m0xEE @m0xee@librem.one

@Suiseiseki @iska@mstdn.starnix.network
So you started with being strict about Linux — GNU/Linux and now you tell us the "booting linux" means getting to the login prompt? 😏
Booting linux means exactly that — getting kernel to the point when, in theory, it can mount the real root fs and get to starting other os facilities. Your init script may even stop here. Gracefully.
If you get to some sort of busybox prompt, you are far from bringing up the network, but it still counts!

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @Suiseiseki Sorry, it wasn't out of disrespect 😅
But if we are nitpicking here I don't know what I should explain and what I shouldn't.

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @Suiseiseki Nope, if grub can read the kernel and initrd, the kernel will still boot using the stuff initrd has in it to the point when it should mount the real root.

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @Suiseiseki initrd is optional, but most linux-based operating systems use it as it has some advantages. For example, you can have filesystem support built as kernel modules, including support for the filesystem your real root partition has. Otherwise you'd have to have them built into the kernel.

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @Suiseiseki Then a lot of other shit happens, agetty or something similar gets started and you get the login prompt. At last!
Thing is, if real root filesystem is not accessible: block device is not accessible, filesystem is not supported or it is damaged — you won't get the login prompt. But you will still see the errors in *framebuffer* console.

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @Suiseiseki It sure does! the bootloader reads initrd image and just passes it to the kernel. Kernel doesn't know shit about most file systems at this point. The init itself is in initrd image (so initrd comes first), so are the filesystem modules. Init inserts filesystem modules (and the modules required for the block devices to work) into the kernel then mounts the real root filesystem, now that it has the proper filesystem support and has the block device accessible.

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @Suiseiseki There is this thing called initrd. Yeah, if you go into nitpicking mode, you can pretend you didn't understand what I was talking about.
Just do dd if=/dev/random of=the-block-device-you-have-your-real-root-partition-on and see how framebuffer works, but you still get no login prompt 😄

@Suiseiseki I didn't mention any login prompt. The fact that framebuffer works doesn't imply login prompt, it doesn't even imply you can access built-in storage and mount the root partition, right?
I get it, you just want to push some agenda, but this doesn't look like a perfect occasion to do it.

@Suiseiseki It is more ambiguous than using linux though. I think everyone here gets that I'm talking about GNU/Linux, not Android, not Chimera or some other even more obscure shit.
I know the difference, you know the difference — everyone in this thread does. If I was writing a paper on it, I'd use the correct term, but you don't have to be so picky about the coments in a rather humorous thread.

@Suiseiseki I insist that it is acceptable. Sure the kernel won't work by itself, but that is not what my point was. This device is not usable because there is no support for the hardware it has *in the kernel*. No init can change that.

@Suiseiseki And I'd certainly use GNU/linux more often than I do now if I didn't have this 500 character limit.

@Suiseiseki I still think it's acceptable in this rare case. Only the kernel boots on this device, the userspace doesn't matter at this point 😆

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @safiuddinkhan@fosstodon.org @hacknorris @2T2@mstdn.starnix.network Oh, now I get the question 😂
Why Windows and not Linux? Because the community port of Windows is great, everything works, including HW video decoding. It can boot linux — but that's it. It has some framebuffer support and the networking might work if stars align properly. A device like this is hardly useful.

@iska@mstdn.starnix.network @safiuddinkhan@fosstodon.org @hacknorris @2T2@mstdn.starnix.network It has this nice dock. You can plug kb, mouse and a display into it and use it like a normal computer. It has only 3Gb of RAM and a dated SoC, but it's still okay. I have hooked up one of the TVs to it — the one that doesn't have any "smart" features to it so I can watch movies directly from NAS.
I've got a cheap Chinese phone to use… as a phone, but this one still works, why throw it away?

@safiuddinkhan@fosstodon.org Get ready for a ~50 Gb download then. Even with modern codecs like h265 2160p content is huge!

@safiuddinkhan@fosstodon.org @hacknorris @2T2@mstdn.starnix.network It could be a Windows 10 Mobile phone, I have one. It has a browser and it's fast, but it's EOL and doesn't have lastest shiny features so a lot of websites just don't work.
Last time I tried even Proton's web interface and Hydrogen (lightweight Matrix web client) stopped working. So I put Windows 11 on it — now it's not a phone, it's a PC 🤣

@safiuddinkhan@fosstodon.org Don't try watching Altered Carbon with subscription like this! I'm really glad I didn't see it before I've got a 4k TV. Visuals are one of the strongest points of the show, in 480p it's probably just another show full of noir detective clichés.

@daksh
For example software just crashes on some invalid input, devs need only problem description to reproduce it and probably the logs, but you don't want them to see your open windows so you exclude the screenshot. Other issue is a GUI bug so you send the screenshot, but not the system logs.
If the user doesn't care he could just use the defaults, but there should be choice.
This is a real privacy issue, just not the kind you wanted to discuss 😅

@daksh Oh, sorry, I didn't make my point clear.
Companies could fix this by making crash reporting more transparent, but often choose not to. For example in Windows you can only flip the switch, whether you want to send "extended" info or not. What is extended and what is a bare minimum is not obvious. Apple's crash reporter used to be better, still not perfect.
There are good implementations: all information gets divided in sections and you can place a checkmark against each section.

@inference @safiuddinkhan@fosstodon.org @cyberspook @iska@mstdn.starnix.network @dushman You may be right, but this article is just bad. Hardening in the OS is not good enough so we can just install Android 🤷
Hardware switches are not good enough because we can just use software airplane mode 🤦
Having modem on a separate board so that we can physically disconnect it is not good enough because we can just ask SoC to do it (and trust it) 🤯
It doesn't mean that Liberm5 is perfect, but these points are just awful!