Re: New Pico2

On a sunny day (Sat, 24 Aug 2024 07:26:54 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Lawrence
D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote in <vac1vu$1ab6s$5@dont-email.me>:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:33:21 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>

Too much bloat these days and Linux with all the rathead shit is
becoming a nuisance.

>
Linux can be as small as you want. Look at Damn Small Linux, for example.
You can actually build a kernel to run on certain CPUs with no memory-
management hardware.

I find
 https://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
interesting

My Raspis and PCs all use fvwm as window manager and xfm as file manager
and have 9 virtual screens with terminals.

xfm -appmgr -geometry 1910x1054+0+0 &

# xterms
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+1920+0 &
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+3840+0 &
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+0+1080 &
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -rv -geometry 270x75+1920+1080 &
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+3840+1080 &
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+0+2160 &
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+1920+2160 &
/usr/bin/X11/rxvt -font 7x14 -ls -sl 10000 -geometry 270x75+3840+2160 &

I use zsh as shell, much less typing required

We went to the moon in the sixties of last century and came back with
computing power less than a Raspberry.

>
There was actually a whole lot of computing power on the ground, in the
form of those IBM mainframes, backing up the guys in space. Everything
they did had to be managed in coordination with ground control, all the
steps worked out in advance.

Indeed, but a 'whole lot' in those days was not even a small PC today.

Now astronuts  get stuck on the ISS with billions of dollars and
sup[p]er computers to do the work.

>
Bit more Government management of the process back then, bit more trust to
private corporations like Boeing, with its stellar reputation for
relentlessly pursuing reliability over profits, these days.
>
Coincidence? You be the judge.

Motivation, indeed now the motivation is profit only it seems.
Back then it was to beat Russia to the moon...
And US had Von Braun, who knew about rockets.
Without him nothing would have flown, the US first rocket tests were a failure.

I have heard Elon wants to go to Mars, I am waiting.
That super heavy thing is interesting, he has some very good engineers.
But chances are by the time they arrive at Mars they need Chinese Visa and money, pay landing rights.
China just did a sample return mission from the backside of the moon.
They invented the gunpowder too, long ago.

As to going back to 'simple'
 https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/quadcopter/index.html
 https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/quadcopter/drop.html
that was 2016-2017
  now they use it to drop explosives etc...

All just done with a simple Microchip PIC
 https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/quadcopter/hsign.html

It seems to me we only need ever more complex Linux just for the browser
the plot is to make the OS ever more complex to force people to buy ever more powerful hardware
The media content you see has not much more 'depth' but advertising increases.
 Microsoft used to buy shares in hardware companies before releasing the next bigger bloat
the bloat would force the people to buy ever more powerful hardware, they use
automatic updates to force the buying, how evil can you get.

Evils like rathead would try to make their Linux versions non-portable non-compatible to lock in customers to their systems.
Unfortunately some of their silly crap made it into the kernel.

When Linus dies (is he still alive) and greed only rules where will it go.