Wonder what distro I should use if I set up a libvirt system instead.

Should be something stable but I dunno how sensitive virtualization is to age.

Like CentOS, sure it's probably nice and stable, but how much did one miss out on by having your hypervisors stuck on CentOS 7 from 2014 until quite recently.

@quad Definitely do not go with CentOS.

Alpine would be nice, I'm sure, but the lack of glibc may end up breaking stuff (or maybe not).

Hmm... Why not Ubuntu LTS?

@L1Cafe Ubuntu LTS seems sensible, but I just kind of hate Ubuntu because of Canonical. 18.04 switching to netplan was the final nail in the coffin and from then on I kind of just quit running Ubuntu on servers unless Debian was too outdated for things to function.
@tk @L1Cafe Debian is pretty chill on servers.

Though in today's "agile" (bleh) software environment many things don't work or are too fiddly to get working on Debian

@tk @quad Anything can indeed be agile if you install Docker. Docker is a blessing for me, honestly. I run tens of services, and I don't have to worry about manually updating them (through apt, yum, dnf, or else) anymore. I just have an Ansible playbook that shuts the Docker machines down while keeping the volumes intact, and fetches the latest Docker image from hub.docker.com, while reconnecting them to their volumes and starting all of them up.

It's pure bliss.

@L1Cafe @tk Docker is easy but it feels like such a god damn overkill solution to just keeping my server software updated.

i support containerization for quick deployment of test environments, temporary applications and isolation of certain components. But I absolutely despise seeing docker pretty much being used as a package manager

@quad @tk I think it adds a lot of stability, reproducibility, and security to a prod deployment.

For example, my Docker "master node" has like 3 or 4 networks that are isolated from each other, and allow services like MariaDB and such to talk to other servers. This way, all my databases are isolated from each other, and if a web service contains a vulnerability that allows the attacker to dump the databases, they won't see much from the other ones.

@L1Cafe @tk If you're using docker properly then yes.

What I hate is when instead of setting up software someone just pulls 20 docker containers to run Plex, SickRage, CouchPotato, Deluge and whatnot on their home server.

That's just Docker being used as a glorified package manager.

@crunklord420 @tk @quad To be fair, software engineering exists and very few companies seem to get it right. I don't understand why this is, but I suspect it's the same reason why Docker is not used properly either.

@L1Cafe @tk @quad actually it's about taking all the tech specializations and trying to get the most soy code-camper webdevs to do it instead.

And then everyone acts shocked when basically half the MongoDB instances are fully exposed with no-authentication requirements and hundreds of millions (possibly near a billion) of users information is stolen.
@crunklord420 @L1Cafe @tk That's just what happens when tech companies think sysadmins and developers are the same thing except developers are smarter
@quad @L1Cafe @tk it's probably that. But I also believe these tech companies know that security and quality of their products do not matter. Their target demographic have been trained like pets to accept it.

It's actually a bad move from a business perspective to spend the effort to provide security and quality, which is why webdevs running docker is acceptable.

@crunklord420 @tk @quad

> It's actually a bad move from a business perspective to spend the effort to provide security and quality

No it isn't. It may not make sense in the short term, but the biggest companies on the planet (GAFAM, FANG, whatever you want to call them) use solid engineering principles for long-lasting success.

Generally speaking, small and medium companies don't care about these issues until it's too late, and they're hacked, for example.

@L1Cafe @crunklord420 @tk It's kind of a dilemma consumer in tech. Because the whole industry moves so fast that you gotta shit out brand new shiny things constantly for consumers to care. But to actually make proper solid products you need to take your time to design them carefully.

Consumerism is honestly kinda more at fault than companies here. We expect brand new shiny things for as cheap as possible.

If either consumers were more patient, they could spend more time developing it. Or if they were willing to pay more, they could hire more people to make up for the lack of time.
@L1Cafe @crunklord420 @tk It's also why I like enterprise-grade tech.

Like my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter.

The original EdgeRouter is from 2014 and still gets updated at least quarterly. About a year ago it got a major version upgrade in software too.

Enterprise-grade stuff tends to be hella expensive, but in return you get longer support times and an overall more reliable product. Heck just look at ThinkPads, why do you think everyone buys them used?

The obvious drawback though is that the more enterprise-grade something is, the less it cares about non-corporate things. Like being open source.

@quad @tk @crunklord420

> Like being open source

Well, I'd say Red Hat products are as enterprise-grade as it gets, really. I would be inclined to say there's as much open source push on the enterprise side of things as there is on the consumer side of things.

@L1Cafe @tk @crunklord420 On the enterprise-grade side there seems to be more of a focus on consuming open source rather than creating open source.

Though exceptions do exist, Red Hat is pretty great. Though hopefully it doesn't crash too hard following the IBM buyout. They haven't gone straight to shit yet, but you just never know
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@quad @tk @crunklord420 Microsoft is clearly steering towards open source, too. Edge, Visual Studio Code, .Net Core, PowerShell.

Don't get me wrong, above all, they're companies. They want to make money. They're not charity NGOs. But still, Microsoft didn't strictly need to make Edge and VSCode open source.

@L1Cafe @quad @tk Open Source is a marketing gimmick. It was extremely clear that Microsoft runs the show when they removed the Santa Hat from Visual Code. It was a straight top-down decision from corporate.

@crunklord420 @tk @quad Like I said. They're not NGOs. Of course they only care about money. That's the point.

But again, they didn't strictly need to do it. Microsoft's survival doesn't necessarily depend on VSCode being open source, that's my point.

@crunklord420 @tk @quad Of course I have.

Wouldn't you agree that the Brave, Edge and Vivaldi are a net positive outcome, though?

I mean, Google is now kicking adblocks and Brave and Vivaldi are joining forces to create an alternative to the Chrome Store. I think that is pretty positive, honestly.

(Even if you don't like the browsers specifically).

@L1Cafe @crunklord420 @tk The selection of browsers is a win.

The selection of browser engines that every browser relies on is not.

@quad @tk @crunklord420 My point is that I take a pragmatic approach and simply pick the most (IMHO) suitable tools for the job.

I wouldn't dare do web development on Chromium, for example. I find Firefox' debug options vastly superior. But I don't like using Firefox as my main browser because it is not very respectful of my laptop's battery.

@L1Cafe @quad @tk it's really only a matter of time until Firefox turns into total malware like Chrome. Firefox technically already became malware once they started pushing "studies" in secret to intercept and modify webpages without informing the user.
@L1Cafe @crunklord420 @tk No, they don't need to do it. But companies tend to view their open source code as an "investment" to recoup in another form later. In the case of Microsoft, it's often trust and influence, in the case of Google's Chromium it's control, and in the case of Apple... well on the open source front, Apple seems to have surprisingly few ulterior motives. Too bad they seem to close most of their major projects now though, probably exactly because they didn't profit off their open source code.

@quad @tk @crunklord420 CUPS was pretty nice indeed, but it seems like Apple doesn't care about anyone but themselves. Exactly like Microsoft.

And Red Hat is not a saint either, they push open source to outrun the closed source competition, while pushing their systemd, PulseAudio, Ansible, and other stuff to other distributions.

This isn't inherently bad (or good) either. Nothing's ever black or white.

@crunklord420 @L1Cafe @tk Corporations have a tendency to only use open source for marketing or control.

Fairly certain Google wouldn't have made Chromium open source without the intent of giving them indirect control of every major browser.
@quad @crunklord420 @L1Cafe @tk
These companies release stuff as open source to so that it becomes popular and crushes competition.
They make huge monstrosities that no individual or small group could possibly fork so that they maintain control of the code base.
Don't forget that IBM supported Linux back in the day in order to crush Sun Microsystems, and it worked.
Sun released Open Solaris to try to gain mind share but by then it was too late.
Now everybody has to release things as open source if there's any possibility of competition.
@L1Cafe

Saddly MSFT makes a lot of money on .Net Core being open. I use .net core webapi a lot to do backend, which for me is one of the best languages to do it. But saddly the best environment to code is Visual Studio, omnisharp is an amazing tool to code completion and generation o .net it isn't better or good like the one on visual studio which is closed source, and because the free version of visual studio can't be used by companies, they probably profit a lot from companies that has to buy windows + visual studio licenses(which are expensive) to code on .net core which is free and open source

@quad @tk @crunklord420
@kumicota @L1Cafe @crunklord420 @tk That's the classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

A prime example is Azure Sphere, it's so stupid and blatantly obvious that luckily it seems to not be gaining much traction and I hope it stays that way.

Specially they "Embrace" Linux by making their own Linux Distro.

They then "Extend" it by adding features to it.

They then try to "Extinguish" it by only making it possible to program against those extra features only if you're running Windows or using other Microsoft products.
@quad @kumicota @L1Cafe @crunklord420 I'm sure some folks would like to think Microsoft has changed significantly, but they still have hints of their old behavior here and there.
@tk @L1Cafe @crunklord420 @kumicota That's their Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy.

Embrace includes making people believe you are being nice.
@quad @L1Cafe @crunklord420 @kumicota After all, who wouldn't like a hug, even if there's an ulterior motive behind it?
@tk

I'm an example of it but I prefer to search on docs a function that omnisharp coudn't find than using windows for it

@quad @L1Cafe @crunklord420
@tk @L1Cafe @crunklord420 @kumicota Embrace doesn't just mean "Include it" or "Use it". It means make people believe we care about it and are doing good, even when we reach the extinguish phase, make people believe "we just happen to have the best implementation" rather than making them realize that they purposefully extended it in a way to promote their own interests for additional profits.

Companies will always be companies, Microsoft is very good at playing human however.
@quad @kumicota @L1Cafe @crunklord420 @tk if people want to lock themselves into the shitstack that is .NET, that's a good thing because they'll go under soon enough. Doesn't extinguish anything else tho.
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