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Kongar

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HP bricks ProBook laptops with bad BIOS delivered via automatic updates — many users face black screen after Windows pushes new firmware (www.tomshardware.com)

On May 26, a user on HP’s support forums reported that a forced, automatic BIOS update had bricked their HP ProBook 455 G7 into an unusable state. Subsequently, other users have joined the thread to sound off about experiencing the same issue....

Kongar ,

The article doesn’t say/clarify. Was it some crap HP software that performs driver updates, and it decided to force a bios flash? Or was it windows update itself?

If it was windows itself, holy crap, that’s a serious over reach on Microsoft’s part. Like “this is insanity windows needs to be removed” bad.

Kongar OP ,

They do! I checked all of them. I couldn’t believe it!

Kongar OP ,

It kind of was what I meant. My first Linux experience was in 93 - I wanted to run X on my 486 so I could use maple and other Unix programs from the mainframe in college. Thank god for my comp sci roommate-I don’t think I could have figured it out on my own back then.

Flash forward through the decades and here I am running all the games I want through steam and bottles. Win10 updates are crapping on themselves requiring a reload - I try linux on it expecting it to mostly work, but having a few annoying issues that will be a bear to solve. Nope, it just worked.

It’s impressive to me. A bunch of nerds on the internet mostly volunteered their way into a better OS than the big boys have made.

Kongar OP ,

Gnome

Kongar OP ,

Not with the volume buttons on the keyboard. Alsamixer helped a little - it was set to ~70% (whatever the line between white and red is). But it’s still quiet. But you can drive it way beyond 100% through software. The problem is pushing the volume button stops at 100%.

The lazy way is to open pulseaudio, grab the slider bar and put it to say, 150%. You can also do it with a terminal command. Somewhere close to the top of a Google search somebody mentioned they bound their volume keys to that terminal command/script where each press resulted in a 5% increase or decrease in volume - allowing the button presses to go beyond 100%. I may or may not do this.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it doesn’t work - merely one of the annoyances I was expecting. Except I expected many of these and this is the only one I encountered.

Kongar OP ,

This was the first time I tried to install on this laptop. I expected more issues because of the online comments about HP and this laptop series in particular (janky keyboard, the pen, touchscreen, folds over to a tablet, etc.) Over the years I’ve tinkered often with different distros, and on all the machines across all the attempts - there were a handful of annoyances or driver issues preventing me from having that smooth “it just works” experience. If I put in more effort or was smarter, I probably could have made that printer work, or get bluetooth working, whatever.

The last time I built a new desktop, I specifically bought components I knew would behave in Linux so I had a good experience. But I didn’t realize things had progressed to the point they are today where “it just works” applies to a much broader range of devices such as my laptop.

It’s nice! :)

Kongar OP ,

I left I alone, it went off. I came back and wiggled the mouse, nothing happened. I pressed the enter key snd it came back to life -same behavior as my desktop.

Did it again, this time I tried closing the lid and opening it - it sprung to life when the lid opened.

You’re right - not the most thorough tests, but that’s what I did/saw.

Kongar OP ,

It was a couple hours. Just like on my desktop, wiggling the mouse wakes it from sleep, but not so in whatever that second state is when it’s left for longer. It definitely was something other than sleep. What it was - I’ll let you guys decide. Whether it behaves long term with fans in a laptop bag, that I don’t know - I haven’t had enough run time with it.

I’m just sharing a positive experience. If I see it misbehave I’ll be sure to update the thread with reality. But so far, it really is behaving much better than I expected.

Kongar OP ,

HA! True. Remember when Google was always right and always exactly what you were looking for?

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

Kongar OP ,

I did some more digging on this last night. I’m more confused now than I was before, and I don’t know what it’s doing.

The arch wiki defines three states, suspend to ram (sleep), suspend to disk(hibernate), and a hybrid suspend(presumably what my steam deck does).

First there is the “turn off the display” behavior. Doing anything brings the monitor back alive and I’m presented with the Lock Screen.

Second is what I believe to be sleep. This happens when I select “suspend” from the menu or leave it alone for a very long time. This mode doesn’t happen soon (maybe at all) if the computer is doing stuff. It appears to be in a lower power state-but I can’t say why I think that (maybe it’s just because the fans aren’t running? I dunno). Wiggling the mouse or doing anything wakes it back up.

Third is another state. It’s just like the above state, except it will not wake up with mouse movement, or clicking keys on a Bluetooth keyboard. I must push a key on the keyboard, the power button, or open the lid. It’s weird because it responds to things other than the power button.

Interestingly, my desktop behaves exactly the same way. But what’s interesting on the desktop is that I can hear a power relay clicking on from this third state. It’s distinctly different than the 2nd state - exhibiting power cutoff, but still responding to the keyboard.

Neither computer enters any other state even after days of being left alone.

So I dunno. Are modes 2 and 3 like two versions of sleep, and hibernate never activates? Or is state three hibernation but it responds to things it shouldn’t?

I have no idea. But now that I’ve played with it some more - I don’t want to say hibernate is working because I don’t know what it’s doing. All I know is that it has the above three behaviors which are consistent with my desktop machine.

Kongar OP ,

Excellent, that makes sense. I’ll try that command tonight at home, see what it does, and report back. I kind of want to know what it’s doing just because I’m curious.

I say a relay, but I agree with you - I couldn’t imagine a relay being used. But whatever it is on my desktop, it sounds just like a traditional ice cube relay clicking - and it’s quite loud. But I have no idea what it is. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a computer that made that noise before. My laptop makes no such noise obviously.

Kongar ,

Too late. I deleted windows from every pc in my house today. Even my computer challenged wife is using linux now.

The problem is Microsoft continues to show their cards and where they are taking things. Thanks but no thanks.

Kongar ,

None. They are called trees. We should stop wrecking things.

Kongar ,

Agreed. The problem is people mistake “zero planning and structure” to mean “agile”. Of course it fails.

Agile to me was always mini waterfall. You always know who’s doing what, why, and what success looks like on a 2 week sprint horizon. When you see people on a sprint without a clear understanding of what they are doing over the next couple of weeks - then you know your project is in trouble for sure.

Kongar ,

They really are screwing it up. I’ve long been a proponent of dual booting. Yes I spend 99% of my time in linux, but I’ve always kept a windows drive going for the things that I’m just too lazy to get working. RGB lights, nicehash miner, exact audio copy, my aio cooler’s nzxt software for its blingy screen, the very off chance game that’s got a couple of glitches.

But like now, I don’t even want that OS on my PC. Even sitting on a drive that I hardly ever boot from. I view my password vault and it takes a screenshot of my credentials? Does it grab my bitcoin wallet too? At what point does windows 11 start scanning my local files simply because I booted the OS? When does it start scanning my other drives and OSs?

They just can’t be trusted anymore. And the fact that I’m actively solving the above mentioned pains in Linux and actively working to deleting the dual boot win11 os…. Well… when lazy people start doing work against you - you’ve screwed yourself.

Spotify is raising the cost of Premium subscriptions, again (www.engadget.com)

Spotify is officially raising its Premium subscription rates in the US come July, following reports of the move in April. The platform is increasing its Individual plan from $11 to $12 monthly and its Duo plan from $15 to $17 monthly — the same jump as last year’s $1 and $2 price hikes, respectively. However, its Family plan...

Kongar ,

More money More crap nobody wants like audio books Still haven’t seen cd quality streaming yet

I used to happy with Spotify before the enshitificatuon happened…

Kongar ,

Agree 100%

I’m sure it was presented to the band like this “hey will you do a private show for a dump truck of money?” Of course the answer is yes. As if he has any way of knowing what’s going on inside a company, who’s specifically on the invite list - come on…. He’s a rock star - he plays shows for money, bitches, and blow. That’s all there is to it - he ain’t the villain here.

Kongar ,

Never in my life has an ant had any smell whatsoever. I was today years old when I realized people could smell ants.

In fact, I’ll go one step further. I grew up on a farm, tons of bugs. The only bug that I can ever remember smelling are those stupid Asian stink bugs invasive thingies that seem to have proliferated in the northeast US recently. When you squish them, they smell like green apples.

I can’t think of any other bug that smells at all - even when they are squished.

Kongar ,

I mean, they probably DO smell - but like I’ve never gotten on my hands and knees and sniffed any bug up close. Maybe these people are more sensitive to smells and can pick them up yards away - or a whole colony?

But ya it’s weird that I’ve never heard of this at all. I had heard of people born with tails or horns, females with beards, color blindness, tiger stripes on skin, the asparagus thing, rain man, hemaphrodites, on and on…

But today I learned ants smell ;)

Kongar ,

So weird! Ants are everywhere. It must get annoying if they stink…

Kongar ,

It’s 10 with some extra BS. It runs. But I wouldn’t call it decent. Definitely a controversial take ;)

Take my upvote not because I agree, but because you are brave! ;)

Kongar ,

I never got the hype of the first game. Cool idea sounds and visuals, but the gameplay was trash. I felt burned paying for the first, no way I’m touching this one with real money. I’ll wait for a $5 sale maybe, but that’s it.

I bet a lot of people are in the same boat.

Kongar ,

Pathetic.

Kongar ,

I was rocking an iPhone 6. Yes, a 6. My wife had an xs max - two weeks ago she dropped it and it smashed. We went and bought a pair of iPhone 15 pro max phones, fully loaded.

  1. they are ridiculously expensive - over 2k a piece. Most people can’t afford that. What happened to sub $1000 phones?
  2. yes there’s a lot of improvements over the 6. But the 6 still functioned perfectly - albeit a bit slowly
  3. the only improvement I can tell as a user over the xs max is the cameras. They are arguably better. Otherwise it’s the same phone.
  4. the software is nearly identical on all three versions. There’s not many “ooo this one does xyz like this, and that’s an improvement”

Bottom line: there just isn’t a reason to upgrade a phone anymore, unless they break. Sales HAS to go down if the price point stays the same or goes up.

Kongar ,

I get that, I do. I wanted the phone I wanted, bent over, and let Apple give it to me with no lube.

But in my defense-I did go an entire decade not buying a phone. ;)

Kongar ,

This is honestly such a pile of shit from Microsoft. Right…. Grandma is going to resize her partitions with those ridiculously cryptic instructions. She’s totally going to figure out which partition we’re talking about, she’s totally going to open a command line interface as admin, heck she totally even knows to find those instructions. Its hard enough for people to distinguish between “ya that’s windows update, click that button” vs “no that’s a phishing attack, never click that button”

Now the rest of us who know what we’re doing have to fix everyone’s PCs in the family. Keep pushing everyone to iPads and Linux Microsoft…

Kongar ,

For my 75 year old mother who doesn’t do anything besides Facebook. Ya an iPad is perfect! ;)

She thinks it’s a full blown computer and it’s impossible to break or install a virus on it. iPads can be surprisingly good for that purpose…

Kongar ,

Do it. Get a second hard drive and distro hop. Eventually you’ll find what you like and use windows less and less. Doesn’t have to be all or nothing at one point in time.

Kongar ,

If I knew who you were and what company you worked for, I’D report that to HR. If that ever happened at my office I’d fire the guy without even consulting HR. I’d confiscate his stuff and walk him out the door, HR can clean up the mess.

If there was one hint of retaliation by another employee, I’d fire them on the spot. If there is any hr or manager retaliation to you, you call a lawyer. You’ll be paid extremely well.

The situation you described is so black and white in your favor - your management and hr department should be quaking in their boots that you don’t sue.

Kongar ,

I worked at a college bar for beer money. Her friends came in all the time, she did not. Then one night she did, and I was literally struck dumb - just like the stories. There was a few months of seeing her here and there, a few conversations - I had never met a woman so amazing. I was a bug, and she a goddess in every way. Imagine my shock when she handed me a napkin with her phone number on it and said “call me sometime.”

You bet your ass I called her the very next day. That was 28 years ago. The crazy part is things got steadily better over the years. Nothing got “boring” it got more exciting. Looks fade, but she’s more beautiful to me today than ever. Kids didn’t drag us down, they made things more fun. Bills and chores and life’s troubles became something we worked through together - teaching us that we can overcome just about anything and be successful. I’d argue all of our success is because we’re a team.

We truly hit the love lottery when both of us were “done” and didn’t believe something like what we have is possible. Put away your baggage, and keep an open mind - your napkin could be handed to you today.

Kongar ,

I see this sentiment a lot and I’ve disagreed. Something didn’t really click for me with Metroid prime - I much preferred the side scrollers. I think it has to do with controllers - up until then I was a mouse and keyboard person, the controller was jarring and janky.

Maybe I should revisit the series. I never thought it was a bad game, maybe I’ll appreciate it more the 2nd time around.

I do love me some Metroid games whatever the form.

Kongar ,

I agree. I’m the guy who picks, buys, assembles, and installs the OS and programs for like everyone around me. I enjoy doing it, they enjoy getting awesome PCs for good prices.

My next build for them will absolutely not be Microsoft. The average person can get away with an iPad running iOS for their computing needs. So it’ll be a user friendly Linux distro going forward.

Kongar ,

Glad they have time to call out everyone else’s problems, yet Microsoft still can’t fix their broken jan win 10 update.

Kongar ,

This crap is the new norm. Companies compile your data, don’t secure it, and the whole world becomes victims of identity theft. Then they get free credit monitoring from the companies that screwed then.

Use a strong password manager with unique complicated passwords.

Freeze your credit.

Assume someone is trying to impersonate you and open credit cards in your name at all times.

Sad state of affairs today.

Kongar ,

Glassdoor and all other businesses that operate on the “holding companies hostage” model are trash, always have been, and people who use them should know better / expect this type of behavior. They are imo even lower than the Facebooks and twitters of the world.

Not surprising.

Kongar ,

It’s too bad that the year of the linux desktop has been so long in the coming. Because now, it really is far superior to windows. Bluetooth, printers, and games even “just work” these days.

/shrug

Kongar ,

Why on gods green earth would you tip when you’re picking up a to-go order? Insanity! Stay strong - don’t do it!

Kongar ,

Baldurs gate 3. I started when it came out, but then got distracted by a few games. It took like 200+ hours, but I finally got my fill of factorio. So now back to bg3-it’s very good.

I hope someday we'll find a way to pirated a car (lemmy.world)

In the end, the KIA car company made its cars into subscription models, I really hate this because in the end the car we buy with our own money doesn’t feel like it belongs to us. Should we finally buy an old school car ? so as not to be affected by this subscription models or is there a way to crack the software installed in...

Kongar ,

Pretty sure there were cars around 15 years ago with remote start, heated seats, and fancy ways to lock and unlock. No there weren’t phone apps, but nobody wanted that - key fobs worked just fine.

My 2021 jeep’s key fob has an unbelievable range and works fine. My wife’s ford does have a phone app, but it’s completely free.

This is nothing more than a money grab.

Kongar ,

I would recommend endeavor over manjaro. Manjaro has issues with the aur.

And I’d recommended if either of these are your first foray into linux, then dual boot with a windows install still functioning (because a noobie will break arch once or twice)

Kongar ,

I can’t for the life of me stop playing Rimworld. Man that game is addicting.

Kongar ,

This. Manjaro isn’t trash, but there are better options. This coming from a guy who used manjaro and loved it for years.

Kongar ,

I know you guys are going to hate this, but I’m seeing a trend develop that no one is talking about. Work in our office is being divided up differently, jobs are morphing. There’s the work that can be done from home, and the work that can’t. Guess which one the bosses are talking about farming out to third world countries.

In my opinion hybrid is the way. Go in three days a week, do the things that require a physical presence, don’t worry about your job getting off shored.

New to Linux, have a few questions

I currently use Windows 10 and I’d like to try out Linux. My plan is to set up a dual boot with OpenSUSE tumbleweed and KDE Plasma. I’ve read so many different opinions about choosing a distro, compatibility with gaming and Nvidia drivers, and personal issues with the ethos of different companies like Canonical. I value...

Kongar ,

The response you got above is the best advice. Get a second internal drive of any type and size, and install distros on that. You totally can partition your existing windows drive and install linux alongside it, but… you’ll probably screw something up along the way and bork your windows install. Use another drive and it’s much harder to do. If you want to be super safe, you can unplug your windows drive during installs and then it’s literally impossible to break your windows drive.

The other advantage is that nobody knows what distro will be right for you. That means you’ll want to distro hop - and that’s so much easier when you have another drive you can just format and start over with (and not worry about your boot loader).

To your follow up question, yes, linux can read and write to the contents of your windows drive. If you mount that drive, then you can do whatever you want to it, including deleting things that break your windows installation.

Kongar ,

Arch isn’t inherently unstable. It’s just that most users don’t maintain it properly. Tips:

  1. learn to backup for real: rsync, borg, etc. you broke something? Just back up to that image you made right before you updated ;)
  2. use flatpaks. It’s kind of hard to run into AUR or dependency issues if you’re as close to a base arch install as possible.
  3. read the maintenance page and understand it. You can’t just “yay” every week and be done with it. You need to know how to handle pacnew, read the wiki for manual interventions, look for errors and warnings in the pacman log, etc. it’s not hard at all once you figure it out, but it takes a little learning.
  4. you don’t need to update every day. If it’s working - you can just let it ride. If you don’t update forever, then just update your keyring first and you’ll be good to go.

Use what you like - it’s all stable enough.

How do y'all deal with programs not supported on Linux?

I’ve been seeing all these posts about Linux lately, and looking at them, I can honestly see the appeal. I’d love having so much autonomy over the OS I use, and customize it however I like, even having so many options to choose from when it comes to distros. The only thing holding me back, however, is incompatibility issues....

Kongar ,

The same thing I’ve always done - booted another OS that works with that software. No need to artificially limit yourself.

Once upon a time I remember running Dos, windows, os2 warp, and linux on one hard drive. Those were the days…. Ya ya, I’m going back to my retirement home bedroom…

Kongar ,

Hundreds of commands is just not true with many distros. Everything is gui based these days. The command line is worth getting familiar with, but it’s not necessary.

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