Worries about the future, and questions for the free software community.
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Hi all,
I've been using GNU/Linux for about five years now, and recently came to care about software freedom. I have noticed that the GNU/Linux community seems to be increasing in size, partly due to the impending EOL of Windows 10. The majority of the existing community doesn't seem interested in teaching them the value of free software. They seem to be focused on getting GNU/Linux in as many hands as possible.
I am not sure of the general age in the free software movement, so forgive me if I am off, but it seems to lean toward the older side. I am on the younger side (18), and people around me seem indifferent about free software. It makes me worry about the future of the movement. Finding GNU/Linux and later the FSF were beacons of hope for me, as I have felt increasingly alienated from the world around me. The invasive tech, the corrupt billionaires and politicians. What worries me most though, is society's indifference and complacency towards it all. I apologize if that is a bit too personal. There doesn't seem like there is anywhere else I could speak my mind about it. To avoid getting caught up in anxiety, I would like to ask a couple things.
What can I do to help the movement? I already am an associate member to the FSF, though I feel that money will mean nothing if there isn't any people to utilize it.
How would you recommend learning to program? I do not currently know how to program, though I would like to learn. Most resources I've found seem to be full of paid subscriptions and tend to spoon-feed answers.
Thank you.
The important contribution we all need to make right now is testing the pre-release versions of Trisquel 12 and reporting any issues that we have: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/first-beta-isos-trisquel-12-are-out-getting-closer-0
Maybe during your Trisquel 12 testing you'll find some additional ways you'd like to contribute.
See https://www.gnu.org/help/ if you have not yet.
I feel you there, people are dumb as dirt when it comes to how bad invasive tech is and they don't fight billionaire assholes enough. It really pisses me off how much they get away with because people don't realize that anyone who is called a socialist by the media is likely trying to FIX THESE EXACT PROBLEMS!
Basically, if you try to help the poor and middle class instant socialist alert.
But if you try to help the rich, you are just a centrist.
Like give me a break...
This is what I think is effing up usa if nothing else. Although it probably is messing up other countries too.
Any country that is leaning authoritarian or has leaders who want to push it there, has this problem big time.
I very much would prefer billionaires to perish off this planet because it seems like they will do whatever it takes to keep their money even if it means sending the world to hell if need be.
So you see why I also hate billionaires.
Yea...
Oh and as a last thought, mass surveillance enables fascism and worse which is a wake up call the world itself needs badly.
And the corporate goons need to be pushed out of the way for this to be heard.
lrl,
Nice to hear from you and your participation in the forum is a help in its own right. I read of your worries and I connect and for that feel a little more human. And if you bring your questions to the forum and some of our incredible developers share the light, no doubt others will benefit also and become interested in the principles behind the 'movement.'
I went to college using fafsa and finished without owing anything. Most of the classes were Windows centric but learning about loops and ifs and elseifs and then doos etc, in Visual Basic and ASP wasn't a total loss. One serious place to learn everything about tech is https://www.oreilly.com/. I see you can try it for free. I bought a subscription for my nephew and it was a bit expensive (maybe $200 a quarter). But they have books on every programming language and every kind of server you can study. I think O'Reilly has been in open source software's corner for a long time even though their books aren't free. I hope others offer suggestions.
MB says "See https://www.gnu.org/help/ if you have not yet." For that I see something new: https://savannah.gnu.org/ Gonna check it out.
re Zoma: 'Basically, if you try to help the poor and middle class instant socialist alert.' ALERT!...ALERT! - been there, heard that.
I think if I stand in front of a mad steam roller coming my way, I know what's going to happen. But if the only other choice is to occupy a seat on that roller too, maybe it would be best if I submit to the squishing. Concerning society's ills, I have accepted the possibility of temporary defeat, but I have a trump card (and it ain't you know who) - it's good to trust in God.
https://rubenwardy.com/minetest_modding_book/en/index.html
has a nice modding book that can help a little to learn about programing, or at least making mods for luanti/minetest.
I do not know how much modding a program could help people learn to program, but changing programs you know about or use a lot could help you see how changing code changes things in a program. Also any small program you can edit and see what happens could also help you learn programming.
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/running-temple-os
The "TempleOS" system, is in the public domain, but, it has many problems like, cussing, blasphemy, inaccurate information about the Bible, as well many other problems like only having one programming language.
So this may not be the best code to learn programming, but it is likely all public domain.
Most code is also "just in time" compiled, so most code can be changed and tested quickly.
3 forks (at least) are being made of TempleOS at this time, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
https://github.com/cia-foundation/TempleOS
https://github.com/Zeal-Operating-System/ZealOS
https://github.com/tinkeros/TinkerOS
https://github.com/minexew/Shrine
As for any problems it is good to trust in God and his words.
https://archive.org/details/king-james-bible-pure-cambridge-edition-pdf
https://trisquel.info/files/king-james-bible-pure-cambridge-edition-pdf_archive.torrent
> As for any problems it is good to trust in God and his words.
God can obviously not have created the world in English, nor in any natural language. We trust God used Rust in order to create a safer world. Then the punishment for disobeying Them and programming in Python for Apple was to be thrown in an unsafe world without Rust. Fortunately, God is forgiving and eventually sent a copy of The Book to Mozilla, who in turn made it available to the rest of us, free of charge. And we lived safely forever after.
Incorrigible miscreants keep using C/C++ instead, but they will fall into the pit of dangling pointers and burn in data race hell.
> God can obviously not have created the world in English
I think it possible that in the beginning when God said יְהִי אוֹר (Let there be light), inherent in the sound of His voice was every language that would ever be spoken. I mean maybe, who knows. But theologians would no doubt argue whether Rust was included. Rust and other forms of decay should have begun after the Fall. Seems to me heaven will be Rust free.
But if you endorse Rust as a better programming language, what do you like about it?
I often wonder why there are so many languages.
Note Hebrew from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_there_be_light.
I have always been an incorrigible miscreant. I suppose I like burning in hell and falling into pits [1].
What about you? What is your favorite programming language? Which one would you suggest learning first, and how?
[1] preferably the moderately hollow ones, with large cushions at the bottom and fallen angels singings the blues.
Honestly, I am no programmer and my daughter was talking about learning rust so I am truly interested.
I do like to make web pages every so often and play with html, css, javscript, php and mysql. Also studied VB and whatever the Microsoft answer to php based on Visual Basic was in school like 20 years ago. But are you saying Rust is only for incorrigible miscreants and has no other redeeming social value? I thought I might take steps to add it to my playlist but maybe I shouldn't.
I used to like the miry pits but they are horribly difficult to get out of and the only blues I heard was my own cries for help. At least the mud was as soft as a pillow though unbearably cold. I'm trying real hard to watch my steps better now. Still stumble some yet.
Code is what has social value. If the project you are considering contributing to is written in C++, learn C++. If it is written in Rust, learn Rust. If it is written in Pascal, learn Pascal, in COBOL, learn COBOL, in Guile, learn Guile, etc...
C++ is ubiquitous in libre software projects, so that would probably be a good start for the OP. It also ranks high in runtime efficiency (RAM, energy and time) as shown in a universally acclaimed paper that you can find in various places in this forum if you look long enough. If you already know C++, learning (about) Rust could probably tell you interesting things about memory safety.
What exactly is good about memory safety out of curiosity?
Does it aid stability, security or something unknown?
I hear people yap about rust and how its this awesome programming language, but honestly, whose to say other new programming languages won't come out that will make rust look like its worthless.
Rewriting everything in rust seems like a waste of time given the future is so vague and all the unknown variables with it.
I am a translator!
As an ex-C programmer writing things executed in kernel space, I remember that it sometimes happened that some code writes in memory at places it is not supposed to, for example because of doing calculations on pointers while not being carefully enough to check whether some boundaries were not exceeded.
The consequence was that at some point, things obviously went wrong in something totally unrelated with the code causing the problem, which might be difficult to identify. One trick I learned was to write a specific small pattern in every data structure so that, when dumping the whole memory, one could see what had been written that resulted in inconsistent things in memory, and then further check the code that wrote such data structures.
The consequence was that at some point, things obviously went wrong in something totally unrelated with the code causing the problem, which might be difficult to identify.
A worse consequence is that somebody may exploit the bug, inputting to the memory-unsafe program data that it ends up writing where it is not supposed to (typically beyond the end of an array, a so-called buffer overflow) and that are actually specific instructions that the memory-unsafe program will later execute, maybe giving root access to the attacker.
For instance, if OpenSSL had been written in a memory-safe language, there would have been no Heartbleed: the compiler would have refused to compile the code that is vulnerable to the buffer over-read.
So it does have an effect on security...
Still, I hope rust it least stops going the rolling release model and eventually stabilizes.
OK, appreciate that, C++ might be a good place to start. Actually might have a book on it.