Damn, Fedora 41 is a HUGE update.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

Damn, Fedora 41 is a HUGE update. Much bigger than Fedora 40 and 39 were. Or maybe just longer, could be I cursed my system to the bone and DNF is now mving the entire filesystem back and forth to fix it or something

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

It's updating 6311 packages rn. I didn't even realize there are 6311 fucking separate BDFLs/foundations/maintainers/etc. all needed to make my local installation of Fedora work

I think our biggest problem after an apocalypse would be to pick up, maintain, and update said 6311 projects so that we'll have somewhat working computers.

You don't need 6311 engineers to rebuild all the roads before you can drive on any road, but you do need 6311 maintainers to, ignore maintaining, figure out how to compile 6311 separate packages, before you can boot into your desktop.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

Please tell me Fedora has an ultra secure vault storing everything needed to compile it from the ground up.

Like, the C compiler! What if we lost all C compiler binaries? C compilers dogfood. We'd literally have to make an entire C compiler to compile the original C compiler to compile literally anything

I assume someone thought of this already and maintains a compiler written in assembly, but whatever.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

Like, C doesn't only compile C, it also indirectly compiles almost every language on earth.

Almost every language I can think of has a compiler written in C, or its compiler is written in C, ad infinitum.

If aliens really wanted to destroy human civilization, all they'd need to do is create a virus that deletes C compilers. They wouldn't even need to fight us physically. This vulnerability bottleneck makes having a C compiler by default on every single machine a really good idea, which Windows should adopt. Doesn't even matter if it's usable, just save the damn thing in case an apocalypse happens

Samosa somas

@laxla you should 'reflections on trusting trust' the 1974 ACM paper by Ken Thomson (all of that from tiredbrain, apologies for getting it wrong). All about subverting the C compiler ourobourus.

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@Heterokromia dogfooding is a good idea, as long as your repo contains history from before you started dogfooding.

That way you can compile each version with the previous one. Problem is, C compilers are so old, they have so many versions....

Laxystem (Masto/Glitch)

@Heterokromia I'll read it.