Hacker News: alekq

New comment by alekq in "Gentoo Linux 2025 Review"

alekq — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 22:56:03 +0000

Amazing project, great people behind it, but it is a time sink.

Our Journey Through Linux/Unix Landscapes

alekq — Tue, 20 May 2025 21:16:27 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.kalvad.com/our-journey-through-linux-unix-landscapes/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44045998

Points: 20

# Comments: 17

New comment by alekq in "SDL2 for macOS 9 “rough draft”"

alekq — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 08:37:28 +0000

Whenever I think that the time I invested in some of the mini-projects is lost/wasted time and that it was probably better choice to do just about anything else instead - I come across something like this. The only thing I can conclude is that there is no such thing as wasted time, as long you enjoy the road.

Kudos.

My Rust experience after eight years

alekq — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 11:05:33 +0000

Article URL: https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2025/03/my-rust-experience-after-eight-years/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43533554

Points: 57

# Comments: 50

New comment by alekq in "Gnome betrayed the entire FOSS movement by using Adobe software"

alekq — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 06:59:38 +0000

This might be too harsh... Do not think it is betrayal, but it is idiotic and can understand someones frustration with it. On par with FreeBSD developers using MacOS to develop their OS.

New comment by alekq in "Deals with the devil aren't what they used to be"

alekq — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 07:18:01 +0000

Is English your native language?

New comment by alekq in "An icon taskbar for the Gnome Shell"

alekq — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 11:03:40 +0000

People easily install these without being concerned about security or privacy. I am actually more curios if these are audited at all or the risk is solely on users?

I use GNOME only in throwaway VM, but even there - only the extensions available in official repository are used.

Poets' Odd Jobs

alekq — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 09:51:37 +0000

Article URL: https://poets.org/text/poets-odd-jobs

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40560979

Points: 85

# Comments: 45

New comment by alekq in "Trusting Content on the KDE Store"

alekq — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 14:02:51 +0000

If you cannot audit it and supervise it, do not offer a point-and-click way to install it. Do not rely on end-users experience and sanity nor the good intentions of random people online.

Installation of Gnome extensions or KDE themes (unless official package from distribution's repository is used) always seemed as unnecessary risk to me.

Greybeard's tomb: the lost treasure of language design (2019)

alekq — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 06:59:13 +0000

Article URL: https://michael.orlitzky.com/articles/greybeards_tomb:_the_lost_treasure_of_language_design.xhtml

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39379872

Points: 26

# Comments: 9

Fabien Sanglard's Setup (Uses This)

alekq — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 12:09:23 +0000

Article URL: https://usesthis.com/interviews/fabien.sanglard/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38217899

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by alekq in "Gnome 45"

alekq — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 13:47:31 +0000

Although I do prefer look and feel of the GNOME and most of the software I use is GTK, I use Plasma as well. The main issue I personally have with GNOME is it's dependency on 3rd-party extensions. For start, it's missing clipboard manager and notification tray that you get with Plasma out of the box (as well with other DEs and OSes). You want the dock? Again, you need the extension. Then you upgrade and at least one of the extensions is lagging behind.

New comment by alekq in "Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork"

alekq — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 12:00:34 +0000

I knew about Trinity right from the beginning of project (back then it was available in one of the Gentoo's overlays), but I am genuinely surprised it is still running and they actually introduce new features to the DE and applications. It is remarkable effort.

New comment by alekq in "XEmacs 21.5.35 “kohlrabi” is released"

alekq — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 14:47:08 +0000

CLISP update

New comment by alekq in "Desktop Linux Hardening (2022)"

alekq — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 07:57:25 +0000

It is just SecureBoot which is officially supported by many mainstream distros.

I unlock encrypted partitions with a passphrase, not TPM.

New comment by alekq in "Desktop Linux Hardening (2022)"

alekq — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 07:55:27 +0000

Usually I look for alternative way - like zipped binaries or similar. Most of the developers offer it.

New comment by alekq in "Desktop Linux Hardening (2022)"

alekq — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 18:58:30 +0000

I went this rabbit hole roughly 2 years ago and I just quit at the very end, because my focus went from using the OS for something productive to maintaining it, securing it and becoming home sys admin.

Since then, I’m simply “ignorant” and sane - use it, update it regularly, use official software sources (so official distros repos and Flatpaks), FDE, SecureBoot, do not run random net stuff (like scripts, “Git” etc.), try to stay as default as possible and use a VM to experiment if I really need to.

I am curious - how many of you regular desktop Linux users actually had security issues (or at least suspected something shady)?

New comment by alekq in "20 Years of Gentoo"

alekq — Fri, 19 May 2023 18:02:03 +0000

I am running “full-blown” desktop with relatively minimal Plasma (I installed only the KDE software I actually need). The initial setup was quite straight-forward, without any tweaking or particular issues. I do use binary packages (available in Portage) for the stuff I do not care - like LibreOffice or Rust compiler.

Upgrades where you are expected to do something rarely happen and even then it is fairly simple.

The major downside is when you want to try out something - it takes time usually, so it is not instant as with binary distros and other OSes. For now, when I am not willing to wait, I just use Fedora VM to test stuff first.

New comment by alekq in "20 Years of Gentoo"

alekq — Fri, 19 May 2023 06:22:14 +0000

Gentoo ended my distro-hopping phase back in high-school/college student days (17-18 years ago). Top class documentation (the title moved to Arch in the meantime) and helpful, supportive and knowledgeable users of their community taught me so much about Linux. Additionally, although I'm not educated nor working in CS field, Gentoo got me curious about programming languages, build systems and compilers (as a hobbyist). I used it happily and exclusively for 6-7 years (then moved to Windows at work and Mac at home).

From summer of 2020 I restarted with Gentoo on my new home desktop.

Thank you Gentoo for everything.

New comment by alekq in "The effects of sleep debt"

alekq — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 09:59:24 +0000

Mentioning the debt without any figures is at least... superficial.

Article does not mention how much sleep daily is considered sufficient (I'm aware it is individual matter). Also, if naps help or not.