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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • I could go on for days about the problems with medical devices. I write software for one of those at my day job and as much as our team would love to port the software to something other than Windows, that would be a logistical nightmare.

    The thunderbolt connection alone can break because of a thousand factors, even on the exact combination of hardware and operating system it was tested with. Processing of medical images is often very GPU-heavy which gives us the same problems as with CAD software.

    Even if you get all the technical problems out of the way, medical devices need to be certified before you’re allowed to use them for diagnostics. This often includes an exact specification of the platform you run the software on. If you just take something that’s certified for “Windows 10 between 20H2 and 22H2, Intel or AMD CPU, device driver version 8.1.23” and try to run it on Wine, I would expect the American FDA, German TÜV and Chinese NMPA to fight over who gets to kick your door in first. It might be possible to get a certification for a Linux version but probably only for one specific combination of distribution, display server and desktop environment.


  • Kinda unironically: yes.

    Linux is great for some use cases and at least decent for most others but what I’ve experienced in some Linux communities made me understand why people don’t feel welcome. In a thread literally titled “Help me like desktop Linux” that listed a few things I was struggling with, I got hit with a bunch of “you’re an idiot for not using the exact same distro that I like”, “works on my machine” and “you want the wrong things”. Even as someone who already had over a decade of Linux server experience, that almost made me turn around and walk away.



  • One that I read on Mastodon:

    Every bad thing about commercial software is the programmers’ fault. Even if it was something that management decided and the programmer fought against it and lost. They claimed you should rather risk losing your job than accepting an inconvenience for your user. Weird take but okay. Then they started comparing software engineers to soldiers “just following orders” during the holocaust. That’s where I blocked them. Cherry on top: they have “if you want to hire me as a software engineer, message me” in their bio. I wonder why nobody wants to hire them…