Yeah, I think that’s my backup plan is to get some powered speakers and Pi’s to run Snapcast. But it adds a lot of complexity, and more power requirements at the speaker. On the other hand, it’s more hackable than a speaker running a specific piece of software directly, without any real alternatives like I would get with a Pi. Thanks!

Oh no, I know. I’m just limited to wireless right now because I’m renting an old house with massive amounts of insulation. So I had tried to get the Sonos speakers working with a combined sink wirelessly, but it just wasn’t able to keep up, leading to intermittent interruptions to the stream. I’m going to play with that wired in a test environment at some point, but I think I’d prefer something like Snapcast over Airplay.

But once I buy a house in the coming months, I’ll do some low voltage runs to support the audio network, among other things. I figure I’ll probably have a dedicated POE switch so I don’t have to worry too much about QoS, probably Mikrotik if Ubiquiti doesn’t release some new EdgeSwitch gear.

I’m just not sure if the software is there yet, with Pipewire AES67 support. It was “new” in v1, with I think some PTP patching in the first point release. So I’m trying to see if anyone has cut their teeth on this yet, since it’s going to be pretty costly to get gear. I imagine I can just create a combined sink, but I’m not sure if PTPv2 is just automagic within the RTP configuration of Pipewire.

And potentially needing a second server for MPD/Pipewire is something I’m keeping in the back of my head. I’m hoping to run it in a container on the NAS server, probably running Debian (or maybe something more cutting edge if I’m reliant on new Pipewire releases). But RTP and PTP might need something a bit more dedicated to the task. It’s not like I’m doing broadcast or some other form of professional audio here, so I’m optimistic that a container will be fine. Just a single 16/44 FLAC decode to combined AES67 sink. And since containers use a shared kernel, I wouldn’t need to worry about the clock scheduling issues some hypervisors had with Asterisk and Free Switch in my previous life working on VOIP networks. But I’m also not planning on a ton of cores, 4-8 only in a low voltage CPU, sooooo… I dunno.

Well, right now I don’t really have a setup. I bought the Sonos speakers when I was experimenting with the Apple ecosystem a few years ago, but now that I’m fully back on Graphene/Linux they haven’t been worth the trouble. I don’t have an audio server yet, I’m just storing on my laptop and playing locally to headphones/XLR Genelecs using Quod Libet.

What I’ll end up with is probably a home built NAS running stuff like MPD and Home Assistant in containers. I’ll have either a VLAN or dedicated switch for audio.

The Genelecs I’m looking at for AES67 stuffs are the Smart IP Installation series like this 4410a. I’m pretty sure these are full audio-over-IP using AES67/Dante, and not using IP only for control. Unless Genelec documentation on these sucks. If they were to require XLR, I’d choose a different speaker that does not, or run structural audio cables to a multi-zone receiver.

I’ve come to think of myself as trying to be outside of the social constructs that America is currently shedding.

I see society as layered. A social fabric that we weave by acting our beliefs within our communities, which layers atop nature. Upon that we build a structure of law, order, and an artificial economy that we see as beneficial in maintaining a healthy society. It’s important that these three layers closely conform to each other, and that the structures at the top remain minimalistic and efficient in their alignment to the fabric itself, which is more organic.

But the structure has become unwieldly, and is being used against us. It confines us. It enslaves us. The vast majority of people are acting out against this, and their actions are colored by their upbringings and beliefs combined with propaganda. Our diversity is being amplified through anger at our situation, the hate of the propaganda (edit: not ‘of the propaganda’, ‘generated from the propaganda’ is better), and the greed that has become systemic.

Then there are the people who seek to rule us. To some degree they recognize that they can manipulate a failing system to take absolute control. They’ve figured out that they can control us by our anger, and turn it into hate and greed. (edit: I should add that even these people are a symptom of the sickness, and while they may seek to perpetuate it, they’re not themselves the root cause)

Right, left… it doesn’t matter. The whole system is coming down. There’s a lot more to that, but as it stands… there’s a reason a lot of us feel driven to go live on a mountain top or in the depths of the forest. It’s a withdrawal from an unjust system. But we still need the social fabric, it’s our substrate that makes us who we are. We need to embrace our communities, locally, and focus on making the lives we want everyone to be able to have as we eventually pull through this period of authoritarian fascism.

Now if only I could get a meaningful reply to a bug preventing complete account deletion, either on github or from support. It seems they modeled their support structure on Google’s.

I was pleasantly surprised with Evolution the last time I tried to use Gnome, it used to be a buggy, bloated mess. But alas, I can’t manage to use Gnome for more than a release or two. Now I’m looking for a decent Wayland native alternative to Thunderbird, but it just doesn’t exist without DE bloat at this point. Maybe someone will build a modern replacement for Sylpheed/Claws.

Ok, so the resolv.conf is being used to put systemd-resolved in the forwarding path, with it listening on 127.0.0.53. That’s how Mint does things, so don’t touch that file.

Your resolved.conf has no DNS servers or fallback DNS servers configured, so it should just use the DNS servers handed out by DHCP. Either your DHCP servers isn’t handing out a DNS server (unlikely, since other machines work), NetworkManager was configured to not use DHCP DNS servers, or you’re hitting some bug causing the same. I suspect you may have configured NetworkManager for this, maybe it was overriding the VPN DNS. Or maybe you accidentally set the NetworkManager DNS backend to dnsmasq, when it should be systemd-resolved in Mint.

You could try uncommenting that FallbackDNS line and adding a couple space separated DNS servers, maybe your router IP. Mine looks like this:

#DNS= FallbackDNS=1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1 #Domains=

That will hopefully allow VPN DNS to work when it’s connected, and fall back to other DNS servers when not. If not, we could try taking a look at NetworkManager configs. It’s been a bit, I use systemd-networkd now, but I could spin up a VM.

I think they care about their customers just about as much as they care about making money, and aside from GOG, the competition simply does not. It’s a pretty good demonstration to how capitalism has failed us, to be honest, because any of those competitors would have been able to compete if they hadn’t treated their customers like shit.

If you wanted to, you could post your /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/systemd/resolved.conf here. I don’t know if there might be a configuration directory option for systemd-resolved, so keep an eye out for a potential directory like /etc/systemd/resolved.d that might have the configs instead.

Uhm… interesting hyperbole during a time where America is literally facing down a fascist dictator.

Did you ever come back to this and figure it out? My curiosity is killing me :)

And I think it’s probably not in resolv.conf, that’s a stub that kind of redirects things to systemd-resolved. So I think it’s in the forwarder config of that.

Be careful, I was just looking over the Arch docs I linked you to, and I think the configs have changed substantially in the last few months. There’s a good chance that the configs in Mint look substantially different.

Agreed, though I don’t think they disabled systemd-resolved, because it still works using 127.0.0.53 when they’re connected to the VPN. So the daemon must be running, unless Mullvad itself has a DNS forwarder using the same loopback. I suspect they either hard coded some upstream DNS server for Mullvad, because Mullvad might not have supported systemd-resolved yet. Or maybe they set a permission on the configs, and something changed with the user context of Mullvad processes.

Interesting that it works when the VPN is connected, though. I also believe that systemd-resolved is installed on just about any system using systemd, but often isn’t enabled, without problem. Enabling it would generally involve a resolv.conf symlink and a config, so maybe that config was hijacked by Mullvad (or OP configuring Mullvad), and there’s no upstream DNS server available when the VPN isn’t connected.

I missed that it’s Linux Mint in the original post, and it looks like Mint has started using systemd-resolved. The Arch wiki might be useful to OP on how things are configured:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-resolved

Ok, so something setup 127.0.0.53 as your DNS server, and isn’t removing it correctly. I think it’s safe to say it’s Mullvad, since it works using that DNS server IP when connected. Is that IP in your resolv.conf, or is resolv.conf maybe a stub, and you’re using systemd-resolved?

Ok, so does the VPN bring it’s own DNS? Some VPNs do, so it may explain why everything suddenly works fine when you connect.

When not connected to VPN, are you able to dig or nslookup internet names? Local names? A server timeout will be very different from an nxdomain or an empty SOA, in the response.

Are you able to telnet to a public web server on TCP/443?

One thought I’m having is, maybe at some point you set a static IP on your wifi interface, but screwed up the subnetting.

Have you ever messed with network manager or systemd-resolved internal settings, maybe trying to setup multicast DNS or caching?

I’ve been using Thinkpads since the X61s, and used the trackpoint extensively back in the day. Hell, I had the X61s that didn’t even have a trackpoint(edit: didn’t have a trackpad), and I rarely used a mouse with it.

But I really don’t understand how anyone still uses the thing extensively. Once in awhile I’ll use it for some bit of specific precision work when I don’t have a mouse handy. I feel like the Trackpoint quality has gone down significantly over the years, and stuff like anti-drift seems to have been neglected.

If not for the horrible arrow keys that I already hate on my Macbook Air, I was all for this transition. I’d much rather have a great trackpad at this point. I want something more compact than a Framework, and I’m comfortable with Lenovo’s Linux support at this point.

Honestly, I never really use it untethered enough to give you a good answer. But I can say that notebookcheck’s battery tests are pretty good, and they test enough laptops to compare well across a large number of models and generations.

I’d say if you get a Ryzen, yeah. I have a P14s gen4 AMD that I use for my primary machine, and game on successfully. But I also have an old T14s gen1 AMD that work let me keep when I got refreshed. Right now I have Windows on it, to play some games that don’t work well in Proton, but it works fine in Linux as well.

If you can swing it, the T14s gen3 with a Ryzen 7 6850u was a truly excellent machine, it’s what I have for work right now. But we won’t see it coming off lease for another couple years, so it’s a bit early for good prices on the used market.

Just grab a 3-4 year old 13" business class laptop, like a Thinkpad X13. When they come off lease at 3-4 years, they hit the used market at pretty great prices. Some are in rough shape, but use trusted sellers who sell at reasonable volume, and their condition grading tends to be pretty reliable.

Be careful about upgradable RAM, or getting at least 16GB. It sounds like you’d be fine with 8GB for now, but 16GB will get you better life out of the machine.

You may want to replace the SSD straight away, depending on the write cycles. I’d probably just grab one with 256GB, and get a replacement straight away. Lenovo has all their hardware maintenance manuals online, to make checking compatibility and performing the upgrade pretty easy.