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Distro suggestions for grandparents?
  • It is different, but it's also logical, simple, and consistent. It handles average use cases very well, whereas KDE is more typical to Windows users, but can be cluttered and confusing because it seems to try to address every use case.

  • Distro suggestions for grandparents?
  • Red Hat fuckery aside, I still feel like Fedora is the best refined distro out of the box for the average user, and Gnome is the most consistent desktop. Immutability is perfect for grandparent types who don't need much of any customization, so I'd strongly consider Silverblue. Just make it a habit to go upgrade releases every 6 months, you should be visiting more anyway ;)

  • What are the differences between the 'base' of various Linux distributions?
  • I think they meant build as in configure your environment, not build as in from source. If that's the case, they're not exactly wrong. But once you get the bulk of it to your liking, it's mostly fun little tweaks and accidents. It's just a lot at first.

  • How easy is it to switch back to windows?
  • There's a very good chance the key is stored in the EFI, making this the absolute easiest part. I'd just make sure to get the Windows installer on a USB stick before installing Linux, if there aren't any other Windows machines around. And also make sure I have a wifi/ethernet driver available before reinstalling Windows, if it comes to that. It can be tricky to install Windows without network, these days, and even if you get past that (which I'd recommend, to bypass a Microsoft account), you still need it once you're in the installed OS.

  • Are we going to see arch based immutable distros in the near future?
  • Yeah, I played with Silverblue for the first time a week or two ago, when I decided to move back to Gnome from Plasma. When I realized that I'd need to layer adw-dark to get rid of the light settings panel in Gnome Console, and then layer in aptx and ldac support, and then some drivers for hardware accel in Firefox... I came to undestand that truly approaching this as minimally layering, and instead properly relying on flatpak and toolbx/distrobox wasn't going to work out. Instead I'm just going to get anxious every time I have to say, 'well fuck, I guess I have to layer this too.'

    That and I really don't like the mess of a filesystem. So back to Arch, with some things learned to keep stuff I don't like out of my base system. I can use a Bazzite-Arch container for Steam, to avoid having to enable multilib, for example. Well, if I can figure out the performance issues, anyway. And I know I'm weird, but I'd kind of like to avoid using AUR on my base system, and Flatpak kind of terrifies me for the reasons you mentioned

    I do look forward to an immutable future, but I don't think it's going to make me happy for some time. Maybe Nix or GUIX, but that sounds like a winter project. I know some folks use an Arch base with Nix layered on top, but that rather sounds like the inverse of what I'd ideally want. It seems like the beauty of Nix is that you don't have to worry about layering, because YOU declare the base?

  • Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite
  • It's rumored Qualcomm actually has an exclusivity deal for Windows on ARM that's expiring in 2025. Supposedly, Nvidia and AMD both have chips being prepared for that.

    Microsoft is very much trying to push ARM forward, in order to compete with heat, noise, and battery life of Apple laptops and tablets.

  • Upstreaming Linux kernel support for the Snapdragon X Elite
  • This isn't a phone focused product, and the thermal envelope is quite a bit larger. It's meant for laptops, and maybe some tablets will see it. These are Oryon cores from their purchase of Nuvia, and I don't think a whole lot will transfer over.

  • Which file system do you recommend for Linux?
  • And EXT had been developed for 16 years at that point (and XFS for 15). They didn't mature overnight, either.

    Hopefully bcachefs matures more quickly, because we need a mainline replacement for ZFS.

  • [SOLVED] I'm cheap and want a Linux keyboard
  • I have a Nuphy Halo 75 that I'm rather thrilled with. I have a 65% and TKL Leopolds, with Topre and Cherry Clears respectively, that I also love. But I wanted to go wireless, and I wanted RF instead of Bluetooth. I also wanted a happy medium 75%, and the Nuphy checked all those boxes.

    I got baby kangaroo switches, as I love tactiles, and I really enjoy them.

    A couple caveats:

    1. The v1 uses a proprietary tool for programming the layout. The v2 uses QMK/VIA, but the 65 isn't available in v2 yet.
    2. The keycaps are kinda meh. Coming from a Leopold, which has very nice textured PBT keycaps, I knew I wouldn't be happy. I ordered some Osume keycaps, and they greatly improve the quality of the experience.

    I was considering a Keychron, but just got the feeling that the QC may be a bit lacking compared to Nuphy. I can't back that up, and have no idea if it's true, it's just the feeling I got from reading reviews.

    I also considered a Zoom75, but haven't had the time for a first build, and availability wasn't great.

    Do you need wireless? Do you need it to be programmable? If the answer to both of those is no, I'd definitely recommend Leopold. They do have some bluetooth boards now, but my experience with bluetooth input devices hasn't been great.

    Varmillo is another one to look into, with the VXT67 in particular looking interesting. That glintstone colorway is gorgeous.

  • Which file system do you recommend for Linux?
  • Yeah, bcachefs is still very very young, and not ready for much of anything beyond tinkering. But I'm definitely excited to have a native filesystem that's designed with tiers in mind.

  • Which file system do you recommend for Linux?
  • It is 16 years ago, that's pretty old in terms of technology.

    It's also an evolution of ex3 and ext2, and ext if you want to consider it's very short lifetime. In fact, the lead developer stated in 2008 that it was meant as a stop gap, as it's based on old technology with some new features, and that BTRFS was the future.

  • What're some of the dumbest things you've done to yourself in Linux?
  • Yeah, mine was pretty similar...

    rm -rf / home/user/somedir

    I think I realized what was happening somewhere in /etc, and stopped it maybe in /lib. But this was before /bin was a symlink, and I was jumping distros pretty constantly, so I just reinstalled. It was also before Ubuntu popularized sudo, IIRC, so I was probably su'd.

  • Why do my onions lose their flavor when I steam them/saute them on water?
  • No, but you can boil/steam to extract flavor before frying. I do this when I make fried potatoes, and a lot of other things. I start the potatoes off in a bit of water with the alliums, butter, and spices added. I cover it loosely, and once the water boils off, the potatoes start frying.

    This accomplishes a couple things. First, it keeps the potatoes from ending up hard (not raw, but hard), because the water draws some starch out and hydrates the potatoes. Second, it extracts the flavor from the allium (I favor shallots) and spices, mixing with the starch that ends up coating and browning. The starch being pulled out of the potatoes, but being left to coat them, also makes the end product more cohesive, with shallots clinging better to the potatoes.

  • Fanless linux laptop
  • Snapdragon Elite is going to be a rather sizeable step forward, thanks to the Nuvia purchase. Windows on ARM exclusivity is also going to end in 2025, and apparently both AMD and Nvidia are going to have chips ready. I'm hoping Lenovo and/or Dell will put some effort into Linux support once we have better chips, and that the likes of System76, Framework, and Starlabs are able to release ARM models.

  • ☕️7 Myths and Misconceptions About Coffee
  • So is pourover.

    I think the confusion with espresso is that people think espresso should be a darker roast, and that remained pervasive even as other brew methods started to gain market share with lighter roasts. But you can absolutely make great espresso with lighter roasts.

  • ThinkPad @lemmy.ml jcarax @beehaw.org
    P14s gen 4 AMD arrived

    I got the 21K5001JUS, which has the R7 Pro 7840u, 64GB LPDDR5x 6400, and OLED 2880x1800. Ordered it August 20th, shipped expedited on September 1st, and arrived in the upper Midwest this afternoon, September 5th.

    I updated to the latest Windows 11 Pro patches, no Lenovo updates in the Vantage software. My first impressions were:

    1. The fan spins up and gets quite loud when installing Windows updates, but not nearly as loud as my P52s. Substantially louder than my T14s gen 1 AMD. Unfortunately I don't have my T14s gen 3 AMD just yet, I'm not sure of an ETA on that yet.
    2. The OLED scaled to 1.5x really doesn't bother me. I think it's well worth the absence of backlight quality issues, and IPS glow. We'll see once I get into assessing battery life, especially coming from an M1 MBA for personal use.

    It feels a little less premium than the T14s gen 1, with a little bit of flex in the lid and wrist rest. But it's crazy how far we've come since my T450s, which is like a workstation by today's size and weight standards.

    Running Prime 95 with 8 cores and SMT, the fan can get a good bit louder than I would prefer, and than I would expect the T14s gen 4 will. But running GeekBench on Best Performance profile in Windows, the fan does spin up but is nearly silent.

    In my experience of years with Thinkpads, especially the P52s, I expect the fan noise to be much less aggressive in Linux. I'll be assessing that next in Fedora 38, with and without a Windows VM running. Then, before truly assessing if I'm going to keep this or trade it in for a T14s gen 4 AMD with less RAM (opting against the VM workload), I'll do the same in Arch with the latest kernel and such.

    Here are my GeekBench scores:

    !

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    jcarax @beehaw.org
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