Linkdump #3

Here comes another linkdump. I’ve found and read interesting blog posts and also websites. And did a little exploration in “retro web”!

Blogs & Blog posts

• Where Unix runs today: Short stories about different clones or versions of Unix(not Linux!) being used in the recent timeline. The interesting part is about WhatsApp. Before Meta/Facebook takes over, the servers were running FreeBSD. Because “FreeBSD and its network stack make it possible for a small team to carry a very large userbase”.
• Measuring input latency on Linux: X11 vs Wayland: Marco Nett has done some benchmark to see how X11 and Wayland compare. He plays FPS games(as do I) so latency is important. I was thinking about writing a summary here but nope! Don’t wanna spoil it!
• Why we migrated many of our servers from Linux to FreeBSD: Stefano writes advantages of FreeBSD over Linux for many servers and services he and his team maintain. Note that these are real world data. Not some theories on the paper.
• Nobody clicks on your share button: One of many things many of us “passively” know or feel but no one looks into it to see if it’s true. Yup! The share buttons are a waste of screen space and a source of noise and distraction.
• The Email they shouldn’t have read: Another story from Stefano. Think twice when a company says they are open source and love it!
• Open Source solved remote work and distributed collaboration: I never thought of it this way!
• A post from OSNews quoting from an economist about LLMs/AI: This is one of the things many people without knowledge of economy have talked about. But now we have an economist reinforcing our gut!
• The story of BoxyBSD moving from bhyve to proxmox then again bak to bhyve: I have no knowledge or speciallity about virtualization. But the post seems interesting. In the case you don’t know, BoxyBSD offers small free virtual servers for people who want to learn BSD and some Solaris-based OSes.
• Jake Tae’s blog: An unmaintained but valuable educational resource about AI and Machine Learning.

Websites/Services

• Linux-hardware.org and BSD-hardware.info: A very valuable resource of hardware probes. I mean very very valuable. You can learn if some other hardware(which you possibly would like to buy) has good Linux or BSD support. But other than that, it’s also good to learn about technical details of devices when technical specs from the manufacturer are short. Make sure to probe your hardware. It might be helpful for someone else, possibly your future self!
• ActiveMatrixRooms.com: A directory of Matrix rooms. You can also see how many messages per hour are sent. If you’ve got a public community, you can submit it there. Then their bot will join the room and watch it.
• DarkTheme.club: A directory of websites with dark theme.
• Blogger Archetype Quiz: A funny quiz. Mine came out explorer and community gatherer!
• 32bit Cafe: A community of smallweb developers and creators. You can find many interesting stuff in there and also promote your own wares. And yeah, connect with the others.

Software

• Akse: An easy to use and beginner friendly 3D design software. For me, it is too primitve. But it might be useful for someone else, especially kids!
• Goeteia: A scheme for the web! It’s interesting and I should try it sometime. Macros come very handy in web. And… people are crazy! I mean good crazy!
• Hister: Your personal search engine. You can import pages from your browser history.
• CO2 (repo): A superset of C which is easy to integrate and use in Rust. I don’t know Hamid Reza Kalbasi who is behind the project. But reading his words, I can say these words are from a wise and experienced developer/engineer! Even if you think this project won’t do you any benefit, I still recommend to read philosophy behind CO2 to get some light!

Games

Here we’ve got 2 Luanti servers with various mini games. Who says open source games lack enough fun and entertainment?

• AES (Arcade Simulation System): AES is just great. With many fun mini games and very beautiful pixel graphics. However, a problem is it hasn’t got very big playerbase. So you have to bring your kids(it’s family safe), cousins and friends. Alternatively, you can watch the server to see when it’ll get populated. Usually certain times in a day or certain days in a week have better chance because of school!
• Luplay: This is another server with many interesting mini games. I haven’t played on this server. But the games seem fun. Like AES, it hasn’t got a huge playerbase.