#also come see how quickly Mint boots up compared to Windows (when Windows manages to boot of course)

[go-learn-esperanto]

Me, after restarting the computer 20 times and having to repair Windows' boot 3 times in the last 2 days while Linux Mint is opening just fine in the same computer:

[thisishawkins]

Nothing Compares To You

Here’s another Billy Hargrove one-shot! I got the idea while listening to Prince’s song of the same name. I hope you enjoy it, and please leave feedback if you do! It is much appreciated!

Love - K

BILLY X READER

Trigger warnings: language (?)

= Billy feels the weight of what he lost, and so do you.

======

Billy's groggy gaze was focused on the stream of water before him, the early morning light bouncing off of it through the bare trees, stretching for miles.

It had been nearly two weeks since you broke it off with him, and he couldn't bring himself to feel anything else other than the pain of losing you.

In fact, he reveled in it. It's what he deserved, really.

"Do you love me?"

His face lifted up from his hands. He was perched on the edge of his bed, with you standing near the door.

He hesitated, your teary eyes boring into his own. 

"I don't know what I feel.", He told you, eyes switching between yours. He knew that you made him feel things that he had never felt before, but he didn't call it the L word. He was terrified to admit it - that'd mean he was in too deep, and admitting those feelings aloud would make promises that he was afraid that he wouldn't keep.

You couldn't take it anymore. Billy knew how you felt. Hell, you had told him one night during a heated make-out in the Camaro, after a date at the diner. Intoxicated by him and your chocolate milkshake, it came past your lips before you'd even realized it. 

You’d explained that there was no pressure, that he didn’t have to be in the same place as you, yet. But time kept on passing, and he still had not expressed anything but sweet nothings and lust-filled motives.

Your bottom lip trembled, a warm ball forming in the pit of your throat.

In the time you had been together, he barely revealed anything. You didn't expect him to make you his diary - you just wanted him to open up. How was the relationship going to survive if he didn't? 

You had opened up to him, and trusted him with your darkest of secrets. The both of you were surprised at how natural it was between you. Yet, Billy couldn't fully reciprocate.

It left you with questions. Where did he see this going? Was he just using you for a good way to pass his time in Indiana? 

Did he love anything?

"You know how I feel. But, I guess that doesn't matter.", you spoke at last, the words caught in your throat.

Billy didn't respond, and he loathed himself for it. He was without the vocabulary to express how he felt. Instead, you both just stared at each other in desperation.

It was breaking both of your hearts, his seeing that he was doing this to you, and yours at his lack of expression. 

"I c-can't do this." 

Suede jacket already in hand, you turned around without another word, hand covering your mouth to muffle the sobs that were trying to engulf you.

Billy remained sat down, shaking his head, the tips of his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

He scrunched his eyes together when he felt the burn of hot tears searing them.

You hadn't spoken to one another since, only accidentally meeting eyes when passing each other in the hallways at school.

Throwing his first cigarette of the day to the dirt, he stomped it out with his boot, then turned to grab the driver side door of the Camaro.

He hadn't slept much. Instead of laying in bed to wallow in his self-hatred, he opted to get ready for the day before the sun had risen. So, here he was, going to school on this godforsaken, freezing-to-the-bone February morning. 

Needing some air to think without his father’s oppressive presence, he escaped his house and found himself parked at the place where you first told him that you loved him.

He needed to talk to you.

Billy realized that he did not just love you. He'd realized that nothing compared to you. 

*

You stared intently at your reflection in the mirror at the back of your locker, fixing your bangs before adjusting the collar of your candy red turtleneck.

You were a bit frazzled this morning, plagued by another dream about him. 

Much like other trying times, you were trying your damnedest to get past this. After all, you had other things to worry about - your future after graduation, your mom’s health, the evil that dwelled in Hawkins, to name a few. 

But, you knew deep down this wasn’t something you could brush off. You kept telling yourself that you didn’t need him, or a relationship, for that matter. You were an independent woman, dammit, and you had come this far. No one was going to define you but you.

However, you wanted him. The only thing keeping you from that was him. He is so guarded, so lost, so self-destructive, so stubborn - but he was also everything but those things.

If only he saw that. Or, maybe you cared more than he ever did.

You shook your head, as if shaking your thoughts away like gnats to ripened fruit. Sighing, you grabbed your mint lip balm and watched your reflection as you applied it.

Seeing him today was going to make it even harder, just like every day since you took your love away.

Since he didn't claim his.

--

Billy traipsed through the doors into the buzzing hallway. 

Of course, there you were, with your sweater marking you as his target.

He held in a breath, stood frozen, watching as you tucked hair behind your ear, with your binder in your other arm.

The sunlight was cast around you like an aura of all things good and warm in the world.

No, nothing compares to you.

Shutting your locker door, you swiveled on your heels to make your way to class. Instead, you stopped dead in your tracks when your eyes met Billy's, an immediate heat peppering your cheeks.

All Billy could do was respond with a sorrow-laced smile.

I died when you went away.

It was then that Tommy Hanson and Keith Monaghan presented themselves.

"Dude, where have you been? Let's go before Coach penalizes us.", Tommy told him.

Simmering at the interruption, Billy turned to him with a glare that could've struck Tommy dead. "Fuck off, Hanson."

Tommy, appearing both frightened and downtrodden, looked away from Billy.

Billy's eyes shifted back to where you were, but found that you had retreated to class, leaving nothing behind but the ache in his chest.

*

You shuffled your Nikes off of your knackered feet before yanking the switch to your bedside lamp, the muted, harvest yellow resembling your mental state.

After spending your evening at Nancy's studying for an anatomy exam, which mainly consisted of testing each other's patience instead of wits, all you wanted was your bed. 

Nancy wanted to talk about him because she could clearly see that your love was wearing you down like an old belt. Still holding it all in, but too obviously worn from the strain of it.

After going through the motions of your nightly routine, and changing into a baggy nightshirt and white tube socks, you were consumed by your comforter.

You turned your back to the empty side of your bed, the reminder fueling the tears that had already been building up throughout the day, ever since you saw him.

Hawkins was by no means a sizeable town, so you were bound to see each other. But, you'd both managed not to for a handful of days. Even so, it still sent a shock through you when you laid eyes on him.

You reached behind you to grab a pillow, then hugged it to you before completely letting loose, the cool fabric relieving your flushed, damp face.

Nothing can take away these blues.

Billy sat on the edge of his bed, his leg bouncing enough to shake the mattress.

He was battling the urge to go see you.

Should he leave you be, let you move on to perhaps someone better, someone not so broken? Or, should he relent his true feelings, the one thing that you wanted from him, and possibly risk hurting you later on? 

This one time out of the countless urges he had fought since you left, he chose the latter.

Yanking himself up from his bed, he shuffled his brown leather jacket onto his shoulders, then shimmied his window open, the combination of the cold and his nerves immediately causing goosebumps to prickle at his skin.

I know that living with you baby was sometimes hard,

But I'm willing to give it another try.

Knuckles against your bedroom window startled you, having nearly succumbed to your emotional enervation from dripping the rest of your energy onto your pillow.

Sliding out of your bed, you stepped over to your window.

There he was, stinging blue eyes pleading you to let him back in.

Gazes locked onto each other, you flicked the lock up and Billy climbed his way inside, a gust of cold air swooping into the room.

You stepped back as he carefully shut your window back in place.

Turning to you, he met your glassy eyes, exhaustion glazed over them.

"Baby…" He sighed, mouth agape as you watched him intently, awaiting his next words with bated breath.

"I'm sorry it's come to this for me to finally tell you how I feel.", Billy's eyes searched yours, asking permission to go on.

After a second, you nodded.

"I'm fucked up, and everything that I touch breaks.", he began, voice trembling and steel eyes watering. 

You opened your mouth to reassure him that he was beyond that, that he was not his father, but he continued, "I would never want to do that to you. And, that terrifies me, too."

Billy took a step closer, "But, I don't want to break that promise that I've made with myself, and I don't want to promise anything that I might not be able to keep."

Your brows furrowed, and you stepped toward him, placing a finger to his lips to shush him, and opened your mouth to object.

"The truth is, I don't love you.", Billy uttered, soft lips brushing against your delicate index.

Your face pulled into an incredulous frown, fresh tears building up at the rims of your eyes once more as you quickly retracted your finger, as if his lips burned to the touch.

Had he come back just to crush you even more? To finish the job, and prove to be the monster that he believes he is?

"There's not a word to describe how I feel.", Billy began to explain, bringing his hand up to cradle your cheek. Surprisingly, you let him, pushing away the urge to either melt into his touch or push him away.

"Because the word does not compare to how I feel about you.", his voice trembled at his admission, dropping his hand.

"Y/N, nothing compares to you."

The two of you were so close that your noses nearly touched, his breath fanned over your features - hints of mint and tobacco washing away your weariness. 

You raised a hand to his cheek, caressing it and wiping away a lone tear that had escaped, which he hadn't noticed until he felt it smeared across his cheekbone.

"Oh, Billy.", you breathed. He supplied a soft smile in return, relaxing his posture.

Your lips met his with a sweet, soft fervour as your arms slid over his shoulders, and he enveloped you into a tight embrace.

You breathed life back into one another, your tender kisses healing your hearts.

"I love you so fucking much.", you mumbled against his lips. You felt him smile before you opened your eyes, his wide grin igniting something in you.

"I love you, too, babe.", his eyes glittering with a light you had never seen in them before, and a warmth spread through you, your smile growing to match his own.

The light in your awakened eyes told Billy that you thought the same of him, too.

No, nothing compares to you.

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 38

Well hello folks and welcome back to the world of Linux Life.  Not much happening regarding machines this episode as I have been exceptionally busy but there is a few topics regarding Linux which has been pretty prominent lately I would like to discuss.  This is probably going to be a long episode... you have been warned.

Topic 1 - Why is Linux not seen as a major desktop system.

This is an interesting discussion as given that Linux costs the huge price of absolutely nothing.  How come now that its about 15 years old is it not dominating Windows as the desktop OS environment.  Majority of the software is free and it should have a much larger reach than it currently has.

Thing is it is still seen as an operating system for geeks.  Linux installation is much easier than it ever was.  I’m a guy who started with Slackware and can remember having to do everything from text prompts.  Now everything is graphical and straightforward.  It will even set up to dual boot if the right options are selected or at least show you how to do so via a tutorial.

So what is real problem if not installation.  Application support is primarily seen by many as there is no Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects, No FL Studio or Cubase products.

Now all of these can be run by Wine in Linux but they can only run the 32 bit versions of said software although 64 bit support is improving. Wine is constantly improving so more software running is becoming much easier.

However there is alternatives to said programs such as LibreOffice, GIMP, Kdenlive and Davinci Resolve. For music your have Ardour and Rosegarden.  Now I understand it would require major relearning of your workflow which will take time and effort which you may not be able to afford.

Linux has Firefox, Chrome, Opera and all the usual browsers so Internet is not a problem.  Also most wifi cards now have a driver automatically recognised.  A small number of cards don’t but compared to the early years it’s vastly improved.  It recognised about five wifi cards if you were lucky.

Linux also had many mail applications such as Thunderbird, Twitter support with Corebird and much more. So this is no longer a problem.

Now Gaming was always a stumbling point for Linux.  However Steam has been available for Linux for a number of years now and several games have a Linux version.  Recently Valve have started working with CodeWeavers the people behind the Wine project to create the Proton project.

This allows Steam to play Windows games in your Steam library using a modified Wine installation wrapper.  It runs quite a lot of games but currently is still in beta.  In time more and more games will work as the Proton driver is improved.  Also as Valve are working with the Wine guys it will also help it run various applications as the code will be available to it.

Linux is far more customizable than Windows.  Don’t like the look or setup.  You can normally move stuff or if you want replace the Windows Manager with one more to your preference.  While changing WM is not easy it can be done.  However theming and desktop modification is normally reasonably simple.

Also don’t need certain drivers then you can remove most of them bar the essentials.

The thing is with Linux is for all it’s getting much better, it’s still a bit technical when it goes wrong.  Reinstalling software doesn’t always fix things like it does in Windows.

A lot of things still require terminal commands.  However distributions like Arch or any other rolling release tend to do most things in GUIs and only occasionally do you need a terminal.

Until they find a true way to minimise this and make fixing issues much easier it will remain a fringe operating system.  Mind you how many people go hunting with RegEdit on Windows so it can be a pain equally at times.

Linux has the advantage of malware and viruses are virtually none existent due to rights management and if any bugs are found they are normally fixed pretty quickly.

So maybe in three to five years Linux may be where it should be then it may start to dominate.  We may even have Mir by then but I wouldn’t put money on it.  Funny thing is because it’s free a lot of people distrust it which is odd.  They figure if you are giving it away for free it must have something wrong with it.

Topic 2 - Microsoft is now getting involved with Linux.  What?

Well its pretty well documented that Microsoft now have their own Linux based Azure Sphere OS.  However to program anything for Azure Sphere you need a Windows installation and Visual Studio to do so.  Which is kind of counterproductive if you ask me.

Also they have a seat on the board of The Linux Foundation meaning they get a vote in the way that Linux progresses.  They have open sourced various patents to the OIN (Open Invention Network) but the only people who gain advantage with this are existing OIN members.

It’s easy to see why many don’t trust Microsoft being involved.  Many ditched Windows to be away from their incessant spying and fiddling.  Also they have not had the best things to say about Linux.  Admittedly this was primarily when Steve Ballmer was the CEO of the company and now that Satya Nadella has taken the reins it has changed it’s stance.

“Linux is a cancer” - Steve Ballmer (1 June 2001)

Ballmer admitted in 2016 he hated it then but he now loves Linux but he had been left Microsoft for 2 years by then.

Most Linux people who have been around for a bit also remember that Microsoft sued several Linux Distro providers due to patent usage so when they announced they liked Linux and would even defend it if necessary.  Many Linux users were sceptical.

Also their recent acquisition of GitHub has raised concerns as many of the Linux Open Source projects are based on there and with Microsoft in charge what sort of issues will this present.

While understandably sceptical about Microsoft being involved with Linux.  They will probably fund many things to improve the way things are done in Linux especially useful regarding things like drivers.  As they can throw millions at it and not bat an eyelid.

However it’s equally dangerous because this goes back to a Microsoft philosophy that makes many nervous.  The philosophy is Embrace, Enhance and Extinguish.  This is where they introduce themselves to a system.  Add and convert many programs to standards written by Microsoft, then extinguish by leaving such programs without update making users move to something else.

While it will be virtually impossible to extinguish Linux.  The fact that Azure Sphere can only have programs written using Visual Studio.  Microsoft are already starting on the what it calls the Enhance stage.

They think that Visual Studio has enhanced the way to write Linux software.  Many I am sure would disagree vehemently.  If enough Windows guys take it up then there could be trouble on the horizon.

Several people think Linux is already getting a bit bloated without Microsoft attempting to fill up your hard drive.

There is even a version of the Linux Subsystem for Windows available for Windows 10 should you feel you want it.  This allows you to run Linux binaries under Windows 10 using a wrapper to put them on your desktop instead of using a VM.

It’s a double edged sword as I see it.  They could help get drivers and support for applications due to funding the Linux Foundation but equally they could totally start clogging up the Linux system with proprietary software.

What do you think?

Topic 3 - Video Editing on Linux?

Recently a Youtuber by the name of EposVox (Adam Taylor) had a bit of a meltdown regarding trying to switch from Windows to Linux regarding video editing on his channel.

Now he was trying to use Davinci Resolve 15 as his primary video editor and I believe he was using Kubuntu to begin with.  Now EposVox has featured many videos on his channel regarding Linux and  certain aspects of it.

He was certainly no beginner.  However he found first he could not access his video footage from external drives as they were ExFAT.  Now Kubuntu does not supply them by default.  However you can install them using apt-get.

Then when he did files to Linux using USB, he discovered Davinci Resolve 15 Free Edition did not have the codecs to read the videos as they were in 4K H.264 format. So he had to install Davinci Resolve 15 Studio but to do so he had to transfer one of the keys from one of his Windows machines.

Now the program could read his videos but would regularly crash for no apparent reason due to video driver issues.  In frustration he eventually gave up.

He also tried it under Linux Mint 19 which did include the ExFAT drivers but once again Davinci Resolve 15 Studio would just crash randomly due to video driver issues.

This caused him to post his video rant.  Now many tried to defend Linux saying he didn’t know what he was doing.  This I find hard to believe.  He had championed Linux for a while so he was far from incompetent.

However it does seem when it comes to using 4K video under normal Linux conditions, problems do tend to occur.  This is because they have not really got true codec support from the manufacturers.

A lot of the drivers have probably been written by enthusiasts who just wanted to see if it could be done so they probably are not the best drivers available.

Since camera manufacturers such as RED and other makers of 4K or higher cameras work almost exclusively with Microsoft or Apple.  Linux is left out in the cold as it’s not paying them millions of dollars for drivers.

Most Linux content creators are running under 4K, normally 1080p is the limit.  Now I know the BBC use Linux for their editing but it has probably been specifically built for them and if they want the drivers they can afford to pay for them.

Until Linux gets competent 4K video codec support a lot of profession video editors will probably stick with the likes of Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro X.

Kdenlive has improved vastly over the years also there is OpenShot and Lightworks but they all seem to be under optimised or missing features video editors want.

It’s not that Linux is bad at video editing.  Once again I think it is something that they will get in time but for now anyone using 4K camera footage will have not the greatest of time working in the Linux environment.

I could be wrong about 4K video being awkward under Linux but that seems to be the opinion out there currently.

I have had issues running Davinci Resolve in the past so I can understand it can be frustrating.  It is very finicky with it’s setup and is far from stable under Linux.  Works fine under Windows however.

Topic 4 - New Mac ? No Linux for you then...

Well it seems Apple have finally found a way to lock out Linux from  the new 2018 range of Apple Macs.  Due to the implementation of the current T2 security chip it has locked out Linux.

The current T2 chip has also caused issues regarding upgrading.  If you upgrade a new Mac yourself and don’t get an Apple registered service member to do it.  The likelihood is MacOS Mojave will not start.

The reason being that Apple have supplied software to their Apple registered engineers that allows them to reset the T2 security chip so it will start MacOS.  Without this you will just get a black screen if you do it yourself.

Well this same T2 security chip is now locking out Linux so it can’t boot.  Previously Linux got around Mac boot issues by using the Windows Production CA 2011 certificate.

Apparently New Macs block Windows 10 too until you enable it in the Boot Camp settings.  However Linux does not have that luxury.

So is this the end of Linux on new Mac machines or do you think Apple will give them access.  I can only imagine this would happen if Apple were paid a considerable amount of money.

If those who hack it decide to put their findings on the Internet so Linux can be booted.  Be prepared as Apple are notoriously famous for sending legal teams after people.

I’m sure the likes of Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE will eventually cough up some money but other smaller distributions may not be able to afford such.

Sad really and eventually they will find a way around it probably just bypassing the T2 security chip all together and making it think it sees a T2 chip that will let it past.

Anyway that’s enough waffle for this episode.  Hopefully next time I will have more to report on what I have actually been doing with Linux not just general news opinion.

Until next time... Take Care.