It ain't perfect, but it's decent enough.
From a technical point of view, it can do anything that Microsoft Windows can. Except being forcefully installed on every non-MacOS 2019 computer you can buy.
Ciro Santilli's conversion to Linux happened around 2012, and was a central part of Ciro Santilli's Open Source Enlightenment, since it fundamentally enables the discovery and contribution to open source software. Because what awesome open source person would waste time porting their amazing projects to closed source OSes?
Ciro's modest nature can be seen as he likes to compare this event Buddha's Great Renunciation.
Linux should track glibc and POSIX command line utilities in-tree like BSD Operating System, otherwise people have no way to get the thing running in the first place without blobs or large out-of-tree scripts! Another enlightened soul who agrees.
Particularly interesting in the history of Linux is how it won out over the open competitors that were coming up in the time: MINIX (see the chat) and BSD Operating System that got legally bogged down at the critical growth moment.
You must watch this: truth Happens advertisement by Red Hat.
xkcd 619: Supported Features
. Source. This perfectly illustrates Linux development. First features that matter. Then useless features.The function being maximized in a optimization problem.
Although Ciro Santilli is a bit past their era, there's an aura of technical excellence about those people. It just seems that they sucked at business. Those open source hippies. Erm, wait.
Bibliography:
- archive.org/details/sunburstascentof00hall Sunburst: the ascent of Sun Microsystems by Mark Hall (1990)
The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems by Asianometry (2022)
Source. One of the main inspirations for the creation of their workstations were CAD applications.From Section "Lie algebra of a isometry group" we reach:
A cross browser, cross platform, and server-encrypted password manager is a must after Snowden!!! E.g. Proton Pass. And governments should obviously provide one to its citizens, or else be spied upon by the USA obviously: Governments should provide basic Internet infrastructure.
Notably, it does not undergo crossover.
A more precise term for those in the know: open source software that also has a liberal license, for some definition of liberal.
Ciro Santilli defines liberal as: "can be commercialized without paying anything back" (but possibly subject to other restrictions).
He therefore does not consider Creative Commons licenses with NC to be FOSS.
For the newbs, the term open source software is good enough, since most open source software is also FOSS.
But when it's not, it's crucial to know.
The approach many courses take to physics, specially "modern Physics" is really bad, this is how it should be taught:
- start by describing experiments that the previous best theory did not explain, see also: Section "Physics education needs more focus on understanding experiments and their history"
- then, give the final formula for the next best theory
- then, give all the important final implications of that formula, and how it amazingly describes the experiments. In particular this means: doing physics means calculating a number
- then, give some mathematical intuition on the formulas, and how the main equation could have been derived
- finally, then and only then, start deriving the outcomes of the main formula in detail
This is likely because at some point, experiments get more and more complicated, and so people are tempted to say "this is the truth" instead of "this is why we think this is the truth", which is much harder.
But we can't be lazy, there is no replacement to the why.
Related:
- settheory.net/learnphysics and www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MKjPYuD60I&list=PLJcTRymdlUQPwx8qU4ln83huPx-6Y3XxH from settheory.net
- math.ucr.edu/home/baez/books.html by John Baez. Mentions:
This webpage doesn't have lots of links to websites. Websites just don't have the sort of in-depth material you need to learn technical subjects like advanced math and physics — at least, not yet. To learn this stuff, you need to read lots of booksCiro Santilli is trying to change that: OurBigBook.com.
- web.archive.org/web/20210324182549/http://jakobschwichtenberg.com/one-thing/ by Jakob Schwichtenberg
Quantum Field Theory lecture notes by David Tong (2007) puts it well:This is also mentioned e.g. at Video "The Quantum Experiment that ALMOST broke Locality by The Science Asylum (2019)".
In classical physics, the primary reason for introducing the concept of the field is to construct laws of Nature that are local. The old laws of Coulomb and Newton involve "action at a distance". This means that the force felt by an electron (or planet) changes immediately if a distant proton (or star) moves. This situation is philosophically unsatisfactory. More importantly, it is also experimentally wrong. The field theories of Maxwell and Einstein remedy the situation, with all interactions mediated in a local fashion by the field.
Condensed matter physics is one of the best examples of emergence. We start with a bunch of small elements which we understand fully at the required level (atoms, electrons, quantum mechanics) but then there are complex properties that show up when we put a bunch of them together.
Includes fun things like:
As of 2020, this is the other "fundamental branch of physics" besides to particle physics/nuclear physics.
Condensed matter is basically chemistry but without reactions: you study a fixed state of matter, not a reaction in which compositions change with time.
Just like in chemistry, you end up getting some very well defined substance properties due to the incredibly large number of atoms.
Just like chemistry, the ultimate goal is to do de-novo computational chemistry to predict those properties.
And just like chemistry, what we can actually is actually very limited in part due to the exponential nature of quantum mechanics.
Also since chemistry involves reactions, chemistry puts a huge focus on liquids and solutions, which is the simplest state of matter to do reactions in.
Condensed matter however can put a lot more emphasis on solids than chemistry, notably because solids are what we generally want in end products, no one likes stuff leaking right?
But it also studies liquids, e.g. notably superfluidity.
One thing condensed matter is particularly obsessed with is the fascinating phenomena of phase transition.
What Is Condensed matter physics? by Erica Calman
. Source. Cute. Overview of the main fields of physics research. Quick mention of his field, quantum wells, but not enough details. Unlisted articles are being shown, click here to show only listed articles.