Why Desktop Linux Sucks
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by okreylos
6M ago
Now that’s a clickbaity title, you might say, but it’s actually the title of a video I watched the other day: Linus Torvalds is a fun speaker, so go watch the video. I’ll wait here. That was the bait, now here is the switch: I don’t think that Linux sucks as a desktop. I have been using Linux as my desktop computing environment since SGI IRIX stopped being a thing, so maybe in 2001, and it’s fine. There have been advances, there have been serious setbacks (Gnome 3, anyone?), but overall it lets me do what I need to do and otherwise doesn’t try to get in my way. I even gave Mac OS X an honest ..read more
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Now This Is Some Exceptional Code
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by okreylos
6M ago
I have been re-writing large chunks of Vrui recently, primarily to support a new Vulkan-based HMD graphics driver that will warp and distortion-correct rendered application image frames to an HMD operating in “direct mode,” i.e., without being managed by the window manager. Yes, I know I’m several years late to that particular party. While I was doing that, which involved staring at a lot of old code for extended periods, I also cleaned up some things that had been bugging me for a long time. Specifically, error handling. I like descriptive error messages, because I find they make it easier t ..read more
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We’re back!
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by okreylos
2y ago
Wow, it’s been a while. The server (by which I mean the physical mid-size tower PC, see Figure 1) that used to run this blog, and was stashed in a server room in my old building on UC Davis campus, went down in June 2021 due to a brief power outage, and I never got around to turning it back on due to the COVID-related campus lock-down. Figure 1: The old server, which had been running doc-ok.org for about ten years. Your eyes do not deceive you: that is a GeForce GTX 280 in there. Truly cutting edge! I finally remembered to ask the CS department’s IT support staff to pull it out of that server ..read more
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Are Math Textbooks Written by People who Hate Math?
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by okreylos
3y ago
Now that I’m basically home-schooling my daughter due to The Lockdown, I’m realizing how ridiculous math textbooks and workbooks are. Who writes these things / creates these problem sets? Today’s homework assignment had these nuggets in it: “Kelly subtracted 2.3 from 20 and got 17.7. Explain why this answer is reasonable.” The obvious answer is “because it is correct.” But that would get the student zero points. The expected (I assume) answer is about number sense / estimation, e.g., “If I subtract 2 from 20 I get 18, but I have to subtract a little bit more, and 17.7 is a little bit less than ..read more
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Idle Hands etc. etc.
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by okreylos
4y ago
A friendly redditor sent me this link to a popular post on /r/funny yesterday (see Figure 1 for the picture). I might have mentioned before how it was that exact scene in the original Star Wars movie that got me into 3D computer graphics and later VR, so it got me thinking how that particular shot would have looked like if the miniature ILM used to film the trench run scene had not been flat, but exhibited the proper scaled curvature of the Death Star. Figure 1: Death Star and trench from attack scene in A New Hope, showing the flat miniature that was used to shoot the scene. Source. Two hours ..read more
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A Question About VR Headset Resolution
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by okreylos
4y ago
I received a question via reddit a few moments ago, and I think the answer might be of general interest, so I decided to answer it here: “Would you happen to know the effective or perceived resolution of the [Valve Index headset] when viewing a 50″ virtual screen from say.. 5 feet away? Do you think its equivalent to a 50″ 1080p tv from 5 ft away yet? I was also wondering why when I look at close up objects on the index that I can see basically no screen door effect, but when looking into the distance at the sky then suddenly the sde becomes very noticeable.” Okay, so that’s actually two quest ..read more
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A Clarification About “Black Smear”
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by okreylos
4y ago
Here’s another frequently-asked question about VR headsets, or at least those that use LED-based displays: Why does my headset show dark grey when it’s supposed to show black? Shouldn’t LED displays be able to show perfect blacks? I addressed this in detail a long time ago, but the question keeps popping up, and it is often answered like the following: “LED display pixels have a memory effect when they are turned off completely, which causes ‘black smear.’ This can be avoided by never turning them off completely.” Unfortunately, that answer is mostly wrong. LED display pixels do have ..read more
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Quantitative Comparison of VR Headset Fields of View
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by okreylos
4y ago
Although I’ve taken many through-the-lens pictures of several common VR headsets with a calibrated wide-angle camera, until recently I was still struggling how to compare the resulting fields of view (FoV) quantitatively, how to put them in context, and how to visualize them appropriately. When trying to answer questions like “which VR headset has a bigger FoV?” or “by how much is headset A’s FoV bigger than headset B’s?” or “how does headset C’s FoV compare to the field of vision of the naked human eye?”, the basic question is: how does one even measure field of view, in a way that is fair an ..read more
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