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#textbooks#linux#post#students#better#more#toasters#book#college#subscription

Discussion (15 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

tiffanyh16 minutes ago
If you like this kind of post, you might like this “http explained” post.

https://peteris.rocks/blog/htop/

duendefmabout 1 hour ago
Thank you for such a quality post.
m463about 1 hour ago
the end struck me - a picture of an os book. I wonder if students these days retain their books after college, or do they get returned as a rental?
linguae39 minutes ago
I'm a professor at a community college in Silicon Valley, and my students use online textbooks. I try to use Creative Commons or other libre textbooks, but sometimes I use paid textbooks when they are heads-and-shoulders better than their libre alternatives. Some e-textbooks can be accessed on a subscription basis. I admit I prefer non-subscription materials, but a colleague advised me that often the book that students learn from is different from a good reference book that students can use once they've already learned the material. For example, my colleagues and I have had great success with an online, interactive textbook for discrete math. While the subscription is unfortunately only valid for the duration of the course, once students have learned discrete math, they could buy a used copy of Rosen's discrete math textbook as a reference.

The nice thing about e-textbooks is not needing to carry around a bunch of heavy books. I remember the tomes I had in my college days, such as Stewart's Calculus.

post-it33 minutes ago
I bought as few textbooks as I could, but the few that I did buy are sitting in my parents' basement bookshelves somewhere.
jmclnxabout 2 hours ago
Interesting post, it made me wonder. At one time FreeBSD swap usage/logic was far better than what Linux did. Is that still the case ?
0x45710 minutes ago
Yes, It's just not every tool is aware of ZFS ARC. Which is what this post is about. Author just describes in an odd way.
shevy-java37 minutes ago
I remember how NetBSD promoted itself as running on many more toasters than Linux once.

Then some NetBSD dev wrote on their mailing list that this is no longer true. Linux runs on more toasters now. (And also top 500 supercomputers, but toasters are the real metal to the petal test.)

These fights always remind me of:

https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

It's an interesting piece of history too. I kind of evaluate it a bit differently, e. g. my summary is "momentum beats academic perfection". Which is not completely what it is about, but it is my own imperfect TL;DR summary.

bee_rider18 minutes ago
This basically fits my stereotype of BSD being a little bit more hardcore while Linux is a little more accessible… when the question was “can you install an OS on a toaster,” BSD had an advantage. Now that normal engineers have to make IOT toasters (for some reason) Linux should have the advantage, right?
sublinear15 minutes ago
Normal engineers don't do that either.
Levitating14 minutes ago
why did that url point me to a scrotum in an egg cup
naturalmovementabout 1 hour ago
ZFS cache. The end.

User installs an unfamiliar server OS with an enterprise filesystem and is stunned when it works differently. I fail to see a teachable moment here.

toast0about 1 hour ago
Sure, but also some tools needed fixing.
shevy-java39 minutes ago
This is why I use Linux. :>

Poor FreeBSD folks though. After so many years trying to present themselves as better alternative, the road just got steeper ...

edoceo31 minutes ago
The OS Crusades are over man