Can second this.
Also audio libraries on linux. ALSA vs whatever. Had a lot of issues with my particular hardware & Arch.
Also way back when, X itself. Back when it was likely to not work on many systems (~2001). I spent so many hours going back and forth to use my friend's computer & internet to Altavista some help.
Re:Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
by accraze on Monday April 13, 2020 @07:44PM
(#22861417)
lol +1 for audio libraries / drivers on linux. spent many hours on the "battle of configuration".
Re:Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
by k4ch0w on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:17AM
(#22864291)
Absolutely felt your pain too. So many nights trying to build the latest tensorflow package only to find out I couldn't run it on my current Cuda version, so I need to uninstall it, reinstall the new one only to find out I installed 10.0, then 10.1 but I needed 9. It was just so silly I ended up just never updating once it worked.
Re:Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
by tetris11 on Tuesday April 14, 2020 @06:30AM
(#22864385)
To quote Linus: "Fuck Nvidia"
Their proprietary drivers suck and I much prefer using the default Linux ones... but the performance just isn't the same and I always end up relenting and installing their terrible software
Re:Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
by wakkaflokka on Monday April 13, 2020 @08:02PM
(#22861522)
This, this, this. I needed to run some code that was only compatible with an older version of tensorflow. Figuring out how to get the proper Nvidia drivers, CUDA version, etc. was an absolute and utter nightmare.
Compilation of deep learning libraries from source on Windows -- don't do it.
Tikz -- LaTeX drawing "language". The images produced can be stuninngly beatiful, but the manual has 1200+ pages and it takes forever to become productive. If only journals accepted hand-drawn images...