1

Topic: definition: drag-in-ware

drag-in-ware is anti-unix software which will try to drag the user into that software and to use it excessively in an anti-unix style.

This is different from anti-unix style software without user interaction (f.e. systemd).

It is comparable to web services like youtube, which will enforce action-reward loops to keep the user on the site.

Many projects try to achive this by overbloated feature lists. Allthough some of these projects have at least some quality behind it (emacs is an example).

2

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

Well, I don't think it is helpful defining some kind of thing like "anti-unix"-style. The question is easy: Is the service free, libre and welcome people with clear definitions and usage? Is the application using so many dependencies and extraordinary interfaces or also clear defined? You can see this already onto VLC where the development is going more and more towards a fancy design, with more dependencies. And free, libre software doing that is nothing more than same bloated nonsense, not relevant which platform they use. The more, the better? No, absolutely no. But there is the problem: Free software has gone into the ever ongoing competition: More features, more interfaces to be useful for users and "customers" in the end. And there is the major issue: Defining free software to be helpful for all humans without having understatement that this "competition" is nothing more than toxic won't solve this problem. Software like systemd is the result of this: Creating the illusion to be useful and easy, but instead a mass of code in the backend with no one to understand the architecture without reading any exclusive study for weeks and months before touching any line of code or configuration.

Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!

Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!

3 (edited by the_hype 2021-07-26 13:46:30)

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

Thanks for your reply. You are right, if it is libre and people want to use it is ethical without a doubt. Any modern system derivates more or less from the unix ideals. That is because a human needs an interface that fit human needs, not machine ones. The emacs is an extraordinary example for something that deirvates from the unix ideals to achive a more human interface.  The vision of Rms of a human approach is honarable (gnu is not Unix - not exclusively because of the copyright issues). But i still think the original visionaries behind unix and their ideals are absolutely relevant today.

Any user oriented software is trying to approach some kind of "user experience". But i guess the balance between machine-need/human-need is for ever to be explored - in an ever interesting competition.

this is all beyond any libre discussion - libre is without alternative anyway.

From an libre/ethical standpoint systemd is ethical - it fails to convince on a technical level. You a free to critizie me when i say: "Systemd is quite anti-unix" wink (overboarding tentacle-ware)

p.s. sure unix is a trademark... whatever *nix, unix-style...

p.p.s i respect the emacs in many ways and studied it for a decade. Until recently i was sure it must the most powerfull "reprogrammable *nix interface", but i found something more fitting for me.

4

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

I doubt that systemd is even in any way ethical. More or less I have no further problem with Red Hat and I don't see so much criticism needed about their way to do as long as I'm not forced to use it. But the problem comes up when adapting all of this for everything: When talking about systemd, dbus, pulseaudio and others, they are neither ethical nor in any way helpful. Especially systemd has driven the freedom of choice way backwards and adopted so many libraries, that it is impossible now to get one part free for the time being. If you choose systemd as base for the distribution and system, you won't have any other choice for the future as to adapt for everything else. That's not really helping as it is also hard to understand as I've said: The amount of code is so big, that you need being onto that for full-time. wink

Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!

Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!

5 (edited by the_hype 2021-07-26 15:57:13)

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

I doubt that systemd is even in any way ethical.

maybe software can be that bad technically, that it gets unethical. Just un-systemd'ed a parabola server yesterday. It' such a mess...

if the hatred for systemd brings people together, then it serves a purpose wink

6

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

I won't call it hatred. I don't hate systemd, I just ... don't want to use it. smile
I respect everyone's decision to use and being happy with it, no doubt and no problem. But please leave the point for alternatives as this won't do any kind of harm (message to all developers and users). Hatred is doing that for sure (harm): So better to stay on the reasonable side and having no problem at all. Besides: Yes, getting Parabola free from systemd is not that easy for sure. That was the point for me 2017 to view on Hyperbola and staying here. big_smile

And if anyone is searching for reasons NOT to use one component: Why do you want to search for it? Don't want, don't use. Easy as that. Yes, we can create lists about past and actual fails and flaws of dbus, systemd and many more. But for real: In the end it is just this one reason, just too big and not needed for own technical emancipation. You need a modern desktop? Build it, there is enough. You need a server? Well, why do you even bother with dbus then and for many other parts of systemd you have good alternatives. runit or daemontools when using openrc for example! wink

Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!

Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!

7 (edited by the_hype 2021-07-27 06:41:11)

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

throgh wrote:

I won't call it hatred. I don't hate systemd, I just ... don't want to use it. smile
So better to stay on the reasonable side and having no problem at all. ...

Yes, for sure - you're right. We could call it aversion. Anyway thx for the conversation, just wanted to socialize a bit, after migrating to 0.4, which is already done for me.

throgh wrote:

That was the point for me 2017 to view on Hyperbola and staying here.

Yes & thx again!

8

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

the_hype wrote:

p.p.s i respect the emacs in many ways and studied it for a decade. Until recently i was sure it must the most powerfull "reprogrammable *nix interface", but i found something more fitting for me.

can you tell us what are you using instead of emacs, im verry much interested in your research ?

9 (edited by the_hype 2021-07-28 06:15:10)

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

rachad wrote:
the_hype wrote:

p.p.s i respect the emacs in many ways and studied it for a decade. Until recently i was sure it must the most powerfull "reprogrammable *nix interface", but i found something more fitting for me.

can you tell us what are you using instead of emacs, im verry much interested in your research ?

I worked with emacs for about 10 years and was baffeld how powerful it is as an *nix-interface. But obviously there are some drawback, as i said before, it is some kind of drag-in-ware in the sense of: if you not fully commit to the emacs in its whole (with email, task-planer, irc, ...) you cannot unlock it's full potential. Learning from the discussion above i wouldn't call it anti-unix (because emacs is a run-time enviroment for little lisp programms - and these in itself are kind of unix style, maybe ...).

anyway, i have some concentration disorder and lisp code is - after all that time - unreadable for me. So i tryed to come up with something selfmade, some kind of unix-tool-box. I just wanted to collect the finest tools for every task. Doing that i programmed an "Information-division-core" (the ennix-cybernetics-core), which uses the most basic unix/filesystem-dependencies to make a tool box. It is very simple and just divides information that needs to be edited (configs etc.) from information that may be needed, but is uninterresting to see (something like firefox cache).

the most important tool to access your *nix system, if you are not using emacs, would be the shell (i like the fish shell) - but any other is just fine (mksh, bash, zsh...)

I tested it for a ~year now and i am very pleased, it works just as intended. All data gets divided, kind of automatic, the focus is always on the most important tasks, and a find/ag/grep over the important-data takes only ms. Only the best tools stay in the "zen garden" (or citadel as i call it:)

You can test it, it is written in fish, but you can use any shell, and rewrite it's functionality in any shell - in fact everything, exept the basic file utilities (symbolic links), can be exchanged.

remember: all scripts are just a sample implementation of the core idea, which is just based on symbolic links. It is meant to be hacked all the time: it's a reprogrammable programming interface. Drag your most loved config files into the citadel/zen-garden and throw away stuff, that's not up to the task. I am pretty sure, that nx-tools will increase focus and productivity of any text-based programmer (everything is a file)... even the emacs-guys big_smile

I am only now content to present it, after exessive testing (and the deps in hyperbola, f.e. fzy and fish) - i haven't changed my own nx-tools after all that time, so it is stable.

(If you have security-doubts, put your fish shell for testing in a bubble wrapper: https://forums.hyperbola.info/viewtopic.php?id=563)

https://libregit.org/nx-zen/nx-tools

the automatic icon (gravatar) generated by libregit does not please me, but i couldn't change it - it really makes me angry - libregit should change that algorithm

p.s. which editor? i tested emacs with nx-tools, but at the time i use vis+neovim (in rememberence of  Miyamoto Musashi). If neovim gets too bloaty i will throw it away, and someone else will build a new one wink

10

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

the_hype wrote:

Yes, for sure - you're right. We could call it aversion. Anyway thx for the conversation, just wanted to socialize a bit, after migrating to 0.4, which is already done for me.

Mere suggestion that the point for beta release has come (for me, it's way past beta) will make the team believe that the decision isn't theirs. So they'll postpone the beta release.

All the positivity environment makes people flinch at mere disagreements, and outright hate people who want to take decisions different to theirs!

This is already stable for me, it's way beyond what v0.3.1 was at it's best.

11

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

May I intervene here about the point "Beta"? because I will do that right now as this is NOT any decision about feelings or personal views and ONLY about facts! So I'll write down some facts for checking:

- We have not finalized the listing here to read. If anybody is interested in making that faster, please feel welcome and post your package, your PKGBUILD-script for us to review and transfer or any other way.
- We have not finalized therefore all the listed daemons on the corresponding list.
- We have not finalized Lumina as there are already non-free mentions, symbolsets and icons included.
- We have not cleared up all issues reported, here to read. So we also need to test: You know how time-consuming this is? Doing that for 32bit, 64bit and the combination upsides and downsides.
- We have not even started testing with runit, as yesterday evening I had some further insights into possible problems together with zapper (big THANKS to you).

So when we all here have finished the facts above, we can start calling version 0.4 going into BETA, perhaps and possible but that's also not up to me alone. Because this is not going to happen on command here in the forum. smile Hyperbola 0.4 will be done, when it's done. To the rest I won't say nothing as: Positive environments have also a positive influence towards people. Again: Nothing to discuss about that and what I have read also seen about what was called "hatred towards systemd" was most the time nothing about that. Yes, there are really strange and not reasonable positions out there, calling the creators all sort of things. That is nothing helpful or any kind of productive. But having reasonable criticism towards a way too big framework (which is for sure systemd as quite good example) is none of that. I'd recall the social contract from Hyperbola: "Play the ball, not the man." (section 10) So if we could stay on this topic therefore as I find it interesting to read about "drag-in-ware". If there is need for discussing BETA-state of Hyperbola, please open another topic. But a warning: No hurry onto that. Better to have a good BETA-version instead adding and fixing the whole software again and again. Therefore we take the time and Hyperbola needs the time.

Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!

Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!

12 (edited by the_hype 2021-07-28 08:16:33)

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

That is nothing helpful or any kind of productive. But having reasonable criticism towards a way too big framework (which is for sure systemd as quite good example) is none of that. I'd recall the social contract from Hyperbola: "Play the ball, not the man." (section 10)

Sorry again - english is not my native language - the sentence with the italics and the smiley would read in my language as a very funny line.
I take your objection as a Strike-1 and will keep the discussion as civil as possible.

So if we could stay on this topic therefore as I find it interesting to read about "drag-in-ware".

I think it is a topic which is underdiscussed - Especially when thinking about the younger generation and the dangers of "nerological-feedback-loops" constructed by companies to drag in kids into using their devices/apps - especially when using neuro-algorithms to "improve" this (people with kids will know this)

That is because the original visionaries, constructed the *nix around the idea of cybernetics, which will not distinguish between human and machine. This is not a bad thing per se, but can be exploited by creating some kind of mental mirror universe, in which people get lost/will get lost, if humans loose the control of their machines. Which historically happened. RMS understood this danger and the need for

A. Libre software as a MUST to control the machine, and

B. The emacs as an interface to strictly reprogram the frontier between the human and the machine and make a clean cut. (In my language the word inferface has the meaning "point of cut": Schnittstelle)

(in the end emacs has become some kind of drag-in-ware of itself, but it is still one of the best reprogammable programming enviroments out there)

He is an extraordinary man. But... sorry i cannot work with LISP wink

After understandig this danger i constructed nx-tools also as a learning enviroment for 14 years olds to get an understandig of the importance for "dividing information" - (focus and reduction of distracting information). But it works so well for an advanced programer, that i can recomend it generally.

13

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

the_hype wrote:

Sorry again - english is not my native language - the sentence with the italics and the smiley would read in my language as a very funny line.

Same, so the sentence of my posting is quite lost. big_smile Agreed, as I just wanted to point out: Too big frameworks are the opposite of helpful besides they are also used often - because most are doing that just too pragmatic.

the_hype wrote:

I think it is a topic which is underdiscussed - Especially when thinking about the younger generation and the dangers of "nerological-feedback-loops" constructed by companies to drag in kids into using their devices/apps - especially when using neuro-algorithms to "improve" this (people with kids will know this)

That is because the original visionaries, constructed the *nix around the idea of cybernetics, which will not distinguish between human and machine. This is not a bad thing per se, but can be exploited by creating some kind of mental mirror universe, in which people get lost/will get lost, if humans loose the control of their machines. Which historically happened. RMS understood this danger and the need for

A. Libre software as a MUST to control the machine, and

B. The emacs as an interface to strictly reprogram the frontier between the human and the machine and make a clean cut. (In my language the word inferface has the meaning "point of cut": Schnittstelle)

(in the end emacs has become some kind of drag-in-ware of itself, but it is still one of the best reprogammable programming enviroments out there)

He is an extraordinary man. But... sorry i cannot work with LISP wink

After understandig this danger i constructed nx-tools also as a learning enviroment for 14 years olds to get an understandig of the importance for "dividing information" - (focus and reduction of distracting information). But it works so well for an advanced programer, that i can recomend it generally.

We humans tend to underestimate the complexity until it gets out of our hands. We are even beyond that now when looking around with all the technology and nobody can tell me that the amount of data uploaded can be ever controlled. But setting a so-called "standardization" or "default" is the ultimate goal for many. That's not a bad thing in general, and it is not bad to have generalized interfaces and make usage of this. But this has to be done in combination with free and open information for all. And there we have a problem: Flow for documentation and wisdom is not welcome, when it is about greed and power. So that's the most thing about arrogance and resulting ignorance. The way for free, libre soft- and hardware is always the way of standards combined with open documentation, reaching out for emancipation in technologies. But this is way beyond now and even enough projects do it the other way - the lost sentence to remember big_smile!

Is this done intentional? Well, perhaps in parts? The problem with our own complexity getting out of hands and control: We think about pragmatism getting this again at hand. But this is not possible as our search for convinience has brought up web-standards and browsers for example doing all, but not only reading text and showing some pictures. roll

Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!

Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!

14 (edited by the_hype 2021-07-28 10:20:21)

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

Is this done intentional? Well, perhaps in parts? The problem with our own complexity getting out of hands and control: We think about pragmatism getting this again at hand. But this is not possible as our search for convinience has brought up web-standards and browsers for example doing all, but not only reading text and showing some pictures. roll

The "web experience" is especially in bad shape.

Too big frameworks are the opposite of helpful...

better think 10 years and programm 1000 line of source code, than programming 10 years and end up in an un-maintainable state wink

15

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

With a laugh - and I hope nobody takes that personal or serious: We should not end at the other side of the spectrum as I have more or less also NodeJS in mind where even some simple operations are maintained as part of some "module" (Please anyone can correct me here if I'm on the wrong track!). The generic: If you are able to fork and the situation is there some library or application tend to get out of maintaining, being just too big or something ... just do it. There are enough examples and even Hyperbola is using the great gettext-tiny as alternative. big_smile

Yes comes with a price for sure as some packages won't be able to migrate, but well? This is free software, this is the way to take as we can have control about our process, helping others to emancipate.

Better to have forks, rethinking of projects or rewriting instead of the un-maintainable state.

Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!

Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!

16

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

gettext-tiny provides lightweight replacements for tools typically used from the GNU gettext suite, which is incredibly bloated and takes a lot of time to build (in the order of an hour on slow devices).

there are so many things to work on...

Anyway, i think the struggle for a technically sane *nix with a human touch will succeed.

Thx alot... i switch my robot off for now big_smile

17

Re: definition: drag-in-ware

See you later, mate. And know what: Marvin got some answers as he is with the hitchhikers in the galaxy. Some "42"? big_smile

Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!

Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!