@StephenHarris So, any particular reason for your activity here? Slow time at work? :-)

Most experts don't have the time to spend here. Most of us are just amateurs.

I left work 3 months ago and am currently between jobs. Hopefully got an interview set up for next week.

@StephenHarris Yes, I paid $800 for a 19in monitor in 2004. I can now buy something similar or better for like $100. Or, maybe, less.

@StephenHarris Oh, I see. That explains it. Sorry about that.

7 hours later…

10:14 PM

\o howdy folks

10:35 PM

@FaheemMitha a "displayport KVM switch" is a KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse) switch that supports display-port video. For connecting one monitor, keyboard, and mouse to multiple computers and switching easily between them. My current KVM (an ATEN CS1764A) only does DVI single-link (it also switches audio and a single generic USB 2.0 port between attcahed computers)

@cas That sounds handy, How many computers can it handle?

depends on the model. mine can handle up to 4. some rack-mounted KVMs can handle 16 or 32 or more servers, and can even transmit K-V-M over standard ethernet cables for remote access to the server room.

11:00 PM

@cas I see. Actually, I think I've worked with the latter type in a server room, now that I think about it.

11:23 PM

Haha we were talking about Matthew Garret reviews recently; here's a new one: amazon.com/review/ROA1PI0AOS7RJ

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