I'm ... about to parse HTML with grep and awk

there, I said it

@JeffSchaller Eeeek! As though using regexes to parse html weren't bad enough, you're using awk and grep!?

@terdon I ... might not even use awk. cut might do it, with some grep

... and done. wget, (parameter expansion instead of cut), grep, tail, sed --> success

(insert evil scientist chuckle)

maybe "chaotic good" chuckle would be more appropriate

@FaheemMitha I've got two images of interest

What I meant about Slack's changelog excerpts in google play

Compare gmail's below

And this is my first time seeing this banner in libreoffice

I don't use it very often so perhaps it's a regular thing...surprised me anyway

Anyone here know anything about crunchbang? I used it a while ago, but it seems to have stopped being updated: now there's two different continuations, Crunchbang ++ and BunsenLabs. Anyone know which of the two is "better"?

I don't, but unix.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/crunchbang?tab=Newest

Indeed, nothing good recently. Just in case you hadn't seen them.

@JeffSchaller I have another question, if you can help... So I'm an old noob at this, in that I've used Linux for a while, but never really used it for more than pretty basic stuff. I'm getting a new laptop with good specs and I was wondering whether it'd make sense to use a distro like mint cinnamon, or one like crunchbang with no frills. There's a question that seems to ask pretty much what I want to know, but it hasn't got too many upvotes

I'll mainly be using the computer for physics simulations, and using the internet. It's an i5 1.6GHz, 8GB RAM and a SATA SSD with a NVIDIA MX250 graphics card. (Not sure that's helpful, just thought I'd lay it out...)

I don't have direct experience with Mint or Crunchbang; if you're concerned about background memory or CPU usage interfering with the physics simulations, I'd look for a reduced-footprint distribution, or take pains to reduce/remove junk from a fuller distribution. I'm not a typical end-user of Linux systems, so my opinion shouldn't be worth very much :)

@JeffSchaller Thanks anyway :)

@Philip is your concern about making sure the OS doesn't take up resources from the simulations? Or something else? Will the computer just sit around while you run the simulations or will you be actively browsing with it and stuff? (Not that there's a high chance of me being able to help, but these seem like relevant points for those who might)

@AndrasDeak My concern is mainly when I'll be browsing on the side as well.

@AndrasDeak But I suppose what I'm fundamentally asking is that with a laptop with the specs that I mentioned which isn't particularly "slow", whether it would be overkill to install a very light-weight distro, or if I should just go with something well established.

bigger-picture, I'd go with a distribution that I was already familiar with, regarding updates & maintenance. If some piece of it gets in your way, tackle it at that point

That makes sense, I suppose..

(Disclaimer: I'm also a noob when it comes to these things.) I've been using debian with gnome for a long time. My impression is that gnome is pretty but it can often be a resource hog. And my firefox with tabs in the several hundreds is the same, especially when browsing specific webpages. The same goes for stuff like MS teams or skype that I'm bound to use.

So what I'd do (if anything) is to switch gnome for a lightweight, uglier desktop. I think xfce is one usual suspect. That leaves specific programs which you use, but I suspect those are fairly constant in resource requirements.

@AndrasDeak I had a huge problem with a memory leak on XFCE. Might've been the combination of hardware and software, not sure. I was using Xubuntu, and within a couple of hours of even very normal usage the memory would really add up. Looked around and found other people had similar problems, but no easy solutions. Finally did what most of them did and shifted to Mate.

Do you find it to be resource-heavy during normal use?

Frankly I think the biggest resource hog is probably Chrome frankly. I've been using Opera recently and it's much better. I'm on Mint Mate now, and I'm reasonably happy with it. Was just curious if I could expect a huge improvement with something like Crunchbang.

Well for example on Mate I'm still using 3.6 GB of RAM out of 8. Seems like on my old 4GB this might've really slowed things down!

Yeah. My previous laptop was an i7 workhorse, and 8 GB started to feel a bit thin after 5 years or so. Gave it 8 GB more and it was reborn.

but this also means that unless you substantially change your browsing habits, the OS is not your bottleneck

Good point.

Out of curiosity, what kind of physics simulations are these? If you don't mind sharing; I don't mean to pry :)

(heh, it's funny, I'm really not that old, but the computer I used the longest had 16 mb of RAM :P Things've changed so much over the past 15 years)

Oh nothing too fancy

From time to time I try to do some N-body simulations

so classical mechanics

mostly undergrad level stuff, forming a simple solar system starting from a "nebula" etc. Yep. But I also do a fair amount of statistical mechanics simulations

monte carlo, was just working on a very simple model for epidemics

neat :)

using the Gillespie Algorithm to sort of model how many asymptomatic COVID people would be around. Nothing too fancy but that's also why I usually have other stuff running simultaneously :D

Is that a 4x2 CPU that you have?

It's an i5-7200U, 2.50GHz

I mean 4 cores, 2 threads each

OK, let me look that up :)

yup, it is

one of the low-power ones, that's always nice

The one I'm shifting to is the 10210U 1,6 GHz one, was wondering if it's worth it, but I'm on a budget.

This is my "work" laptop that I'm going to have to give up soon :P

the new one's power's low too. Wonder if it'll affect the stuff I do. It's got a lower base clock speed, but a higher maximum one. :shrug: I guess I'll find out!

That's always a good way to end up with "silence... silence... WHOOOOOOOSSH" when the turbo kicks in :P

hehe

will make me feel more productive at any rate :P

Anyway, off to bed, thanks!

good night