There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

BaumGeist

@[email protected]

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Use work laptop as personal device by dual booting on a separate internal drive?

I currently have a Dell laptop that runs Windows for work. I use an external SSD via the Thunderbolt port to boot Linux allowing me to use the laptop as a personal device on a completely separate drive. All I have to do is F12 at boot, then select boot from USB drive....

BaumGeist ,

The big takeaway is that you do not own this computer. It is not yours, it is being lent to them for a very specific purpose. And what you want to do, hell what you’re already doing, is way outside of that purpose.

How would you feel if you lent a friend your conputer to check their email and found out they had bypassed a lot of your security mechanisms (passwords) to set up their own admin account?

What about when you begrudgingly get a MFA app on your personal phone because your employer’s too cheap to shell out for a yubikey or hardware token? How would you feel if their app also rooted your phone just for shits and giggles?

What you’re proposing is not only dangerous to your career, it’s also potentially illegal. And also just downright unethical.

BaumGeist ,

Debian + Gnome. The debian wiki is full of great documentation. If you prefer watching, there’s so many great (and not-so-great) courses on YouTube. I personally found tutoriaLinux’s series helpful. Please understand that is merelyy what helped me at that point in my journey not necessarily the best tutorial series for you or anyone else.

My biggest tip is, regardless of the teacher or the lesson: follow along. Learn by doing, not by watching someone else doing. If you find yourself thinking anything like “couldn’t I have done this” or “but what would happen if I changed this parameter”: Do It. Try it out. Seee what happens.

Coincidentally, my second biggest tip is: use a test environment to do anything that you don’t fully understand. Even if it’s only a new folder with a bunch of empty files to practice file manipulation commands, it’s way better than losing your important files. Anything that affects software configuration should be backed up first, anything that affects the OS should be tested in a VM

BaumGeist ,

There’s so many good Mr. Rogers quotes. What a wholesome human. I’m sad I wasn’t around to witness the height of his cultural relevance, but the beauty of him and his teachings were their timelessness. May his work be immortalized.

PBS had so many kind, gentle people working to remind us that there is love, kindness and hope in the world if we just take time to make room for it.

BaumGeist ,

we are also probably the only species that has members that sympathise with other species above ourselves

I don’t buy that for a second, and neither would you if you’ve ever had a beloved pet. These little furry guys treat you like their bff, I can honestly see why some humans refer to them as fur babies.

And it’s not just cats, dogs, and crows. If you know where to look (shoutouts to the BigBoye subreddit, for example), you can find evidence of all sorts of animal species befriending humans or other species outside their own.

BaumGeist ,

“Death is only the beginning” - Imhotep’s last line in The Mummy.

A man that has been dead for a couple millenia and is about to return to death utters these ominous words. Yes, it’s probably just to leave the story open for a sequel, but the metaphysical implications are terrifying. He knows what it’s like, and he’s claiming that so much more comes after, but we’re just left with a vague notion of what it could be. What could this mean? Is there sunshine and rainbows? Eternal torture? An endless void? An infinite realm of possibilities has just opened up for us, the audience.

But there’s no time for that shit, there’s gold and Benny’s a greedy sack of shit, the temple’s crumbling, and once they escape there’s a celebration and denoument to be had! We’ve all but forgotten that threat—or promise, as the case may be.

One of the best ways I have ever seen writers leave the door ajar for a sequel. There’s no hand pushing up through the rubble, no sinister laugh as the screen fades to black, no “did anyone remember to check that he died for sure?” no cheesy gimmicks. Just an ominous vaguery, that may be about hinting at another installment, but still works by itself as a raw line that goes hard af.

BaumGeist ,

Sorry I’m late to the party: your disk is still using DOS/MBR layout, but you’re trying to use UEFI

Unfortunately MBR disks don’t work with UEFI. This tracks with the partition type, since fsck is treating it like ext2 (the suggested filesystem for /boot sector) instead of vfat/FAT32 (the suggested filesystem for the Efi System Partition).

First thing I would try is forcing fsck to treat /efi as vfat, since it kept defaulting to ext2. That will tell us if you’ve got the filesystem as vfat and fsck is wrong or if it’s actually corrupted. If it’s not corrupted, you should roll back the changes and follow a different guide that mentions changing from MBR (Master Boot Record) to GPT (GUID Partition Table). If it is corrupted, I’m gonna guess you tried to change the filesystems without removing the original fs first, thinking you could outsmart the computer and avoid temporarily relocating your files (speaking from experience). In that case your only hope would be disk forensics software. Best bet would be to salvage what you can, then change the disk type.

Unfortunately changing the disk type is not as easy as changing filesystems, the part of the disk that tells the PC where the files are located is the thing that’s being rewritten, so that operation does “erase” the disk (all the bits are still physically there, but the PC doesn’t know where they’re located). You’ll want to do a full backup of all your /usr /bin /root /lib /home /etc and anything else necessary to get your system back to how you like with all your important files, then change the partioning scheme to GPT and, hey, since it’s now a blank disk anyway, might as well treat it as a fresh install of Arch to avoid further headaches.

BaumGeist ,

Oh! That’s also an experience I’ve had. Lessons learned and whatnot. Sorry I wasn’t here earlier to chime in and save you some time. Glad you’ve got it working again and learned something along the way, though!

BaumGeist ,

I don’t buy the whole “the more users a software has, the better it gets” rhetoric. Historically this has been the opposite of the case. There’s an even higher users-to-contributors ratio amongst the general population. Not all users share the same respect for the philosophy behind FOSS.

If the driving force behind design decisions becomes “what keeps people happy so they’ll keep using our software” and not “freedom,” there’s now a practical incentive to sell out and introduce more Intellectual Property shenanigans into the ecosystem. After all, it’s a lot easier to hire devs and churn out new features and keep the software actively developed for the foreseeable future if there’s money in it. And the only way there can be money in it is if there are proprietary licenses shitting up the place, and Shit As A Service suscription models as far as the eye can see.

Linux always has been, and should always continue to be, about freedom. If that freedom comes with user-friendliness, great! If not, then we have to pay the price: taking responsibility for the tools and tech we use and learning how to use them properly and contributing to them to maintain a community of likeminded people. Otherwise, we’re not worthy of the freedom and the responsibilities it entails.

I get your point about elitism and gatekeeping. We’re no better than Windows users or Mac users or any other OS’ users. We just have a set of values unique to our community, and they have sets of values that differ. We also shouldn’t be throwing users under the bus in the name of politics, but part of what makes Linux slightly more bearable is the way the driving philosophy of Free Software is evident throughout. Linux is better than it could be because it attracts the people who want to be here for the community’s values, not the people who have to be coaxed and coerced into accepting the values to use the “best”/“easiest”/“friendliest” software.

BaumGeist ,

I want to open the internet but its not on my desktop. How do I get it back? Also, what happened to my C drive? All the files are gone now, and there’s all these other ones I don’t need called like “lib” and “home.” I tried using that app store you showed me, but I couldn’t find microsoft word; it tried to install something else instead, I think I might have a virus. It’s probably that “wine” virus I tried installing, some guide on the internet said it would give me word, but it didn’t bring word back. I don’t think it did anything, but you should still do a virus scan. I tried to, but I couldn’t find the Norton button.

…

check the Downloads folder, OfficeInstaller(1).exe through OfficeInstaller(12).exe

…

It worked before you messed with it. Why did you do that? What do you mean you were “installing word” it’s just a program you click, why’d you need that black window with text in it?

try to teach them about the terminal

I shouldn’t have to learn all this hacker shit to install a simple program.

TL;DR: you overestimate what “noobie” means

BaumGeist ,

Your time is quite valuable, but there’s a reallllly good chance you’re underestimating the cost of your process in windows:

The OS is cheap. Even buying a key at full price, it’s like ~$100 ballpark. But the software you use costs money, and if it’s business grade, it’s an “As A Service” subscription plan. And any plugins (including VSTs) aren’t free if you want good quality ones. And support plans cost money. And upgrades cost money. And getting new hardware because the newest version of the OS doesn’t supoort anything older than 5 years costs money. And you still end up spending your valuable time on troubleshooting, whether it’s you or waiting on a tech to do it, because problems and errors still occur.

Seriously, keep a spreadsheet of how much time you spend on getting your programs and hardware to work the way you want, even if it’s the time you have to spend waiting for someone else to do the fixing for you. Your time is valuable, and you don’t deserve someone pulling the wool over your eyes to rent you something you should own.

I’m not saying Linux is a better fit for you, nor that you’re in the wrong for not wanting to hop on the hypetrain. Just that it’s not as cut and dry as it seems, the cost isn’t as low as you think, and the whole “Just Works” narrative in any tech is a myth.

BaumGeist ,

what does it mean if intent is “low” or “high”?

Also this is either quite old, or they’re just delusional boomers ranking google, amazon, facebook and youtube above the “crap” line. I haven’t even touched Yahoo in ages, so I’m just giving them the benefit of the doubt there

BaumGeist ,

Oh yeah, re-reading my comment I didn’t make it obvious enough, but I assumed this was something you found and didn’t make yourself. When I said “they” and “them” I was talking to you about the creator, not talking about you (and past you) to the rest of the community.

I remember when all the named sites were good. Facebook was once the gold standard because they kept out the young’uns and boomers. Amazon not only had trustworthy reviews, but also only sold from trustworthy sellers—e.g. you didn’t have to put up with shady sellers mixing in lower quality merch with the generic stuff that goes into big grab bins in the warehouses. Google searches were good for finding information beyond the most surface level of any topic without getting slammed by SEO procedurally generated blogs. Yahoo outperformed google in everything but search for a hot minute; I remember using it for email, news, and watching the latest music videos on their embedded RealPlayer java applet!

Youtube got monetized is what happened. The original owners sold off to Google because Google Video sucked, and the owners couldn’t keep up with the growth of the site. Google decided that they should make money off of their shiny new toy. It stopped being about sharing videos, and became about keeping you engaged with “Content” so you could see more ads. YouTubers got incentivized by the algorithm to go with what appeals most to the broadest possible audiences, and the algorithm evolved in the direction of showing people whatever kept them watching ads. The front page, which used to be about highlighting odd, unique, and (most importantly) new ideas became about showing you whatever was most like whatever you had already sunk the most time into. It’s like how once you buy a product, all the targeted ads change to selling you the same type of product. Their algorithms don’t understand one-off purchases nor limited reserves of interest in a topic.

And on top of that mound of shit, they changed the community to enable their greed: once being a “Content Creator” was a sustainable source of income production values increased, which drove a need for a future guarantee of further income. This wave of videomakers attracted a userbase that, on average, cared more about quantity and style than substance. In turn, these types of users became instrumental in maintaining revenue for youtube-based businesses, so catering to their expectation of high-volume with ever-increasing production values became the most important factor to creators, which drove a need for increasing revenue streams. That’s why even with an ad blocker, youtube is still mostly ads: sponsored segments, product reviews, and soooo much shallow pop culture engagement—references and reviews and critiques and thought pieces about media and people that won’t matter in 5 years’ time.

Ironically this is exactly what went wrong with analog TV and then cable, and it’s what’s going wrong with streaming services now. The iriny being that that is precisely why they had a large influx of users early on: it was all thevTV watchers who were tired of 1/3 of their valuable time being wasted with ads. They learned nothing and refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of the For-Profit model, electing to blame the ad-blockers, pirates, and “striminals” who make up a percentage of their viewers—instead of ever introspecting and considering that it’s really their fault for pushing away the even larger subset that simply just stop watching entirely. Those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it, just faster and in a more spectacular way.

BaumGeist ,

Your use-case says “ARM laptop” to me.

Pros: Get some kind of SoC laptop, and never worry about battery charge again. They’re also lighter-weight and better at thermal management. Right now, Linux on ARM is still kind of fledgling so there’s not as many apps made to run on ARM natively; the upside is that since there’s not as many possible combinations of hardware, there aren’t nearly as many edge case bugs and issues.

Cons: If you want youtube in 1080p+ and 60 fps or if you want to use Visual Studio (instead of something lighter-weight), you’ll either want the most powerful SoC laptop on the market (probably something by Apple), or not SoC at all. Same goes if you want to have like 5+ programs opened at once and 10+ tabs open on firefox. If you’re on the opposite side with me and don’t mind if the video is 30 fps or the resolution is 720i and using vim as an IDE, you can get away with something dirt cheap. The other downside of course being the inability to upgrade hardware, which goes hand-in-hand with the reduced hardware combinations aforementioned. Also, since it’s not as widely adopted/developed, there are more standard case bugs/issues.

It does force a more minimal approach to computing—it’s not powerful, and it’s on the lower-end of ARM laptops—but my Pinebook has only done well by me. The security/privacy factor of Pine was also a big plus.

BaumGeist ,

TIL. I didn’t know there was a standard, and I’ve never seen “hxxp”, although the rest is familiar looking.

BaumGeist ,

Please report back in a few weeks and a few months, and maybe even a year or two down the road.

Generally “I’m really (happy/upset/confused/sad) with it” after only a day isn’t really good feedback for people thinking of changing, but it does provide a good baseline to measure against once you’re more familiar with it, and getting glimpses into your learning curve might be really helpful for people looking for advice on which OS to go with.

BaumGeist ,

I work in an architecture firm, and whenever we put text on the plans, it’s always in ALL CAPS. It’s a niche use-case, but Caps Lock has saved my pinkie finger from getting sore holding down shift for hours a day

BaumGeist ,

IT here. I use the F keys any time I have to change bios or bootloader settings, which is about once a month. Worst part is that no manufacturer uses the same F keys for getting into the bios/boot settings, and no bootloader either, windows and Dell change theirs over time. One Generation it’s F6 to get into the bios, the next it’s F8, and then a generation later it’s Del. Sometimes it’s F2 and F10 or F11 and F12; and almost never F3, F4, F7.

On a more positive note, Autodesk uses the F keys as hotkeys to toggle settings quickly, which is nice when I put on my drafter hat. I imagine a lot of technical software has figured this out.

I remember using F2 quite often when I was younger, but I can’t remember why. I think it might have been New Game in a lot of the Windows built-in games?

That all being said… I get that these keys were originally intended for software to assign to whatever software-specific functions, as a kind of “Function keys,” but we’ve evolved since then, and I much prefer the laptop scheme of having an extra key on the bottom row that modifies all other keys as a kind of “Function key” instead of 12 that don’t do anything specific. Of the uses listed above, BIOSes/bootloaders don’t have to use F keys instead of regular ones–except possibly standards requiring the other keys to always output specific characters even when the software can’t use it, but if that’s the case I’d love to see the devs all agree upon which keys open bios settings and which accesses the boot order menu.

BaumGeist ,

No one’s gonna throw shade at the ≣ key? Aka the Menu Key?

It’s next to useless. It’s almost always used to open the right-click menu, which is specifically for GUIs and based on the mouse position… so why not just right-click? What silly person is using their mouse except to bring up the context menu?

I’d say the same about the Super Key (❖) Aka The Windows Key, but I got i3wm on my laptop and I am loving having a GUI without needing to use my mortal enemy: the Trackpad. Plus it’s a minor time-save above moving windows/clicking menus with the mouse; still doesn’t apply to Menu when your finger’s already hovering over the RMB.

BaumGeist ,

Very nice! Jsyk, you can also use Shift + Ctrl + V for the one handed paste (likewise Shift + Ctrl + C to copy), or Shift + Insert (and Ctrl + Insert to copy) works too. If you’re on Windows, right clicking in CMD/Powershell pastes, Enter copies anything highlighted, and Ctrl + V work as usual… Ctrl + C copies too, except when a command/script is actively running, in which case it sends the halt signal, so use it at your own risk.

I usually stick to the Ctrl + Shift shortcuts, but it messes me up when I’m trying to copy from firefox into my terminal and I accidentally bring up the devtools instead

BaumGeist ,

Uncharitability to those you disagree with, style without substance, and all built upon thought-terminating cliches.

This isn’t helpful or enlightening or informative, it’s entertaining but not in an interesting nor original way. It reminds me of 2010s Reddit memes where everything was about adding as many “fucks” as possible because our moms aren’t supervising our internet time anymore. It espouses a consoomer mindset of “gotta have bigger numbers and shinier visuals because all that matters is appealing to lizard-brain.”

And it’s all couched in the obvious mindset that any criticism will be met with “ok boomer” (I’ll almost be insulted if I don’t get one) because being superior is more important than being right. Y’know… like a boomer?

You’ve got a point, focus on that: you can make the case that Linux fits your use case, or that certain mindsets within the Linux community are hindering progress. But please do so in a way that doesn’t just lend itself to more infighting and drama. That shit is for shallow people who have nothing to contribute and only serve as the cultural detritus that destroys communities and community-driven projects.

BaumGeist ,

If I’m going to have a lot of icons on the desktop, I’d want one of the visually uncomplicated ones (top right, bottom left). Otherwise, if it’s just for eye-candy and what I have to see everytime my windows are minimized, I’d either go for mid-left or bottom-right. I fall into the latter category, but y’all in the former may consider that when casting your vote

Slow Nala completions - Janky hack m8 (github.com)

I’ve been using nala on my debian-based computers instead of apt, mostly for the parallel downloads, but also because the UI is nicer. I have one issue, and that’s the slow completions; it’s not wasting painful amounts of time, but it still takes a second or two each time I hit tab. I don’t know if this is the same for...

BaumGeist ,

As someone once said: “The Technical Merits of Wayland Are Mostly Irrelevant”

BaumGeist ,

They hated her for she spoke the truth. We (DIY people) hate to acknowledge that not everyone sees value in investing as much time and energy into perfecting their workspaces as the nerds have, and would rather have their tools Just Work™ so they can get to work on the projects they do care about. I say this as someone who still gets frustrated and argumentative when my friends say they prefer spyware-ridden OSes that remove control from the end-user because they don’t require end-user micro-management to maintain and work.

X vs Wayland might as well be Grub vs rEFInd or systemd vs SysVinit to most end-users: it matters from a technical perspective, but most people just want something that will allow them to go about their business without sinking hours into getting the “correct” option to work. And it’s important to remember that we all fall on either side of this divide with some aspects of our life, even if it’s not computer-related. How often do we agonize over finding the “correct” pipe wrench when our sink is leaking, despite what the plumbing nerds would criticize you for using? Do you sink hours into picking the right books on conflict resolution when you argue with your spouse, or do you post on AITA and hope they give good advice? Do you agonize over having all the right utensils and ingredients so you can eke out the most subtle flavors from your cooking, or do you use the pan that you got at the local superstore?

BaumGeist ,

For the four groups enumerated in the article, this still is not important. It may affect them in ways they are unaware of, but you will not be able to change their minds using technical arguments at this point if they have not already been convinced by the wealth of information and support that is readily available.

U.S. Pledge To Triple Global Nuclear Energy By 2050 (www.huffpost.com)

When I first read the titile, I thought that the US is going to have to build A LOT to triple global production. Then it occured to me that the author means the US is pledging to make deals and agreements which enable other countries to build their own. Sometimes I think the US thinks too much of itself and that’s also very...

BaumGeist ,

Anyone still worried about the safety of the method is an ignoramus. “Dying slowly to lung cancer and the environment cooking me alive is so much better than the one-in-a-billion chance of having to eat some prussian blue”

Waste removal is my biggest concern. Unless the plans to expand also come with ways to recycle the waste, we’re just setting ourselves up for giant exclusion zones throughout the globe, most likely in small countries where the plants are imposed on them by foreign economic powerhouses and then they’re told to figure the waste out themselves.

Not to mention “just bury it” is neither futureproof nor is it good for the non-human inhabitants of our planet; sure if those concrete containment cysts in the desert ever fail it will “only” be leaking radiation into the desert, but any desert is still home to hundreds of species of living things and its own complex ecosystem. “Desert” doesn’t actually mean “devoid of life”; there are no good locations to bury it and forget it.

Let’s talk about the absolute devastation mining rare materials does to ecosystems and the exploitation of third world countries that it’s led to. We’re already implicated in so much violence against the earth itself and colonialist exploitation, and I’m supposed to support gods know how much more of that for Uranium from Kazhakstan (45% of the worlds’ production in 2021)? That’s basically begging for more forever wars over energy resources in the middle east.

“We’ll figure out long term solutions after the infrastructure is put in place” is how we got to where we are with fossil fuels AND landfills.

I’ll fully support any plans to make a push toward nuclear, but the foremost concern of that push should be waste recycling. After that’s figured out, everything else is small potatoes. It would even make the long-term costs cheaper than fighting for new material and figuring out million-year half-life hazardous waste disposal. A nearly unlimited energy supply that doesn’t fuel wars and is safer than the current system? Sign me the fuck up.

BaumGeist ,

That’s cool as fuck! Now, how do we implement it?

I should have been a little more clear: I’m not worried about a lack of ways to properly neutralize and dispose of the waste, I’m concerned that they will not be implemented because they are deemed unprofitable.

Already the U.S. runs nuclear power, and yet we still haven’t implemented waste recycling (as of 2022 iirc the article I read); why? Presumably because ultimately it does not serve the interest of capital. So get plans to create that infrastructure into effect, and I’ll get on board with any expansion. Until that happens, it’s just hopping on the dick of this new tech because it’s bleeding edge and assuming the infrastructure to handle it will follow (which has worked so well for e-waste and cars and fossil fuels and plastics and…)

Not that sticking to fossil fuels in the meantime is a better alternative. We should focus on energy production that doesn’t have the potential to immediately kill us should the waste-containment fail: solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric. Hell, we already have stockpiles of a majorly combustible fluid that requires an ever-increasing amount of energy to harvest, why not exchange it for one that doesn’t also cause biosphere collapse as a side-effect: Hydrogen?

None of these are environmentally friendly either, and so I’d still prefer to see nuclear in the long run instead. Strip-mining Uranium is still better than the massive amount of mining needed to get the rare metals necessary for solar at large scales, wind farms are destructive to local wildlife, hydrogen can explode and needs a constant source of water to produce while requiring a way to dispose of all the sediment generated, dams and massive water reservoirs are a blight on the landscape and disrupt entire ecosystems; I have no clue how geothermal is even harvested, but if the other renewables are anything to go by…

BaumGeist ,

Great article, have a few issues with it though:

  1. Google docs are free (as in beer) and collaborative and just about as good, and Minihard’s web interface also works. This still doesn’t account for all use cases, bur that should be about 80% of people who think they can’t live with LibreOffice.
  2. KeepassXC is cute, but not modern because of it’s lack of cross-device sync. I use Bitwarden and it works great. Having options is great. I get their frustration with flatpaks self-contained package formats have only ever given me headaches. Also flatpak isn’t a feature that windows does either.
  3. I have no clue what their problem is with virtualization, but I’ve used virtualbox, vmm, and just the CLI for qemu, and I’ve never had the issues of cumbersome installation or a virtualization disabled error
  4. Speaking of virtualization, I’ve run old software and games with wine all the time. I’m sure there’s some performance hit, but it’s pretty negligible unless you’re one of those people that meticulously tracks performance metrics instead of just relying on feel (cough "5-15% performance hit in games boohoo cough)
  5. *some developers and sysadmins. I know people who act as counterexamples and use linux personally and professionally

Windows licenses are cheap and you get things working out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’ll be productive from day zero… It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.
You can buy a second hand computer with a decent 8th generation CPU for around 200 € and that includes a valid Windows license. All computers selling on retail stores already include a Windows license, students can get them for free etc.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand all the previous examples go out the door. All of the aforementioned “benefits” of windows cost money. Adobe is all SaaS, MS office is SaaS, AutoCAD is SaaS, windows itself is arguably SaaS, that hypervisor that isn’t jank is SaaS; those annoying janky hardware solutions that have drivers only for windows charge for those drivers and the bespoke UI programs that control the hardware, the securitybrisks of running XP for the aforementioned costs money, those sysadmin and developer solutions cost money (usually also on a subscription). If you want the well-documented and supported software that brings the streamlined experience that fanboys prattle on about, you don’t go with freeware; windows freeware sucks just as hard in the UX sense while also being proprietary and spying on you/designed only to upsell you to paid. And don’t make me get into the monetary worth of all the data the above programs and windows itself harvests. This rose-tinted windows experience isn’t “cheap” unless you’re in the global top 10-20%, the rest of us make do with freeware that sucks harder than linux. I’m one of the few who are lucky enough to be able to save 25% of my monthly income and some dick behind their keyboard is trying to convince me to throw 2 months worth of that away every year on software that doesn’t do the job better, just more conveniently.

Not to mention the spying! What is this? Stockholm syndrome? Battered user syndrome? Blink 3 times if Windows hits you!

As far as I can tell, most of the actual arguments that hold weight boil down to “For desktops, Windows is superior for businesses and jobs” and that’s not a failure of linux. That’s fine by me if it isn’t profitable, that’s not the point of FOSS. In fact that misses the point entirely.

BaumGeist ,

Curious kids, tinkerers and business customers are all other options. Someone might have an app that spams connections to annoy neighbors, someone might be testing their new program/script they wrote, someone might have malware that replicates via bluetooth connections, and yes, someone might be trying to hack into every nearby bluetooth devices. Update your network hardware (modem/routers/wifi APs), don’t accept unknown connections, and you should be as safe as can be expected (unless you’re sysadmin levels of proficient). If the annoyance gets to be too much, just disable bluetooth when you’re not using it (or make it undiscoverable so your devices can stay connected)

BaumGeist , (edited )

I’m going to ignore your “Planned Usage” section. Why? Because that’s more-or-less about which software you install, not about the distro (well, not if you choose a well-enough maintained distro at least). If it was a question of family of OSes (windows, mac, linux, BSD) that might be different.

You want Debian, here’s why:

I’d like an OS that’s highly configurable

That’s most distros

but ships with good default settings

That’s Debian. I installed it when i was still a newbie to computers in general, and it hasn’t bit me in the ass yet.

and requires very little effort to start using.

See previous answer.

I don’t want it to ship with loads of applications; I want to choose and install all of the higher level tools.

My first Debian was a headless install on my laptop so I could customize the graphical stack. In hindsight, I wouldn’t recommend going that barebones unless you actually do take advice and RTFM. I went without a compositor for several years, as an example of why.

Shipping with a configured desktop is perfectly fine but not required.

On the flipside, Debian has GNOME, Xfce, KDE Plasma, LXDE and MATE as installer options. You can also install any Desktop Environment that works on linux, as it is more higher-level software than OS-dependent software.

Ideally, I can have all of this while still keeping the maintenance low.

My other PC is also a Debian (need that on a bumper sticker). It’s my daily driver desktop (the aforementioned headless install is a laptop); I set it up based on installer defaults and have not had to do any low-level maintenance on it for the past 2 years that I’ve had it.

I think that means a stable OS,

Debian is stable af. The downside is that they don’t really have bleeding-edge software on the default Stable repository. Testing is newer, and still 99.9% stable, but also not the absolute newest. Unstable lives up to its name, I’m told, but haven’t felt bold enough to experiment.

Really though, I’m going to guess that any fixed-release update cycle distro will be as stable as Debian, and any rolling release will be about squashing compatibility issues to make sure you can have bleeding edge software. There are some distros that strike a balance more in the middle of those two, so that’s up to your preference and you should probably try out a few before you settle for what someone on the internet says is “The Best.” (The main difference between the others and Unstable is that Unstable is a rolling release, instead of fixed)

a good package manager, stable/automatic updates, etc.

Apt is mostly a positive experience. As I mentioned, before, using thr Stable repository will ensure updates are stable and don’t break compatibility. I have never had the Pacman experience of not being able to update because there are unresolvable conflicts; the few times I had issues, they were simple enough to fix with a dpkg --configure -a and/or apt --fix-broken install. It can be slow, but frontends like Nala have made that less of a dealbreaker for me.

Last bit. Open source is rather important to me. I prefer free and free.

Debian’s core driving principal is FOSS. You definitely can still download and run non-free software on it, and there’s even a small section of the main repository that includes non-free sofrware, but the primary guiding principles of the Debian repository are the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Note that these principles are more restrictive than the FSF’s definition of Free Software, but the most part there is a large overlap.

Here’s a link to the installation page, which includes links to various installers and the installation guide.

The wiki isn’t as likely as Arch to come up in searches if you just search terms like “linux [software]” or “linux [issue]”, but it’s an invaluable resource, almost as thorough as Arch’s, and the Debian Project’s recommended way for ensuring accuracy to your system.

Finally: I’m going to do that annoying thing nerds online do and tell you that you asked the wrong questions, then answer the questions they claim you should have asked. The linux community as a whole supports and encourages experimentation. You’ll find your journey more fulfilling as a whole if you go outside your comfort zone and try new things, do it differently instead of sticking to recommendations and what you know. I know this message is at odds with how much I’ve talked up Debian, but I was answering the questions you asked.

The truth is that your tools should suit you and your needs and your style of problem solving. All softwares, including the most basic parts of an OS, are tools and therefore benefit from trying different options. Do you want “eh this is okay enough to get the job done” or “this is a fun and fulfilling way to complete projects”?

BaumGeist ,

@Lodra

I’ve finished editing my response, I promise (probably). It may have changed “a little” if you already read it when i first posted it.

BaumGeist ,

If that’s true, I urge you to submit your findings to the relevant bug bounty program of whichever browser and at least get paid for all the hard work you’ve been doing

BaumGeist ,

That’s funny, I had the opposite experience. When I found out that info was the GNU projects recommended way of documentation, I was all on board. Then I tried using it, and it couldn’t find most CLI software I used. So I downloaded the texinfo archives… and that still lacked probably 50% of the commands I tried to look up.

Then I searched up how to get info pages for this or that tool, and someone on StackOverflow had said that it was woefully incomplete and outdated at this point.

I think I’ll give it another try and report back

Cross platform terminal emulator?

Is Termius the only cross platform emulator that includes Android as one of the platforms? It is quite good, in my limited experience, but too expensive for a hobbiest. I like that I can use my Linux desktop, MacOS laptop, and Android tablet/phone and the UX is the same across them all. The sync (trial for free, then charge) is...

BaumGeist ,

That’s because there isn’t an APK, it’s designed to work with Plasma Mobile, which uses AppImages

BaumGeist ,

Ah yeah. Looking back, I see that almost all of them are listed as compatible with android. Station and Clip appear to be the only ones that aren’t.

BaumGeist ,

Yeah ,this is really gonna ruin the public perception of them

BaumGeist ,
  1. To boot endeavour, did you have to change any BIOS settings? If so, change those back and ignore the reat of this.
  2. Backup your windows user folder if you haven’t already, put it somewhere safely away from your PC
  3. No seriously, back up your files to another drive asap
  4. You will deeply regret it if you do not back up
  5. Do you know what the word hubris means? Back those files up, champ
  6. I mean, it’s your computer, so you can make whatever terrible decisions you want. You should still back it up tho
  7. Make a windows installation USB or, better yet, a winpe usb if you have access to another windows computer. Boot into it, but DO NOT continue with the installation. Instead, select the option that lets you run Startup Repair.
  8. Run startup repair
  9. When that fails, because it’s apparently a script that just freezes the PC for a minute before telling you it failed, follow this guide
  10. If all that fails: unless you really wanna RTFM on the windows bootloader and EFI partition, or piece together the equivalent knowledge from 83 different forums and blog posts after you separate out the mountains ofmisinformation, you can always just reinstall windows and restore from the backups… you did back up, right?
BaumGeist ,

Not for AdSense ads, like what YouTube uses. Click-Through Rate (CTR) is only used to determine how much of a cut Google gives to the ad hosts, the advertisers just bid for the spots. The advertisers can see the CTR metrics, and so they might be willing to bid more, but that’s not guaranteed.

So google makes money either way, and the advertisers spend money either way. The only difference is that your favorite websites and youtubers get paid too.

BaumGeist ,

In theory, you’re paying up front for their long-term loss by not driving conspicuous consumption with planned obsolescence. They lose out on at least 4x the cost of selling you entirely new devices every 5 years, and you get a computer that only requires a few hundred in repairs for the next 20 years.

In reality:

  1. new standards take hold all the time. Sorry, your laptop takes DDR7 RAM, everyone’s moved on to DDR10—which won’t cause a noticeable performance improvement, but it will give you FOMO because the numbers are bigger. So we’ve ceased manufacturing those old DDR7s; good luck with used DIMMs on ebay.
  2. Startups with amazing business models go under all the time. Sure, it may be “bad market strategy,” aka not being money-grubbing scrooges, and the resultant investor pull-out. It might be a lack of hype outside a niche market. It might be a hurricane. Too bad, ypur “lifetime” computer now has no one manufacturing parts. See also: what happens to early adopters of robotic prosthetics.
  3. Enshittification, plain and simple. That idealistic company that was going to defeat the ills of capitalism by beating it at its own game? Well now the investors want their money, and the shareholders are upset as their stocks plummet. Time to start cutting costs and fucking over the users! Suddenly we’re okay with child slavery and nonfree firmware because it doesn’t violate our core value of sustainable laptops probably. Have a subscription about it.

And the longer it lasts, the more likely one or more of the above is to happen.

If you don’t mind that and just want to “send a message,” then go ahead. The more viable (profitable) Framework is, the more likely it is others will follow suit.

If you’re really just worried about e-waste and sustainable tech, buy used and fix it up. We’re past the point of Moore’s law where you’re missing out on meaningful performance gains if your device is a few years old, and have you see what people will throw away just because the screen is cracked?

If it’s about ethical business models, support non-profits. They don’t have the same financial incentive to enshittify. (They just have their own ecosystem of ethical issues)

Or get two birds stoned at once by joining/starting a non-profit tech mutual aid network, where you help maintain and upgrade each others’ tech.

BaumGeist ,

Companies in any city when a square millimeter of building isn’t covered in advertisements

BaumGeist ,

Gods damn that sounds lovely

BaumGeist ,

Is that the Boy Boy vid? Hell yeah. They have a patreon exclusive where they watched Yeonmi Park interviews and she makes the most batshit claims about how post-apocalyptic DPRK is. They do a good job at cutting through the bs fearmongering without dickriding any specific regimes (DPRK or otherwise)

BaumGeist ,

I considered myself libsoc but not anarchist for a long time. Still kinda do. I believe in the ideal of a classless, oppressionless, non-hierarchical society, but I’m not out there living that ideal and doing praxis.

If all it takes to belong to any political movement is simply to claim you belong regardless of what your actions say, I don’t care for nor want your meaningless, substanceless labels. On the other hand, if it takes participation, then spending my time arguing online about whose fantasy football team political philosophy is better sure ain’t it either.

Either way, I’m probably just another lib with lofty aspirations. My best hope is that someone reads this, goes “you know what? That jaded shitlib has a motherfucking point!” And then logs out to go be an anarchist instead of just throwing the term around.

BaumGeist ,

Ok… but the comic doesn’t say that…

BaumGeist ,

It quite literally says “LISP is ugly and confusing with those endless parentheses” and then fails to refute that claim

BaumGeist ,

Looks like some people had success setting their specific model (auto detection failed for whatever reason), try changing to options snd-hda-intel model=mba42 (or model=mba6)—per kernel docs—in alsa-base.conf. This may (read: “probably will”) require a reboot for each model.

Should this not work: we may have to dig into dmesg to figure out where it’s erroring. This is currently beyond my remote troubleshooting ability (I don’t know what I’m looking for, but might know it when I see it)… Also, will you please take note of the output from lsmod | grep ‘snd’ during each attempt, and share what you find if they both fail?

Also per the docs: do headphones still work?

BaumGeist ,

It’s $5 for every time you fantasize or $50 (+time and materials) for each video. Either way, pay me

BaumGeist ,

This kills the human

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •