Posts by vincent himpe

Wine 11 runs Windows apps in Linux and macOS better than ever

excel macros.

The litmus test

Is running an application like Solidworks or Altium Designer with full GPU acceleration on something like a Quadro or RTX-ADA and using peripherals like a 3dconnecion spacemouse.

That is historically where Wine and others have failed miserably.

VBA macros ? i got tons of spreadsheets full of macro code

What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

How about

The ability to run existing windows binaries ?

You know, things like Solidworks ? Catia ? Altium ? Adobe ? Affinity ? Wine doesn't cut it...

Stuff people use so they can exchange work files with other people.

Windows 11 needs an XP SP2 moment, says ex-Microsoft engineer

Re: "Just till it doesn't suck."

ahh. vacuum cleaners. The only product that sucks if it doesn't suck ....

Seven years later, Airbus is still trying to kick its Microsoft habit

i think it's all the VBA macros

Until google can implement the macro system it's offering is a no-go.

I have lots of spreadsheets that contain complex macros. translating that to a different language is a pile of effort i don't need/want.

Same reason i still use the desktop version of office

Microsoft's fix for slow File Explorer: load it before you need it

i'd like to have copy or move start doing things immediately.

All the modern file browsers (even on mac) take oodles of time before they even start moving or copying a single file. They are first "estimating" how long it will take.

From a command prompt it starts directly. Why can't browsers do that ? I don't need to see an estimate. It's going to be wrong anyway.

Researchers intercept unencrypted satellite traffic from space blabbermouths

Re: Visitors

Isn't T-Mobile a German company ? they are owned by Deutsche Telecom ...

How your mouse could eavesdrop on you and rat you out

I Knew this old Bus Mouse card would come in handy

Now to find a motherboard with ISA slot ....

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

space plane....

Strap a fuel tank and two boosters on it and just fly it there. problem solved.

Google's dev registration plan 'will end the F-Droid project'

Funny security argument : "anyone can inspect the source"

Yes you can inspect it, but pray tell : how many of the Android based (or other platform) phone users can actually read code ? or have the technical skills to deep dive into the program logic to find attack vectors ? 1% ? 0.1% ? 0.01% ?

Having the source means nothing to those people. You can own an entire library of books, but if you only watch tv it does you no good.

Having the source is a false safety argument. It only applies to a very small minority. I don't deny it's good. It's very nice the code is available. But for the overwhelming mass of Android users it means nothing. They can't read it, understand it, let alone fix it.

That is why there needs to be accountability and registration of the developers. The world is 99+% non-developers.

Zorin OS 18 beta makes Linux look like anything but Linux

Re: Can we go back to simple, flat, user interfaces ?

With "container" i mean a single directory or file per application. Everything that belongs to the application lives in that space. It can't step outside that space.

If i install a new computer i can simply copy that folder over and i'm done.

The drive would essentially have 3 root folders : /Os , /Application and /User. The operating system and all its stuff lives in /OS. Applications live in containers in /Applications. So /applications/Inkscape would contain Inkscape. my home directory is in /users/Vincent.

Moving stuff to a new machine is a matter of copying those two folders. Those folders could even be links to a remote storage. That way you can have a master install on a remote machine. When you fire it up that loads the local machines /users/<current_loggedin_user>/Applicationsettings/Inkscape and off it goes.

Now you have centrally managed applications with local user settings.

So some programs could be locally installed, or live on a server where they are centrally managed. That way everyone uses the same version.

As an admin : once i got the application configured properly on my local machine deploy is easy : copy the folder from my install to the server.

I Have 3 computers. It is hell keeping applications in sync. Documents are easy : Github, Dropbox or any kind of cloud store. Applications ? unless they are "portable applications" it is frustrating. Make everything portable. Detach the applications from the OS

Can we go back to simple, flat, user interfaces ?

Think Solaris, KDE, Windows 98. Without all the fancy borderless windows, disappearing scrollbars and fly-out panels that overload the processor and graphics cards with alpha blending, glow and z-depth ? Sometimes it's hard to figure out where the exact border is, where the scrollbars are , where the corner is to resize.

It just seems to me that the only differentiator these days is 23 million different user interfaces and color-schemes.

Can we have a single deploy system where you don't have to "install" an application ? The application lives in a container. Installing is a matter of just throwing that container in the /Applications folder. If i want to move it : copy the container. That container can be compressed file (think like a ZIP file). The application cannot step outside of its container. It can't write anything, apart from application generated documents, outside its container. Application generated documents can only go in the /user/documents/... folder.

Gone would be the endless problems with missing files, crap left over everywhere. If an application requires certain other packages : they go in the requesting applications folder. Disk space is cheap and plenty. The package has a layout that let's the OS automatically detect the executable(s), icon(s) so those appear automatically on your launcher. You can pin those as you please.

Every time i have a new computer i need to spend hours loading all the programs and getting the system back with all my settings.

The above mechanism would be a matter of simply copying the /applications and /user folders to a new machine.

And i'd be able to find a programs window border and scrollbars.

I don't need another user glass user interface with pastel colors. I need something that works.

NIMBYs threaten to sink Project Sail, a $17B datacenter development in Georgia

Re: Two sides to the story

quote : There's no obvious reason to store vast amounts of "data" in multiple places

Let's ditch all the backups then. While we're at it. The internet could use a good scrub. Replace all duplicate files with pointers to one file . You can probably save 99.99% of space.

No more 'Sanity Checks.' Inclusive language guide bans problematic tech terms

Re: It's being done for hardware too...

I Remember those. Built several boards with them for ATE. Used as pin drivers. good times.

It's being done for hardware too...

SPI busses use 4 signals : CS , CLK , MOSI and MISO

ChipSelect, CLocK are fine but some people are offended by MOSI : Master Out, Slave In and MISO : Master In , Slave Out.

So they changed that now to COPI and CIPO : Controller Out, Peripheral In and Controller In, Peripheral Out.

Intel totals automotive group

Re: can’t make good money on the Automotive sector

The automotive world is different. You can split the landscape into several sections : sensors , engine / drive train control , safety , body control and infotainment.

Intel doesn;t play in the sensor market ( they got rid of mobileye). Engine / drive train control is the domain of microcontrollers. TI, NXP and ST-Micro rule that world. Intel doesn't do microcontrollers anymore. They had a lot of offerings in the 8051, 8096 families in the 80's and 90's but systems no are invariably Arm Cortex based.

Safety (stability, antilock brakes etc) requires ASIL level D certified stuff. Those are highly specialized. The ARC processor (for ASICs) , NXP S32 (ARM cortex) family , TI Jacinto (ARM Cortex) and Freescale Qorivva (PowerPC architecture). They feature multiple cores that run in lock-step. The cores are sometimes different architectures (one 64 bit, one 16 bit) to prevent software duplication and error path duplication.

Body control requires processors with lots of IO (analog and digital, PWM, timers and BLDC bridge drivers) , connectivity (CAN, LIN , Flexray, Automotive ethernet ) and lots of on-board ram and flash. Intel is not a player there. Again, the domain of ST, NXP, TI, Infineon. Intel had an offering but i don't even know if anyone uses it.

The biggest problem for all of the above is the automotive temperature range. These device need to operate from -55 to +125 (AEC-Q) or even +155c. This requires additional design effort but also additional testing effort during manufacturing. It's a cut-throat market where devices cost 1 to 25 $ .. not a pond Intel and AMD want to fish in.

So, what's left ? infotainment. No highest-level AEC-Q requirement, 0 to 85c suffices, not safety. Low power desirable, embedded graphics desirable since we are all moving to touch-screens, and the ability to run commodity OS (typically a linux kernel based system. This is contrary to the other domains where they either run bare-metal or use the likes of VxWorks , QNX or other RTOS).

Intel has done well using their mobile processors + ARc graphics , but they are being overtaken by AMD. AMD now owns Xilinx FPGA technology and can offer highly customizable platforms like the Zync family. The Zync processors are even used in aerospace as flight, engine and FTS controllers. AMD is branching out into ADAS and AI. the Ryzen for infotainment and Versal for AI

It's a weird shift.

European consumers are mostly saying 'non' to trading in their old phones

Phone, meet Drill

Drill, eat phone !

At least make a nice hole through the memory chip and cpu (the cpu contains the secure enclave storage )

KDE targets Windows 10 'exiles' claiming 'your computer is toast'

Installed Linux, now how do i bring over all my software?

What about all the software i bought over the years and licenses ? Rhino, Adobe Creative Suite, Solidworks , Altium to name a few. They don't run on Linux ( Some may run on Wine albeit with a lot of difficulty and severe limitations )

There's the rub for people. Switching to other tools is not an option. I have invested decades of time and money in those tools and make a living from them. Not interested in "equivalents".

So it's Win11 then.

It's fun making Studio Ghibli-style images with ChatGPT – but intellectual property is no laughing matter

Cartoonify filters have existed for decades

Almost any image editing program can do it or there's a plugin for it.

So what is new ?

AI is just another tool that makes the process a bit easier and does not require skill

The "art" is in the story and the way it is told.

If i draw a bunch of black rectangles and fill them with bold base colors, have i ripped off Mondriaan ? It's his style but i have not violated his copyright ?

Can "styles" be copyrighted ?

This is Baroque style, or Louis XIV style ...

When AI helps you code, who owns the finished product?

Anything AI produces should be Open Source

Free, as in free beer. and Free as in do whatever you want with it.

Of course, the AI should only be trained on a codebase that already fits that description

Another week, another leak for Boeing's Starliner crew capsule

Re: uncrewed

processes ? what processes ?

BepiColombo power struggle could leave probe short of Mercury's orbit

Re: the [...] SEP system has been "glitchy" for a while.

Are they looking for Jinnan 't onnix ? I hope it's not the room temperature water version

Space insurers make record-breaking loss as orbit gets cramped

Space insurance

Essentially gambling. They gamble they can keep your money. Space is hard. If it blows up, it blows up. Better spend money on the design so it doesn't blow up than to gamble with it.

EU duties might not be enough to hold off flood of Chinese EVs

Re: E-con-nomics

Traditional car makers don't make cars anymore. That stopped long ago. They assemble them from bits and pieces they buy elsewhere. Engine controllers from Bosch, Valeo instrument clusters, Wabco ABS systems, Magneti Marelli alternators. Some of them don't even make their own engines anymore. They buy them from other makers. Engineering is nonexistent. The difference between a model 2024 and last years is 2 extra cupholders and a new ugly pastel paint that looks like something my 3 month old daughter produced after filling up on formula.

European Parliament votes to screw repair rights in consumer toolkits

we'll switch to 008004. muhahahaha

See if you can solder that.

Malicious xz backdoor reveals fragility of open source

Run linux they said...

It's very secure they said...

You can see all the source code so you can check for yourself they said...

Unfortunately so can every miscreant on the planet. That bit they left out...

Since the repositories are open it's relatively easy for anyone to modify it. That bit they completely overlooked.

Opening the source is putting the cat next to the milk. Yes you can keep watching the cat...

Allowing anyone to meddle with it, is spoon feeding the cat.

I'm all for open source , live and learn, but lock down the modifications hard. In order to be allowed to make a change use a traceable and verifiable id and lots and lots of other barriers. Better check it's your own cat...

Year of Linux on the desktop creeps closer as market share rises a little

Re: what runs on the users machine

Yes and no. The cost of developing these things is staggering and the user base too small. Silicon tools have always been rentware.

Others like Solidworks and Altium are not rentware. They keep working but are frozen in time. You pay a subscription to keep getting updates, new features and bugfixes. Maintenance essentially.

You don't lose your work. I have a 3 year old license of Solidworks. It still works fine. I don't need the latest and greatest. Same for Adobe Creative Suite. Altium is the same deal. It keeps running but is frozen in time. That one i keep up to date as i make money of it. Silicon Design tools are true rentware. Stop paying and it stops working. This is akin to silicon testers where you pay for "test time" : you pay by the hours the machine is running so it is in everyone's benefit to test a given component as quickly as possible.

Re: what runs on the users machine

You clearly have not read my post. Try running CAD applications like Catia, Solidworks, NX , Altium and the likes. That doesn't work over remote desktop or on Wine. Adobe tools ? Rhino ? Anything GPU intensive with realtime 3D doesn't work over a remote desktop or in a browser.

The funny thing is that, traditionally, heavy CAD was always *NIX based : HP-UX, Solaris, Irix. The only ones remaining is Cadence and Mentor, although the PCB tools also have gone windows.

The remaining (commercial) Linux based tools are VERY picky on what distro. Mainly only specific versions of RHEL. Try it on anything else and you get no support at all. You are on your own, don't complain if you encounter issues. You can't do work like that. you are spending more time second-guessing and fixing the apps than actually doing productive work. Application users are not coders or sysadmins. That's a different world. There it DOES work. Outside that realm : not so much.

The Linux desktop ecosystem is simply too fragmented to cover all ifs, thens and buts. Every UI is different, using different runtimes and different libraries. They don't even use the same install mechanisms. Patch and Break. The application manufacturers don't want to deal with it. Windows is easier. Most windows applications are version agnostic. There may be a minimum version but that's mainly it.

The same is true for browser based apps. Remember the misery with having to make websites that could work in IE, Mozilla, Chrome, Opera. For many years you had to code HTML differently and detect the browser used. Fortunately that has mostly gone away. Almost every browser these days uses one of two cores.

Re-unify all the linux UI's around a common core , and have one package installer. That way anything can install anywhere and run anywhere, just like Windows and Mac.

But that goes against the grain of the entire Linux world. And that is the issue. It is too fragmented and too hard for the app developers to support all permutations.

Please don't start about source or open-source. The source of these applications is not available and never will be. And the knock-offs are not the same. Similar isn't good enough. Data exchange and translation are a forever headache and time-hog.

The (desktop application) business world doesn't work that way.

Linux has its place. But not on the desktop. Not until they solve some base things : making sure the existing apps can run. I understand that from a system admin perspective linux has certain advantages. But the desk worker has nothing to do with that. He/She needs to be productive. They have nothing to do with the OS. The OS is only there to run applications and access file systems over a network. We will run the OS required for the application pool needed.

Re: Applications that, often, only exist for the microsoft

That's the backend. i'm talking front end, that what runs on the users machine. Linux is fine ticking away in a server room somewhere. User facing ? Not so much.

Re: Repeat after me:

Would that be : the ability to run EXISTING APPLICATIONS without hassle ?

Businesses don't use operating systems to do work. They use applications. Applications that, often, only exist for the microsoft operating systems. There may be "similar" applications but they are NOT THE SAME. Retraining the workforce , changing business operations. Not going to happen.

I'm in the technical domain. Catia, Siemens NX, Solidworks, Altium and lots of other CAD. sorry bub , windows only ... Running it under Wine doesn't work.

Sandra Rivera’s next mission: Do for FPGAs what she did for Intel's Xeon

full circle (twice)

intel spun of their CPLD as Altera, bought it back, now spits it back out.. That's twice...

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

Re: there are plenty of alternatives to Windows 11 out there

I tried Wine. Doesn’t play nice with CAD aplications like Solidworks or altium. Same for things that need parallel port access (yeah i have several device programmers that still run off a EPP port so i need to keep some machines around with an ich9 or old style pci slot.). Wine is not emulation, it’s also not complete.

Re: there are plenty of alternatives to Windows 11 out there

Ok. So recompiling the source is required. Any idea where i can get this “source” for Solidworks, adobe illustrator, altium designer, rhinoceros, dataman and hilo programmers and all the other software i use ?

I think you can see where this is headed : nowhere. There is no “alternative” to windows cause you simply can’t run applications. Switching applications is not an option. I’ll stick to windows 10 for now. All my software runs fine on windows 7 or later.

Re: there are plenty of alternatives to Windows 11 out there

All the programs i use are 64 bit. (none will run on 32 bit versions like XP or 7 in 32 bit) .

Re: @vincent himpe - there are plenty of alternatives to Windows 11 out there

i only want to change the OS, so i don't need Microsoft anymore. I don't use any Microsoft applications (no office) , only their OS to run applications built by others. The file browser is about all i use from the OS to do basic file operations like moving , copying , renaming.

there are plenty of alternatives to Windows 11 out there

Can i bring my existing set of application binaries and/or and installers ? I'm interested. This would probably interest many other people too.

I keep hearing about these alternatives a lot, but i must be looking at the wrong ones since i can't run any of the applications i already own. Please help ?

Damn Small Linux returns after a 12-year gap

where is the time

a bootloader had to fit in the first 512 bytes of a floppy.... now something is considered "small" if it "only" needs 3 gigabyte of storage.

FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botnet

Re: Thanks for nothing

the safest device is one that is switched off and stays off

Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains

i know places where they have CNC drills (Excellon) that are still driven by paper tape wired to a NOVA or a PDP-9 ( not an 11 !). some machinery is very long life and very expensive to replace. it's completely amortized , will outlive its users.

Musk lashes out at Biden administration over rural broadband

Re: Let's go Brandon.

i happen to live in such an area. (Behind yosemite : Madera) The only grid is the electrical, strung from wooden poles (that get hit by cars and at least one a year there is an outage.) Own well, check. own septic, check. propane? have a tank. Cell phone ? spotty at best. The "denser" areas have comcast (tv and internet) and that is your only option. even ADSL is not available. you are lucky to get POTS. The only internet options are Hughes net (very expensive and 10mb/s if you are lucky. if it rains: adios internet) or the newer mobile internet over 5G ( that also raises lots of protest .. ooh 5G we're all getting irradiated and tracked) and that is also spotty (see cell phone coverage). It's all farmland and homes as spaced very far apart and in clusters of 2 to 10. So starlink would be perfect. Have one access terminal and share with neighbours. Starlink has the ability to do that. Thy have been doing it for the tribes. One terminal and a network switch. https://www.pcmag.com/news/native-american-tribe-gets-early-access-to-spacexs-starlink-and-says-its

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

Re: Encoders

and how many supercells are there in the pack ? not thousands.

Again , i can't speak for every manufacturer how they do it. I only know how the ones i worked for did it. I've worked on several, for cars, space (launcher, rocket and payload) and aircraft. Same for the encoder. You can use contactless encoders that sense the magnetic field ( not hall ) . Use rogowski coils for current and melexis field sensors for rotation. I'm well aware how BMS systems work. . Matched cells in a supercell, each individual cell bonded with a fusable wire. If the cell shorts or is mechanically damaged the fuse will blow and the cell detaches from the pack. Voltage does not change but the max current does. During charge the cell voltage will climb faster for this supercell and the load balancer will kick in on this supercell first. This gives you feedback of how many cells are lost in the supercell. There are techniques to determine the overall state of the chain.

Re: Encoders

Some technical information to get rid of misconceptions:

1) Encoders are not used for rotor position (for exactly the reasons you mention : slipping. The three phase motor has a PWM drive mechanism using half bridge topology. A hardware block monitors the current in each winding. The hardware can predict, based on the currents, when the magnetic field will cross a pole. For a very short time (called the commutation window) the PCM drive to the winding is stopped by tristating the H-bridge. A voltage comparator checks when the polarity of the back-emf changes. At this eact point the rotor has passed the winding and commutation in the H-bridge resumes.

This is nothing new. It has been done in harddisks for 20 years. It's called a torque optimiser. No need for magnet sensors, magnetic couplings.

It used to be you needed access to the center tap of the motor but there is a solution to create an artificial center tap using a resistive bridge and some sample and hold amplifiers.

2: There is no thousands of sensors in a battery pack. i can't speak for all batteries but the ones i know of have only a few tens. the heat gradient over short distance is not large due to the thermal conductivity. Also the cell topology not a parallel lump of strings. you would lose the stirng if one cells goes out or if the fuse blows. They are a single string- of parallel cells. more like a heavy chain. each cell has its own fuse in the form of a bond wire. if a cell gets damaged the fuse will pop and the cells isolates itself from the parallel bank. In practice they use banks and chains made from banks. if you make strings of individual cells you would lose the entire string. if a single cell goes out in a bank the rest of the bank still works and does not interrupt the string so you don't lose the string.

The battery management system can sense the loss of cells in a bank and instructs the balancer circuitry to take this into account.

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

Long ago, in a design center far far away .. (chip design that is. running on Calma and ComputerVision systems driven by a Data General Nova . this is late 80's)

One day we found that the computer running the workstations had rebooted. Shruggingly written off as a one-time event. A week later the same happened. And the week thereafter and the week thereafter ...

Every thursday morning we found the machine had restarted. Strange. Service was called in and they couldn't find anything wrong. It couldn't be a scheduled job : the thing didn't have a clock or a way to schedule things. Files were saved with a version number that incremented upon every save. No time/date stamp.

Next thursday the sysop stayed late to monitor the machine from his desk in the aquarium. This was the era where the computer rooms were all floor to ceiling glass walls so you could proudly display the hardware to visitors. We users called it the aquarium. The sysop always said the fish were on the outside.

Somewhere late the cleaning crew for the office got in and sure enough: one of the cleaners entered the "aquarium" and started dusting. The nova machine had a nice ledge with a bunch of toggle buttons. out comes the dusting brush .... and mystery solved. It turned out there was a problem with the machine. One of the toggles was a halt/reset and it was a bit "sensitive". They replaced that front panel , and then put a piece of perspex over it, and told the cleaners to only collect the printouts but not dust anything in there.

Note : if i remeber correctly this things was a Nova 3

Linux 6.4 debuts after literally unremarkable development push

PCMCIA

Pulse code modulation central intelligance agency ?

or

People Cant Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms ?

The Balthazar laptop: An all-European RISC-V Free Hardware computer

Re: escape meta alt ctrl shift

meh, why all those keys ? use a stenograph keyboard. better even : only a 1 and 0 key. use binary encoded ascii.

Loathsome eighties ladder-climber levelled by a custom DOS prompt

Re: When I were a lad

ones and zero's. sometimes we didn't even have zero's, we had to use the letter o. or i if we ran out of 1's.

Laugh all you want. There will be a year of the Linux desktop

Sure ...

The day commercial software has been ported to it.

There simply is too much software that is windows only. And no, alternatives are not an option. Businesses use application xyz and will not switch to something different. The invested time and money and retraining is simply too large and disruptive. Hardware and OS is much cheaper than retraining the workforce

More than 4 in 10 PCs still can't upgrade to Windows 11

Re: Nothing much against Win11 but can't see the point!

Os's don't have any value. The programs that run on it do. The OS is nothing but a layer between the hardware and applications , manages memory , storage, peripherals, a user interface and connectivity. Most of it (except the user interface) is invisible.

A perfect operating system would completely stay out of my way, let me run the applications i need, keep my data secure ( not only from external influences but also from hardware failures). It would eb invisible, need no configuration and just work. Windows 10 Enterprise comes pretty darn close.

I use the OS needed for the task at hand. I run NX, Solidworks, Altium and a bunch of other CAD and technical software. Windows. 7 year old Zbook G3 Win10. works like a champ.

I surf the internet , do online banking , create some videos and edit some photos : MacOs on a Mac ( a used one, 2015 model)

Social media and other spielerei : ipad

Phone ? that's for making phone calls. (and email / text if really needed, or the odd quick picture)

Windows 11 ? no thanks. Both my laptops are not able to run it. Don't need it, the applications run fine on 10. They even run on 7. So until the performance really becomes sluggish , or the applications absolutely need 11 , there will be no hardware upgrade. And if there is an upgrade to new hardware, by then there will be machines available that can run it.

Linux kernel's eBPF feature put to unexpected new uses

oh goody

read mouse coordinates, alter to the location of the "YES" button then send click ,or spacebar . keylogger ? check !