netboot.xyz VS Windows Terminal

I learned about https://netboot.xyz/ the other day. Worked fantastic when I didn't have a big enough thumb drive. Not exactly the same though.

I replied to a reply of yours with this same info, but since you’re both sorta asking the same thing, I’ll post it here for you also.

https://netboot.xyz/

https://github.com/netbootxyz/netboot.xyz

Knew about http://netboot.xyz, but had no idea iVentoy existed. Good to know.

Set the computer to PXE boot, or use a boot image with iPXE (such as netboot.xyz). That would quickly rule out a problem with Debian or the Linux kernel (at least until you download and boot one). I don't know anything about your network setup, but making sure DHCP is enabled on your router and there are enough unreserved IP addresses would probably help.

Hey thanks for the detailed response. You're saying you boot FCOS on bare metal over PXE, correct? I've thought about trying that approach, but have little experience with PXE and TFTP. I just checked out netboot.xyz and it looks surprisingly easy to get going. Last time I played around with PXE I used Synology's TFTP server and, while I got it working, I was more confused by the end than when I started. I think actually learning PXE end-to-end and understanding what I am doing there would be a solid foundation for building my environment the right way.

For netbooting we rely on a netboot.xyz inspired ipxe based setup.

[[UPDATE]]: The fix was as 'simple' as going into the 'bios', and selecting 'add a boot option', which automatically came up with the correct EFI file/path, then putting it at the top of the boot order. 'Simple' it wasn't, many new and temporary instances brought online while digging my way through it all, and finally just going with a brand new Debian Bookworm and migrating my data over from the old disk file. At least I learned a lot about recovering from this weird circumstance. The incorrect EFI file/path must be an artifact of using netboot.xyz to install Deb Bookworm over a previously provisioned Ubuntu instance. Makes sense I guess. Still loving netboot.xyz as a super fast way to spin up an unsupported OS.

I learned about GRML only a few years ago. Absolutely love the mixture of power and minimalism. Here is the only ISO which increases my mileage even more: https://netboot.xyz

> convince management of the value

This presupposes that such convincing is even possible. Many, many companies have leadership that are simply terrible at identifying value. If you've never been part of a majority of developers advocating for, if not outright begging for, some huge ROI initiative to get the green light, you are very fortunate.

There are great counterexamples, like Valve, which is known for giving developers an extreme degree of autonomy, and they benefit greatly from that approach. For each Valve, though, there are dozens of companies that manage to succeed despite themselves.

Take Microsoft, for example. One tiny, yet representative, example: the way the Windows Terminal team handled a suggestion from Casey Muratori to take their software from abysmally slow to lightning fast:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362

A quote from one of the Terminal developers, dismissing the suggestion:

> I believe what you’re doing is describing something that might be considered an entire doctoral research project in performant terminal emulation as “extremely simple” somewhat combatively…

Just how difficult was such an endeavor in actuality? Well, given that Casey implemented his own terminal emulator from scratch and incorporated the functionality he was proposing in a mere weekend... not a whole lot. Relatively minor effort for a huge return on investment. It took Casey explaining the concepts, then providing a working proof of concept, and finally a bunch of backlash online towards the Terminal team to get them to do the right thing for themselves and their users.

At this point ConHost.exe is open source [0] so it is maybe not a stretch to expect Microsoft to open source CMD.EXE at some point.

Though with PowerShell being cross-platform and already open source, I personally don't think there's enough to gain in some sort of better open source CMD.EXE fork. I'd be interested in being proved wrong on that, but I'm also happy enough with PowerShell these days I'm not in a hurry to return to CMD.EXE.

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/tree/main/src/host

"Users of Linux and macOS may well be familiar with the sudo command, used regularly in the terminal, and it looks like Windows may finally be getting its own version."

More Linux tools are coming to Windows, especially Windows Server because the tools are good and they make it easier to administer a Windows Server.

They are looking at adding a default TUI text editor (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/discussions/16440) and now they are adding sudo.

I would not be surprised if systemd or something like it gets ported or reinvented for Windows simply because it makes managing services so nice.

GitHub

>We are allowed to view and consume it, to be influenced by it, and under many circumstances even outright copy it.

People keep saying this but it's actually much more complicated, and in many cases you can't view copyrighted content.

An example, MicroSoft employees are not permitted to view or learn from an open source (GPL-2) terminal emulator:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10462#issuecomm...

Another example is proprietary software that may have it's source available, either intentionally or not. If you view this and then work on something related to it, like WINE for example, you are definitely at risk of being successfully sued.

If you worked at MicroSoft and worked on Windows, you would not be able to participate in WINE development at all without violating copyright.

If you viewed leaked Windows source code you also would not be able to participate in WINE development.

An interesting question that I have, is whether training on proprietary, non-trade-secret sources would be allowed. Something like unreal engine, where you can view the source but it's still proprietary.

Windows Terminal is pretty good and a new terminal emulator written in the last few years. No smooth scrolling, here's the GitHub issue requesting it: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1400

Assume its related to this:

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362

It's nothing serious just microsoft engineers writing slow as shit code and reacting poorly to someone trying to help.

"There are plenty of offline scenarios where this would be incredibly useful. For disconnected environments, etc. There are some environments that will never connect to winget."

Source: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/discussions/16440#disc...