I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!
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I have a mini PC at home, which sole purpose is to run a browser to play stuff from Netflix, its display being my TV, of course. There's no point in throwing money at the thing, so it's a pretty low budget configuration, plus I didn't see a reason to buy OS for it. For last 2 years or so, it had Ubuntu 16.something (I think). Apart from initial problems with display (desktop moved to the left, with about 5cm offscreen), it worked ok.
The only thing other than running Chrome and watching Netflix I did on that system was to click 'ok, install updates' every two weeks or so, when constant nagging about them got on my nerves. Some time ago the update process finished with this result: "New version of Chrome is not supported on this ancient Ubuntu install. Do you want to upgrade your OS automagically?". Hmm, ok, why not, I'm installing updates anyway. >click<
Two minutes passes and: "It's not possible to upgrade automagically".
Ok, great UX, as expected. Let's just forget about updates and use what is installed until it stops working.All was fine and dandy until three days ago I accidentally clicked 'install updates' again. Nothing to worry about, it will just run in circles for a minute or two and fail. "Updates installed successfuly." Wait, what? What was installed exactly? Not the unsupported version of Chrome, surely...
Click Chrome icon, 30 seconds of silence, "Chrome crashed. Run it again?", 30 seconds of silence, "Chrome crashed. [...]".
What a piece of crap. Oh well, I quess it's time to install newer version of the OS.
Installation goes fine, select language, next, next, next, copying files, done.Want to reboot?
Yes.
Welcome to something that looks like a desktop, but doesn't actually work. Do you want to install Ubuntu?
What is this shit? I already installed the OS. No, don't install anything, just let me use the desktop and stuff.
Ok, no installation for you. What do you want to do now?
Open system menu.
Not working :D
... start browser?
Not working, ha ha ha.
Wait, is this some kind of live shit booted from USB? WTF?!?! WHY? Reboot and show me boot options.
Yes master.
Fuck me.OCZ VERTEX (ubuntu) OCZ VERTEX OCZ VERTEX (UEFI System) (ubuntu) OCZ VERTEX (UEFI) OCZ VERTEX
I don't even... Disable booting from USB and boot from (ubuntu) OCZ VERTEX, the first one.
Welcome to your new desktop. What do you want to do now?
Start Firefox. Go to Netflix.
Continue watching?
Yes.
Not working.
Ehhh. Open software center.
Here you go. I found 4 packages online. Also no repositories are available.
What? Reload available packages.
I found 4 packages online. There is no internet connection. That's a total of 0 packages found.
... Download Chrome from Google.
Downloaded. What to do with this file?
Install it.
Installation successful. And also installation failed.
What?
Nothing. No info. Everything is fine. Why?
Start Chrome?
Of course.
Go to Netflix. Continue watching.
[movie plays]
Good. Glad it's over.
[system freeze] ha haGoogling for Ubuntu system freeze solution gives a fuckton of results. All not working. Or maybe some work. Who knows, but what is certain is that comments like "MONTHS OF HELL!" are not encouraging.
Right, so let's ditch Ubuntu and find something else. But what... someone told me that Mint is hassle free. Ok, their site says that streaming services work great, they have a screenshot with Netflix...
and someone rants on forum that 'we are 100% compatible with Netflix!'. Looks good, let's install that.Language, next, next, next, reboot. Check boot options... Huh, no new partitions, and no 'Mint' mentioned. That's good, maybe.
Hello! Welcome to your brand new fantastic Mint desktop.
Sure, great, start Firefox, go to Netflix.
Netflix wants to use DRM, enable that?
Oh, that's promising. Yes, enable.
All good to go.
Continue watching.
Pff. Not working, you moran.
I'm still calm. I'm still calm... Open software center.
Quadrilion packages found.
Search for Chrome.
We only have Chromium, but it's even better.
Ok, install that, go to Netflix and continue watching.
It is a not working.
Download Chrome. Install.
Chrome installed. Also Chrome is not an installable package, couldn't install it.
So it's installed or not?
It sure is.
Continue watching...
[movie plays]
[second movie plays alright too]
Phew, that was close, almost lost my temper. Now let's disable updates and never think about it again. Open system settings.
[system freeze]
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@mrl said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
"New version of Chrome is not supported on this ancient Ubuntu install. Do you want to upgrade your OS automagically?".
Was it 32-bit install? Chrome only ships 64-bit browsers for Linux any more.
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@boomzilla said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@mrl said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
"New version of Chrome is not supported on this ancient Ubuntu install. Do you want to upgrade your OS automagically?".
Was it 32-bit install? Chrome only ships 64-bit browsers for Linux any more.
That's possible. I installed it 2 years ago, so I don't remember.
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@boomzilla Remember when I told you to 'have fun' in whatever thread that was? I was alluding to shit like this.
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@pie_flavor I don't get it.
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@boomzilla I know. You will.
Have you gotten fed up with bash insanity and installed PowerShell yet?
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@pie_flavor said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
Have you gotten fed up with bash insanity and installed PowerShell yet?
I thought I made it clear that I was going the opposite direction than that. Also, no.
I've tried PowerShell a few times but it was painful.
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@mrl said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@boomzilla said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@mrl said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
"New version of Chrome is not supported on this ancient Ubuntu install. Do you want to upgrade your OS automagically?".
Was it 32-bit install? Chrome only ships 64-bit browsers for Linux any more.
That's possible. I installed it 2 years ago, so I don't remember.
Yeah, it sounds about right because I’m using elementary OS, which is basically a better Ubuntu 16.04 and it’s getting the usual Chrome updates.
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@boomzilla said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
I've tried PowerShell a few times but it was painful
Yeah, shell languages are like that
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@boomzilla said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
I've tried PowerShell a few times but it was painful.
It's really quite nice once you get used to it....and turn off the bloody stupid Execution Policy stuff.
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@cursorkeys I especially enjoy the part where you're passing sequences of objects instead of e.g. a textual list of files, and thus don't have to do all sorts of hackery in scripts.
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@boomzilla said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@pie_flavor said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
Have you gotten fed up with bash insanity and installed PowerShell yet?
I thought I made it clear that I was going the opposite direction than that. Also, no.
I've tried PowerShell a few times but it was painful.
I have an example of why PowerShell is worse than Bash:
With only software distributed by Microsoft, the command
bash -c 'echo $1' -- 'hello world'
prints nothing in PowerShell and printshello world
in bash. You can access bash by typingbash
in PowerShell, after which you will have a bash shell with a bright blue background that's identical to one of the default console colors and also makes it really hard to read text in like half the remaining colors.
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@mrl said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@boomzilla said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@mrl said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
"New version of Chrome is not supported on this ancient Ubuntu install. Do you want to upgrade your OS automagically?".
Was it 32-bit install? Chrome only ships 64-bit browsers for Linux any more.
That's possible. I installed it 2 years ago, so I don't remember.
Next time you're near the machine, run this command and tell us what it says:
uname -a
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@ben_lubar How is that something bad about Powershell? Yes, you can start bash from it, if you've configured either Cygwin or the Linux Subsystem. But just about the only thing I can see in that post which is an actual complaint is the color, which is configurable.
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What about starting PowerShell from bash?
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Something in your system is incompatible with Ubuntu drivers and causes crashes. That sucks.
But getting frustrated because you continued to use the system after you knew that it was going to crash all the fucking time was your own damn fault.
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@anonymous234 said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
Something in your system is incompatible with Ubuntu drivers and causes crashes. That sucks.
But getting frustrated because you continued to use the system after you knew that it was going to crash all the fucking time was your own damn fault.
You didn't read my post at all or you just didn't understand it?
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@pie_flavor said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar How is that something bad about Powershell? Yes, you can start bash from it, if you've configured either Cygwin or the Linux Subsystem. But just about the only thing I can see in that post which is an actual complaint is the color, which is configurable.
I don't have Cygwin installed. This is Microsoft software being broken.
Also, if you do this:
bash -c '$1' -- 'echo hello world'
it works in PowerShell for no apparent reason.
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@ben_lubar Ben, remember how we talked about explaining things rather than just repeating the assertion? You appear to be saying that Powershell is worse than Bash because running a Bash script works in Bash and not in Powershell. By that logic, the SNES is a better console than the PS4 because if you try to put a SNES cartridge in a PS4 you can't play the game
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@jaloopa said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar Ben, remember how we talked about explaining things rather than just repeating the assertion? You appear to be saying that Powershell is worse than Bash because running a Bash script works in Bash and not in Powershell. By that logic, the SNES is a better console than the PS4 because if you try to put a SNES cartridge in a PS4 you can't play the game
There are lots of other reasons PowerShell is worse, like the fact that it pretends to have a bunch of bash commands and then doesn't actually attempt to make their interfaces anything like the ones in bash. For example, try
wget https://some-address
orrm -rf foo bar
in PowerShell.
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
Next time you're near the machine, run this command and tell us what it says:
uname -a
It says I
havehadn't updated Cygwin in almost 2 years.
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
For example, try wget https://some-address or rm -rf foo bar in PowerShell.
You're telling me
wget
is a bash command? EDIT: I looked it up; it's not.(
rm
I'll grant you.)
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@blakeyrat it's a command I use via bash
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@ben_lubar Aliases are nice. You can at least
man
the thing you remember, and get information. As someone who doesn't use commandline much, a little fuzziness is useful.
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@magus said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar Aliases are nice. You can at least
man
the thing you remember, and get information. As someone who doesn't use commandline much, a little fuzziness is useful.Having the aliases actually use the same parameter names as the commands and have the same behavior would be nice, though.
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@ben_lubar That only even makes sense sometimes. The functions you're calling are not bash programs, and take object parameters a lot of the time. They have aliases to make them easy to find, but they're just aliases.
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@ben_lubar No, because then you're just writing Bash. You do know what a scripting language is, yes? How about an alias? And for the record,
wget 'https://example.com'
works just fine. There's also theiwr
alias, which more accurately matches the command (Invoke-WebRequest
). And if the sheer presence of thewget
orcurl
aliases disturbs you that much, you can disable them in your profile script.
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@blakeyrat said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
(
rm
I'll grant you.)Even
rm
isn't a bash command. It's an executable in /bin. Its syntax is 100% up to whoever made it.It's like me saying AIX is worse than Linux because it's not Linux. (It's a pain in the ass for entirely different reasons.)
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@heterodox Oh, I assumed it was a built-in. Then Ben's just 100% mega-wrong here. Great.
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
Having the aliases actually use the same parameter names as the commands and have the same behavior would be nice, though.
They probably don't because the behavior and names of the commands was shitty.
What's the point of starting from a blank slate if you just make everything identical to what it was before?
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@blakeyrat said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
Having the aliases actually use the same parameter names as the commands and have the same behavior would be nice, though.
They probably don't because the behavior and names of the commands was shitty.
What's the point of starting from a blank slate if you just make everything identical to what it was before?
I have no problem starting from a blank slate. The problem is when Microsoft makes
wget
an alias of a command that acts nothing likewget
.
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@ben_lubar Then remove the alias. You're already doing it wrong if you're typing
wget
into PowerShell in the first place.
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@pie_flavor said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar You're already doing it wrong if you're typing
intowget
Powerany Shell in the first place.FTFY
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
The problem is when Microsoft makes wget an alias of a command that acts nothing like wget.
- Why is that a problem?
- Why not just not type it?
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@blakeyrat said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
The problem is when Microsoft makes wget an alias of a command that acts nothing like wget.
- Why is that a problem?
- Why not just not type it?
Things I would accept:
- Not having a
wget
command (thanks, I'll go get my own) - Having a
wget
command that works (thanks, you saved me the trouble of downloading wget.exe)
Things I do not accept:
- Having
wget
be an alias of a command that does not act anything likewget
.
Would you feel uncomfortable if you booted up a computer and clicked on the "Microsoft Word" icon and it started up Dwarf Fortress?
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
Would you feel uncomfortable if you booted up a computer and clicked on the "Microsoft Word" icon and it started up Dwarf Fortress?
But your example is stupid, because Word and Dwarf Fortress don't do the same thing at all. You're talking about two commands that do the same thing, just in a slightly different way.
If double-clicking Word brought up OpenOffice Writer, I'd probably just shrug and start writing.
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@blakeyrat Dwarf Fortress also features a text entry box on some of its screens, so it's Close Enough
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@ben_lubar Dwarf Fortress has an icon.
Invoke-WebRequest
does not. You would only know thatwget
functioned as an alias forInvoke-WebRequest
if you typed it in. Plus what @blakeyrat said. But nobody is pasting in a bashwget
command and expecting it to work. Instead, it is one of a couple of different aliases (includingcurl
) which most people consider synonymous with the act of invoking a web request from the command line. Obviously nobody wants to have to type out the whole Invoke-WebRequest command every time, so they choose an alias which works for them or make their own, andiwr
is less beginner-friendly because it references the name of the command rather than things the newcomer already knows.
Or how about this: In Java, a static class is one that is a static member of its containing class (as opposed to a member class). In C#, a static class is one that only contains static methods and cannot be instantiated. Would you yell at Microsoft for 'changing' the behavior ofstatic
? No. C# is its own language and is neither required to behave the same as Java nor to look completely different to Java. PowerShell is neither required to have itswget
command behave the same as Bash's, nor to not have one.
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@pie_flavor If C# had a class named
java.lang.String
and it managed printer queues, would you be making this same argument?If you booted up a computer and clicked the icon labeled "Google Chrome" and it opened a search for the element with atomic number 24 in Internet Explorer 6, are you allowed to be surprised?
If a friend asks you to meet them at Dairy Queen for a Blizzard and when you get there it's just a computer running Overwatch with a cow wearing a paper crown next to it, is that something you are required to expect?
The fact is, words mean things. If I type
exit
in a command prompt, it should exit the command prompt, not show me a list of exits in the building. If I typeecho Hello World
in a command prompt, it should repeat the text after the wordecho
.If I type
bash
in a command prompt, it shouldn't ignore what I asked it to do and run PowerShell instead. If I typeperl
in the command prompt, my computer should either start Perl or set itself on fire. NOT open Ruby.wget
is the name of a specific program. I would be fine with a command with a name likerename
acting differently on different systems, but there is no excuse for pretending to be a program and then providing a completely different interface.
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@ben_lubar You're saying things with huge concept shifts. From a web browser to a specific search. From an ice cream store to a video game and a cow. From a text sequence to a print queue. These are not the same concept.
Invoke-WebRequest
is the same concept as the realwget
(partly; it can also POST and such) - getting a file over HTTP.Perhaps your points about
perl
andbash
have some merit, but need I remind you, you are the one typingwget
in PowerShell in the first place. If the realwget
program is on your $Path, it will run the real one instead. If it isn't, I'm not sure what you were expecting to happen.
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
The fact is, words mean things.
Ben leave your basement and go to a coffeeshop and ask people what they think "wget" means. Then be enlightened.
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@blakeyrat said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
The fact is, words mean things.
Ben leave your basement and go to a coffeeshop and ask people what they think "wget" means. Then be enlightened.
I'll just skip the bullshit and do what someone who doesn't know what a name I said refers to nowadays:
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@blakeyrat it's a command I use via
bashcmd.exeFTFM. Applications you launch from a particular shell don't make it the shell's command.
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@tsaukpaetra said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@blakeyrat it's a command I use via
bashcmd.exeFTFM. Applications you launch from a particular shell don't make it the shell's command.
Here's an example of a command that is part of the shell by necessity:
cd
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@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@tsaukpaetra said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@blakeyrat it's a command I use via
bashcmd.exeFTFM. Applications you launch from a particular shell don't make it the shell's command.
Here's an example of a command that is part of the shell by necessity:
cd
Is cd a command or a program? If you can't tell the difference your shell isn't going to help you in any case.
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$ type cd cd is a shell builtin
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@ben_lubar I'm sure you could write a cd program that changes the parent process's current directory. At least I am pretty sure it's possible on Windows.
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@lb_ said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
@ben_lubar I'm sure you could write a cd program that changes the parent process's current directory. At least I am pretty sure it's possible on Windows.
I think it is too.
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@tsaukpaetra That's for Scheduled Tasks, not active processes. I think it's possible as well, but there doesn't seem to be a documented way to do so. (
SetCurrentDirectory()
only works on the current process.) You might have to start scribbling in the process' memory directly (there's a documented way for debuggers and another documented way for administrators) and muck around with one of the "reserved" parameters in the Process Environment Block (there's a documented way to get a pointer in the context of the target process, though most people use the more convenient way to get a pointer in the context of the calling process, because they're snooping, not scribbling).
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@twelvebaud said in I only wanted to watch some Kimmy Schmidt, for fuck's sake!:
That's for Scheduled Tasks, not active processes.
Ah, didn't notice the breadcrumb, my bad.