I used to be a big fan of Debian but I left it years ago.
The packages were too old in my opinion for desktop use. I always wanted something that Debian just didn't have. I'd add various third party repositories, then it would want to uninstall 3/4 of my system because someone compiled something with a different version of libc or something stupid like that. On more than one occasion I was in a hurry and pressed Y before I saw what it wanted to do.
And then there are all the questions that get asked mid-installation. I used to start an update or a big install on the terminal. It would want to install some hundreds of packages that would take an hour or two. (It has been a while, computers and broadband were slower then). I'd get it started and leave to go somewhere thinking I would come home to shiny new software. Instead I would find that it stopped less than a third of the way through to ask me something inane like what color borders I wanted on the menu of a program I know nothing about that got pulled in as a dependency of a dependency of a dependency.
Debian and it's Apt/Get was a HUGE improvement over the bad old days of hunting down individual RPMs on the web. It was not the end-all best possible solution though.
My personal choice now is Gentoo. Maybe it would be good for you, maybe not. It's probably not the best possible solution either but it's good enough to make me happy. But, I don't know, maybe you will find something else that fits you better.
My advice to anyone trying Gentoo..
If this is your desktop, use a Live CD of a full desktop like Ubuntu or something as your boot disk for the initial install. You don't really need the Gentoo live CD, you just need something that boots Linux and has chroot. This way when it takes a few days to complete the Gentoo install you can still use your computer for other things.
Once the initial install is done go into your make.conf and set Portage's nice level somewhere around 10 or so. You want it to be a lower priority than your user applications so you can use your computer while builds are happening in the background. You don't want to lower it all the way though because then builds will have to compete with things like log churning and cache maintenance making them take forever.
When upgrading or installing things it will take a lot longer than it did in Debian. Dont' despair. Just do it in a screen session. Get it started, close the terminal and forget. Go ahead and use your computer like usual or just leave. Go have some fun with your friends. Later, re-attach to the screen session to check that it completed ok and see if there is any other maintenance to do (like updating config files). Unlike Debian it will just happily keep going without your input so it isn't going to get stuck waiting for you. If it needs you to do something for any packages it will just tell you AFTER all packages are installed. No nasty surprise that it stopped to ask you a question when you weren't there.
Every article I read about Systemd somewhere mentions dependencies. I don't get it. My computer has handled those ever since openrc came out. For example, it knows not to start network server daemons such as ssh, httpd, etc... before the network. If you turn the network off it will automatically stop all those daemons first. Turn the network back on and they come back right after. That's about as complex as dependencies get on my system, everything else can and does start in parallel. If I did install some new magic daemon that depended on 5 others before it could run though the facilities are there in openrc for me to set that up.
Is changing settings like that going to be a constand uphill battle against the distro maintainers?
In other words are those configuration files going to get replaced every time an upgrade is installed? Or, almost as bad, is the user going to have to trudge through screens and screens of diffs every time updates are installed in order to pick which differences are customizations to keep and which are part of the upgrade?
Yes, they do have it calculated. Somebody (actualy, probably several somebodys) get more money than the people producing the food to calculate all that information. Then they present it to people making even more money who can write more reports and color more charts until it eventually becomes a selling point to get people to buy more stock.
It has nothing to do with the price of the meal though. Imagine this conversation between two executives, I'll call them 1 and 2.
1: Market research has brought to our attention that we could sell our McHeart Atack Burger for $7.00 with minimal negative impace on sales. 2: How much do we sell it for now? 1: $5.00 2: How much does it cost to produce and serve? 1: On average, $2.50 each. 2: Our profit goal was 100%. We are right on track. Do not raise the price of the McHeart Attack. 1: But.. we could make more money! 2: No.
Come on! It doesn't work that way. Executive 2 would be out of a job, and rightly so! That kind of fantasy world only exists in the minds of employers who don' t want to pay their employees a living wage and sick businesses who are operating on such little margins that they will probably fail in the next few years anyway.
If companies can save money by not paying people they will. The savings will NOT be passed on to consumers. There is no incentive to do so!
I never even noticed it. Well.. after hearing so much about it I went back and looked and kind of see what people are talking about. Before I had it so toned out that I never noticed. There are always articles that don' t interest me. They might be drivel or they might just not be one of my topics. Either way.. you don' t have to click every headline!
Sealed box with cooling fins. Fill with mineral oil.
If that is not enough to keep the parts cool then..
A pump in the box could circulate the minera oil.
A tube snaking through the box could have water flowing in it from the outside forming a heat exchanger.
Good Luck!
If you are a typical Slashdotter, a side benefit to you when working with a mineral oil cooled pc - For once you can leave your basement with slick, oily hands and still look mom in the eye and feel inocent when you tell her you were just working on your computer
I just run my updates in screen terminals and I have turned portage's nice level up a bit so I can keep doing other things. It finishes when it finishes, I don' t watch it. I don't have Chromium though and have pretty much gotten rid of everything that updates constantly and is big like that.
I do groan when I see libreoffice on the list though. But.. again, it runs in the background so no real time loss to me.
"I thought there were options to install pre-compiled versions of the packages."
Gentoo does support that although the repositories only have binaries for a few really big packages like web browsers and desktop managers that would otherwise take a long time to compile. Those are probably the things you benefit the most from compiling though.
You can set up third party repositories. I think there might be some pre-compiled ones out there. I think there is even a way to set up one build server that builds packages for all your other computers. I've never done this myself.
"The entire point of Gentoo is literally to compile the entire system on your system, custom-built for your hardware, for maximum efficiency for your specs."
Not necessarily. It's also good just for general customization that doesn' t necessarily HAVE to be about hardware fitting.
I used to use Gentoo because I liked to turn on every feature of every package that I possibly could without causing conflicts. There were all sorts of features that could be en/disabled at compile time in various desktop environments and applications that the leading distros tended to turn off. They probably did it to reduce dependencies. I used to use Gentoo so that I could run a monster bloated system and have every bell and every whistle. At the time I didn't usually completely optimize for my hardware because I changed my hardware too often.
Now I go almost completely the other way. I know what features I use and don't. My hardware is old and doesn't get upgraded so often. Now my Gentoo is configured very lean so that my processor and RAM go towards the main functions I am working on and not so much the eye candy. It is optimized for my hardware but not because my hardware is new like you suggested! I'ts more because my hardware is old! Optimization makes my old computer work similar to a new one running normal pre-compiled software.
Gentoo is also great for dependency issues. There is no such thing as "ebuild hell". You almost never need to find exactly X version of libY to install an application because the application just gets compiled specifically against the libraries you have installed. That doesn' t mean much if you are normally just running a major distro and install everything from that distros package manager but if you ever try to install a program downloaded from the internet somewhere, not built for your specific version of your distro... it makes a HUGE difference! Things just work!
Actually... I change my answer.. counterintuitive as it seems, I use Gentoo because it Just Works!
I use Gentoo too. Most things compile in minutes. Some things such as browsers can take hours. Big Desktop environments like KDE/Gnome and also LibreOffice can take over a day each. Some people can't imagine how a Gentoo user can stand it. It's really not a problem though.
The build process never prompts you for anything, all options are chosen before it starts. It also does not require a GUI. (There are GUIs available if you want one) It's just pretty simple commands like (emerge chromium). Emerge handles the whole process, downloading source, compiling, installing and does all the dependencies too.
So... the answer to long build times is easy. Just start the build in a screen session. Then you can close the window and forget about it. It will be done when it is done, feel free to continue using your computer in the mean time. Or, not. You CAN walk away. If you are concerned about the build process running in the background slowing down your computer when you are using it for other things that's no problem either. You can just raise the nice level. It might take longer to finish but you never even have to know that the build is running.
Just type: emerge conkeror && emerge links && emerge lynx && emerge w3m && emerge emacs && emerge google-chrome && emerge chromium && emerge firefox && emerge wget && emerge opera Now walk away and go make some tea.
See, not complicated at all!
Of course, that last one really just downloads a binary. But.. might as well include it too just for the completeness;
"Households in the top quintile have on average 2.2 people employed full time."
That confirms something I have suspected for a long time. With more people in the house working and/or sharing responsibilities we would all live better. Now to figure out how to convince my wife to let me have a couple more...
"confronted with employees who demand to get more expensive with time?"
But they are not. Sure, there may be a demand for a larger number of dollars but those dollars have lost value over time. Wages have not increased with inflation. If anything workers are trying to get back some of what they used to make in real value.
"Why should a company ignore self-serve kiosks"
They shouldn't. The people running the company''s job is to maximize profit. Unfortunately that does mean that as labor replacing technologies become less expensive jobs do go away.
What I think has been happening is the price of automation solutions (including these kiosks) has been dropping while there capabilities have been increasing for decades now. We only kept the jobs we have because wages (REAL wages, as in what that money can buy) have been dropping. It dropped enough to put minimum wage workers into the poverty category a long time ago and now it is dropping to the point that a person can't really survive on it. So, something has to give.
So, minimum wage goes up (in terms of dollar amount), kiosks overtake workers as cheap labor and jobs are eliminated. The alternative really wasn't going to be any better. What we need is an adjustment. We need to take the remaining jobs which cannot be automated and spread them out differently. We need a society where greater people work a fewer number of hours per person. This way the same amount of work gets spread among more jobs. We need a society where those hours worked are valued higher so that a person can live on those fewer hours. That shouldn't be such a radical idea. Think about it, every minute you give to some company is time out of your life. We only get one life (that anyone can prove anyway). That makes each minute priceless!
Now, some might argue that those higher wages will make living more costly as the expense must be passed to the consumer. Remember though, prices are set to maximize profit. Raise the price of a burger you make more per burger but you sell fewer. Lower the price you sell more of them but make less off of each. Somewhere there is a best price point that balances those factors to make the most money. Notice what's NOT in that formula... the price of labor! The only way that labor costs (or supplies, etc...) factor in is if the demand is so low and those costs so high that the only possible profit is very small before nobody buys any. If a business is truly operating in that area it is already in trouble! It is probably going to fail regardless of what the minimum wage does! This is not the point where McDonalds for example is operating at. Where would the money come from? I would suggest looking at executive salarys. People who don't even produce anything! Also, don't stop at the salarys, what kind of expensive conferences and other perks are they spending money on?
So how do we get to this world where easily automated jobs are and the world enjoys this saved labor by working less while still prospering? I have no idea. I wish I knew.
The last retina lasted 70 years. I'd say that if she is still around and her retinas are her bigest concern after another 70 years she is doing pretty good!
That is incorrect. They are making a change to the device. Once it has been plugged into a computer with the new driver it's PID is set to 0 and it will not work on any other machine regardless of driver version.
Authenticity is great and all but with so few still working I hope they will at least re-cap the thing, if that hasn't already been done. I'd hate to see them let that original smoke out!
Wasn't troll supposed to mean someone that writes controversial or inflamatory things (even if they don't really believe them) just to get other people debating (fighting) about it so they can sit back and watch the fireworks. Now it's cyber bullies and people who harass women online. It sounds like the old/new definitions of hacker. This new English, it changes faster than Double Talk!
>>"Make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than is possible today."
Ughh! It isn't 10 times MORE of something, it's 1/10th as much of something! Also, it's a monetary goal, not quality one. It isn't cheaper it's less expensive.
Does anyone really want to: "Make a rocket at most 1/10th the quality of what is possible today"?
"Gnome is dependent on an API for user management. Why not implement it separately? I saw talks of one project forking logind and decoupling it from systemd, and then everything goes back to normal and Gnome can run on any init system. THAT is how Linux used to be run."
Why is Gnome dependent on that API? I haven't really used Gnome since the Sawfish days. But... as I am accustomed to it the desktop or window manager is loaded AFTER the user logs in. A different user might not even use the same desk/window manager. Depending on who logs in Gnome might not load at all! If Gnome is managing the user logins then that does NOT sound like how Linux used to be run to me. Does this mean that a user who does not chose Gnome as a default will be loading a bunch of Gnome libraries anyway? Does it mean that a machine with Gnome only runs Gnome?
I must admit that I don't understand exactly what logind does. I really mean these questions as questions, not assumptions.
Actually, when I try to read about Systemd it feels just like when I tried to read about the old *kit and hal stuff. It all seems to either be providing features that Linux already had before it or it is solving problems that I have never had, problems that I cannot even imagine having. All I do know is that when the *kit stuff decided to break I would lose things that "just worked" for years before *kit came around. Is this what Systemd will be like?
He has also recovered some bladder and bowel sensation and sexual function.
I'm happy to not be paralyzed and certainly hope to stay that way. But, if I was... I think these functions might be even more important to me then getting my legs back. Don't get me wrong, not being able to stand or walk would really suck. But.. a person with no leg function might get along in a wheel chair. Shitting oneself and not being able to enjoy sex... there just isn't a chair for that.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to be a big fan of Debian but I left it years ago.
The packages were too old in my opinion for desktop use. I always wanted something that Debian just didn't have. I'd add various third party repositories, then it would want to uninstall 3/4 of my system because someone compiled something with a different version of libc or something stupid like that. On more than one occasion I was in a hurry and pressed Y before I saw what it wanted to do.
And then there are all the questions that get asked mid-installation. I used to start an update or a big install on the terminal. It would want to install some hundreds of packages that would take an hour or two. (It has been a while, computers and broadband were slower then). I'd get it started and leave to go somewhere thinking I would come home to shiny new software. Instead I would find that it stopped less than a third of the way through to ask me something inane like what color borders I wanted on the menu of a program I know nothing about that got pulled in as a dependency of a dependency of a dependency.
Debian and it's Apt/Get was a HUGE improvement over the bad old days of hunting down individual RPMs on the web. It was not the end-all best possible solution though.
My personal choice now is Gentoo. Maybe it would be good for you, maybe not. It's probably not the best possible solution either but it's good enough to make me happy. But, I don't know, maybe you will find something else that fits you better.
My advice to anyone trying Gentoo..
If this is your desktop, use a Live CD of a full desktop like Ubuntu or something as your boot disk for the initial install. You don't really need the Gentoo live CD, you just need something that boots Linux and has chroot. This way when it takes a few days to complete the Gentoo install you can still use your computer for other things.
Once the initial install is done go into your make.conf and set Portage's nice level somewhere around 10 or so. You want it to be a lower priority than your user applications so you can use your computer while builds are happening in the background. You don't want to lower it all the way though because then builds will have to compete with things like log churning and cache maintenance making them take forever.
When upgrading or installing things it will take a lot longer than it did in Debian. Dont' despair. Just do it in a screen session. Get it started, close the terminal and forget. Go ahead and use your computer like usual or just leave. Go have some fun with your friends. Later, re-attach to the screen session to check that it completed ok and see if there is any other maintenance to do (like updating config files). Unlike Debian it will just happily keep going without your input so it isn't going to get stuck waiting for you. If it needs you to do something for any packages it will just tell you AFTER all packages are installed. No nasty surprise that it stopped to ask you a question when you weren't there.
Every article I read about Systemd somewhere mentions dependencies. I don't get it. My computer has handled those ever since openrc came out. For example, it knows not to start network server daemons such as ssh, httpd, etc... before the network. If you turn the network off it will automatically stop all those daemons first. Turn the network back on and they come back right after. That's about as complex as dependencies get on my system, everything else can and does start in parallel. If I did install some new magic daemon that depended on 5 others before it could run though the facilities are there in openrc for me to set that up.
So... what is so special about Systemd?
Is changing settings like that going to be a constand uphill battle against the distro maintainers?
In other words are those configuration files going to get replaced every time an upgrade is installed?
Or, almost as bad, is the user going to have to trudge through screens and screens of diffs every time updates are installed in order to pick which differences are customizations to keep and which are part of the upgrade?
Potering? Is that you?
Yes, they do have it calculated. Somebody (actualy, probably several somebodys) get more money than the people producing the food to calculate all that information. Then they present it to people making even more money who can write more reports and color more charts until it eventually becomes a selling point to get people to buy more stock.
It has nothing to do with the price of the meal though. Imagine this conversation between two executives, I'll call them 1 and 2.
1: Market research has brought to our attention that we could sell our McHeart Atack Burger for $7.00 with minimal negative impace on sales.
2: How much do we sell it for now?
1: $5.00
2: How much does it cost to produce and serve?
1: On average, $2.50 each.
2: Our profit goal was 100%. We are right on track. Do not raise the price of the McHeart Attack.
1: But.. we could make more money!
2: No.
Come on! It doesn't work that way. Executive 2 would be out of a job, and rightly so! That kind of fantasy world only exists in the minds of employers who don' t want to pay their employees a living wage and sick businesses who are operating on such little margins that they will probably fail in the next few years anyway.
If companies can save money by not paying people they will. The savings will NOT be passed on to consumers. There is no incentive to do so!
I never even noticed it. Well.. after hearing so much about it I went back and looked and kind of see what people are talking about. Before I had it so toned out that I never noticed. There are always articles that don' t interest me. They might be drivel or they might just not be one of my topics. Either way.. you don' t have to click every headline!
Sealed box with cooling fins. Fill with mineral oil.
If that is not enough to keep the parts cool then..
A pump in the box could circulate the minera oil.
A tube snaking through the box could have water flowing in it from the outside forming a heat exchanger.
Good Luck!
If you are a typical Slashdotter, a side benefit to you when working with a mineral oil cooled pc
- For once you can leave your basement with slick, oily hands and still look mom in the eye and feel inocent when you tell her you were just working on your computer
I just run my updates in screen terminals and I have turned portage's nice level up a bit so I can keep doing other things. It finishes when it finishes, I don' t watch it. I don't have Chromium though and have pretty much gotten rid of everything that updates constantly and is big like that.
I do groan when I see libreoffice on the list though. But.. again, it runs in the background so no real time loss to me.
"I thought there were options to install pre-compiled versions of the packages."
Gentoo does support that although the repositories only have binaries for a few really big packages like web browsers and desktop managers that would otherwise take a long time to compile. Those are probably the things you benefit the most from compiling though.
You can set up third party repositories. I think there might be some pre-compiled ones out there. I think there is even a way to set up one build server that builds packages for all your other computers. I've never done this myself.
"The entire point of Gentoo is literally to compile the entire system on your system, custom-built for your hardware, for maximum efficiency for your specs."
Not necessarily. It's also good just for general customization that doesn' t necessarily HAVE to be about hardware fitting.
I used to use Gentoo because I liked to turn on every feature of every package that I possibly could without causing conflicts. There were all sorts of features that could be en/disabled at compile time in various desktop environments and applications that the leading distros tended to turn off. They probably did it to reduce dependencies. I used to use Gentoo so that I could run a monster bloated system and have every bell and every whistle. At the time I didn't usually completely optimize for my hardware because I changed my hardware too often.
Now I go almost completely the other way. I know what features I use and don't. My hardware is old and doesn't get upgraded so often. Now my Gentoo is configured very lean so that my processor and RAM go towards the main functions I am working on and not so much the eye candy. It is optimized for my hardware but not because my hardware is new like you suggested! I'ts more because my hardware is old! Optimization makes my old computer work similar to a new one running normal pre-compiled software.
Gentoo is also great for dependency issues. There is no such thing as "ebuild hell". You almost never need to find exactly X version of libY to install an application because the application just gets compiled specifically against the libraries you have installed. That doesn' t mean much if you are normally just running a major distro and install everything from that distros package manager but if you ever try to install a program downloaded from the internet somewhere, not built for your specific version of your distro... it makes a HUGE difference! Things just work!
Actually... I change my answer.. counterintuitive as it seems, I use Gentoo because it Just Works!
I use Gentoo too. Most things compile in minutes. Some things such as browsers can take hours. Big Desktop environments like KDE/Gnome and also LibreOffice can take over a day each. Some people can't imagine how a Gentoo user can stand it. It's really not a problem though.
The build process never prompts you for anything, all options are chosen before it starts. It also does not require a GUI. (There are GUIs available if you want one) It's just pretty simple commands like (emerge chromium). Emerge handles the whole process, downloading source, compiling, installing and does all the dependencies too.
So... the answer to long build times is easy. Just start the build in a screen session. Then you can close the window and forget about it. It will be done when it is done, feel free to continue using your computer in the mean time. Or, not. You CAN walk away. If you are concerned about the build process running in the background slowing down your computer when you are using it for other things that's no problem either. You can just raise the nice level. It might take longer to finish but you never even have to know that the build is running.
Just type:
emerge conkeror && emerge links && emerge lynx && emerge w3m && emerge emacs && emerge google-chrome && emerge chromium && emerge firefox && emerge wget && emerge opera
Now walk away and go make some tea.
See, not complicated at all!
Of course, that last one really just downloads a binary. But.. might as well include it too just for the completeness;
which post was the last one, the straw that broke the camel's back
"Households in the top quintile have on average 2.2 people employed full time."
That confirms something I have suspected for a long time. With more people in the house working and/or sharing responsibilities we would all live better. Now to figure out how to convince my wife to let me have a couple more...
"confronted with employees who demand to get more expensive with time?"
But they are not. Sure, there may be a demand for a larger number of dollars but those dollars have lost value over time. Wages have not increased with inflation. If anything workers are trying to get back some of what they used to make in real value.
"Why should a company ignore self-serve kiosks"
They shouldn't. The people running the company''s job is to maximize profit. Unfortunately that does mean that as labor replacing technologies become less expensive jobs do go away.
What I think has been happening is the price of automation solutions (including these kiosks) has been dropping while there capabilities have been increasing for decades now. We only kept the jobs we have because wages (REAL wages, as in what that money can buy) have been dropping. It dropped enough to put minimum wage workers into the poverty category a long time ago and now it is dropping to the point that a person can't really survive on it. So, something has to give.
So, minimum wage goes up (in terms of dollar amount), kiosks overtake workers as cheap labor and jobs are eliminated. The alternative really wasn't going to be any better. What we need is an adjustment. We need to take the remaining jobs which cannot be automated and spread them out differently. We need a society where greater people work a fewer number of hours per person. This way the same amount of work gets spread among more jobs. We need a society where those hours worked are valued higher so that a person can live on those fewer hours. That shouldn't be such a radical idea. Think about it, every minute you give to some company is time out of your life. We only get one life (that anyone can prove anyway). That makes each minute priceless!
Now, some might argue that those higher wages will make living more costly as the expense must be passed to the consumer. Remember though, prices are set to maximize profit. Raise the price of a burger you make more per burger but you sell fewer. Lower the price you sell more of them but make less off of each. Somewhere there is a best price point that balances those factors to make the most money. Notice what's NOT in that formula... the price of labor! The only way that labor costs (or supplies, etc...) factor in is if the demand is so low and those costs so high that the only possible profit is very small before nobody buys any. If a business is truly operating in that area it is already in trouble! It is probably going to fail regardless of what the minimum wage does! This is not the point where McDonalds for example is operating at. Where would the money come from? I would suggest looking at executive salarys. People who don't even produce anything! Also, don't stop at the salarys, what kind of expensive conferences and other perks are they spending money on?
So how do we get to this world where easily automated jobs are and the world enjoys this saved labor by working less while still prospering? I have no idea. I wish I knew.
The last retina lasted 70 years. I'd say that if she is still around and her retinas are her bigest concern after another 70 years she is doing pretty good!
Yes. FTDI went a big step farther than Prolific did.
That is incorrect. They are making a change to the device. Once it has been plugged into a computer with the new driver it's PID is set to 0 and it will not work on any other machine regardless of driver version.
You lost me when you said something about there being books in Texas...
Authenticity is great and all but with so few still working I hope they will at least re-cap the thing, if that hasn't already been done. I'd hate to see them let that original smoke out!
That should be interesting. How many Slashdotters really know what a woman is?
Wasn't troll supposed to mean someone that writes controversial or inflamatory things (even if they don't really believe them) just to get other people debating (fighting) about it so they can sit back and watch the fireworks. Now it's cyber bullies and people who harass women online. It sounds like the old/new definitions of hacker. This new English, it changes faster than Double Talk!
>>"Make a rocket at least 10 times cheaper than is possible today."
Ughh! It isn't 10 times MORE of something, it's 1/10th as much of something!
Also, it's a monetary goal, not quality one. It isn't cheaper it's less expensive.
Does anyone really want to: "Make a rocket at most 1/10th the quality of what is possible today"?
"Gnome is dependent on an API for user management. Why not implement it separately? I saw talks of one project forking logind and decoupling it from systemd, and then everything goes back to normal and Gnome can run on any init system. THAT is how Linux used to be run."
Why is Gnome dependent on that API? I haven't really used Gnome since the Sawfish days. But... as I am accustomed to it the desktop or window manager is loaded AFTER the user logs in. A different user might not even use the same desk/window manager. Depending on who logs in Gnome might not load at all! If Gnome is managing the user logins then that does NOT sound like how Linux used to be run to me. Does this mean that a user who does not chose Gnome as a default will be loading a bunch of Gnome libraries anyway? Does it mean that a machine with Gnome only runs Gnome?
I must admit that I don't understand exactly what logind does. I really mean these questions as questions, not assumptions.
Actually, when I try to read about Systemd it feels just like when I tried to read about the old *kit and hal stuff. It all seems to either be providing features that Linux already had before it or it is solving problems that I have never had, problems that I cannot even imagine having. All I do know is that when the *kit stuff decided to break I would lose things that "just worked" for years before *kit came around. Is this what Systemd will be like?
He has also recovered some bladder and bowel sensation and sexual function.
I'm happy to not be paralyzed and certainly hope to stay that way. But, if I was... I think these functions might be even more important to me then getting my legs back. Don't get me wrong, not being able to stand or walk would really suck. But.. a person with no leg function might get along in a wheel chair. Shitting oneself and not being able to enjoy sex... there just isn't a chair for that.