[rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily
Gary Sloane
gksloane at hotmail.com
Wed Oct 23 12:39:43 CDT 2019
<rant>
Software is a sofa in the house of hardware.
It's human nature. You live comfortably in 600 sq. ft apartment; then you
move into a house. When you move you have all this ROOM... and you acquire
things until it's filled up. Then you move to a bigger house... One day you
realize how much shit you have; you're inundated with it; and wistfully
remember when you had everything you needed, but it fit in that 600 sq. ft
apartment.
The HW is the house; Moore's law. It kept getting 'bigger'. The software
worlds hasn't come even CLOSE to evolving as fast as the hardware; it's just
gotten BIGGER.
The bottom line is that the software world has gotten lazy. When you have
terabytes of disk and gigabytes of RAM, why try to fit everything into one
sector on a floppy disk (you had to on the Cado...)? Why try to be efficient
when there's more hardware capability on your desktop than you could ever
use?
I help lots of people with PCs; I'm always amazed that the faster the
computers get, the slower the experience is for humans.
The bottom line is that because the hardware has evolved so much faster than
the software, the software has become the bottleneck. We used to spend TIME
(human time) trying to make our code more efficient. Because it mattered. Now
perhaps it doesn't, until you add up the collective inefficiencies of not only
the application code, but the 'standard' interface, the libraries, the
filesystem, the device drivers, and so on) that has cumulatively doomed us to
having the fastest hardware, and the slowest user experience, in the history
of technology.
Picking a more efficient machine or OS still won't solve the problem - we have
to re-envision how we develop software, and more importantly how the global
mass of add-ons, interfaces, APIs, libraries, etc. can more efficiently be
utilized without all being memory resident at the same time.
Now we have 3 sofas in a huge house. But we still can sit on only one of them
at a time. How many do we really need?
I was going to use bathrooms instead of sofas to draw the parallel, but
thought it would become too easy to be tasteless.
</rant>
On another subject,
a. I have two Corvus Concept machines and only one monitor. Anyone got a
monitor they want to part with?
b. I have a Sun-1/100U, and 3 CPU boards, all versions of the Sun-2 CPU
board that preceded the released version. Anyone have
schematics for the Sun-2 CPU? Or know anything about these priors?
Gary
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Contents of rescue digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily garbage we put
up with (Patrick Giagnocavo)
2. Re: tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily garbage we
put up with (Liam Proven)
3. Re: tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily garbage we
put up with (John Floren)
4. Re: tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily garbage we
put up with (Liam Proven)
5. Re: tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily garbage we
put up with (Stefan Skoglund)
6. Re: tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily garbage we
put up with (Stefan Skoglund)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 09:53:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick at zill.net>
To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Subject: [rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily
garbage we put up with
Message-ID: <8233698.4011571838803729.JavaMail.root at mx2.zill.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Just delete this if you don't like my opinion, but ...
we now have multi-Ghz multi-core, multi-GB RAM systems with GUIs that
companies have literally spent $100 million+ on, and yet the state of GUIs has
not advanced, and the UIs struggle to keep up with the glacially-slow humans
that type on it (input latency on Apple IIe and early Macs was lower than
today's in many cases).
Things people actually accomplished real work on:
NextStation running NS3.3 - hardware we now would not even view as a
competitor to a Raspberry Pi: 33Mhz 68040, 32MB RAM, 1120x832 resolution.
SPARCstation 10 - 50Mhz CPU with up to 1MB cache
I don't think it is "all Microsoft's fault" in that OSX and Linux haven't
really shown their ability to be that much more compact. You would really have
to struggle to cut down a Linux GUI system to 512MB RAM, for instance.
Did people just become lazy? Did everyone being able to afford a computer,
result in a dumbing-down or lowest common denominator approach? Why does so
much of computing these days just seem like a total crapfest?
I have been seriously thinking about using the Coherent unix-a-like, or
various Z80/CPM boards running on actually low end hardware.
What's the minimum you need, for actual hacking?
/rantoff,
Patrick
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:08:18 +0200
From: Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>
To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Subject: Re: [rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily
garbage we put up with
Message-ID:
<CAMTenCEXxZcMApX0RksoBP60nW_xcz-ufkiOvY3v1Du3+-PFKw at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 at 15:53, Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick at zill.net> wrote:
>
> Just delete this if you don't like my opinion, but ...
>
> we now have multi-Ghz multi-core, multi-GB RAM systems with GUIs that
companies have literally spent $100 million+ on, and yet the state of GUIs has
not advanced, and the UIs struggle to keep up with the glacially-slow humans
that type on it (input latency on Apple IIe and early Macs was lower than
today's in many cases).
>
> Things people actually accomplished real work on:
>
> NextStation running NS3.3 - hardware we now would not even view as a
competitor to a Raspberry Pi: 33Mhz 68040, 32MB RAM, 1120x832 resolution.
>
> SPARCstation 10 - 50Mhz CPU with up to 1MB cache
>
> I don't think it is "all Microsoft's fault" in that OSX and Linux
> haven't
really shown their ability to be that much more compact. You would really have
to struggle to cut down a Linux GUI system to 512MB RAM, for instance.
>
> Did people just become lazy? Did everyone being able to afford a
> computer,
result in a dumbing-down or lowest common denominator approach? Why does so
much of computing these days just seem like a total crapfest?
I strongly agree. Actually, I've been thinking and writing about this for
quite a while. I am not alone in this, either.
Some notable commentators...
* Stanislav Dastovsky,
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.loper-os
.org%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d757da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f6
40afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045191556&sdata=L74K6MXqbA8AeE%2F
17wN%2BZb0CyG5eXRoOL%2FchPYyXhEg%3D&reserved=0
* FranC'ois-RenC) Rideau,
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffare.tunes.o
rg%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d757da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f640
afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045201567&sdata=5njmFbKvPyioJ8yv5KS
eB2omBXJKN7xACfvqu4tP%2Fls%3D&reserved=0
I've been looking at alternate computer platforms. Lots of people are
nostalgic about the "good old days" and there are continuations, forks, FOSS
recreations of many old OSes.
* Amiga OS has AmigaOS 4 on PowerPC, a clone MorphOS on PowerPC, and FOSS
recreation AROS on x86
* Acorn RISC OS now has Risc OS Open
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.riscoso
pen.org%2Fcontent%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d757da7262%7
C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045201567&sdata=%2Fu
b2XlBjx120Y2eJgzYjDH%2BJWo4t2wauyRj3pCEnfUA%3D&reserved=0
* There's a FOSS recreation of the whole Atari ST OS complete with an emulator
to run it:
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Faranym.gith
ub.io%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d757da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f
640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045201567&sdata=oFt0Wjhl030mhFiC
koJNf8ZFr9CtIcreDtga2fbXOi4%3D&reserved=0
* There are 2 FOSS forks of the Sinclair QL OS, Minerva and SMSQ/E
There are umpteen modern FOSS efforts to do better OSes.
* Plan 9 & Inferno, of course
* Minix 3
* HelenOS
* Genode
* Redox OS
Frankly, I find them all wanting.
The 1980s stuff from the Amiga, ST, Archimedes, QL etc. is all badly
compromised. Either it's in hand-coded assembly, or it's a lash-up because a
more ambitious project got cancelled (Acorn ARX b RISC OS, Commodore CAOS
b AmigaDOS), or it's something dead basic extended way beyond reason
(TOS/GEM b MINT).
The 2 things that seem most ignored by history are Lisp Machines and
Smalltalk.
I am watching ChrysaLisp. It's by the original creator of Taos and
Intent/Elate, the most remarkable OS platform I have ever personally seen.
However perhaps the single most interesting OS line I've discovered that is
still alive, still being worked on, and is FOSS and is out there with a (tiny)
community, is Oberon and its successor AOS/A2, AKA Bluebottle.
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fignorethecod
e.net%2Fblog%2F2009%2F04%2F22%2Foberon%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f84
46da18c08d757da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045
201567&sdata=o6Pt%2Fuc3f9TzO%2F577tkDykZj7%2F8DXNy4ZsbfeMJL7uM%3D&res
erved=0
> I have been seriously thinking about using the Coherent unix-a-like,
> or
various Z80/CPM boards running on actually low end hardware.
You're not alone.
This is what let to FUZIX, if you've not met that.
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fuzix.or
g%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d757da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f640a
fb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045201567&sdata=uF4WkdZzhm2JZKNIWWPy
dBldAbVVmKVN1yybi4LaHmE%3D&reserved=0
If you want commodity kit, though, and x86, Minix 3 looks very promising.
And NetBSD is alive and well, of course.
--
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UK: +44 7939-087884 - D
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------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 08:14:45 -0600
From: John Floren <john at jfloren.net>
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: [rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily
garbage we put up with
Message-ID: <d0cd256c-74d3-9222-7e6d-b6679c072f0f at jfloren.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
On 10/23/2019 7:53 AM, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> Just delete this if you don't like my opinion, but ...
>
> we now have multi-Ghz multi-core, multi-GB RAM systems with GUIs that
companies have literally spent $100 million+ on, and yet the state of GUIs has
not advanced, and the UIs struggle to keep up with the glacially-slow humans
that type on it (input latency on Apple IIe and early Macs was lower than
today's in many cases).
>
> Things people actually accomplished real work on:
>
> NextStation running NS3.3 - hardware we now would not even view as a
competitor to a Raspberry Pi: 33Mhz 68040, 32MB RAM, 1120x832 resolution.
>
> SPARCstation 10 - 50Mhz CPU with up to 1MB cache
>
> I don't think it is "all Microsoft's fault" in that OSX and Linux haven't
really shown their ability to be that much more compact. You would really have
to struggle to cut down a Linux GUI system to 512MB RAM, for instance.
>
> Did people just become lazy? Did everyone being able to afford a computer,
result in a dumbing-down or lowest common denominator approach? Why does so
much of computing these days just seem like a total crapfest?
>
> I have been seriously thinking about using the Coherent unix-a-like, or
various Z80/CPM boards running on actually low end hardware.
>
> What's the minimum you need, for actual hacking?
>
> /rantoff,
> Patrick
I wonder about the same thing frequently. I think there's a couple things at
play:
1. New programming languages may be more pleasant to work with or provide a
more featureful standard library, but can drag along a pretty big runtime. I
love programming in Go, but its memory management can be pretty "greedy"; I
don't leak memory like I did in C, but the runtime likes to hold on to space
it's garbage-collected for later re-use.
2. We're dealing with bigger/more complex content. One reason (not the only
reason) Firefox now chews up 3 GB of memory is that each page is pretty fat.
Some of this is due to lazy web programmers loading up on external Javascript
and fonts etc., but some of it is just due to the fact that images / videos /
etc. have to look better these days. In 1999 we may have been happy with 8-bit
dithered 400x300 pixel images on web pages, because we were viewing them on an
800x600 monitor, but today our screens are bigger and we demand better-looking
content. Also, with faster network connections, we don't worry so much about
sending a giant image and just scaling it on the client side--but it still
means we've got a big fat image sitting in memory.
3. As always, developers have the latest and greatest machines which can hide
a lot of programming sins. I've got one of the new AMD Ryzen processors, 64 GB
of RAM, and an SSD in my dev box. On something like that, you might not even
notice that your application is constantly pinning 3 cores... but your users
on an old i3 sure will!
4. It's always sucked. I remember spending a LOT of time sitting waiting while
the disk 'ticked' back in the old days. How long did it take to start Emacs on
a VAX?
If you want something really basic for just responsive text editing, just
install a baseline Debian distro on whatever less-than-a-decade-old hardware
you've got, install X and a lightweight window manager like FVWM, and only run
a text editor like Emacs or Vim or Acme. You'll do fine with LaTeX and PDF
viewers if you need, but resist the temptation to run a web browser! My
netbook from 2010 works fine as a ham radio box, EXCEPT when I open a web
browser.
If you really want to make an appliance, check out
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fu-root.tk%2
F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d757da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb4
35aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045211572&sdata=sF3KOHu%2Fa%2F2%2F7Gsri
YVyebFpKeHJcIcmyOl3QPb0Hog%3D&reserved=0;
it's a busybox-esque thing made by a friend of mine.
john
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 16:19:33 +0200
From: Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>
To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Subject: Re: [rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily
garbage we put up with
Message-ID:
<CAMTenCFTQWDhDiqhFphza1QEHhBKew=-5T4P08NNjnxHqA5_rw at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 at 16:14, John Floren <john at jfloren.net> wrote:
> 2. We're dealing with bigger/more complex content. One reason (not the
> only reason) Firefox now chews up 3 GB of memory is that each page is
> pretty fat. Some of this is due to lazy web programmers loading up on
> external Javascript and fonts etc., but some of it is just due to the
> fact that images / videos / etc. have to look better these days.
I'm not so sure it's just that.
I mean, q.v.
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fqueue.acm.o
rg%2Fdetail.cfm%3Fid%3D2349257&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d7
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--
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Email: lproven at cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - D
R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:12:50 +0200
From: Stefan Skoglund <stefan.skoglund at agj.net>
To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Subject: Re: [rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily
garbage we put up with
Message-ID: <4a49dc04054d06c4fc72ce1a16631acd1129fce8.camel at agj.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
ons 2019-10-23 klockan 16:19 +0200 skrev Liam Proven:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 at 16:14, John Floren <john at jfloren.net> wrote:
> > 2. We're dealing with bigger/more complex content. One reason (not
> > the
> > only reason) Firefox now chews up 3 GB of memory is that each page
> > is
> > pretty fat. Some of this is due to lazy web programmers loading up
> > on
> > external Javascript and fonts etc., but some of it is just due to
> > the
> > fact that images / videos / etc. have to look better these days.
>
> I'm not so sure it's just that.
>
> I mean, q.v.
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fqueue.acm.o
rg%2Fdetail.cfm%3Fid%3D2349257&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d7
57da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045221577&
sdata=fZVvMR%2BUHr0Vy6fW6btub1prWCxe5pW9QVpoGCuv7Nk%3D&reserved=0
>
>
The text is interesting but:
UNIX is a victim in this case of companies need of differentiating them
from the competition but
also the cool-aid of UNIX is UNIX is compatible ie write for one system
and port over to another one.
That configure and autotool is a hard doing properly , that i can agree
with but the current replacement in the linux world seems to be some
version of a python tool which then i expect will start to morph into
different version so suddenly one recipe for a package build will
either build something which works and is correct else something which
doesnt works or fails . This when building on another version and build
of python....
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:31:06 +0200
From: Stefan Skoglund <stefan.skoglund at agj.net>
To: The Rescue List <rescue at sunhelp.org>
Subject: Re: [rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily
garbage we put up with
Message-ID: <d623ac4e36037e8f33c522f3415e0da1f51233ed.camel at agj.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
ons 2019-10-23 klockan 16:19 +0200 skrev Liam Proven:
> On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 at 16:14, John Floren <john at jfloren.net> wrote:
> > 2. We're dealing with bigger/more complex content. One reason (not
> > the
> > only reason) Firefox now chews up 3 GB of memory is that each page
> > is
> > pretty fat. Some of this is due to lazy web programmers loading up
> > on
> > external Javascript and fonts etc., but some of it is just due to
> > the
> > fact that images / videos / etc. have to look better these days.
>
> I'm not so sure it's just that.
>
> I mean, q.v.
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fqueue.acm.o
rg%2Fdetail.cfm%3Fid%3D2349257&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed34f8446da18c08d7
57da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637074468045221577&
sdata=fZVvMR%2BUHr0Vy6fW6btub1prWCxe5pW9QVpoGCuv7Nk%3D&reserved=0
>
The author also writes that UNIX was a cathedral of simplicity ....
Is a product like that really saleable ???
The author also seems to long back to 1993 before AT&T spun of UNIX ...
The complexity due to differentiation between different providers of
UNIX was already by that time in full swing.
Pyramid with a split BSD/SysV personality
SunOS 4 also with that (but in a less schizophrenic way..:)
BSD 4
AIX
HP-UX
Digital UNIX
Ken Olsen's snake oil reference with regards to for example Ruby
(UNIX/Linux/BSD) is still valid today (i hit a irritating bug in the
handling of encodings in the python implementation of apt-listbugs due
to the fact that the error description for a package had alternative
translated versions. The swedish language version of a report broke
ruby !
The damn thing worked if running in C locale for example....
Read
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbugs.debian
.org%2Fcgi-bin%2Fbugreport.cgi%3Fbug%3D749193&data=02%7C01%7C%7C13f404ed3
4f8446da18c08d757da7262%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C63707446
8045221577&sdata=gjGhGKgiatV6nycC53UBuD1kfVcmXlPnAet%2FRnYrTW8%3D&res
erved=0
so it is something with how ruby-soap4r treats things.
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