Top all-time · #1348
Felipe Contreras
Personal blog · felipec.wordpress.comprogrammingsystems
Felipe Contreras's personal blog at felipec.wordpress.com covers programming and systems. Since 2011, 52 different Hacker News readers have linked it 72 times, most often “The Linux way; never ever break user experience (2013)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-04, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (17) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Felipe Contreras writes about Git workflows and terminology, and about Linux and GNOME desktop choices. HN commenters cite his posts as sources, and two call specific posts excellent or great.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- Called an "excellent article" on Git, and "a great blog post" on Linux's don't-break-userspace policy that is "pretty good".
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 17 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Linux way; never ever break user experience (2013)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-12-05
- The Git staging area, the term literally everyone agrees with4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-08-11
- The stupidity and arrogance of GNOME developers (2024)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-03-18
- Git update: the odyssey for a sensible Git pull – Felipe Contreras3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-07-05
- /2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-doesnt-have-a-dhh-problem/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-11-29
- Xz Backdoor and Autotools Insanity2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-05
- C skill issue; how the White House is wrong2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-11
- /2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-07
- One decade later, GNOME still sucks2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-04-26
- Seamless Git interop with Hg and Bzr2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-29
What Hacker News says?
The typical Github workflow is to treat the Github repo as a preferred upstream Is it typical? What metrics do you have to support that? Speaking for myself I have only ever used triangular workflows: fork upstream; set local remotes to own fork; push to own fork; issue pull request; profit https://felipec.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/git-triangular-work...
Comment linking /2014/05/11/git-triangular-workflows/
on “Microsoft and GitHub team up to take Git virtual file system to macOS, Linux”Submitted Another user/developer banned from GNOME's bugzilla without any warning as a story · 88 points
HN discussion> If you're willing to fiddle around, there are a few good themes that don't waste so much space. The point of this "first impressions" exercise was to explore the happy path. > It's not just Gnome that does that. There's an entire generation of designers that's cargo-culting mobile designs at the moment. Breeze, KDE's default theme, is equally space-wasting. I would agree with that sentiment, though I didn't want t…
Comment linking /2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/
on “Debian 10 “Buster” Released”Submitted The problem with GNOME 3 as a story · 76 points
HN discussionN9 was very close to launch when Elop came, so that went ahead, but the rest of the development got cancelled immediately to focus on Windows phone: N9 would've otherwise been the first in a series of devices to slowly take over from Symbian. Until Elop canceled everything Symbian was still selling - declining sales, but still millions of units. So while the situation was bad slowly phasing out Symbian for taking al…
Comment linking /2011/02/22/meego-scales-because-linux-scales/
on “Nokia's internal presentation after iPhone was launched (2007) [pdf]”Submitted Simplifying the Xz Backdoor as a story · 44 points
HN discussionAnother example is what happened when Linux moved to 3.0; some programs expected a 2.x version, or even 2.6.x, these programs were clearly buggy, as they should check that the version is greater than 2.x, however, the bugs were already there, and people didn’t want to recompile their binaries, and they might not even be able to do that. It would be stupid for Linux to report 2.6.x, when in fact it’s 3.x, but that’s…
Comment linking /2013/10/07/the-linux-way/
on “A regression is the kernel not giving the same result with the same user space”Submitted The stupidity and arrogance of GNOME developers (2024) as a story · 39 points
HN discussion>Read "As I Remember London", and put on your reading comprehension hat. Ironic. Your linked article wouldn't exist if the author had put on their reading comprehension hat. >If you need help, try this article: If you need help, try this article: https://felipec.wordpress.com/2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-... >DHH is clearly talking about people of color in London "People of color" are not native to London. If you w…
Comment linking /2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-doesnt-have-a-dhh-problem/
on “Framework Sponsors CachyOS”Submitted No, mercurial branches are still not better than git ones as a story · 36 points
HN discussionSounds like you have a poitical clash with DHH. You are of course free to choose how you spend your money. Other people are free to ignore politics or look at counteracting viewpoints: https://felipec.wordpress.com/2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-...
Comment linking /2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-doesnt-have-a-dhh-problem/
on “Framework Computer Now Sponsoring LVFS / Fwupd Development”Submitted Why renaming Git’s master branch is a terrible idea as a story · 27 points
HN discussionNope. In fact, Felipe Contreras has an excellent article he just posted about that exact topic: http://felipec.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/whats-missing-in-git...
Comment linking /2014/06/05/whats-missing-in-git-v2-0-0/
on “Git 2.0 is here”Submitted Xz Backdoor and Autotools Insanity as a story · 19 points
HN discussionGNOME as a project has consistently made itself clear on how it feels about the rest of the desktop Linux ecosystem existing, or working well with it: 2012 — https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti... 2021 — https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/building-an-alternative-... 2023 — https://felipec.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/one-decade-later-gn... 2023 — https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an…
Comment linking /2023/03/04/one-decade-later-gnome-still-sucks/
on “The Adwaita Icon Theme no longer follows the FDO spec, breaking e.g. KDE apps”Submitted The stupidity and arrogance of GNOME developers as a story · 17 points
HN discussionThis is older than git 1.9, but git supports mercurial repositories[1]. I used to have to use mercurial to deal with kiln (which couldn't convert our repo to git), but now I happily work with git and everything is 10 times faster. [1]: https://felipec.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/git-remote-hg-bzr-2...
Comment linking /2012/11/13/git-remote-hg-bzr-2/
on “Git 1.9 Release Notes”Submitted Xz Backdoor and Autotools Insanity as a story · 15 points
HN discussionSome time ago (10 years) we implemented this as 'continuations' into our own game engine. E.g. see https://felipec.wordpress.com/2008/09/28/continuations-in-c-... and http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ContinuationImplementation
Comment linking /2008/09/28/continuations-in-c-easy-asynchronous-stuff/
on “Simple coroutines for games in C++”Submitted Mercurial vs Git; it’s all in the branches as a story · 14 points
HN discussionLinus has a policy: Don't break userspace. See https://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/the-linux-way/ That's a great blog post; it's not just about the policy, but talks about some people who disagree, provides a lot of links, and is just generally better than anything I could hope to write here. I'll only observe that I'm not endorsing anything except that that's a pretty good post. I'm just pointing out the conte…
Comment linking /2013/10/07/the-linux-way/
on “x86: Deprecate a.out support”Submitted What's missing in Git v2.0 as a story · 13 points
HN discussion>London is a melting pot and a global city. Always has been, always will be. Falsehoods and ahistorical delusions. You do you though, believe whatever BlueSky posts that preserve the narrative and signal virtue. >The "natives" have no more of a right to it than British nationals with familial roots outside the UK. (Who, by the way, are not "immigrants" or "foreigners". They are literally, by definition, "immigrants"…
Comment linking /2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-doesnt-have-a-dhh-problem/
on “Stephen Miller's Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State”Submitted Xorg Neglect and XLibre Slander as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI was not aware of this. The fact that this got through is maddening. There is a person who campaigned for 5+ years to get the term "index" changed to "staging." Everyone agreed with this change. There is a ton of evidence that it's better. The patch was written. But one person refused it and it got shut down. Edit: here is the actual link https://felipec.wordpress.com/2021/08/10/git-staging-area-re...
Comment linking /2021/08/10/git-staging-area-rename/
on “A once respected biology journal indicts evolutionary biology for ableism”Submitted The Linux Foundation is wrong about sanctions as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThe author seems to contradict himself in a comment[1]: My objective is to show why Git is superior. (Thanks to [2] for noticing.) [1]: http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/mercurial-vs-git-its... [2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3437677
Comment linking /2011/01/16/mercurial-vs-git-its-all-in-the-branches/
on “Mercurial vs Git; it’s all in the branches”Submitted My tone doesn't make me wrong, or how I convinced the Ruby project to fix a bug as a story · 12 points
HN discussionAnything like this ever happen to you before? https://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/no-gnome-doesnt-wan...
Comment linking /2011/09/23/no-gnome-doesnt-want-user-feedback-how-i-argued-in-favor-of-voting-in-bugzilla-and-got-banned-as-a-result/
on “My tone doesn't make me wrong, or how I convinced the Ruby project to fix a bug”Submitted The Git staging area, the term literally everyone agrees with as a story · 11 points
HN discussion
