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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • In my experience, it’s usually power users or basic users with very specific application requirements, who have trouble moving between operating systems. There’s usually a FOSS alternative to those applications, but often requires reworking a workflow or upskilling more than they want to. But they’re still basic users so it’s more a speed bump than a road block.

    So yeah, most people can switch to MacOS without an issue, and the vast majority of those can switch to a distro like Fedora or Ubuntu and quickly feel comfortable.

    Power users get stuck in this situation where they’ve learned how to do advanced things in Windows, have things tweaked to support more complex and peculiar workflows, but often don’t understand the actual concepts behind them. And even if they do understand the concepts, they still have to learn the alternatives in a new OS, and rebuild their workflows. Now, there’s a lot more ability to learn behind the scenes about the why and how with Linux and BSD, so I’d argue they’d be better off to just suck it up and get started, and they’ll be better off before long.


  • I’m with you. I’ve never really liked the look of QT, but I think I’m going to go for it anyway. It’s always felt more plasticky and artificial, compared to GTK feeling more grounded and earthy. Plus, KDE has always felt cluttered in every way they can clutter it. So I was into the boxes (I was partial to fluxbox) and XFCE back in the day. Played with Gnome 3 a bit, had a cyclical love and ultimately hate relationship with it, but got hung up on Gnome as the best option when I wanted to switch to Wayland.

    I’ve been using Cosmic since January, and I like it, but I’m left wanting more out of it. I was thinking of spinning my own environment with LabWC, but… meh. It’s a lot of work, and I want something more integrated.

    I’ve been using KDE in Asahi on my Macbook Air a bit, and I guess I could use it more. But I don’t really use that machine a ton, either. Mostly for it’s better speakers than my Thinkpad, and I have it connecting a VPN automatically until I can be bothered to switch from iwd/systemd to network manager on my primary.

    God I wish Gnome would change it’s tune, and stop being so militantly simplistic. The idea of extensions is great, but using a rolling release distro is rough when you’re relying on a bunch of extensions to make your DE suitable. I really like their approach to UX at it’s foundation. Cosmic is showing a lot of promise, and has that configurability built in, and I do look forward to where it goes. but it’s going to have this problem where a lot of the software that looks best in it is libadwaita, which enforces drastically different UX.

    Ah, now I remember why I bought the Macbook.




  • I’ll need to give tiling another try, I started using alpha 5 back in January and there were some pretty nasty bugs in tiling mode back then that made me think maybe a memory leak or something. After 15-20 minutes performance would get horrible until switching back to floating, though I’m fuzzy on the details.

    Is there any capability to leave an open space? Honestly, I like tiling more for the orderliness above and beyond snapping than the dynamism. Aaaaaand that’s reminding me why I was looking at building out a LabWC environment, it has configurable snap zones.


  • jcarax@beehaw.orgtoLinux@lemmy.mlWhy?
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    2 months ago

    I started dabbling in around 2000, getting sick of the instability of Windows, and it seeming like the next logical step of geekdom.

    I tried a LOT of distros. Mandrake, Connectiva, Red Hat to Fedora Core, Slackware, Debian Woody, Crux, etc etc. I drifted in a Debian-centric circle until I finally landed on Arch. Lost my way for a bit during my IT career, supporting Windows I ended up just using that. But I’m back to Arch now as my daily, Debian for some networking projects, and a bit of Fedora from time to time when I need to spin something up quick.


  • Not really for the purpose of this thread, since pretty much anything can do what OP is asking, but any idea how the Juno Tab compares to the Starlabs Starlite in regards to build quality, cooling, and what not? I noticed the other day that the Starlite has been updated with an N350 CPU. Though it is up to a $765 starting price…

    Once or twice a year I start thinking it would be nice to have a tablet. Then within a month I wonder wtf I want a tablet for.




  • It’s probably not a good idea to believe that. Even if they do fight for you behind closed doors, which I doubt, they will still have to bow to large governments for the sake of their shareholders. That’s the world we live in right now.

    I’m on Graphene on a Pixel 8 right now, but I really don’t trust the overall direction that Google is pulling AOSP, nor the closed security chip in Pixel phones. I’m trying to decide if I want to stick with AOSP with a non-Pixel device, or give some form of non-Android Linux phone a shot. The Jolla C2 is looking intriguing, but getting one in the US isn’t the easiest thing. I’ve also considered a Shiftphone 8.1 and Fairphone 6, but I’d want to run Calyx, and the future is murky. The Shiftphone is also tricky to get in the US, as is Volla which comes with an AOSP OS without Google services.





  • 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.



  • 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.