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Joined 21 days ago
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Cake day: January 9th, 2026

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  • POSIX shell is the standard that all shells should support (Fish does not I think). Its basically what is executed if you run it as /usr/bin/sh script. POSIX is not a specific shell itself, its just the standard. /usr/bin/sh is usually a symbolic link to an actual shell interpreter. And any shell could support it, in example Bash with its compatibility mode (what is usually done by default in todays Linux systems). Or Dash is designed to do that specifically and only that as far as I know.

    Bash on the other hand is an enhanced shell that introduces some concepts, features and changes default behavior of the standard POSIX. That is when the script runs with /usr/bin/bash. This is also used in your terminal as the interactive shell. And ZSH in example is similar to Bash, but has some extended features over Bash. They are relatively speaking similar. I think ZSH is or was the default shell in MacOS too.

    As for KSH, I don’t have no experience about this myself. I only know it exists and just saw checklists of differences.


  • However my personal shell preference is zsh. When I write scripts I do so using bash. The two shells are 99% similar on a day to day basis, but I prefer zsh for a user interface. So I use one for day to day and the other for scripting.

    I used to do the same, Bash as the default script interpreter and ZSH as my terminal interactive shell. Worked well. I also had Dash as the /usr/bin/sh installed. But once I installed a new OS, I did not want to set it up immediately and wanted to do it later. Then I realized that I do not need to and frankly didn’t notice any difference. Besides ZSH was a bit slow here and there with the kind of setup I had. So since then I stayed on Bash only again and don’t miss most of the stuff (but ZSH had some nice features).

    I wouldn’t have even mentioned Fish here, its too different. If you going to learn a scripting language that is this different, then there are even more shells out there. I would stick to Bash (or ZSH for that matter). Especially if its the first shell language you get into.


  • In the past I replaced Bash as the default POSIX shell interpreter /usr/bin/sh with Dash. Normally the /usr/bin/sh is run by Bash in compatibility mode, if no Bash features are needed. Dash is an independent implementation of /usr/bin/sh compatibility and in theory should startup a little faster than Bash for those scripts. In practice I didn’t notice any difference on my modern computers (and I mean more than a decade old by now). My personal experience and recommendation is not to worry about this and not install Dash at all. If you do, nothing will break or get worse, but I believe nothing is won either.

    Dash as an interpreter for /usr/bin/sh is only for shell scripts, that run the shell in default mode without Bash or other features. It is not intended for use in the terminal in an interactive manner.

    Learning Bash? Oh hell yeah! The language is a bit ugly and has really lot of pitfalls and dumb language constructs or default behavior. But it is the default and you can rely on Bash for the most part in Linux. You can write scripts, understand others scripts and make changes to them. And it is even used in the IT industry everywhere (well maybe not everywhere…). But that’s not all, you have to learn Linux stuff too, not just the scripting language to make most use of it. While Bash the language itself is ugly, it is still useful to learn the basics and get into it a bit deeper over time. I fully recommend it.


  • I don’t know how to do a screenshot of the entire window that scrolls outside the view… i know skill issues. :D Well in Flatseal some relevant settings are X11 windowing system = ON, Wayland windowing system = OFF, Fallback to X11 windowing system = OFF. GPU acceleration = ON:

    • xlsclients returns “freetube”
    • With the enabled acceleration features using cmdline: “Media” activity is active (as soon as I play a video)
    • Without the extra features: “Media” activity is 0%

    Unfortunately if I enable Wayland (just reverse ON / OFF X11 and Wayland setting in Flatseal), the Media activity is unused. Following settings and results are…

    X11 windowing system = OFF, Wayland windowing system = ON, Fallback to X11 windowing system = OFF. GPU acceleration = ON:

    • xlsclients returns “” (empty)
    • With the enabled acceleration features using cmdline: “Media” activity is 0%
    • Without the extra features: “Media” activity is 0%


  • I don’t know why, but the shortcut in the “Start” menu of KDE does not longer start FreeTube… Its Command-line arguments is 'run --branch=stable' --arch=x86_64 --command=/app/bin/run.sh --file-forwarding io.freetubeapp.FreeTube @@u %u @@ . I have uninstalled FreeTube, deleted the shortcut so it is created from scratch and still does not start. It only starts from either commandline with regular flatpak command, or when I create a new shortcut with the arguments run io.freetubeapp.FreeTube --enable features=AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxZeroCopyGL,AcceleratedVideoDecodeLinuxGL,VaapiIgnoreDriverChecks,VaapiOnNvidiaGPUs




  • The sad thing is, they had support for Linux in the past. And I mean not only making the launcher run on Linux, but with Linux builds of games:

    OS X and Linux support

    In October 2012, GOG.com announced support for OS X. They included the previously Steam exclusive (OS X version) The Witcher and The Witcher 2, both made by CD Projekt Red. GOG.com gathered user feedback in a community wishlist, and one of the most demanded feature requests was support for native Linux games, which gathered close to 15,000 votes before it was marked as “in progress”.[20] Originally GOG.com representatives said, that there are technical and operational issues which make it harder than it seems,[21] however it’s something they would love to do, and they have been considering.[22] On 18 March 2014, GOG.com officially announced that they would be adding support for Linux, initially targeting Ubuntu and Linux Mint in the fall of 2014.[23] On 25 July 2014, Linux support was released early, and 50 games were released compatible with the operating system.[24]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOG.com#OS_X_and_Linux_support


  • Yes, that’s basically it. It’s a backup, with the intent of being the most comprehensive and secure backup, not controlled by a single company (other than this organization off course). As long as it gets funded by various sources, this should be available in the future. Hopefully.

    Some additional personal thoughts: This should have better chances to archive than Internet Archive does, as they only archive content that is Open Source (as far as I know). And a reason why big companies fund this is probably they want to use it for Ai… just my speculation on my part…



  • The point is, does it someone? This archive is doing exactly what you say someone could do, copying the software to a place that most likely will survive. They give some examples to what dangers are there, even for open source software. In example, are all Git repositories on Github and other personal repositories backed up on a safe place that will be available to the public at same place? All versions of it?

    Not all code is big and used as often and secured like the Linux code in example. 20 years from now, there will be software, that most individuals and companies will not have anymore on their servers and may not even care. Hardware fails, services disappear and so on. It’s like arguing that anyone can do a website copy to archive it, but does anyone do it? Same thing applies here.