Putin Says Russia to Seek Defense Cuts; How Much Depends on War
This is a strong indication that Russians expect the war will be over this year.
Putin Says Russia to Seek Defense Cuts; How Much Depends on War
President Vladimir Putin said Russia plans to cut defense spending, acknowledging growing strains on the budget even as he insisted that reductions would depend on winning his war in Ukraine.Bloomberg
British MPs invite deposed shah's son to promote Iran regime change in parliament
According to an invitation to the event seen by MEE, Pahlavi is set to brief MPs and peers on "the ongoing situation in Iran and his plan for the collapse of the current regime and for a stable transition to a secular democracy".
Akehurst told MEE: "It is for the Iranian people to decide what type of government they want, but clearly MPs are going to be interested in hearing what different opposition voices have got to say about the future of such an important country."
As a staunch defender of a US-backed monarchy that he hopes to bring back to Iran, he has made several visits to Israel, taken photographs with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and cast himself as the only viable leader of a modern Iran if the Islamic Republic collapses.
British MPs invite deposed shah's son to promote Iran regime change in parliament
The son of Iran's ousted shah is set to address British MPs in the UK parliament on Monday, numerous sources within parliament and the Labour Party have told Middle East Eye.Imran Mulla (Middle East Eye)
AI to make us more private?
Just listened to Naomi Brockwell talk about how AI is basically the perfect surveillance tool now.
Her take is very interesting: what if we could actually use AI against that?
Like instead of trying to stay hidden (which honestly feels impossible these days), what if AI could generate tons of fake, realistic data about us? Flood the system with so much artificial nonsense that our real profiles basically disappear in the noise.
Imagine thousands of AI versions of me browsing random sites, faking interests, triggering ads, making fake patterns. Wouldn’t that mess with the profiling systems?
How could this be achieved?
I feel like I woke up in the stupidest timeline where climate change is about to kill us, we decide stupidly to 10x our power needs by shoving LLMs down everyone’s throats, and the only solution to stay private is to 10x our personal LLM usage by generating tons of noise about us just to stay private. So now we’re 100x ing everyone’s power usage and we’re going to die even sooner.
I think your idea is interesting – I was also thinking that same thing awhile back – but how tf did we get here.
like this
Hexanimo likes this.
There are ais that can detect use of ai. This is a losing strategy as we burn resources playing cat and mouse.
As with all things greed is at the root of this problem. Until privacy has any legislative teeth, it will continue to be a notion for the few and an elusive one at that.
Yeah agreed. What's going on in my state of Pennsylvania is they're reopening the Three Mile Island nuclear plant out near Harrisburg for the sole reason of powering Microsoft's AI data centers. This will be Unit 1 which was closed in 2019. Unit 2 was the one that was permanently closed after the meltdown in 1979.
I'm all for nuclear power. I think it's our best option for an alternative energy source. But the only reason they're opening the plant again is because our grid can't keep up with AI. I believe the data centers is the only thing the nuke plant will power.
I've also seen the scale of things in my work in terms of power demands. I'm an industrial electrical technician, and part of our business is the control panels for cooling the server racks for Amazon data centers. They just keep buying more more and more of them, projected til at least 2035 right now. All these big tech companies are totally revamping everything for AI. Like before a typical rack section might have drawn let's say 1000 watts, now it's more like 10,000 watts. Again, just for AI.
"it says here you clicked 'sign me up for ISIS' 10000 times?"
"Haha no officer, you see it was my social chaff AI that clicked it"
Remembered an article of how a hacker tried to fidget with road cameras with licence plate NULL but for some reason have all the tickets sent to his home.
In the end he got tired and sold the car.
It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not sure the payoff justifies the effort.
Even with AI-generated noise, you’re still being tracked through logins, device fingerprints, and other signals. And in the process, you would probably end up degrading your own experience; getting irrelevant ads, broken recommendations, or tripping security systems.
There’s also the environmental cost to consider. If enough people ran decoy traffic 24/7, the energy use could become significant. All for a strategy that platforms would likely adapt to pretty quickly.
I get the appeal, but I wonder if the practical downsides outweigh the potential privacy gains.
getting irrelevant ads
you guys are getting ads?
You said
you would probably end up degrading your own experience; getting irrelevant ads
Irrevant ads = less targeted ads. You seem to think this is a negative. I'm saying it is actually a positive.
Obscuration is what you're thinking and it works with things like adnauseun (firefox add on that will click all ads in the background to obscure preference data). It's a nice way to smear the data and probably better to do sooner (while the data collection is in infancy) rather than later (where the companies may be able to filter obscuration attempts).
I like it. I am really not a fan of being profiled, collected, and categorized. I agree with others, I hate this time line. It's so uncanny.
Whatever data profile they already have on your can be obscured to make it useless vs them probably trickling in data.
Think of it like um...
Having a picture of you with a moderate amount of notes that are accurate, vs having a picture of you with so much irrelevant/inaccurate data that you can't be certain of anything.
But the picture of me they have is: doesn't click ads like all the other adblocker people (which is accurate)
Why would I want to change it to: clicks ALL the ads like all the other adnauseum people (which is also accurate)
You are just moving the problem one step further, but that doesn't change anything (if I am wrong please correct me).
You say it is ad behaviour + other data points.
So the picture of me they have is: [other data] + doesn’t click ads like all the other adblocker people (which is accurate)
Why would I want to change it to: [other data] + clicks ALL the ads like all the other adnauseum people (which is also accurate)
How does adnauseum or not matter? I genuinely don't get it. It's the same [other data] in both cases. Whether you click on none of the ads or all of the ads can be detected.
As a bonus, if adnauseum would click just a couple random ads, they would have a wrong assumption of my ad clicking behaviour.
But if I click none of the ads they have no accurate assumption of my ad clicking behaviour either.
Judging by incidents like the cambridge analytica scandal, the algorithms that analyze the data are sophisticated enough to differentiate your true interests, which are collected via other browsing behavious from your ad clicking behaviour if they contradict each other or when one of the two seems random.
[other data] + clicks ALL the ads like all the other adnauseum people
adnauseum does not click "all the other ads", it just clicks some of them. Like normal people do. Only those ads are not relevant to your interests, they're just random, so it obscures your online profile by filling it with a bunch of random information.
Judging by incidents like the cambridge analytica scandal, the algorithms that analyze the data are sophisticated enough to differentiate your true interests
Huh? No one in the Cambridge Analytica scandal was poisoning their data with irrelevant information.
adnauseun (firefox add on that will click all ads in the background to obscure preference data)
is what the top level comment said, so I went off this info. Thanks for explaining.
Huh? No one in the Cambridge Analytica scandal was poisoning their data with irrelevant information.
I didn't mean it like that.
I meant it in an illustrative manner - the results of their mass tracking and psychological profiling analysis was so dystopian, that filtering out random false data seems trivial in comparison. I feel like a bachelor or master thesis would be enough to come up with a sufficiently precise method.
In comparison to that it seems extremely complicated to algorithmically figure out what exact customized lie you have to tell to every single inidividual to manipulate them into behaving a certain way. That probably needed a larger team of smart people working together for many years.
But ofc I may be wrong. Cheers
filtering out random false data seems trivial
As far as I know, none of them had random false data so I'm not sure why you would think that?
In comparison to that it seems extremely complicated to algorithmically figure out what exact customized lie you have to tell to every single inidividual to manipulate them into behaving a certain way. That probably needed a larger team of smart people working together for many years.
I feel like you're greatly exaggerating the level of intelligence at work here. It's not hard to figure out people's political affiliations with something as simple as their browsing history, and it's not hard to manipulate them with propaganda accordingly. They did not have an "exact customized lie" for every individual, they just grouped individuals into categories (AKA profiling) and showed them a select few forms of disinformation accordingly.
Good input, thank you.
As far as I know, none of them had random false data so I’m not sure why you would think that?
You can use topic B as an illustration for topic A, even if topic B does not directly contain topic A. For example: (during a chess game analysis) "Moving the knight in front of the bishop is like a punch in the face from mike tyson."
There are probably better examples of more complex algorithms that work on data collected online for various goals. When developing those, a problem that naturaly comes up would be filtering out garbage. Do you think it is absolutely infeasable to implement one that would detect adnauseum specifically?
You can use topic B as an illustration for topic A
Sometimes yes. In this case, no.
Do you think it is absolutely infeasable to implement one that would detect adnauseum specifically?
I think the users of such products are extremely low (especially since they've been kicked from Google store) that it wouldn't be worth their time.
But no, I don't think they could either. It's just an automation script that runs actions the same way you would.
This is like chaff, and I think it would work. But you would have to deal with the fact that whatever patterns it was showing you were doing "you would be doing".
I think there are other ways that AI can be used for privacy.
For example, did you know that you can be identified by how you type/speak online? what if you filtered everything you said through an LLM first, normalizing it. Takes away a fingerprinting option. Could use a pretty small local LLM model that could run on a modest local desktop...
First, Naomi and her team are doing a fantastic work in security for masses, easily top 5 worldwide!
AI is capable but we are still failing at program it properly, gosh, even well funded companies are still doing a poor job at it... (just look at the misplaced ads and ineffective we still get.)
What I want, and it is easy to do TODAY, is AI checking our FOSS... so many we use and just a tiny, tiny minority of it goes with some scrutiny. We need AI to go through the FOSS code looking for maliciousness now.
So, she is talking about an AI-war? Where those who don't want us to be private, controls the weapons? Anyone else see a problem with that logic?
Thousands of "you" browsing different sites, will use an obscene amount of power and bandwidth. Imagine a million people doing that, not a billion... That's just stupid in all kinds of ways.
This isn’t a very smart idea.
People trying to obfuscate their actions would suddenly have massive associated datasets of actions to sift through and it would be trivial to distinguish between the browsing behaviors of a person and a bot.
Someone else said this is like chaff or flare anti missile defense and that’s a good analog. Anti missile defenses like that are deployed when the target recognizes a danger and sees an opportunity to confuse that danger temporarily. They’re used in conjunction with maneuvering and other flight techniques to maximize the potential of avoiding certain death, not constantly once the operator comes in contact with an opponent.
On a more philosophical tip, the masters tools cannot be turned against him.
No, you can’t.
You are not the hero, effortlessly weaving down the highway between minivans on your 1300cc motorcycle, katana strapped across your back, using dual handlebar mounted twiddler boards to hack the multiverse.
If ai driven agentic systems were used to obfuscate a persons interactions online then the fact that they were using those systems would become incredibly obvious and provide a trove of information that could be easily used to locate and document what that person was doing.
But let’s assume what the op did worked, and no one could tell the difference.
That would be worse! Suddenly there’s hundreds of thousands of data points that could be linked to you and all that’s needed for a warrant are two or three that could be interpreted as probable cause of a crime!
You thought you were helping yourself out by turning the fuzzer on before reading trot pamphlets hosted on marxists.org but now they have an expressed interest in drain cleaner and glitter bombs and best case scenario you gotta adopt a new pitt mix from the humane society.
Ok, got another one for ya based on some comments below. You have all the usual addons to block ads and such, but you create a sock-puppet identify, and use AI to "click" ads in the background (stolen from a comment) that align with that identity. You dont see the ads, but the traffic pattern supports the identity you are wearing.
So rather than random, its aligned with a fake identity.
This is a dangerous proposition.
When the dictatorship comes after you, they're not concerned about the whole of every article that was written about you All they care about are the things they see as incriminating.
You could literally take a spell check dictionary list, pull three words out of the list at random and feed it into a ollama asking for a story with your name that included the three words as major points in the story.
Even on a relatively old video card, you could probably crap out three stories a minute. Have it write them in HTML and publish the site map into major search engines on a regular basis.
EDIT: OK this was too fun not to do it real quick!
~ cat generate.py
import random
import requests
import json
import time
from datetime import datetime
ollama_url = "http://127.1:11434/api/generate"
wordlist_file = "words.txt"
with open(wordlist_file, 'r') as file:
words = [line.strip() for line in file if line.strip()]
selected_words = random.sample(words, 3)
theme = ", ".join(selected_words)
prompt = f"Write a short, imaginative story about a person named Rumba using these three theme words: {theme}. The first word is their super power, the second word is their kyptonite, the third word is the name of their adversary. Return only the story as HTML content ready to be saved and viewed in a browser."
response = requests.post(
ollama_url,
headers={"Content-Type": "application/json"},
data=json.dumps({"model": "llama3.2","prompt": prompt})
)
story_html = ""
for line in response.iter_lines(decode_unicode=True):
if line.strip():
try:
chunk = json.loads(line)
story_html += chunk.get("response", "")
except json.JSONDecodeError as e:
print(f"JSON decode error: {e}")
timestamp = datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%d_%H%M%S")
filename = f"story_{timestamp}.html"
with open(filename, "w", encoding="utf-8") as file:
file.write(story_html)
print(f"Story saved as {filename}")~ cat story_20250630_130846.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Rumba's Urban Adventure</title>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<style>
body {font-family: Arial, sans-serif;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Rumba's Urban Adventure</h1>
<br>Rumba was a master of <b>slangs</b>, able to effortlessly weave in and out of conversations with ease. Her superpower allowed her to manipulate language itself, bending words to her will. With a flick of her wrist, she could turn a phrase into a spell.<br>
<br>But Rumba's greatest weakness was her love of <b>bungos</b>. The more she indulged in these sweet treats, the more her powers wavered. She would often find herself lost in thought, her mind clouded by the sugary rush of bungos. Her enemies knew this vulnerability all too well.<br>
<br>Enter <b>Carbarn</b>, a villainous mastermind with a personal vendetta against Rumba. Carbarn had spent years studying the art of linguistic manipulation, and he was determined to exploit Rumba's weakness for his own gain. With a wave of his hand, he summoned a cloud of bungos, sending Rumba stumbling.<br>
<br>But Rumba refused to give up. She focused her mind, channeling the power of slangs into a counterattack. The air was filled with words, swirling and eddying as she battled Carbarn's minions. In the end, it was just Rumba and Carbarn face-to-face.<br>
<br>The two enemies clashed in a spectacular display of linguistic fury. Words flew back and forth, each one landing with precision and deadliness. But Rumba had one final trick up her sleeve - a bungo-free zone.<br>
<br>With a burst of creative energy, Rumba created a bubble of pure slangs around herself, shielding her from Carbarn's attacks. The villain let out a defeated sigh as his plan was foiled once again. And Rumba walked away, victorious, with a bag of bungos stashed safely in her pocket.<br>
</body>
</html>Interesting that it chose female rather than male or gender neutral. Not that I'm complaining, but I expected it to be biased 😀
Yup, you'd be surprised what you can accomplish with 10gb of VRAM and a 12b model. Hell, my profile pic (which isn't very good, tbf) was made on that 10gb VRAM card using localhosted stable diffusion. I hate big corp AI, but I absolutely love open market and open source local models. Gonna be a shame when they start to police them.
To OP: The problem is that they're looking for keywords. With the amount of people under surveillance these days, they don't give a rat's ass if you went to your favorite coffee roasting site, they want to find the stuff they don't want you to do.
Piracy? You're on a list. Any cleaning chemical that can be related to the construction of explosives? You're on a list. These lists will then tack on more keywords that pertain to that list. For example, the explosives list will then search for matching components bought within a close span of time that would indicate you're making them. Even searching for ways to enforce your privacy just makes them more interested.
So then you put out a bunch of fake data. This data happens to say you viewed a page pertaining that matching component. Whelp, that list just got hotter and now there are even more eyes on you and they're being slightly more attentive this time. Its a bad idea. The only way you're getting out of surveillance, at least online, is to never go online.
In reality, they probably won't even do anything about the above. What they really want is money. Money for your info; money to sell more things to you. They want the average home to be filled with advertisements tailored from your information. Because those adverts make those companies money, which they then use to buy more information to monetize your existence. Its the largest pyramid scheme known to humanity, and we're the unpaid grunts.
The moment the world became connected through telephones, cable TV, and then internet this scheme was already in motion way beforehand. Let's be honest, smartphones were the motherload. A TV, phone, and computer you always keep on you? They were salivating that day.
This strategy of generating fake data just doesn't work well. It requires a ton of resources to generate fake data that can't be easily filtered which ends up making the strategy non viable on most situations. Look at Mullvads DAITA and how it constantly has to be improved to fight this and, that's just for basic protection.
There is a bit of a cognitive dissonance that goes on, where people seem to understand that you are tracked constantly online and offline through all sorts of complex means but still think relatively mundane solutions could break that system.
Americans: "Tragedy of the Commons proves that people are incapable of working together for mutual benefit, because personal greed will always lead to the devastation of the collective common good."
Chinese: "Why do you not simply arrest and punish the bad actors in your society when they overstep and impede on the general welfare?"
Americans: "Because that's fascism. Also, we're arresting and deporting you for asking."
I think it's a refutation of unregulated production & resource distribution in general.
In socialism, distribution would be handled by the state or locality, by the producers themselves, by a work coupon system, with money (a la market socialism), or theoretically in a sort of free-for-all all where people just request what they need. Only the last one is really implicated in a tragedy of the commons type scenario, with the money and work coupon systems potentially causing a smaller degree of that sort of an issue (as there would be less inequality, so less possibility of overproduction due to demand). Producers would, in that case, be encouraged to produce more to fill the increased demand, but there wouldn't be a profit motive for doing so, and so a consumer-side tragedy of the commons is less likely. Also, producers' access to resources would theoretically be more tightly regulated than in capitalism, but that isn't necessarily the case.
In capitalism, distribution is dictated by the money system obviously and due the massive inequality there is a big disparity among people's buying power - but more importantly companies consume the vast majority of resources and are encouraged to grow infinitely in a world of finite resources - creating demand where it doesn't naturally exist to squeeze more profit out of folks' savings, make them take on debt, or cause them to deprioritize other purchases.
In capitalism, people are not encouraged to consume infinitely more because it is not possible. You only have so many needs and so much income as an individual. The market invents new needs with advertising and such (you need makeup, you need the newest smartphone with ten cameras, you need glasses that let facebook spy on you), but consumers' buying power is limited. People can't really cause a market-wide tragedy of the commons, only companies can because they have the vast majority of the access to resources and the ability and motive (profit motive) to acquire them.
Tragedy of the commons, or some iteration of it, seems inevitable under capitalism, but is mitigated or eliminated under socialism
Should be noted that Europe had commons for hundreds and hundreds of years before they all got enclosured and they managed them just fine with local-level spontaneous democracy.
Also the "tragedy of the commons" as we know it today was invented by a malthusian in the 1960s and everybody who invokes it as an argument against socialism ignores the part of the essay where the author advocates for central planning
Well said. To give some more examples of communal societies:
- The Mbuti hunter-gatherers of the Ituri Forest in central Africa.
- The gift-giving economy of the Semai in Malaya.
- Numerous indigenous societies in NA that practice communal land ownership (Lakota/Dakota/the Cherokee, etc.).
- Millions who shared resources in the villages of Europe:
- Arable land was often divided into plots for local families to farm (e.g., the English open field system, - Scandinavian Solskifte ["Sun Division"] system, the Irish "Rundale" system, etc.).
- Grazing lands and forests were often shared by the community (e.g., in Scandinavia, Spain, France).
People who argue that we need capitalism to save us from ourselves don't understand human nature.
Does anyone actually think it's pro-capitalism? Though the social psych equivalent to this is just the concept of the harvesting dilemma and the main lesson is generally pro government regulation (regardless of economics). Social dilemmas like this apply to any common good everyone benefits from, be it air quality, military defense, public parks, public safety, etc. (when explaining, I use a few right wing examples too, even if I am a bit ACAB myself lol).
Basically, they simply don't exist without some form of social agreement not to be a shitty greedy asshole. Government being the most obvious way to control that.
It's about understanding the difference between the dictionary definitions of "communism" and "capitalism" and how they are actually practiced in the real life.
One of them is a system where the super rich hoard all the wealth and use the news media they own to keep the poor and middle classes fighting with each other while they, the rich, run off with all the f*cking money.
And the other one is a system where the super rich hoard all the wealth and use the news media they own to keep the poor and middle classes fighting with each other while they, the rich, run off with all the f*cking money.
"But wait a minute," you ask. "Aren't those the same thing"
Yeah. Congratulations. You GOT it.
Socialism is when white union workers at Swedish arms factories eat cheap treats farmed by impoverished black farmers kept in line with western arms.
Cocoa farmers in Ghana have never even tasted chocolate.
you're a fucking moron
That's not what communism is, you dweeb
Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political scientist and political economist[1][2][3] whose work was associated with New Institutional Economicsand the resurgence of political economy.[4]In 2009, she was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons", which she shared with Oliver E. Williamson; she was the first woman to win the prize.[5]While the original work on the tragedy of the commons concept suggested that all commons were doomed to failure, they remain important in the modern world. Work by later economists has found many examples of successful commons, and Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for analysing situations where they operate successfully.[17][14] For example, Ostrom found that grazing commons in the Swiss Alps have been run successfully for many hundreds of years by the farmers there.[18]
Ostrom's law
Ostrom's law is an adage that represents how Elinor Ostrom's works in economicschallenge previous theoretical frameworks and assumptions about property, especially the commons. Ostrom's detailed analyses of functional examples of the commons create an alternative view of the arrangement of resources that are both practically and theoretically possible. This eponymous law is stated succinctly by Lee Anne Fennell as:
A resource arrangement that works in practice can work in theory.[42]
The Tragedy of the Commons was popularized by a man who was anti-immigrant and pro-eugenics, and it's not good science. The good science on it was done by Elinor Ostrom who won a Nobel-ish prize for fieldwork showing that various societies around the world had solved the issues of the governance of commons.
The thing is, Ostrom didn't disprove it as a concept. She just proved that with the right norms and rules in place it doesn't inevitably lead to collapse. IMO it's not about capitalism or communism, it's about population. A small number of people who all know each-other can negotiate an arrangement that everyone can agree to. But, once you have thousands or millions of people, and each user of the commons knows almost none of the other users, it's different. At that point you need a government to set rules, and law enforcement to enforce those rules. That, of course, fails when the commons is something like the world's atmosphere and there's no worldwide government that can set and enforce rules.
At that point you need a government to set rules, and law enforcement to enforce those rules.
In a communist society where we have abolished wages and everyone has their needs guaranteed, why would anyone harm the community by flouting norms regarding the commons? This paints us as naturally immoral creatures that will always need Father Government to protect us from ourselves. Arguably, people are such social creatures that strong norms and taboos would keep most (all?) of us in check (again, in the context of a communist society).
I never even thought it was that deep (idk if in other countries ppl go over it in school or something, I first heard of it online) so I never really understood how people are relating it to any economic system. All it's saying to me is that one bad actor can be enough to ruin something for everyone - as far as I'm concerned it's just prisoners' dilemma in a larger group. So we need some way of enforcing that, if a shared ressource is vulnerable to singular bad actors (which isn't all of them, e.g. some people abusing welfare doesn't suddenly skyrocket costs), it won't be abused.
Edit: just realized I forgot whether tragedy of the commons was about some few fucking up the pasture for everyone, or everyone slightly overusing it. The latter is ofc a bit different, but "ah I can cheat the system a little, I need it after all" isn't an uncommon sentiment. That one usually just means you need a bit of a buffer, though, because most people won't grossly abuse something. (And of course, it's still quite independent of economic systems - regional software pricing for example is ultimately a capitalist thing to sell more, and yet would fall under this as it's usually possible to get these prices from other regions.)
When private property is so ingrained in your brain that you think communism is when more people have land.
The tragedy of commons straight up describes capitalism, profits are privatized and costs are socialized, how can people think this is a refutation of communism.
Xiaomi naming convention
like this
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ likes this.
Also, some very specific colours flicker. A developers option makes it go away but the option turns itself off after some time.
Their tablet naming is at least a little more sane.
I don't know why companies don't just put the release year in the name. That'd be much simpler than having to keep track of device generations.
China has a big problem with selling an identical product fifteen times through twelve different companies.
I think it’s an SEO strategy for Amazon, where they edge out any competition by being everywhere on the first page of search results. They also have the ability to game reviews by killing any products that get bad reviews and recreating them under a new brand.
I decided not to buy another Xiaomi phone when the one I previously had would turn off when it was a bit mildly cool outside.
Like, I would take it out of my pocket to look at bus schedules but it would turn off after a few seconds of being exposed to 5°C, saying the battery was dead. Another time I had it attached to my bike handlebar and it kept turning off because apparently 13°C with the wind was also too chilly. Every time that fucking Xiaomi phone was feeling a bit chill, the battery would just die. And not even in freezing temps!
I looked online and everone of the fanboys on the forums kept saying that this is normal, battery performance degrades in winter, that iPhones do the same, and apparently all other phones do the same. In short, I had unreasonable expectations.
Yet, all my other phones' batteries didn't die within seconds of taking them out of my pocket, even in winter.
So, I don't have to bother with their names anymore.
But it was maybe a few months old at best. Maybe it had a defective battery from the start but I contacted Xiaomi and I've been told it was "normal" in "winter". Then when I looked online for this issue with Xiaomi phones, the people on the forums said it was "normal", and that I expected too much.
In the end it was probably a defective battery. I couldn't believe that they were selling millions of these and that people always just kept them warm all the time. Like, they have a proper winter too in some parts of China, and I can't imagine millions of people having their phone dying on them as soon as we get into sweater weather.
But obviously this left a bad taste in my mouth. This and having to ask permission to root my phone.
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
Broadcom Eyes $2 Trillion Club as AI Chip Demand Explodes
Broadcom Eyes $2 Trillion Club as AI Chip Demand Explodes
Broadcomjust hit $1.3 trillion in market cap, and some analysts think that’s just the beginning. The chip giant’s custom AI processors are pulling in massive orders from tech’s biggest players, setting up what could be a sprint to $2 trillion by 2028…GazeOn Team (GazeOn)
What hardware does not support Linux?
I remember the old ADSL modems where effectively winmodems. I had to keep a Windows ME machine as my household router until the point the community had reversed engineered them enough to get them working on Linux.
At least they where usb based rather than some random card. I think the whole driver could work in user space.
The lack of support seems very daunting at first.
I started thinking "Oh I wish I could transition to Linux, away from Windows, but what about the latest hardware or random gadget?"
The trick is to flip the question around, namely not "Does my current hardware work with Linux?" but rather "Am I sure my next hardware work well with Linux BEFORE I buy it?" then this remove 99% of headaches. It's typically 1 Web search away from either a lot of complaints or positive feedback... or not much, and then it's up to you to see if you are ready for an adventure. If there is not much but there is some standard interface, e.g. Bluetooth, and no need for a proprietary application, it's nearly sure the main features will work. If a proprietary application is needed, then safer to avoid.
So.... yes maybe surprisingly a LOT of hardware does work well with Linux!
What does not work for me, to give a random example, is the LED controller of my desktop case, which I bought several years ago while Windows was still my main OS. I didn't put a lot of effort into it, cf gitlab.com/CalcProgrammer1/Ope… but the recent article posted on this instance, namely lemmy.ml/post/32389687 makes me want to give it another go at some point!
[New Device] Corsair One (Complete PC) (#1683) · Issues · Adam Honse / OpenRGB · GitLab
Name of device: Corsair One (i### and a###; e.g. a200), by Corsair. Link to...GitLab
Writing a basic Linux device driver when you know nothing about Linux drivers or USB
This is my plan going forward. Linux wasn't on my radar when I bought my laptop (and my PC but that's a different story about just being scared to try since I use it for work and I'm not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).
I got a wicked sale on a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, and of course a few months after I started cutting BIg Tech out of my life (I was an idiot for buying Samsung to begin with but too late now haha). No more Meta, Amazon, or Google accounts or devices for me, and all I have left of Big Tech is Microsoft on my laptop and PC. I tried Mint as my first Linux attempt, and put it on my Samsung laptop. It...didn't play well unfortunately. I've read Bazzite may work better but haven't tried it yet.
Moral of the story, you nailed it. Going forward every bit of tech I buy will be vetted for FOSS support first.
Neat! Two quick things :
I’m not convinced Linux has comparable software I need).
Feel free to ask here. I might not know alternatives but others could, no matter how niche.
Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Ultra [...] didn’t play well unfortunately
Same advice. I don't have one of these but what fails and how? Any specific error message?
As far as my main PC, I'm a freelance voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software (I've tried Inkscape, but it's a hard transition from photoshop). For recording I really don't like Reaper, and I use Audition (I know, Adobe, haha) and Cubase for music which unfortunately doesn't have a Linux option.
As per the laptop, it had some standard driver issues which were no big deal but apparently Mint doesn't play well with Nvidia graphics cards. The webcam didn't work but that's a semingly standard issue. The biggest thing was Samsung chips and such from what I read really don't play well with Linux, or at least Mint.
voice actor, artist, and musician. My main concern is recording software and to a lesser extent, art software
Even if you are not based in Brussels where we have resonance-mao.be/ you might have a local equivalent, namely open source and open hardware music enthusiast and profesisonals who meet monthly at least to learn and jam. They know this domain a lot more than I do. There are a LOT of software for all that but I wouldn't go as far as advising you. That said yes it mostly likely will require a bit of re-training. Still IMHO you have done the hardest, namely you understand the concepts behind what the tools do. The interface will be different but how it is actually done should be the same. My advice is to find "your people" and discover together.
Regarding hardware Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian. I have an NVIDIA GPU and I play (and work) with it daily. Sometimes sleep/resume is buggy but pretty much never ever while actually working or playing. Regarding the Webcam, it's not super convenient but until it gets supported (hopefully) you might have to rely on an external camera.
Accueil - Atelier Résonance
Page du site Résonance de Bruxelles, atelier mensuel de m.a.o. (musique assistée par ordinateur) pour les utilisateurs de logiciels libres et open sourceRésonance
external cam haha. I use the laptop cam daily to video call family
I actually did that on desktop recently and I enjoy being able to unplug and physically remove it as I don't use it daily. Same for the large external microphone, it's only on my desk when I'll have meetings planed. Maybe you could also use a mobile phone as camera.
Anyway kudos on leaving Google! It's a great step.
For Samsung chips maybe wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebi… could help.
InstallingDebianOn/Samsung - Debian Wiki
Guides on how to install Debian/Linux on a Samsung.wiki.debian.org
Some useful stuff for some laptops - worth checking if you're buying one for linux:
wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lapto…
wiki.archlinux.org/title/Categ…
Also this - i guess this is the inverse question though:
Broadcom, as you've discovered. That's the one brand that I've always had trouble with; they go out of their way to be closed source: never publishing specs, never responding to developers. They're horrible to the point where I will not buy any product that uses Broadcom chips. Which used to be a PITA because they were also common.
Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.
One of my computers has a MediaTek wireless chip where WiFi isn't supported but Bluetooth does.
A lot of people have problems with NVidia cards; I've not had trouble with either AMD or Intel GPUs (although, I think all Intel GPUs are CPU integrated?).
Multifunction printers are still iffy, and even just plain printers can give grief; I've come to believe that this is simply because CUPS is ancient and due for a completely new, modern printing service. It's an awful piece of software to have to work with.
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Cups is so much better then everything printer related that is available for Windows and it works so good that even Apple was not able or willing to create something on their own and are using it their OS on all devices.
Yes, the web interface is dated but nearly every Desktop comes with a modern integrated interface for printer setup and configuration.
It is ages that I had to use the web interface.
Cups comes with a boatload of printer drivers out of the box. And if not then there are often PPD files on the homepage of the printer manufacturer.
Multifunction printers are a special case and if they are supported or not depends either on how the device is build (are the parts addressable Independently as printer, scanner, modem/Fax) or is it all a integrated mashup that needs special software or drivers from the manufacturer.
In the first case can the printer part often be used with cups and the scanner with sane.
Well in the second case there is not much that Linux developers can do without support and goodwill from the manufacturer.
Fingerprint readers, in general, also widely seem to be poorly supported.
Not sure if it technically counts as fingerprint readers but using my YubiKey Bio daily, for login on my desktop and WebAuthN and... 0 problem.
Indeed hence my warning. I'm only sharing this alternative because in practice it works and it's secure (AFAIK).
Edit :
black box security fob
IMHO that's a feature, namely I do not want to OS to mess with this specific part of my setup. I do also have NitroKeys and FPGAs to tinker with but that's different. FWIW if there is an OSHW&FLOSS alternative to the YubiKey Bio please do share.
I have been fine with both Canon and Lexmark and also a Brother unit that someone in my family owns that their new Win11 machine refused to talk to; I opened up my ASUS t-pad with Ubuntu and printed in five seconds.
But yeah CUPS has actually caused many a headache to the point that I’ve disabled it on some units.
On the peripheral end, ElGato. You can usually get their stuff to work but they provide little to no support, usually have issues to work out, and you'll always be relying on third party replacements for their software.
I got a stream deck plus with the xlr dock, since even though I quit content creation I like what it provides and have no reason to downgrade my mic, but the thing has been a headache and a half ever since I switched to cachyOS.
"Working" is not what I would call that.
The "Features" list is full of broken stuff and only 1 works and 1 partial.
Booting, yes.
Working, not really.
libimobiledevice · A cross-platform FOSS library written in C to communicate with iOS devices natively.
libimobiledevice is a software library that talks the protocols to support iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Apple TV devices running iOS on Linux without the need for jailbreaking.libimobiledevice
I use mouse which is fine most of the time, but it would be nice if the touchpad would be supported one day.
Similar story here. I had a laptop running nVidia/Intel dual graphics for a few years and it was so fucking finicky. Primusrun this, optirun that. Ugh. Once upon a time, whenever I heard the word Optimus, I thought of transforming trucks with laser guns. Hearing that same word now puts me in a fetal position.
To any GeForce owners that are considering going Linux full time: do a test run first and see how it works out, because nVidia support on Linux is spotty at best.
Certain less well known smaller brands might not work as too few people know the HW
Same goes for very specialized hardware, if it wasn't on Linux to begin with, it probably won't work
Internal HDMI capture cards are barely supported, there are some professional brands like blackmagic that have support but nearly all consumer grade capture cards are not supported at all, because the companies who make them don't care about Linux.
USB based capture cards often work because they use the same standard protocols as USB cameras.
Anybody ever get Winmodems to work or did they all give up on it?
Back in the day, it was hard enough getting dialup internet working on Linux (especially before you had internet in your pocket, so you had to print out HowTos or write down a bunch of notes before you tried to do it).
But it was downright impossible with a class of modems that was designed essentially as a softmodem, heavily reliant on closed-source firmware and drivers, making them practically impossible to work on Linux.
the new one😂
I am surprised to unable to find this type.
Honestly, Linux has better support for the old hw, even better than m$ win.
Depends. If you have a 32bit CPU, app support is surprisingly much worse on Linux than on Windows. While the kernel and core systems still support 32bit, there are a ton of apps that are only offered for 64bit Linux while 32bit Windows support is still available.
One example: Anything running on Electron.
Racing wheels lacks Linux support. It's the biggest, actually only, reason why I'm dualbooting with Windows.
I've been trying to get my Thrustmaster TX to work on Linux Mint but no success so far. I'm still a little bit newbie with Linux so that might be the reason why my wheel doesn't work (yet).
For debian / arch / fedora based distros:
github.com/Kimplul/hid-tmff2
Looks like it's not perfect however looks to be a good starting point.
GitHub - Kimplul/hid-tmff2: Linux kernel module for Thrustmaster T300RS, T248 and (experimental) TX, T128, T-GT II and TS-XW wheels
Linux kernel module for Thrustmaster T300RS, T248 and (experimental) TX, T128, T-GT II and TS-XW wheels - Kimplul/hid-tmff2GitHub
Not going to surprise anyone but Windows Mixed Reality VR headsets aren't great on Linux, at least with controllers
Although that is improving!
VR Gear & GPUs
Hardware # NVIDIA WIRED VR ISSUES: Nvidia proprietary drivers currently have a critical issue with DRM lease causing substantial presentation latency for wired VR headsets, resulting in a delayed viewport effect that makes VR uncomfortable.Linux VR Adventures Wiki
Daily driver work-from-home on Bazzite? Or something more mainstream (Debian?) and install Steam/proton?
My question is basically the title, but here are some more details.
My computer is used about 75% for work, 20% for personal use (almost entirely web), and 5% for gaming. ~2 y.o. midrange rig w/ Intel CPU, AMD graphics, 32GB DDR4 RAM.
For work, I need lots of straightforward things: video conferencing on Teams (web is fine), Zoom, Word document editing (web is fine), a bunch of other web apps, some light database stuff, etc.
Plus two things that are a bit trickier: OneDrive professional/SharePoint (so I'll need abraunegg's onedrive) and Excel 2024 desktop (web isn't good enough) for which I'll need to run Windows (10? Ameliorated, maybe?) in a VM.
But I also want to do gaming. I wouldn't install a kernel-level rootkit anyway (and I boycott Denuvo), so SteamOS-level compatibility should work great for my needs. I also have a Quest 3, so I'll want to do PCVR, which apparently works great (with Bazzite).
But I don't really grok what Bazzite being immutable means for using it as a daily driver for work/productivity. Under the hood, it's just Fedora 42, right? For immutable distros, you use flatpaks instead of apt install, and they're basically just "apps" that should "just work", right? Do I care about kernel modification?
Or, more to the point, I don't know what I don't know. After preliminary research on this all, I think my plan of going for Bazzite then adding abraunegg's onedrive and a Windows VM with Office 2024 will hit all my needs, but can anyone "sanity check" that plan, or compare the pros/cons with a non-Ubuntu-based alternative?
I'm good enough with computers that I should be able to tinker through the inevitable small challenges that will come up, but I don't really have enough time to do it twice if my initial plan is terrible. (I connect to a Debian server remotely using the terminal, so I have some background—but I needed to install a bunch of packages to get web app software running, and idk if I'll need that as a desktop user.)
Any advice much appreciated! And thanks for reading this far, even if you don't comment. 😀
Edit: thanks for the input so far! I'm turning in, but I'll read everything and reply to stuff tomorrow.
GitHub - abraunegg/onedrive: OneDrive Client for Linux
OneDrive Client for Linux. Contribute to abraunegg/onedrive development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Pro of running an immutable distro is that it is much harder to break during daily use. The con is that you're pretty much setup to only use flatpaks and some things like abraunegg's onedrive aren't available as a flatpak.
Have you considered making the ~~Win10~~ Win11 VM a complete work jail? If you do all things work in there then you get a nice separation of private and work and won't have to worry about work apps linux compatibility.
edit: Windows 10 support ends on October 14, 2025
Windows 10 support ends on October 14, 2025 - Microsoft Support
Windows 10 support ends on October 14, 2025. Upgrade to Windows 11 now to ensure continued security and feature updates. Learn more about the transition.support.microsoft.com
Thanks for the reply!
A few thoughts:
I was thinking Win 10 EOL won't matter if the VM has no Internet access. Linux would sync the files for me, so the Windows VM can just run Excel (and maybe Word, since I'm setting up Office 2024 anyway) using the files synced by abraunegg's onedrive, so it doesn't need internet access. (Assuming there's a partition format that works well for both Windows and Linux that I can use for onedrive, which I assume is a "solved" problem by now—i remember this being hard 20 years ago.)
And his package apparently works in Fedora 42 with docker, which I assume should work fine.
But yeah; maybe what you're suggesting makes more sense. And that VM definitely would need web access, then, so Win 10 is a non-starter. The database work I do is likely easier in Linux, but that's likely easy enough to get data files out of the VM for just that work, I would expect.
Another question now comes to mind; I'm going to look this up now; how hard is it to copy/paste between Linux and a VM? Edit: As I'd hoped, this is also apparently a solved problem and sounds easy to configure.
I'm allergic to mixing private stuff with work stuff and there's a great thing to be able to shut work down at the end of the day. (Freeing up all your hardware for your private fun at the same time)
I’m by no means an expert on this, but I have used both Bazzite and Fedora workstation as my exclusive operating systems.
What I would say is that they’re both perfectly adequate for the tasks you described.
Personally, I’d say unless you prefer things handed to you, choose Fedora. I don’t have a problem with flatpacks, but I missed being able to easily use dnf. At the end of the day, though, there are ways around everything; you can still get what you need done on Bazzite.
In terms of kernel tweaks, etc. I barely noticed any difference in performance between the 2. Keep in mind that this was a relatively modern pc so performance wasn’t really an issue that I was looking out for.
Overall though, you’ll be fine whatever you choose. I also had to use MS office for work and it’s pretty much the one thing you can’t get working on Linux. You’ll have to explore your options for that, I ended moving back to a Mac because of Ableton live 🙁
The main issue you'll run into is nicher proprietary software being hard to install, but that's what containers are for. The main one I see is if you need to install some proprietary VPN client it gets annoying, but since you'll be running a VM anyway you can do some network trickery. My work's antivirus only works on Ubuntu and RHEL, proprietary kernel modules so it's got to be at least one of those kernels.
Linux is Linux, nothing's impossible to solve even with Bazzite's immutability. Worst comes to worst you make your own images and it's not that hard, you basically just fork it on GitHub and let the CI do its thing.
But do you have time to fiddle to make it work and take the risk, or do you want to play it safe? How confident are you with Bazzite's more advanced topics?
oh, shit:
The main one I see is if you need to install some proprietary VPN client it gets annoyingf
You're right. I have a crappy work-supplied Windows laptop that has exactly that installed. It would be nice not to need to boot into that when I need to work on the server from home, but it's not a deal breaker.
No other specific non-web-based software is needed for work, aside from the aforementioned OneDrive and Excel 2024.
Edit: Your last paragraph is exactly what I'm asking about; I'm capable of doing slightly involved tinkering, but it would need to be something that I can Google Fu through each step of someone walking through most of the steps. I don't know it at all well enough to go completely "off script" and just tinker with confidence.
It sounds like you're suggesting that going for something mainstream and getting it to work for games is likely a better option, particularly for someone with limited Limits experience?
Debian is far from being a mainstream workstation distro.
Debian is/was a very good server distro but there are lots of good alternatives to debian nowadays which may be much better for someones usecase. Debian is not the ultima ratio.
For me, I personally just run my workplace stuff in a VM (Debian 12) using KVM.
For excel desktop, OnlyOffice has a Desktop application that you can use to edit local files, which has pretty good compatibility with Microsoft products.
ONLYOFFICE - Secure Online Office
ONLYOFFICE offers a secure online office suite highly compatible with MS Office formats. Connect it to your web platform for document editing and collaboration or use as a part of ONLYOFFICE Workspace.ONLYOFFICE - Online Office Applications for business
The Universal Blue people emphasize containerized stuff a little too much. It's perfectly possible to add non-flatpak software to ostree distros, it just slows update processing down a little bit.
Since abraunegg onedrive is available as an RPM, you can just layer it on top of Bazzite; download the rpm and and then rpm-ostree install ./onedrive.rpm
If the RPM works on Fedora it will work in ostree distros too. Besides, if it foesn't work, you can just rpm-ostree rollback and it's like you never installed it, apart from things in your $HOME like config files.
The recommendation is to avoid layering wherever possible, not that you can't do it. Many apps are still a bit wonky as flatpaks, even if available.
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Distrobox is much more suitable for installing RPMs on immutable distros, unless they need deep system access (e.g. Docker).
Bazzite even ships with DistroShelf for that purpose.
Just create a Fedora container for RPMs and a Ubuntu/Debian container for DEBs and install them there.
Netanyahu Says It’s Antisemitic For Israeli Soldiers To Describe Their Own Atrocities
Netanyahu Says It’s Antisemitic For Israeli Soldiers To Describe Their Own Atrocities
The more exposed Israel’s criminality becomes, the more absurd the arguments made in its defense are getting.Caitlin Johnstone
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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Can't enable mobile security settings
Hi there,I have an Asus Zenfone 10 on Android 15.
In this release of android a new feature named mobile security settings became available which are supposed to signal and protect against surveillance on the mobile network side, like at a protest.When I try to enable these settings on my device they are off again when I reenter these settings.
Do these settings have some kind of prerequisite? Are they working on your device?Thanks!
Wtf! Same situation for me!
Is this some more Asus bullshit? I am still mad that I can't unlock it
Edit: but also what is encrytion on normal mobile network supposed to be? Are calls somehow encrypted? I thought normal network is not encrypted anyway, how even, is there a key exchange or anything?
I worked for ASUS back in the late 00s, when they still made quality products. I did Linux, Server, EEEPC, and Level 2 support calls.
I can't recommend them anymore.
Sinaloa cartel used phone data and surveillance cameras to find FBI informants, DOJ says
A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official's phone records and use Mexico City's surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency's informants in 2018, the U.S. Justice Department said in a report issued on Thursday.
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This should absolutely be held up as the example for people that say "I have nothing to hide."
The world isn't fun time sunshine lollipops, kids. It's literally inevitable that your data gets leaked or stolen.
You either naïvely trust the service you give data to more than you should, or you naïvely trust criminals to skip you when given the opportunity. There no evidence of a middle ground or other options in the matter.
IMEI concern grapheneOS
Is it a good enough solution for IMEI tracking to use an alternative device to provide a hotspot connection?
This approach appears to protect any new device that hasn't inserted a SIM card from being identified.
But I'm not sure how much information is carried to the second device by using hotspot.
Is this a good solution so far? Should I try to spoof IMEI?
The main goal here is to keep my device's IMEI number private, so that it appears to the service provider as if my phone has never used cellular data. By hiding the IMEI, the provider won’t be able to associate the device with me when I use it solely on public Wi-Fi such as in a café, or be able to track me with IMEI if my IMEI number is leaked by some service or app that I accidentally used. They might see that a new device is connected, but they won’t be able to identify that it belongs to me.
Now that I think of it twice I think you got a point Solely connecting to WIFI doesn't seem to leak my IMEI number. But I'm not sure what else will except for using SIMs.
I guess I just don't like the idea that a persistent number could be used to identify me.
Though I'm still curious about:
May I also ask how much information is carried to the second device by using hotspot? By this I meant the phone with IMEI will be able to know my device name, but what else? Will the phone with IMEI also be able to know the device model?
thank you for the clarification!
changed my device name!
I cannot find any reliable source that says personal hotspot can see the device model connecting to it, would be really great if someone could clarify this here.
But, some wifi access points can detect your device model anyways. My Xfinity gateway will show my Phone’s name and what model of phone I have.
I believe this is true as there is browser plugin for spoofing device model
GrapheneOS Location Services
Should I enable WIFI scanning / Bluetooth scanning / Network Location under setting->location->location services?
Which one would help me navigate inside a building or underground using open source maps?
I haven't tested yet, does google map requires any of those location services enabled to work? Should I just use google map in vanadium?
thanks a lot
The thing is the Open Source mapping service doesn't seems to work inside buildings. Does enabling those options help with that?
also How is CoMaps compared to osmand and organic maps?
thanks a lot
could you elaborate their difference? what information is send to what servers?
In my opinion WIFI scanning / Bluetooth scanning / Network Location is only used within system and shared with apps inside the profile if given permission. If I use open source maps I can't see how my personal information is going to leak
thanks a lot
for those who have trouble understanding this
- Passive Tracking (Wi-Fi & Bluetooth Beacons)
Your phone constantly searches for nearby Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals.Retailers place Wi-Fi routers or Bluetooth beacons in stores to detect these signals.
Each device has a unique MAC address (though modern phones often randomize this to prevent persistent tracking).
These devices log when and where a phone is detected, creating a record of customer movement.
- What They Can Track:
When a customer enters or exits the storeHow long they stay
Which areas of the store they visit
Repeat visits (if the MAC address isn’t randomized)
Whether they've visited other locations (if the same system is deployed across multiple stores)
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Remember when phones had that insane super advanced tech that could guide anyone anywhere, even offline?
Seriously, why doesn't the compass exist anymore?
I have never turned on location anything on grapheme.
On my other phone I have also uninstalled google location services/history, WiFi scanning, Bluetooth unknown tracker, etc.
If I get lost in a building... I ask someone.
If I get lost in a building… I ask someone.
what about driving? most of the times the connection isn't good enough to support Navigation when driving.
The thing that help you navigate inside buildings is called "Network Location".
Google and Apple provide this functionality by collecting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth network data from all their users and creating a massive database.
By default, "Network Location" is disabled in GrapheneOS. If you have Google Play Services installed, you can use Google's Network Location service by enabling those options.
Fortunately, GrapheneOS provides an alternative using Apple's network location services. There is an option to use GrapheneOS proxy server instead of connecting directly to Apple. Of course, whether you use this feature should entirely depend on how much you trust GrapheneOS developers. This one works using just Wi-Fi data and I use it daily.
thanks a lot!
though could you briefly explain the term "Network Location"? what does this "network" represents? How is it going to help with location and geopositioning? My understanding is that by enabling "Network Location" the location defined with "Network" is sent to SLP server as assisted data for geopositioning.
I would assume "Network" represents cellular data, hope someone could confirm
You need a direct line of sight with satellites for GPS to work.
Of course, this is almost impossible indoors. Here's how network location works to my understanding:
Another person outdoors uses GPS to locate themselves. This person has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled and their device can see your home/office network. Google and Apple save this information to their databases. When you request your location indoors, your device sends Wi-Fi information of nearby access points. The servers know approximate location of this Wi-Fi network and can give you your approximate location, though with a large margin of error.
Sign the petition to get proton to accept Monero for payment.
change.org/p/proton-to-add-mon…
This would be really neat, however it's not trivial to sell those everywhere. If you're lucky to live in a country or even city where they can get those to, you're golden. If you don't, you're screwed.
Unfortunately, as much as I love the idea and tech behind Monero, actually accepting it is not practical at all, as the coin is used a lot for criminal stuff and is thus very strictly followed by many agencies. We don't know if they can break it, but even they don't, businesses can get a rough treatment just for accepting Monero. It's perfectly understandable if they'd rather not do it.
Monero payment option
I would love to be able to create a truly anonymous email account so I would like to be able to pay for premium accounts with Monero or Bitcoin.The Voice of the Proton Community
I don't think it's that easy. the CEO Andy Yen talked about this briefly in this podcast, it boils down to financial auditors not liking cryptocurrencies. he said even just by accepting bitcoin most of the auditors won't agree to audit their company, all the while they are legally required to have regular audits
optoutpod.com/episodes/protonw…
Proton Wallet w/ Andy Yen
I sit down with Andy Yen, founder and CEO of Proton, to discuss the release of Proton Wallet, the decision to focus on Bitcoin despite its lack of privacy, why they don’t accept Monero, and much more.Seth For Privacy (Opt Out Podcast)
another person here also highlighted that mullvad can already do btc + monero + traditional money, so I guess maybe it could just work that way.
interesting though, that mullvad had that for many years now, didn't it? and this podcast is not old. why did Andy say what he said?
Mullvad seems to have figured it out
Being that they still treat Linux as a second class citizen, I'm guessing they just don't care.
Just use trocador.app
No need to add extra work for proton when a solution already exists.
they're not gonna listen to it....
does proton want to be constantly harassed (aka investigated informally without charges nor warrants) by fbi, police, mi5, mi6, Interpol, Europol, etc etc via kyc laws and money laundering laws because a few hundreds/thousands petitioners said "do this"? they would receive even more requests for user data (which often don't require warrants in many countries btw) than they already receive.
or would they rather continue to enable millions of users to escape censorship while still making lots of money and only sometimes harassed by LE?
in other words do you think proton is a conscience with software attached? or are they a money-making company that has slightly better values than certain other companies?
(rhetorical questions. i know the answers already)
no personal offense intended.
IIRC, they've stated that they won't accept Monero because it means they would fail external financial audits they need to remain in operation in Switzerland. Sign all you want, they won't do this.
Plus - y'all, email is not secure anyway. Even Proton. Why would you sign a petition to make the payment method more anonymous than the service they provide? Just send them cash by DHL.
It can be pseudoanonymous if you use it that way.
If you login to it via tor for example and only use it to communicate to people who aren't related to your IRL identity.
Besides cash and mail is still much easier to track than Monero
If promoting decentralized censorship resistant private money makes me a criminal then I'm happy to be a criminal.
If you need to see criminals, just look up pictures of politicians and you'll find them.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a while. Cash I assume is bad as well? You know those paperthingies that doesn't register when hands changes? Saying you don't care about privacy cause you got nothing to hide is like not caring about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Also crime is a good thing sometimes. A lot of really bad things are legal on other side. And let's do a body count of all the crimes you can think of .
My counter "it was worth it" - M. Albright
Cash requires you show up in person to do crime.
Privacy and security are in conflict. I think privacy of thought and privacy of association are important (so social media and messaging) but privacy on where you spend your money leans a bit too far into the privacy side of things.
I admit crime can be a good thing. Piracy for example. But if you're doing crime for money rather than just for the love of the craft, that's where I draw the line.
Honestly what I do with my money is none of anyone else's business.
There was a time when this was the norm. What have happened is that its gone so far that people feel it's not a big deal and are happy to have their data har harvested without a thought. It is however fucking extreme to hear for someone just a few decades ago.
Go argue the privacy is bad to someone getting hormones or abortion pills. Or just shopping a book online and having Facebook match you, and your friends, up with your psychiatrist and sell all your data to highest bidder. Or get deported to an Ecuadorian prison.
Feeling you are safe when your data and habits are with the government and corporations are a privilege. A fake notion as well, haven't considered the fact that any data collected are available for sale or theft?
imagine the Nazis having all the information that exist on you , not even need to beat it out of you. Would be a lot different world then.
I do crime for a lot of things, money included, it pays for some mutual aid here among other things. If I could get away with it I wouldn't think twice of breaking the law for many reasons in many scenarios. Fuck I admire the guys that broke in to the airbase in the UK and fucked up planes that is legally used to commit genocide.
Legality is not a base for morality.
I was gonna respond, but after realizing you're going out of your way to be unnuanced about this I had second thoughts. I looked into your profile and of course you're pro-Russia.
Another one for the blocked list.
Cash by physical mail. Letters are traceable, bank notes are traceable, and physical objects you have been in contact with are virtually guaranteed to have both your fingerprints and DNA on them, no matter how hard you try to prevent that.
Cash by mail is fake privacy.
Cryptocurrencies are a waste of resources and gives might to those with computing force, that is the mighty.
There is no reason to inbosom it.
Let's rather effort towards moneyless societies.
While the international banking system is all run by a hamster wheel?
I don't care if the revolution happens tomorrow. Neither of us will se a moneyless society. Next generation perhaps.
That is your opinion and an opinion that we do not share. I agree with you that most cryptocurrencies are bad.
However, there are some real diamonds mixed in with the lumps of coal, and you should really try to find them.
Opioid pills discovered in US-backed food aid, Gaza authorities say
The Gaza government media office on Friday condemned the discovery of oxycodone pills reportedly discovered in flour bags distributed by “American-Israeli” aid centres.
“We have so far documented four testimonies from citizens who found these pills inside the flour bags,” it said in a statement, warning of the “possibility that some of these narcotic substances were deliberately ground or dissolved in the flour itself”.
Oxycodone is an opioid meant to treat severe and long-term pain, often prescribed to cancer patients.
The drug is highly addictive and can have life-threatening effects, including breathing complications and hallucinations.
The media office’s statement comes after several social media posts shared images of pills purportedly discovered in flour bags in Gaza.
I imagine that other news outlets don’t agree with the allegations of this being to poison people in Gaza. If someone was trying to poison the food, uncrushed oxy pills in flour is a pretty dumb and expensive way to do it.
People are sick and dying and are desperate for painkillers.
Also, smugglers have been trying to find ways around the blockades.
Medical supply / drug smuggling happens in every war. Addicts, and people who are dying and suffering from mangled limbs, want drugs.
‘There was just wave after wave’: Gaza doctors recount horror of the last week
About a third of all casualties admitted to Nasser hospital were under 14, as Israeli airstrikes broke fragile ceasefireJason Burke (The Guardian)
I imagine that other news outlets don’t agree with the allegations of this being to poison people in Gaza.
Other news outlets aren't there, they rely on feeds from the AP/AFP/Reuters cabal and their subsidiaries. So if those three don't pick the story up it doesn't get reported.
You're assuming that the uncrushed ones were the intention and not that there is far more crushed up in the flour and the ones we see didn't get processed.
Opioids are also one of the more common tools of spreading addiction in order to manipulate the people for a reason, it's effective.
They didn’t say that there were actually narcotics ground up. That claim was an unsubstantiated “possibility”
possibility that some of these narcotic substances were deliberately ground or dissolved in the flour itself
People are jumping to conclusions without evidence, and are ignoring the fact that this is one of the few paths in for smugglers, and there is a massive demand for painkillers.
You are also jumping to conclusions. The only fact is that there was opioids in the flour.
Neither of us know why.
I can't help but believe that the absolutely oppressive and evil genocide regime has resorted to poisoning the populace through the tiny amount of aid they let through.
You choose to optimistically believe that this is the result of smugglers accessing those same few aid sites and using them to smuggle needed medicines.
Idk why you're so dismissive as if this would be beyond the scope of Israeli evil.
Agree. Unless you find the people who did it, you'll never know what the motivations are.
That said, we have a lot of reporting that has shown smugglers have been looking for creative ways into gaza, and we have a lot of reporting that shows Israel's blockade has turned hospitals into a hellscape without proper painkillers.
If your mom’s dying from cancer or if Netanyahu blew off your brother’s leg, and the hospital can’t get you medical grade opioid painkillers, are you just going to do nothing? Or are you going to try to work with a smuggler to help them out?
Israel has created a meat grinder and isn’t letting medicine in to hospitals. Desperate people are trying to do whatever they can.
‘There was just wave after wave’: Gaza doctors recount horror of the last week
About a third of all casualties admitted to Nasser hospital were under 14, as Israeli airstrikes broke fragile ceasefireJason Burke (The Guardian)
Occam's razor.
There is a tremendously strong need to get painkillers into Gaza. And smuggler’s drones have been getting shot down. Aid is one of the few channels in. I would expect that someone is going to try to leverage that.
There are also addicts that are trying to have stuff smuggled in. Prime example of this is something as simple as cigarettes. There are quite a few articles about Israel stopping and intercepting people smuggling in cigarettes.
But poisoning or getting random people hooked on opioids? It was loose pills, and a more expensive opiate. If this was a scheme to poison or hook people, it’s a complex and dumb one. If you know anything about opiates, you know there are far better and cheaper to hook or kill people if that’s your goal.
That makes sense, I think I misinterpreted the second paragraph.
Because of the packs of pills being found, they were worried about the flour being contaminated?
Yeah, they were worried about flour being contaminated, and they implied that US or Israeli actors may have also crushed up oxy into the flour. But they didn’t actually test the flour to see if someone actually did that. They just threw out a hypothetical on social media, and people piled on without evidence to back that up.
And they kind of ignored the fact that Israel has created desperate conditions that smugglers are capitalizing on, and there is a lot of reporting about the smuggling and medical shortages.
It was in pill form. My money is on people smuggling meds for the sick and dying because they can’t get rationed meds from hospitals.
This wouldn’t be the first time desperate people resorted to smuggling meds during a brutal war.
If someone wanted to poison people, there are much cheaper and more effective ways to do that.
It’s a brutal war and medical supplies are being rationed, if they exist at all. When hospitals don’t have meds, or can’t give rationed meds to lower priority people who are suffering, those desperate people resort to smuggling.
I’m sure there are also addicts who can trade influence or high value items for oxy, but my money on this being for the sick and dying.
This always happens in war.
My point is that Gaza is a conflict zone with people who are suffering and hospitals that can’t get the right drugs through Israel’s blockade.
I’m not trying to imply that Israel’s isn’t being a genocidal actor.
The idea is to create widespread addiction and societal breakdown.
Israel and their US backers are pure undiluted evil.
Trouble in Paradise: The Growing Public Distrust in Bitcoin Core Developers
cross-posted from: realbitcoin.cash/post/114645
There are people who knew this 10 years ago, this is why Bitcoin Cash was born.
self-hosted i2p+qbittorrent beginner quickstart
Thought I would share my simple docker/podman setup for torrenting over I2P. It's just 2 files, a compose file and a config file, along with an in-depth explanation, available at my repo codeberg.org/xabadak/podman-i2… And it comes with a built-in "kill-switch" to prevent traffic leaking out to the clearnet. But for the uninitiated, some may be wondering:
What is I2P and why should I care?
For a p2p system like bittorrent, for two peers to connect to each other, at least one side needs to have their ports open. If one side uses a VPN, their provider needs to support "port forwarding" in order for them to have their ports open (assuming everything else is configured properly). If you have ever tried to download a torrent with seeders available, yet failed to connect to any of them, your ports are probably not open. And with regulators cracking down on VPNs and forcing providers like Mullvad to shut down port forwarding, torrenting over the clearnet is becoming more and more difficult.
The I2P network doesn't have these issues. The I2P is an alternative internet network where all users are anonymous by default. So you don't need a VPN to hide your activity from your ISP. You don't need port-forwarding either, all peers can reach each other. And if you do happen to run a VPN on your PC, that's fine too - I2P will work just the same. So if you're turning your VPN on and off all the time, you can keep I2P running throughout, and continue downloading/uploading.
I2P eliminates all the complications and worries about seeding, making it easy for beginners to contribute to the network. I2P also makes downloading easier, since all peers are always reachable. And it's more decentralized too, since users don't need to rely on VPN providers. And of course, it's free and open source!
A fair warning though, I2P is restricted in some countries. And in terms of torrenting specifically, torrents have to explicitly support I2P. You can't just take any clearnet torrent and expect it to work on I2P. And the speeds are generally lower since there are less seeders, and the built-in anonymity has a cost as well. However I've been surprised at the amount of content on the I2P network, and I've been able to reach 1 MB/s download speeds. It's more than good enough for me, and it will only get better the more people join, so I hope this repo is enough for people to get started.
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podman network create --internal ... and podman run ..., but it's definitely doable in an hour or so.
I really want to build an i2p router, and have started a couple times, but the lack of control of what goes through my hardware stops me every time. It's a cool project and, sadly, looking more necessary every year.
It's weird I don't have these hang ups for other systems. Running a meshcore node doesn't give me the willies. Just for i2p I worry how much csam is going through my router.
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Agreed. I'll get over myself one day and build one. For now Airvpn supports port forwarding at an affordable (to me) price, so I let them deal with the moral dilemma.
It's coming though, i2p is where my server is headed, even if I keep a VPN up too.
looks easy enough, will try, thank you.
tbh, looked at the thing some while back and noped out when I saw "java" in there; absolutely irrational, I know - just can't stand the thing. cool that there's an alternative.
I remember reading about I2P back in the day. I am old school. If my old memory serves me correctly, I think there are some vulnerabilities with using I2P instead of say a VPN? (Now, I am going to have to go down that rabbit hole again to refresh my memory.)
Edit to add;
The list below describes some of I2P’s main disadvantages.
- Complex configuration process: It necessitates a drawn-out installation procedure and specific browser settings.
- Must-have logging: The I2P user interface must be logged in for users to access their material.
- Severe vulnerabilities: Over 30,000 users were made vulnerable by a zero-day vulnerability that I2P experienced in 2014. Later, a 2017 study found that several more I2P flaws may also be exploited.
- A much tiner user base than TOR: As a result, I2P has fewer network nodes and servers and is more open to intrusions.
- Less anonymity when browsing indexed sites: I2P does not ensure that users' browsing of indexed sites is completely anonymous. The use of VPN services may be able to address this issue.
There was an exploit last May, however, if one is not able to fork over money for a VPN, I2P is a good alternative for a free option.
The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) - A Brief Explanation
Explore the world of I2P, the Invisible Internet Project, a powerful Dark Web technology ensuring privacy and censorship-resistant communication.Cyber Shop Cyprus
Thanks for the info, I would not claim to be an expert about I2P so some of this is definitely new to me. Though I think the situation has improved quite a bit.
Complex configuration process: It necessitates a drawn-out installation procedure and specific browser settings.
If you just want I2P without the torrenting, you can use the official I2P router, which is just an HTTP proxy that runs on your PC, just like Tor. The 3rd-party router used in my guide, i2pd, has a Flatpak as well. So as far as installing the router goes, it's a few clicks. You are correct that it does require configuring the browser though, you are correct. This is explained in my guide and also on the official website. Not as easy as clicking an "Install" button, but only takes around 5 minutes. I wish there were an official I2P browser like the Tor browser though.
Must-have logging: The I2P user interface must be logged in for users to access their material.
Not sure what you mean by this. I've never had to log into anything to set up I2P.
Severe vulnerabilities
I have no doubt. But Tor has had many vulnerabilities too. Both have gotten much better over time.
A much tiner user base than TOR: As a result, I2P has fewer network nodes and servers and is more open to intrusions.
Definitely true. In fact it makes me suspicious how fast TOR is despite how many users there are, and how the relatively high requirements to be a relay (not to mention an exit node). AFAIK TOR is heavily reliant on rich and generous patrons, which makes me wonder about the motives of these patrons. I believe I2P has the potential to be much more decentralized, since every user is expected to also be a router, and Techlore has also raised this point (though I don't have the video on me right now).
Less anonymity when browsing indexed sites: I2P does not ensure that users’ browsing of indexed sites is completely anonymous. The use of VPN services may be able to address this issue.
I didn't know this. What are indexed sites?
GitHub - PurpleI2P/i2pd: 🛡 I2P: End-to-End encrypted and anonymous Internet
🛡 I2P: End-to-End encrypted and anonymous Internet - PurpleI2P/i2pdGitHub
And in terms of torrenting specifically, torrents have to explicitly support I2P. You can't just take any clearnet torrent and expect it to work on I2P.
are you sure about that? for public torrents you just add the postman tracker and done. if libtorrent gets support for DHT over I2P, even that won't be needed
A fair warning though, I2P is restricted in some countries.
And that list is almost identical with Naughty-no-gift-from-Santa list.
i2pd.conf file in my repo as a reference, just make sure to use 127.0.0.1 instead of 0.0.0.0 so that only applications running on your computer would be able to access i2pd (0.0.0.0 is only needed for docker). Then you would configure your browser and qbittorrent the same way detailed in my repo, except make sure to enable "mixed" mode so that your torrents are seeding over both clearnet and I2P. Lastly, even though you'll be seeding your torrents over I2P, nobody will be able to find them unless you post them to an I2P tracker like Postman. I don't know how to submit torrents to Postman so you're on your own for that one
Thank you! I just randomly found your guide in another Lemmy post and this kind of setup has been in my to-do list after I became "pro" with gluetun and qbitorrent (inside Docker) and thought the same could be done for i2pd but haven't had the time.
I have some questions
- I have been very happy about qbitorrent finally opening to i2p but recently found out that because it is using libtorrent it doesn't support DHT for i2p (while the official i2psnark client does). Don't you think is better at this point to still use i2psnark (and you would have the commodity to also have the browser included?) despite being in Java...
- For some reason, I would still feel insecure in using i2p without a VPN. It is said there is no need, ok, but what if I still want to use it. I guess it shouldn't harm? Like affecting speed or other factors? I would like to remove as much as possible any chance of my ISP sniffing on my connections.
PS: I have an improvement for your guide 😁You could add an extra container with Mullvad-Browser (still from linuxserver) to access Postman.
Dragon Age: Veilguard lead level designer Brian J. Audette responds to criticisms on Bluesky: "We couldn't have made a _better_ Dragon Age, only a _different_ one."
In a response to an article written for Bloomberg by Jason Schreier investigating the ten year "development turmoil," lead level designer Brian J. Audette refutes the notion that the game was "compromised" in a post on their bluesky account.
The full post reads:
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a better Dragon Age, only a different one.
Brian J. Audette (@bjaudette.bsky.social)
Reposting without comment except: I refute that we made a bad or compromised game. We made the best version of what we released, warts and all. I'm damn proud of it and the team. We couldn't have made a _better_ Dragon Age, only a _different_ one.Bluesky Social
Support / options for laptop in tablet mode?
I installed Linux Mint on my Lenovo Yoga 7 laptop and it's been great, with the one exception of not really having a tablet mode when I flip the screen. Its not a huge deal, but I watch shows that way and sometimes miss an on-screen keyboard.
The actual keyboard stays active when flipped, which is fine until I pick it up or have it on my lap and accidentally hit some random key.
It seems from some looking around that Mint doesn't do great with this and I'm open to a different distro that's fairly beginner friendly, but even better if there are some options I'm missing to keep what I have.
Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite.... wait actually CachyOS and Solus
I've been using Pop!_OS for a few years now, and it's worked like a dream. Everything works out-of-the-box, and gaming on Linux has never been easier. But it almost works a little too well. Learning Linux as opposed to Windows for all my games was a fun challenge.
But, now that I'm familiar with how to set up any game that needs a little help besides Proton, I'm starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize, and I think picking a new distro with slightly different architechture will be very nice.
Don't get me wrong, I still want something that works by itself more often than not. But I would love to have something a little more cutting-edge that gives me a little more control.
I started with Linux by installing Kubuntu, and I really miss KDE Plasma. I know Kubuntu is still on Plasma 5, and I've been wanting to find a distro that lets me use Plasma 6.
I've narrowed my choices down to three distros: Nobara, Garuda, and Bazzite.
So far, I've confirmed that Nobara and Garuda come with Plasma 6, but I haven't found that information for Bazzite yet.
So, what do you think about these distros? What are the pros and cons for you?
I'm leaning the most toward Garuda - but I'm worried Arch may be TOO big of a leap. I really just learned that Fedora is not Arch-based, so I know Garuda will be a bit of the odd one out of the three.
TL;DR: Nobara, Garuda, Bazzite - which one is good and do any suck?
EDIT:
Thanks, everyone, for the insightful and helpful comments! From what everyone has said, I've come to find that either CachyOS or Solus will fit my needs best.
CachyOS seems optimized for gaming, while Solus' curated rolling releases seem (to my untrained eye at least) to be somewhat of a step between the way Debian-based distros upgrade and the way Arch-based distros upgrade.
I'd love to hear people's experiences with both of these! I think I'm going to try to dual-boot them and see what setup looks like for both.😄
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Bazzite has the latest KDE, yeah, currently reading 6.4 on the latest version. Nobara broke on upgrades for me (I did nothing crazy, basic install and basic upgrade process), bazzite is rock solid and built on a good base (fedora atomic). In general, I fully recommend immutable atomic distros for noobies it all just works and it helps teach you important lessons on data security and containerization
The best thing about atomic linux images like Bazzite is if for whatever reason Bazzite stops releasing new versions you can rebase to a different "distro" and itll have all of your user data and configs intact with a single simple command. With things like Nobara or Garuda, if there is a problem you essentially have to do a clean install.
edit:
And as for Arch, Linux mint, etc., I personally find these distros and advice to be outdated. Upgrades can often break in many smaller linux distros and it is very important to have a strong and reproducible method of upgrading, especially for new users. VanillaOS and Fedora Atomic are currently the most user friendly ways to achieve flawless upgrades.
I was reading into atomic distros just now. Is the rebase feature the main thing that sets atomic desktops apart?
I'm not too worried about having to troubleshoot. Nobara has been appealing to me because it's developed by the Proton guy.
How does an atomic distro help teach containerization and data security as compared to a traditional distro?
Is the rebase feature the main thing that sets atomic desktops apart?
Atomic and immutable distros essentially attempt to make each version on every computer act exactly the same to help devs with debugging. This means they shut down a lot of easy access to core system files, instead you have to use special commands to layer new changes onto your distro. These are automatically re-applied every time you upgrade, reducing the chance of breakage.
Rebasing is a fun consequence of this. Fedora Atomic images (re: things like Bazzite, Secureblue, Kinoite, etc) can be swapped out with a simple command or two. If a dev does something you don't like, you can easily swap to a different image without having to do a full migration.
I’m not too worried about having to troubleshoot. Nobara has been appealing to me because it’s developed by the Proton guy.
Most of the kernel mods from nobara are applied on Bazzite. Bazzite and CachyOS afaik contribute to the same set of code there.
How does an atomic distro help teach containerization and data security as compared to a traditional distro?
Since you cannot easily modify system files, you need to use containers to make certain very technical (and often insecure) things work. DistroBox is the main method for this, and as a plus side, it lets you install programs with commands from any distro. I can use the AUR (an arch linux feature) on Bazzite (Fedora atomic) with DistroBox if i want, for example. There are some other things that come preinstalled on Bazzite that help with this, such as flathub and brew.sh
Correct. Atomic distros don’t apply the update, unless it is ready to be applied successfully all together, usually with an option to restore the previous state, without the need of something like btrfs snapshots.
With Nix(-OS) as an example - your bootloader entry is just a reference a giant list of what you need to get out of the Nix store, to achieve the config you want. Many of those can coexist in the same system as a result, including different versions of the same package
This setup won’t really teach you anything different in relation to containers though.
If you want to play with Atomic distros I'd recommend you do that in a virtual machine in KVM first. They are quite restricting which is good for the distro developers to make consistent releases and experiences for users, and secure, but not necessarily the best option for tech savvy users.
There are ways around the restrictions but you can reach points where the compromises you have to make are too frustrating. If you find that out late down the line after setting up your desktop it can be very annoying. Also I do use Flatpak, but it's not the most efficient way to run software. Atomic distros have more overhead due to the need to use flatpaks or distrobox and the like to get everything you might want.
Atomic distros are a neat idea but I personally love tweaking every element of my install and optimising or customising it. So I use a rolling release distro, have my home folder on a separate partition, and back up regularly.
Preface: I don't have any experience with Garuda or Nobara but I have used Bazzite.
Not to make the choice harder, but Bazzite does come with Plasma 6. You can have it boot to the SteamOS UI or to the Plasma Desktop.
Bazzite is a great choice for stability but you need to be aware it doesn't operate like a traditional Linux distribution since it's based on ostree and is immutable. Package installations are primarily done through Flatpak, AppImage or exported via Distrobox.
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Like OP said, you can get Plasma on Bazzite, as well as install it right on a SteamDeck if you have one. It's constantly being updated, and if gaming is your main driver, Bazzite goes out of its way to make things work. In theory you wouldn't have to do any tinkering to get games running, with the added bonus that you won't be messing up or introducing any entropy to your system files. If something does go wrong, you can reboot into the previous release and it'll be back to where you just came from.
There's still plenty to learn if you want to, it's just not the traditional Linux distro setup.
Kubuntu 24.10 is on plasma 6.1; not sure why you thought it was on plasma 5? Maybe you were thinking of the Long Term Support release which has a much longer release cycle and favours stability over cutting edge; that probably is still on 5? But personally I stay away from Ubuntu distros due to snap.
If you really want to learn Linux and game, maybe pick a distro that is not optimised by default for gaming and optimise it yourself?
I'm on OpenSuSE Tunbleweed and have optimised it myself to game how I want. It's rolling release so I'm on KDE Plasma 6.4. It's not difficult to do although I haven't gone quite as far as kernel patching that the gaming focused distros offer.
Another challenge is Arch - it's really not as difficult as people think and even just setting it up in a virtual machine helps you learn alot about Linux fundamentals without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I've learnt alot using KVM to create virtual machines, and even have a Win 11 machine set up just because I can.
Another route to consider which I also do is get a SBC like a Raspberry 5 and look into setting up self hosting of services like Home Assistant etc. Again you learn Alot about how Linux works in the process and you can keep your main PC running for games without having to move. There is a whole self hosting community on Lemmy with loads of different routes to go, and lots of different manufacturers these days.
There are lots of options beyond changing distros. But also changing distros can be fun and a nice way to reset and make something new.
I would guess jumping from PopOS to Bazzite would be a challange becaue of it is immutable base. It is supposedly less prone to brekage, but certain guides won't work on them.
I think Nobara (or Fedora KDE) will work for you to try. I would avoid Garuda. It has many GUI for helping new user but if learning is your purpose, that just gets in the way. I would suggest Endeavor OS for Arch-based distro.
This is a left field suggestion: Try Solus !solus@piefed.social , we have a pretty good KDE edition. 😀
Cheers!
Thank you for that point about Bazzite. I was worried about having locked-down system files, because I'm really not at a place where I'm breaking my distro all the time.
I've been eyeing CachyOS since another user suggested it. Love the idea of rolling releases, so Solus seems cool too! What sets ya'll apart from the other distros that have been discussed?
As a tinkering old nerd who mainly runs Garuda these days, I would throw in that the added GUI tools don't have to be in the way. It is Arch under the hood, and you can totally ignore Garuda's add-ons and just proceed like you would on vanilla Arch whenever you feel like it.
Best of both worlds, really. The GUI tools are still there whenever you do want to use them, but it's also just Arch. I like MX Linux for similar reasons, as someone who started out on Debian back in the day. Useful for solving problems in both cases, too.
I think those three will be completely fine, but also I think base Arch would be completely fine for you. I have no idea why it's a meme that Arch is so "hard". I wouldn't recommend it for someone coming from Windows or Mac who has no idea what they're doing and had no poweruser tendencies on Windows/Mac either. But for someone who's used Linux for a few years, I think doing a base Arch install is no biggie at all. It's got a very annoying meme reputation but I think it's completely inaccurate.
That's an aside, and I'm not saying you should use base Arch, just that I don't think there's anything wrong with it if that's something you're interested in. Although if you're coming from a "beginner" distro and your intent is to learn, I do think doing a base Arch install (even if you don't stick with it) is a good idea. You'll be entirely capable of the install process and probably get a better understanding of how your system works. Then after you install it you can switch to some other distro you prefer.
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So, Bazzite does have a KDE 6 variant, and works very, very well, especially on a handheld PC.
It takes the approach of sandboxing off the core OS, but giving you a bunch of tools for running flatpaks and other things, set up DistroBox to semi-sort of have multiple linux os's simultaneously if you want to say, compile something from source that only has proper dependencies figured out in... not Arch, what SteamOS is based on...
I run it on my SteamDeck because it offers more ability to use it as an actual PC, while still being rock solid in gaming mode.
But uh... for more discussion... I'm going to kind of not answer your question and suggest something else:
Check out PikaOS.
Basically, much like Nobara is a 'gaming-tuned', optimized, cutting/bleeding-edge version of Fedora...
PikaOS basically is that, but for Debian.
If you're used to using PopOS!, well, that's ultimately Debian based, so there may be less of a learning curve now that you're broadly familiar with the Debian environment.
PikaOS works with GNOME, KDE, Hyprland if you want an even lighter weight DE.
They are also working on a Handheld PC capable out of the box distro, but its not ready yet.
From what I've seen from various youtubers... PikaOS is trading blows with Cachy and Nobara for getting the highest frame rate out of a game, on a same hardware / same setting FPS comparison... sometimes it is actually beating them.
Uh also, yeah, look into CachyOS, it seems to be the latest hotness for an Arch based, gaming optimized, but widely functional for 'whatever' OS, if you're curious about trying out Arch, and of course thus being able to constantly let every one know you use Arch, actually.
But, now that I’m familiar with how to set up any game that needs a little help besides Proton, I’m starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize, and I think picking a new distro with slightly different architechture will be very nice.Don’t get me wrong, I still want something that works by itself more often than not. But I would love to have something a little more cutting-edge that gives me a little more control.
Fam, did I understand you correctly that you want to tinker/tweak/customize the system to your heart's content? Yet, you also wish that the system "just works". At least, mostly. Is that right? Or..., like could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you'd like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place? Please, if possible, be explicit.
After I got a better idea on what it actually is that you seek, I'll try to answer your other(/remaining) questions.
I suppose that's fine, and please feel free to act however way you wish.
The fact remains, however, that no one actually delved into the essence of the matter.
Furthermore, I find it rather troublesome that you deflected the question rather than answering it head-on. Perhaps you didn't think it through yet, and are just waiting to be swayed by whoever advertises best.
To illustrate my point, would you (at least) be so kind to explain me where/why Fedora has lost your favor? While, on the other hand, what Solus provides (in contrast) to justify your interest in it?
Do you think I am using this thread and this thread alone as my only source of information on these distros? I'm crowdsourcing opinions and checking them against the documentation for the distros and my personal preferences.
I feel as though this thread has delved into the essence of the matter perfectly well. That matter being, of course, people's opinions on the three distros I laid out. I deflected your question because you are looking to pick my brain and start an in-depth discussion, but I've reached a point in my research where I'm comfortable making a choice without any more guidance.
And, well, idk, I feel like my statements indicated I was looking for a good middle ground between a stable system that works smoothly and something I can crack open and break while tweaking - for the learning experience. I suppose that would really just boil down to fixed vs rolling release distros.
Fedora has lost my favor due to being a fixed release distro. After CachyOS was brought to my attention, and I researched it a little bit, it seemed to fit my desires pretty well. It's optimized for speed, which is perfect for games, and it's rolling release so I still get to feel like an uber haxx0r. Nothing against Fedora, it seems great. I want something a little further from my comfort zone.
Solus is appealing to me because it isn't based on anything else, and I love that it's a small team. Plus, the weekly updates thing they do felt like a good middle ground between how Debian-based and Arch-based distros work in terms of updating. But, I think I'll stick with CachyOS for now, I'm excited to use Arch btw.
First of all, thank you for that response!
Do you think I am using this thread and this thread alone as my only source of information on these distros?
No, I don't think that. I'd even challenge that notion as your query didn't start with a simple "What's best?" but instead asked for a comparison between three distros that were (somehow) selected by you. Please feel free to enlighten me on what made you even consider the premise of your above question. Though, as this is not that important to begin with, it's also perfectly fine to ignore that 👍.
I feel as though this thread has delved into the essence of the matter perfectly well. That matter being, of course, people’s opinions on the three distros I laid out.
If you lay it out like that, then; yeah, surely. However, it seems we fundamentally differ on what the essence of the matter is. And, perhaps I'm at fault for thinking this is a beneficial exercise to begin with. Regardless, I feel I at least owe you an explanation that goes over where I'm coming from:
Fundamentally, literally none of your original three distros serve you well for the purposes of "I’m starting to want to delve into my OS more to see what I can customize". Each one is pretty opinionated (by default^[Garuda is exempted from this through its KDE Lite offering.]) and -heck- both Bazzite and Nobara come with (highly) specialized tools required for system maintenance. This is because they've identified that there's a very serious disconnect between the freedom they'd like to allow their users and the (otherwise almost insurmountable) complexity this adds to how upgrades are managed. Bazzite trusts Fedora Atomic's tooling for this, while .
Being (highly) opinionated isn't necessarily bad. But it's undeniably easier to tweak/tinker/configure a more minimal system. Hence, you're better served by a lean install (with sane defaults). Thankfully, community members either recognized this and tried to sway you towards other options. With success*. Or, you were able to discern distros that better serve you from the communities' input. However it may be, both CachyOS and Solus are definitely better in that regard. Though, crucially, if the community strictly kept to discussing the original three distros and didn't go out of their way to venture into unexplored waters, then you wouldn't have arrived where you are right now.
Anyhow, all of the above could as well be disregarded the very moment you (hypothetically) state that your idea of customization is limited to the avenues KDE Plasma offers. Because, the original three are perfectly suited for that. So, your ideas on what tweaking/tinkering/customization entails is fundamentally linked to the distro that's most fit for the job.
And thus, I would distill the essence of the matter to be a clear idea on what kind of balance between "stability" and "customization" is envisioned as desirable by you. And, while at it, proper delineations of what is and isn't understood as stability and customization. Is the requirement of stability only satisfied if you can easily rollback to a proper working state? Or, is borking on a random update simply unforgivable? On the other hand, do you really want to compile your own kernel and install it? Or were you merely interested in KDE's knobs? Etc. etc.
and start an in-depth discussion
Not necessarily, answering "Or…, like could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you’d like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place?" would probably have been sufficient.
something I can crack open and break while tweaking - for the learning experience
There's so much we could go over in the paragraph the above text is found, but I'll instead limit myself to just the above text. I find myself in a conundrum when you present that the above was implied and that (somehow) you came to consider Bazzite. While Bazzite is a lot more customizable than people give it credit for, I would not describe any part of the experience as "cracking it open". So, when met with an oxymoron as such, I literally have to ask for a clarification.
Fedora has lost my favor due to being a fixed release distro.
You've stated somewhere that you "Love the idea of rolling releases". So, if Solus passes as a rolling release distro ^[To be clear, technically, it absolutely does.], but has less uptodate packages than Fedora's previous release^[So I'm not even comparing it to Fedora 42 or Fedora Rawhide (i.e. its rolling release branch).]. Then, what is it intrinsically that makes it favorable as a rolling release? And I haven't even delved into why Fedora's release cadence is referred to as semi-rolling or how the latest updates to packages like GNOME arrive earlier in Fedora compared to even Arch. Btw, this is not meant as one big advertisement for Fedora. Instead, I want to point out the many many nuances that exist within the Linux landscape.
After CachyOS was brought to my attention, and I researched it a little bit, it seemed to fit my desires pretty well. It’s optimized for speed, which is perfect for games, and it’s rolling release so I still get to feel like an uber haxx0r.But, I think I’ll stick with CachyOS for now, I’m excited to use Arch btw.
I agree that CachyOS is one of the better fits. And if you're not interested to check out Arch, EndeavourOS or openSUSE Tumbleweed(/Slowroll), then I can't even think of another rolling release worth considering for you.
I love that it’s a small team.
I don't know why this would be preferred over a big team 🤔. Mind helping me understand this?
Btw, to be clear, Solus, as a project, is currently not very healthy. While it could compete with Fedora and openSUSE in the past, the last couple of years haven't been very kind to it. I'd propose the idea that the departure of its founder (i.e. Ikey Doherty) from the project has left it (relatively) visionless. And the turbulent times that followed made nurturing its community a great challenge. One, I'd argue, they weren't able to handle gracefully. Regardless, it's undoubtedly a shell of its former glory. This is also reflected by how relatively bare-bones its repository is. Or how absent it is within the discourse. Hopefully it will be able to bounce back after goodies from Doherty's latest project (i.e. AerynOS) trinkle down to benefit Solus. But, until then, it would be very irresponsible of me if I didn't discourage you from daily-driving it...
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
See, this is what I meant. I deflected because my phrasing gave everyone else enough information that they could just suggest a distro.
I appreciate that you've clearly put thought into the recommendation you want to give, and I appreciate that you'd like to really understand what I'm looking for. But at the time of your original comment, CachyOS was baremetal on my machine. So, I've already picked what I want, and you're insisting I must explain in greater detail so that you may answer my question (already been answered).
Please feel free to enlighten me on what made you even consider the premise of your above question.
The fact that you were insistent no one "delved into the essence of the matter." I didn't need them to, I was researching every OS that anyone mentioned.
but instead asked for a comparison between three distros that were (somehow) selected by you.
They're all gaming distros, dude. I felt like that was evident.
I'm sorry this whole post discussion has not gone the way you wanted, but it's gone the way I wanted. And I believe I've found something that works for me.
But, in the end, it ain't Sophie's Choice. I have my important files on a thumb drive and a backup thumb drive with Pop!_OS in case I need to start fresh again. NBD.
Fam, with all due respect, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you've 'properly' engaged with my previous reply. Don't get me wrong, it's your absolute prerogative to disregard/move-on/disengage/let-go especially if you're already moved on. The daunting task to read a wall of text concerning a subject you've internally closed/'solved' ain't everyone's cup of tea anyways. The reason I've brought this up, is because most of how I would respond to your latest reply is already contained within my previous reply 😅. As such, I will refrain from reiterating what I've said before for the sake of brevity. Instead, I'll try to strictly address the unaddressed. I'll also take the liberty to assume that you're not a fan of consuming long-form content. This will also be reflected in the remainder of this reply.
my phrasing gave everyone else enough information that they could just suggest a distro
Suggesting a distro ain't hard; CTRL + click here consecutively to get a random stream of distros. Even if we would limit it to the union of gaming distros with (semi-)rolling release distros, there's a lot to choose from. As such, mentioning what's out there ain't impressive. But expertly navigating between them sure as hell is.
Granted, suggesting a (new) distro wasn't even the objective. You wanted comparisons... Or, rather, I assumed you did.
CachyOS was baremetal on my machine.
It would probably have saved us both a bunch of trouble if you had been transparent/explicit about this. I can't read your mind nor do I like to assume stuff.
but instead asked for a comparison between three distros that were (somehow) selected by you.They're all gaming distros, dude. I felt like that was evident.
Please allow me to clarify that it wasn't entirely clear why these gaming distros were specifically selected, while others like CachyOS, ChimeraOS, DraugerOS, Jovian-NixOS, PikaOS and Regata OS were not.
I'm sorry this whole post discussion has not gone the way you wanted
Fam, I got literally no stakes in this discussion. Apologies if I made you uncomfortable (or something) by making you think otherwise. I was merely in it to help/assist/support/aid you to the best of my abilities. For this, I required more input so that I wouldn't have to succumb you under multiple walls of text. I didn't think asking you to answer "could you perhaps be more clear on what it is you’d like to tinker/tweak/customize in the first place? Please, if possible, be explicit." was unreasonable. But perhaps I was wrong.
but it's gone the way I wanted. And I believe I've found something that works for me.
I sure hope so, fam. I wouldn't want to see you return with your tail between your legs.
I used Solus for years, it was actually my first long time Linux distro, and I have fond memories from that time and deep appreciation of the project. Note that I say used, because I have moved on (to EndeavourOS and later NixOS).
The reason why I moved on is the same as why I would recommend against Solus: the project have lost a lot of its core contributors. At the time I left there were no package updates for quite some time (used to be weekly).
I am not quite sure Solus really got a future. There are talks about converging it with AerynOS, former SerpentOS, which is innovative but still experimental software built by the original team, i.e. those that left Solus in the first place. Though they are really proficient in making the software, I do not think they have the same skillset for securing longevity through contributions.
In the end you should not care too much what people think. You will get the popular options for the intersection of Lemmy and Linux users, but popular is not always good nor what is right for you. Just try stuff and be ready to move a little through rigorous backups, you do have backups?
Hmm, thank you for your point about Solus. I was interested because it seemed the most interested in the desktop experience. But it does seem they're updating and getting back on track. I love the idea of a weekly rolling release for beginners who still need the idea to click.
I do have backups ;)
I don't agree with your assessment of Solus condition now. Granted I am biased as I am part of the staff. After the outage in early 2023, we have been going strong ever since. There are more contributors than ever. The bus factor problem has been mitigated by more people now have access to critical infrastructure.
Sure the old-heads are all gone but the future of Solus couldn't be more clear than right now. eopkg was ported to python3 and now it is (finally) the default. We switch installer to calamares and in process of replacing our software center. Documentation also now looks better than ever. We already shed so many technical debts that is been going on for years, long before the outage. In the future the plan is for Solus to use AerynOS tooling and on their side development is going rapidly. You can read this all about this on our blog, devlog and forum.
I wrote the monthly "Contributor Roundup" in the forum, it summaries what the contributors been doing in the month. I would say we have pretty steady contribution rate and there is always new contributor coming in. If you have not tried Solus again after the outage, please do. You might be surprised on how things have changed and hopefully for the better. If you find anything that is not good, do not hesitate to tell us. We always appreciate a constructive feedback.
Anyway cheers!
This sounds pretty exciting. Thank you so much for your continued contributions!
In the future the plan is for Solus to use AerynOS tooling and on their side development is going rapidly.
Should I interpret this as Solus going 'immutable'? Or is it something else?
I am not the technical guy, so I might explain some terminology wrong. So, I will give you a few article you can read in my answer. AerynOS tooling right now is focused on the "atomic" part, you can read about it here. The "immutable" part of the original proposition (when it is called Serpent OS) is not set in stone yet. Solus will adopt what make sense for us and right now we are very encouraged by atomic update that AerynOS tooling can already achieve.
TL;DR: Solus going immutable? No plan for it right now 😀
Alright, I very much appreciate you for sharing those articles; it allows me to get into the nitty-gritty of things. Thank you!
As someone who champions the (ongoing) paradigm shift towards atomic/declarative/immutable/stateless systems, I can't but admire the effort to (IIUC):
- Have changing the base of the system without requiring a reboot as a first-class design goal that's well supported (unlike Fedora Atomic)
- Employ a hash + store system that doesn't require forsaking the FHS nor enforces a DSL (unlike NixOS)
- Accomplish the above on a long-standing independent project, so that we can (on one hand) trust the longevity of the project AND (on the other hand) know that it isn't actively resisting its upstream (unlike many other smaller projects, some of which are found here)
While glancing over the many articles, I couldn't really find anything related to declarative system management. Is this something the project intends to tackle eventually?
GitHub - Malix-Labs/Awesome-Atomic: An awesome curated knowledge-base about atomic systems
An awesome curated knowledge-base about atomic systems - Malix-Labs/Awesome-AtomicGitHub
As with many feature outlined, most things are still on drawing board and not yet realized. But yes, the declarative system management ala NixOS was being discussed. The focus now is making "Versioned Repository", so user and developer can avoid breaking changes altogether.
They just released a new blogpost if you are not aware: aerynos.com/blog/2025/06/30/mi… .
They have even weekly updates on updates. Really great comminication towards users.
like this
ElcaineVolta, Badabinski e HeerlijkeDrop like this.
like this
warm likes this.
like this
warm likes this.
There's also no css and no html clubs.
Last but not least, take a look at gemini protocol, which is a bit like gopher: lightweight and textbased only
like this
warm likes this.
Over the past few posts I’ve set up a Windows VM with USB passthrough, and attempted to reverse-engineer the official drivers, As I was doing that, I also thought I’d message the vendor and ask them if they could share any specifications or docs regarding their protocol. To my surprise, Nanoleaf tech support responded to me within 4 hours, with a full description of the protocol that’s used both by the Desk Dock as well as their RGB strips.
To my surprise, Nanoleaf tech support responded to me within 4 hours, with a full description of the protocol that’s used both by the Desk Dock as well as their RGB strips. The docs mostly confirmed what I had already discovered independently, but there were a couple of other minor features as well (like power and brightness management) that I did not know about, which was helpful.
Combo of investigating and a foot up from the manufacturer.
When I've done this in the past for game controllers I've not received such an emphatic response (other than when I was working for the vendor).
Did get some via FOI for a few other products though.
When I installed Ubuntu on an HP laptop recently, I got a message that I didn't have the drivers for my internal Intel wireless chip. It was at this point that I realized the laptop also didn't have an Ethernet port. The installer told me to put the drivers on a flashdrive. Thankfully the error spelled out enough for me to find the drivers online. There were a few different versions and I put them all on the stick.
Bluetooth didn't work, but I realized that was fixed by just enabling the service with systemctl.
Trivia you can use to woo potential partners
Here’s 443 pages on generic HID implementations.
My pants!
If you're not already aware of it (I wasn't until recently) there's a search engine that "prioritizes non-corporate content": marginalia-search.com/
I couldn't find this particular article or blog there, I'm not sure why. Perhaps their robots.txt blocks it, which would be unfortunate. It turns up other similar content though.
Marginalia Search Engine - Marginalia Search
Marginalia Search is a small independent do-it-yourself search engine for surprising but content-rich websites that never ask you to accept cookies or subscribe to newsletters.Marginalia Search
Shit... kind of makes me want to learn Rust now!
Anyway, wonderful write up. No BS, both shortcuts if you just want to the code and in depth links e.g. beyondlogic.org/usbnutshell/us… all written with a fun tone. Plenty of actually useful content showing us all that sure, it is not trivial to write a (USB) driver but it is also probably not as hard as we imagine. Particularly enjoyed the :
- userspace driver, namely being able to tinker locally without feel the pressure to push back the work to Linux the kernel itself
libusband other drivers, namely that there is a myriad of points to start from already, not just writing reverse engineering bits in memory to the new device and hoping it'll work
USB in a NutShell - Chapter 1 - Introduction
Introduces the Universal Serial Bus covering the various chapters of the spec and what is required to be read.www.beyondlogic.org
found a fix for MDN Web Docs demos not working
Recently, some interactive "demo" boxes (example here) in the MDN web docs stopped working on LibreWolf for me. The preview was blank and clicking on the buttons did nothing.
Turns out I had enabled "Limit cross-origin referrers" in settings, and unchecking the box allowed MDN to work normally.
Hope this helps!
flex - CSS | MDN
The flex CSS shorthand property sets how a flex item will grow or shrink to fit the space available in its flex container.MDN Web Docs
Accidentally wrote an ISO to an encrypted 5TB drive… Help?
So, I did a thing - accidentally selected my 5TB external NTFS hard drive (encrypted with VeraCrypt) as the target for writing an ISO. The moment I noticed that "Impression" had switched the drive letter, I immediately killed the process. But yeah… damage done.
Now, the situation:
- Currently shows up as:
- 6 MB FAT
- 4.3 GB
- 2 TB unallocated
- 2.6TB unallocated
- The VeraCrypt volume obviously no longer mounts.
- Drive was somewhat crucial - lots of structured data I’d really prefer to recover with the original file system intact.
I know chances are slim, especially with encrypted volumes, but has anyone had luck recovering from something like this? I’m open to commercial recovery tools or command-line wizardry. Would love to hear from anyone who’s been down this road.
Any thoughts or recommendations?
Veracrypt has back-up headers located elsewhere in the volume that are unlikely to have been overwritten.
First thing's first I would strongly recommend copying the drive as it currently exists bit for bit to another drive of equal or larger size. Don't work on the original if you can help it.
Now with this copy, you should try to check the option to use the backup header when mounting and try again. If the partition is gone and veracrypt doesn't see it you'll need to try using something that recovers partitions and doesn't mind encrypted partitions or partitions or file system types it doesn't understand and use that to ON THE COPY recover and recreate the partition (this will write data and can cause the possibility of further loss or worsen your ability to recover which is why it is important to perform it on a copy). Testdesk may work for this but there are other options that probably are better.
See this list: old.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/… and choose something from there if this data is truly important. Again only work on a copy on another drive. Some of these software examples actually work against the original drive and make a copy elsewhere and should be safe to use on the original drive so long as they have you select a target drive to push the recovered data to but read the documentation. Testdisk absolutely must be used on a copy.
You will incur data loss and likely should run one of the file recovery software mentioned on the drive once successfully mounted in veracrypt to attempt to recover as much as possible.
Thank you so much, this is really helpful.
I have a slightly different issue where I have several VeraCrypt vaults on an external that seem corrupted and don't recognize the correct passwords anymore. I'm making note of your advice to work on mine too. Is there anything particularly different you would recommend?
The only thing I would note is -IF- your volumes are not partition or disk based BUT -files- based there is the possibility that corruption of the host file system of the disk the files containing the volumes are on could result in pieces of those files being marked unreadable by the disk and it’s POSSIBLE one way to solve this would be a file system check utility.
HOWEVER such activities carry a -large- risk of data loss so I would advise a bit for bit copy of the disk and doing the repair on that so if it goes wrong you’re not worse off. -IF- you cannot make a copy then I would advise at least trying to mount using backup headers before doing that and copying off anything you can salvage as file system checks can really mess up data recovery and should only be used in certain circumstances.
You’re much better off trying the recovery software I linked in fact than doing a file system check as it will tend to have better results.
You can also use the option to mount as read only in VC to prevent writes to a suspected failing disk.
Let me know if you need further advice.
Any thoughts or recommendations?
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler
Backup important data
:::
I'm gonna be the one to say it. You've ruined your ability to decrypt the data. You can try a recovery service but expect to pay a lot for zero results.
I'm sorry this happened to you.
Edit: don't go with commercial software, find a recovery service
This case is due to a logical problem. Cleanrooms are only necessary for physical repairs, like swapping the Head Stack Assembly.
DriveSavers’ cost of entry for a successful recovery is about $2,000. They’ve even given that quote to an iPhone user who needed nothing more than a screen replacement.
Their “state of the art facility” is appropriate for hardware cases where money is no object and you need the best of the best to deliver results no matter the cost.
Realistically, most regular people will be well taken care of using a reasonably priced service like 300 Dollar Data Recovery.
expect to pay a lot for zero results
Industry standard for data recovery specialists is “no data, no charge”
Where is “here”?
You might want to check out the member listings at datarecoveryprofessionals.org/
These organizations generally seem to hold themselves to a “better” standard than the rest of the industry.
Global Group for Data Recovery Engineers | Data Recovery Professionals
Data Recovery Professionals are a worldwide group of professional data recovery engineers who share data recovery techniques and information.Data Recovery Pros
Cloud storage solutions with Linux
I am trying to get away from Google and am looking for a decent cloud service that's integrated well into Linux, either by itself or by using rclone.
I tried Proton drive, but it is laggy and overall not very good.
I just need storage, nothing fancy. Self hosting is not an option tough, at this time.
EDIT: I don't want to write the same answer 15 times, so I'll just put this here: Thanks a lot for the recommendations to all of you! I've got some reading up to do now 😀
Syncthing is not a cloud solution though... Rather a sync solution. What's the difference? If you delete the file on 1 device it gets deleted on every device who shares the directory...
While a Cloud solution, your file is on a central server and you can download/delete that file on your device without affecting the server.
Cloud service ≠ Sync service but have a similar purpose.
Edit: And doin' 1 way sync is still not a cloud service !
What's the difference? If you delete the file on 1 device it gets deleted on every device who shares the directory...
- That's not correct. SyncThing has versioning
- That's not a necessary component of "the cloud".
Let OP answer the question, please.
And doin' 1 way sync is still not a cloud service !
It's not 1 way sync. Please look up what you're talking about before speaking.
It's not 1 way sync. Please look up what you're talking about before speaking.
Yeah it's not, however you can configure syncthing as a 1way sync solution and I was emphasizing that this still isn't a cloud solution.
Don't get me wrong, syncthing is great and I use it everyday, but syncthing is not a cloud solution.
Desktop Apps - Koofr
Download the Koofr desktop app and access your cloud storage from any device. Sync your files, work online, and share securely with Koofr. Get it free today!Koofr
looking to migrate off gmail finally
I'm considering finally jumping off gmail. I'm not going to host my own email since I just don't have the skill to secure that thing well enough myself. Any mail server I set up would become a botnest within hours. So that has me looking at third party stuff.
Proton has a mostly good reputation, though their CEO's twitter post a while back praising the Trump regime makes me question if I should trust them with anything. I don't know enough about the entire situation to know if its just internet drama or a real concern, but anything involving Trump is a huge red flag for me.
Tuta looks pretty nice but I've read there are concerns about it being in a country that's part of the 14 eyes collaboration, so it might not matter what the organization wants if the government of the region they are in says fuck off and do what we tell you.
On the lower end of concerns, I am in the Apple ecosystem. (boo hiss I know). I like the clean and simple built in apps like email and calendar and how the notifications all work across my watch, phone, mac and homepods. I like how safari can just jump in and throw an email alias at things for me. I like how all my stuff is managed. But I also know Apple could piss me off at any moment and make wild sweeping changes I might not like, so relying on them too much could screw me over someday. I dont know, right now I really like their setup but portability does seem to matter more ultimately so this switch does seem like a better idea in the long run, even if I'm giving up features I may enjoy.
What are your opinions on the privacy email and calendar services in 2025? Should I even both with a cloud based calendar in the first place?
Proton and SimpleLogin are joining forces | Proton
SimpleLogin has joined Proton. Soon, the entire Proton community will be able to hide their email addresses.Proton
Un guizzo di segmenti e antenne rapide sul chiaroscuro. Benvenuti a cena, nell'Ade - Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri
Un guizzo di segmenti e antenne rapide sul chiaroscuro. Benvenuti a cena, nell'Ade - Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri
È una faccenda nota che spostandosi abbastanza in profondità, il concetto di ciclo stagionale cessa di essere rilevante, portando ad un livello di temperatura stabile che resta sempre identico nel corso dei mesi.Jacopo (Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri)
What problems can I expect using Linux (Fedora) with an NVIDIA GPU?
I'm planning on getting a laptop within the next month which will be my daily driver for university, and it has a RTX 5060. I know people have lots of issues with NVIDIA on Linux, but I don't know of any specific issues. What issues can I expect running Fedora 42 (KDE) on this device?
I am not responding to most comments here, but I am silently taking them into account.
Certain videos won't play in any media player. Also occasional graphical glitches in Plasma for me. No issues with games oddly enough.
Edit: I'm using Arch but I'd expect these issues to be distro-agnostic. Though I'm fine with being wrong.
I had a 3060 Ti.
I couldn't game on Wayland for about 20% of my games (very frustrating), couldn't use specific Window Managers like Sway, experience constant screen tearing on X11 (which I often had to use, because the game would crash on Wayland) when gaming, and had a significant performance hit in some games.
CS:GO ran like a dream and actually better than on Windows, but with the release of CS2 my performance on Linux was about 20% worse than on Windows. My 1% lows were also crazy on Linux (median=190fps, %1=80fps). This meant, among others things, that I just couldn't play death match anymore — my FPS would make it unplayable. This was largely an optimization issue and I think some of the 2025 Nvidia driver updates of improved the situation a little for CS2 specifically. The screen tearing on X and the buggyness on Wayland were enough for me to switch though, even if eventual improvements might come.
I am now extremely happy with my 7900 XT, which I got for less than any available 9070 XT (in my region) and which amusingly actually has better performance in CS2 then then the 9070 XT on Linux. It's massively overkill though, I could have just as well gotten a 7800 XT or 9070 (non-XT).
I am still very, very pleased. Hopefully this will last me a few years, unlike the gosh darn 3060 Ti.
Alright, I'm done with my huge block of text. Hopefully this was helpful.
Running RTX4050 mobile on Fedora 41 (internet too crappy to upgrade to 42)
Works great!
Except for unreal 5 games but idk if that's a driver or a proton issue :/
A lot of the info here reads as outdated to me, I have a 40 series card and on bazzite with open drivers it works with zero issues on major titles like Cyberpunk, Horizon, etc. The open drivers have come a long way. It took maybe 5 months post 40 series release for it to work 100% with no glaring issues for me, but 40 series was also the first cards to be launched with the open drivers so it makes sense there'd be hiccups
The only issues I've had on Wayland are color related.
wyndham hotels leaks personal data....and is totally okay with it
I got a new phone number last year. The last person who owned this number just left all her accounts tied to this number and one by one I've been reaching out to the places tied to it telling them they have the wrong number and to stop using this one. Simple enough.
But there is one company that refuses to stop using this number. Wynhdam hotels absolutely refuses to do anything about this. They keep sending me notifications and check in confirmations for her hotel visits. Using just the texts they send me, I know her full name, email address, home address, her reservations at the hotel, which hotel she's going to and what days. Using past conversations with the other hotels she's been to (called in to tell them to stop this months ago), I know she's been kicked out for making a scene in the lobby or something. Looking online, I see she has a criminal record, and a history of child custody losses, drug abuse, and is apparently an "experienced college girl" on an escort site.
In my most recent calls with wyndham, they told me that they can't change the number out. I will need to contact this charming person and have her do it. I am absolutely not getting involved in that mess in any capacity. I'm still telling her johns and dealers this is the wrong number.
Once I explained to the call center supervisor I was escalated to this has gone on long enough and I'm willing to let an attorney deal with it, they put me on hold and supposedly took my number off the account. But the next day, I get another notification. It seems she is providing her services again and it's still making that my problem. So I call and get routed to a promotional department that said they have no idea why they got this call, but I should probably just sue.
I tried calling the number listed on the confirmation texts but it goes to a dead end line that just asks for a remote access code and then hangs up, so I can't ask the hotel she is actually at flag her down and say "hey, you need to update your number."
I emailed their privacy department yesterday but the notifications are still coming in. I can't change my phone number at the moment as I'm dealing with some delicate matters that are tied to this number so I can't risk changing the number at this time.
How can I get wyndham to take this seriously? This is a dangerous amount of information I was able to get off a recurring text they know is going to the wrong place.
To Wyndham this is her account and her information. Failure to update her information on your behalf doesn't constitute any liability on their part.
Regarding you, I would guess the best legal avenue you have would be something like telephone harassment or spam, but that sounds like a shakey case.
Hotels place a big emphasis on maintaining guest confidentiality in all regards except law enforcement. Front desk agents are trained not to disclose whether a guest is even staying at the property when requested. She would have solid grounds for a suit if she could provide evidence she attempted to change her contact information with Wyndham. Sounds like she didn't try though.
Personally, I would just get a new number again. However, if I was tied to making this work I would do this. Contact Wyndham's consumer affairs department. Tell them the lady has contacted me because I am receiving her information from you guys. She has mentioned she's considering litigation. Advise them to reach out to update her information.
Even that is a long shot because if she's a working girl she probably won't want businesses to have up to date info. Most likely she would ignore their email.
To some other commenter's points about them not caring about your issue. Kinda true, but it's not a feelings issue. , Wyndham has little liability in your complaint and it does not make sense to update an account because someone who isn't the account holder said to.
No, they aren't protecting confidentiality at all. They know the information is going to the wrong place. And yet, they keep sending me her full name, her email address, her home address, her reservation dates, the address of the hotel she is at.....
Imagine what someone could do with all that.
If she was telling them that they'd want to fix it to protect themselves from legal ramifications. But it isn't her. It's some stranger. That's all I'm saying.
If we let people make changes to account information based on stories then I could just lie and take over my ex girlfriend's capital one account or something, ya know. Your situation is unique, but just looking at it from the other side I could easily see doing what you're requesting turning into a phone call from the client asking why they're no longer receiving information about their reservations and me having to explain that somebody told us it was their number. Only to find out it was some enemy she has telling us to do that as a way to mess with her. Then I'm up a creek for removing the number without her permission.
It obviously isn't that, but there are risks involved that some companies are not willing to take. Making changes to account contact information in nearly all regards must be done by the account holder.
Not trying to say there shouldn't be an easier resolution to this. Just looking at as the guy on the other side of the phone.
You also told them you aren't the account holder. So that's pretty much the end of the call right there for any place I have ever worked... I understand your concern and the issue. It just doesn't work this way technically.
I currently manage a hotel and even as an employee there's some account information that I am not able to update on a guest's behalf. They have to do it themselves. The hospitality industry is ripe with fraud and scam attempts. I understand your situation isn't that, but it would set a precedent for the next situation that IS a scam.
If you really have all her account info and personal data then shit just call and be her. Ask to remove or change your number.
Not always true. Letting me from an account information TO something specifically is a risk, but simply demanding they remove MY data from an account that’s not mine is not a fraud concern. Thats the opposite of a fraud concern.
Moreover, I was able to prove I have that number in that I have all the information they gave me access to through that number.
If your in the US you can tell them you'll report them to the FTC and fcc as unsolicited spam text messages that have no means to opt out. They must provide a means to stop receiving text messages per can spam act. If they refuse you report them and then they face 50k in fines per message. You also get to have federal record at least that you didn't want the text messages. You could also file a police report. The cops may roll their eyes, but just tell them you just want something on record that the former number owner waa a shady character and want to avoid any potential legal issues in the future for having their number and getting weird calls or texts.
fcc.gov/consumers/guides/stop-…
ReportFraud.ftc.gov
WhatsApp rolls out AI-generated summaries for private messages
cross-posted from: rss.ponder.cat/post/215685
WhatsApp can now call on Meta AI to summarize your personal chats. As shown in a GIF, you can access it by tapping the button to unfurl all of your unread messages in a chat. But instead of showing your messages, WhatsApp uses Meta AI to generate a bulleted summary of what you missed.
The feature is rolling out in English in the US, with plans to launch in more countries and languages later this year. It uses Meta’s Private Processing technology, which the company claims will prevent it and other third parties from snooping on your messages.
WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, says its AI message summaries are optional, and the feature is turned off by default. You can also use WhatsApp’s “Advanced Privacy” setting to prevent users from using AI features in group chats. We still don’t know if WhatsApp’s AI message summaries will struggle with accuracy, which is something we saw with the launch of Apple’s AI-generated message and notification rundowns.
Over the past year, Meta has continued stuffing different AI features into WhatsApp, including a way to ask Meta AI questions from within a chat, as well as a feature that generates images in real-time. Some users have grown frustrated by the new Meta AI button in the bottom-right corner of the app that they can’t turn off or remove. Meta also sparked backlash with another change that brought ads to the app — something its founders said they never wanted to do.
The app’s Private Processing is supposed to conceal your interactions with its AI model by creating a “secure cloud environment,” preventing Meta or WhatsApp from seeing your summaries. Other people in the group chat won’t be able to see the message summaries, either.
From The Verge via this RSS feed
WhatsApp’s rollout of ads will change the app forever
WhatsApp is bringing ads to its status feature, a move that’s at odds with the brand’s identity as a “secure” messaging app.Emma Roth (The Verge)
I love that my global settings has a whole section labelled Privacy, but I can't disable this globally for all chats my account joins.
Instead I have to disable it for each chat individually.
What awful design WhatsApp (obviously on purpose so I'll forget with new chats).
Well maybe this is the push that those friends will need to move to Signal...
I need to have this WhatsApp BS as its the only way to stay connected with older relatives and work groups. I'm using RethinkDNS on my phone and have blocked as many Meta DNS and network links as I can find online. Exactly none of them show up on my firewall logs! The connections in/ out appear to be via "safe" routes, which if blocked then break wider functionality.
To use yet another completely unheard of home town phrases, "Bastards".
Alright fine I admit it, I want to learn Linux
I'm just so sick of Microsoft and Google.
But there's two things holding me back:
1) I wanna play Steam games on my PC
2) I am just an amateur hobbyist, not a tech wizard
Is there any hope for me?
One thing I'll say is that for a lot of distros these days you shouldn't really need to use the terminal much if ever. That being said don't be scared of the terminal. It's just another way to tell the computer what to do. It takes some learning but if you want to learn things with the terminal you might eventually find it easier/faster than using the mouse for some things. Go through some tutorials and you'll probably find out that the terminal is not that actually all that scary.
Most distros allow you to try them out before you install them. You can run them from a USB stick to let you try a few out before you settle on one. You won't be able to install any programs this way but you'll at least be able to get an idea of the interface and see if there are any you like more than others. Even still you can dual boot your PC with Windows + Linux and switch back and forth whenever you need. It's not an all or nothing ordeal. I still have windows 10 on my machine but I rarely use it now.
Gaming on Linux is better than it's ever been thanks to Steam coming with proton out of the box. protondb.com is your friend for figuring out what games you can run. That being said there are occasionally some rough edges that I have run into personally. I can run most games I want just fine but occasionally I have some issues. I'm just telling you this so you know it's not like a flawless experience. Then again I've also spent plenty of time trying to get games running on my windows PC in the past too so...
My recommendation for a first Linux OS is Ubuntu because in general it's the most popular and has the most support.
Best of luck!
Adding on to this.
If you don't know what a command does you can read the manual running the "man" command. Run "man" followed by the command you want to read about. It also works for some system files too!
Also if you fix something like a driver issue for a game that took a lot of research. WRITE IT DOWN. It WILL come in handy in the future.
So while techie absolutists stayed at Debian/Arch/RHEL,
the commons folks have gone to Linux Mint/Cachy OS/Fedora?
Can I tell you off from Arch Linux?
There are around three Linux families to choose a derivative Linux OS from,
some are more obscure ones and then some really obscure ones.
Choose one of the Linux family OSes and choose the most popular derivative of that one.
So for example Aurora is a derivative of Fedora, which is a derivative of RHEL (derivative-(in)ception).
The reasons to choose derative OSes and not one of the basic main three is that:
- The Linux derative OSes have bells and whistles build on top of the parent OS. This is especially true for the extremely bare bones Arch Linux, that will throw you back into 1985.
- And this is most important... community support! You will at some point have issues and a forum where developers and experienced users can help you out are a godsend. Derivatives tend to have better community support than the bare bone ones. I've experienced this with the Arch Linux community. I'm not sure if Debian or RHEL communities would haved fared better, but to me this community felt like having a conversation with a real life Sheldon Cooper. I am really thankful for the excellent expert level help I did get there, but I will not go there back again. And I don't know if I even can, because the last time I was there, I got banned for a third time.
I've had great experiences on the Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Manjaro communities. Other communities from less popular Linux OSes have been too small in my experience to get help on time.
For Debian, the most popular one right now is Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu (derivative-(in)ception).
It used to be Ubuntu, but Ubuntu tends to take big moves and risks that don't always pay off.
Linux Mint I consider to be the safe option for beginners.
Debian is known for stability.
For Redhat it's Fedora. I haven't used it that much.
Redhat is known for good security.
For Arch it's Endeavour OS and recently Cachy OS.
It used to be Manjaro, but they fumbled a lot on security issues.
Arch is known for having the best documentation,
and the largest amount of software available,
especially made by fellow users,
and if I may add myself, having the best package manager.
I still use Manjaro myself, because I don't feel enough need to switch to a new one,
and I like the community there.
These folks are all giving great advice but also let us know when you're ready to really fuck around and have fun with your Linux superpowers 😀
You, in practically no time at all: "Nearly everything is working great! Now I want to make my desktop change it's background to NASA's picture of the day while also putting all my PC's status monitors on there. Oh! And I want my PC to back itself up every hour over the network automatically with the ability to restore files I deleted last week. I've got KDE Connect on my phone and it's awesome!"
Then, later: "I bought a Raspberry Pi and I want to turn it into a home theater streaming system and emulation station."
...and later: "What docker images do you guys recommend? I want to setup some home automation. What do you guys think of Pi-hole?"
"I've got four Raspberry Pis doing various things in my home and I'm thinking about getting Banana Pi board to be my router. OpenWRT or full Linux on it? What do you guys think?"
...and even later: "I taught myself Python..." 🤣
"I want to copy my root, home, and boot partition contents into a bigger drive I formatted with in terminal. Let's boot from it and see what breaks."
::: spoiler spoiler
/etc/fstab partition UUIDs needed to be fixed by hand. GRUB config needed to be updated to launch straight into bash and I needed to remount the root directly as R/W because GRUB was trying to protect me from myself.
:::
- before you switch, sort out your apps. Look at what you use on windows, see if it runs on Linux. If not, find a replacement that does and test it out.
- Most Linux distros can boot into a desktop from a thumb drive. You can play and test without touching your windows installation.
- in that vein, ventoy is neat. You can make a bootable drive and drop ISOs in a folder to boot from. No messing with etcher or whatever it’s called
- desktop environment matters as much as the distro. Check out gnome, KDE, and cinnamon.
If a computer is a car, then Linux(the Kernal) is the chassis. Mint (the distro) is the motor, and Cinnamon (the desktop environment) is the fancy interior.
KDE plasma is a fancy interior that works with tons of different motors.
Cinnamon is designed for mint and works best with it.
DISCLAIMER: All of this is analogy and isn't technically correct in a pedantic sense, but it works well enough for me. I'm sorry if my analogy isn't exactly accurate.
The desktop environment is all the stuff like the taskbar, the settings menus, the application launcher, the login screen, that kind of thing. It’s the system level user interface.
You choose which one by which distro you download. Linux mint uses cinnamon, Ubuntu and fedora use gnome. There are “flavors” of Ubuntu and fedora that use KDE. That’s why I suggested ventoy: you can download a few different ones and boot into them without making a new thumb drive.
If you don’t feel like bothering with any of that, just use Linux mint. It’s good.
Okay, so the Linux ecosystem is more modular than Windows. Windows is synonymous with its Graphical User Interface (GUI) for reasons I'll get into later.
With Linux, there are several GUIs available to choose from. These tend to fall into two main categories: Tiling Window Managers, and Desktop Environments.
Tiling Window Managers have minimal on-screen UI elements, usually they're meant to be used with keyboard combos with little usage of the mouse. A major feature is everything that is running is visible on the screen, when you open a new window, another window divides in half to give it room, "tiling" the screen. Some examples of TWMs include i3 and Awesome.
Desktop Environments are going to be more familiar to newcomers from Windows or MacOS. They're made more for mouse control, several have what you would recognize as a taskbar, start menu and system tray. Windows can be stacked on top of each other like papers on a desktop, exactly like MS Windows does. Some more closely resemble MacOS though none behave exactly the same way. Some examples of DEs include Gnome, KDE, MATE, and Cinnamon.
Cinnamon is a DE made by the Linux Mint development community, and the default/flagship DE for Linux Mint. It is designed to be familiar and easy to use for Windows users. KDE's Plasma DE is similar in many ways to Mint although it's based on different tech; KDE is based on qt, Cinnamon is a distant fork of Gnome and based on GTK. Some are designed to be more minimal so they take up less system resources, like xfce and LXDE, others are trying mostly to resemble MacOS, like ElementaryOS' Pantheon DE. Then there's Gnome, which I goddamn hate.
For a beginner, the choice of DE is going to present most of the differences you'll notice when trying out distros. It can be instructive to try, say, Kubuntu and Fedora KDE. Both ship with the KDE Plasma desktop, but the underlying OSes are different. Then try out, say, Fedora Workstation (with the Gnome desktop) and Fedora KDE. That exercise will give you a good understanding of distro vs DE.
Edit to add: It's kind of like launchers on Android. You can go in the Google Play store and install a different launcher on your phone, you can make a Samsung Galaxy look like a Google Pixel. Linux DEs work the same way, you can install KDE or Cinnamon the same way you'd install a normal app, you can have multiple and switch between them. It's not a great idea but you can.
Here are three variants of Linux Mint with different Desktop Environments: (click their example image to make it larger)
- Linux Mint (Cinnamon Edition) - the default, I'd use that until you have a reason not to
- Linux Mint (MATE Edition)
- Linux Mint (XFCE Edition)
All of those are Linux Mint, they use pretty much the same core tools under the hood, but the desktop environments change how you engage with them. Mostly the way things look, the way you organize programs on your screen, and the default apps (like which text editor it comes with by default). This can change your experience a lot, I think Cinnamon looks nice and is smooth, while MATE and XFCE are more lightweight and might be better for older computers or if you don't like something about Cinnamon.
Now, those are all somewhat similar, they have a program start menu in the bottom left, a taskbar on the bottom, the basics are familiar. There are some (not officially supported by Mint) which are more different, like GNOME (Ubuntu's desktop default) which has a different app launcher instead of a start menu and a different way of switching between programs. Then, as others mentioned, some people choose to not even install a pre-designed Desktop Environment and only install some of the more core components of a DE, like the Window Manager. People who really love the keyboard might use a tiling window manager, these tend to make you think "wow, this person's a hacker", where they'll rapidly switch between programs using keyboard controls, with the window manager automatically shifting and dividing new windows so that they tile together to fill the screen. Loosely speaking, the opposite of a tiling window manager is a floating window manager, where windows just float and you move them around with your mouse, just like Windows (well, apart from the tiling options in more recent Windows versions when you can drag a window into the corner and it tiles to fill the screen.) I think the "best of both worlds" midpoint is a dynamic WM? I'm not sure. hyprland is an example of that.
Ubuntu Desktop PC operating system | Ubuntu
Fast, secure and stylishly simple, the Ubuntu operating system is used by 50 million people worldwide every day.Ubuntu
TL;DR: Try installing some on virtual box, by all means try Linux mint cinnamon but also try Ubuntu and Fedora KDE.
Linux has some jargon and since you want to learn I'll give you a quick rundown of how a variation of Linux is composed.
"Kernel" is what makes Linux Linux. It's a way of interacting with the hardware.
A "distribution" or "distro" is a one of the many flavors of Linux.
They are usually "based" on a common foundation like Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Nix and whatever. These also work like an onion where Mint is based on Ubuntu which in turn is based on Debian, all of which use some version of the Linux kernel.
A that's just a base will just get you a terminal (also called a shell or console) and is very useful to make a server for example.
What most people think of as an OS is the user interface (i.e. clickable shit). The terminology in Linux for that is "desktop environment" (DE).
You'll see a lot of distributions mix and watch between a base and a desktop environment such as Fedora with KDE, Ubuntu (Ubuntu with Gnome), Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE), Bazzite (Fedora silverblue base with either gnome, KDE or deck DE).
You mentioned Cinnamon. Cinnamon is a desktop environment for Mint so a Linux Mint Cinnamon contains the code of the following:
Linux kernel, Debian, Ubuntu and Mint as a base and Cinnamon to interact with it by using a mouse and keyboard.
There are currently three bases that are really popular right now, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch. In the DE there are currently two that are most advanced, namely KDE and Gnome but Cinnamon is not far behind.
In all honestly, none of this matters all too much, just install a couple of popular distros on a virtual machine like Virtual Bok and do a vibe check.
Take a couple of these, install some programs and fuck around with the settings for a bit, install themes and whatever or watch a quick YouTube video on it:
* Ubuntu (gets hate for being corporate but is solid, uses Gnome)
* Linux mint Cinnamon
* Fedora KDE
* EndavourOS (an arch based distro that's supposedly easy, haven't tried it)
* Bazzite (weird way to install programs through the package manager but hard to fuck up beyond repair)
* Something with the Xfce DE just to see the "lightweight" look.
If your library is on steam, then there's nothing to worry about! Works natively on Linux. If your library is on other platforms, I'd honestly think twice about switching full time. Dual booting might be a better option. My library is split amongst multiple platforms and I decided that it wasn't working well enough for me. Steam games will work great though!
Many distros are easy enough to install and navigate as a newbie. My go to for years now has been Linux Mint! It's based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.
oh that's cool. nope, whole library is on windows on one PC right now.
I was thinking about trying out dual booting to get a feel for it. my understanding was that many programs wont work with linux or require complicated fixes to get them running. so id hate to be left downstream without a paddle, so to speak
Depends which programs. Also, it's very possible that there are open source alternatives
But if you are dead set on using exactly the same program, appdb.winehq.org/ is a database of if and how to make them run on Linux. Wine's core focus is games, but many programs are covered there too
WineHQ - Wine Application Database
Open Source Software for running Windows applications on other operating systems.appdb.winehq.org
yeah adobe isn't something i use regularly. not sure whether you mean photoshop (never) or pdf viewer (which i use adobe for and also hate)
Um, on any given day I'm running Steam, VLC, and Firefox. yeah it seems that those are all better than fine
A lot of people here have already given good advice.
I shall add my experience, recommendation and some tips (may incidentally repeat some of them).
- If you play some games with kernel level anti-cheat (like Rainbow Six Siege, Apex, Valorant, LoL, Fortnite, Battlefield games, Destiny 2 among others), you will have to stick to dual-boot. Check on ProtonDB for compatibility of games.
I have 500+ games on Steam and pretty much everything I've played has worked so far.
In terms of other software you use, make sure you have alternatives that work on Linux.
- For Photoshop, there's Krita/GIMP.
- For Video editing, there's Kdenlive, DaVinci Resolve, etc.
- For browsing and office apps, there's LibreWolf and LibreOffice.
If you happen to have any software that you don't have a good alternative or that only runs on Windows, then you'll have to stick to dual booting.
- If you do end up dual booting, DO NOT use your external HDD in NTFS to run games on linux. It will work for a while, but you'll constantly have to 'chkdsk' or check disk on Windows every time your HDD is found corrupted.
Also, NTFS is Windows' proprietary filesystem. So, I've heard that using ntfs-fix (chkdsk equivalent on linux) might cause data loss. Not sure how far it's true, but be cautious of using that too.
But otherwise, I believe that just reading files from NTFS drive usually is not a problem.
- If you are NOT dual booting however, you won't have to face this mess. You can backup the data on your HDD somewhere, format it in 'ext4' filesystem for Linux-only use ('Exfat' if you want to share any data with others on Windows/Mac) and restore all your files back to this HDD in ext4. Hope you have extra HDD with enough free space to move your files while you convert disks to ext4. You can also probably use cloud services for backup.
- I've used Ubuntu, Mint, Arch and Fedora.
- Had faced a lot of issues with Ubuntu back in the day, and Snap Steam is a mess. So, avoid it.
- Mint is easy to use, removes snap from Ubuntu and just uses apt, has a great Desktop Environment called Cinnamon, and I'd usually recommend this to someone new, but I wanted to shift from X-11 to Wayland for security reasons and HDR support among others. If Wayland worked well with Mint, I'd still be using it today, but that was the only reason I moved away from it.
- While Arch is nice, it's certainly not for someone new.
- That leaves us with Fedora KDE, which would be my recommendation. It has good security features like SE-Linux out of the box.
The reason I suggest KDE over Gnome is so that you might have an easier transition from Windows to Linux. Once you have a hang of this, you can later use a pen drive to load other distro with other DE like Gnome, XFCE, Cinnamon, Cosmic, etc and test them out by live booting.
- Speaking of pendrives, make sure to always have one with Ventoy installed and the distribution you're using. This will be handy if you want to troubleshoot your system anytime.
And I say Ventoy over others because it makes loading distro easier. You can just drag and drop the ISO files instead of having to burn with Balena Etcher or Rufus everytime.
- Rufus is great, but if you're moving out of Windows, you don't need it.
- And I have seen a lot of people have trouble with using Balena Etcher. So, avoid it.
- Turn off Secure Boot in BIOS. (And maybe also fast boot).
- And if your disk is on RAID instead of AHCI, you might have trouble installing. So, you might want to set your SATA configuration to AHCI mode in BIOS if you face issues.
- If you end up choosing Fedora, you may want to follow this.
Fedora only comes with FOSS by default. So, you'll have to install Nvidia driver and proprietary multimedia Codecs separately by including RPMFusion repo.
- You can download the free and non-free repo files from the RPM-Fusion site(Graphical Setup) and install them through the Software Center. After adding the repo, you might have to enable them in the Settings of Discover Software Center.
Enable all of them except those containing the words 'testing', 'Test', 'Source', 'Debug' and 'google chrome'.
- After that, it's just a few lines you type in the terminal (Konsole by default) for installing driver and codecs. Make sure to update the system and restart first before doing these.
For Nvidia driver, type:
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia
For optional CUDA support, type:
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda
For Video acceleration support, type:
sudo dnf install nvidia-vaapi-driver libva-utils vdpauinfo
For Codecs, type:
sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing
Steam is also included in the non-free repo. You may install it by typing:
sudo dnf install steam
- Other than these, most applications can now be installed directly from the store as a Flatpak. You can select them in the store between Flatpaks, Fedora managed Flatpaks and Fedora Linux app for a particular one.
- For flatpak apps, you'll see a tick next to the developer if they are verified. So, you can look out for that if necessary.
- Make sure 'Flathub' repo is enabled in the Settings of Discover Software Center for the Flatpak apps to appear.
NOTE: Every time the video driver updates, you will have to do a follow-on update for flatpak runtimes. You might see a bunch of 'Application platform' and 'Freedesktop' stuff which you'll have to install.
If you fail to do this, you might suddenly find flatpak applications not working properly.
- Troubleshooting tips:
- If Steam doesn't launch the first time, type:
__GL_CONSTANT_FRAME_RATE_HINT=3 steam
- If your system is frozen, try switching to TTY by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F3) and going back to GUI by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F2)*.
*Could be F1 in some cases. - To check what errors you got during the recent boot,
journalctl -b 0 -p err
Apart from the driver installation and some troubleshooting, you generally won't have to use the terminal if you're averse to it.
- In terms of deGoogling, I'd recommend the following:
- Buy a pixel and install Graphene OS.
Switch to
- Tuta/Proton Mail for email,
- Proton/Tresorit Drive for storage,
- Mullvad (or i, proton) VPN or (Rethink DNS for firewall)
I am not sure if you can use both Rethink and VPN at the same time. I assume there is a way.
- OsmAnd for maps,
- Newpipe for youtube frontend(Grayjay on Linux),
- Bitwarden/KeepassXC for Password management,
- Aegis for TOTP
- Fdroid, Accrescent, Aurora for App store.
- Molly FOSS for Messaging.
Can't forget Zen Browser for best productivity browser. Also Ungoogled Chromium
OP if you want to use AI locally but privately then use Ollama with Open Web UI
Also HuggingChat is an AI Chatbot that can do all kinds of stuff with the 1-tap community extensions, models, and assistants avilable. Website is free with an account. Use as a web app for it to be even better experience
When you are more advanced learn distrobox to add apps only available on other distros natively to your laptop
If you have any questions feel free to ask me whenever
I'd suggest to stay away from Brave for any serious purposes 'cause you never know what shady things they might be doing.
Case in point, they had previously been changing regular URLs to include affiliate links on their own.
They also have that crypto bloat.
This is graat info. Didn't know about Ventoy before, it sounds really cool.
Just wanted to add that if you're running multiple monitors on an nvidia card, you may find that the second monitor has low fps/stutters on wayland (common on dual graphics laptops). The fix is as follows:
Add these 3 lines to /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf:
options nvidia-drm modeset=1
options nvidia NVreg_UsePageAttributeTable=1 NVreg_InitializeSystemMemoryAllocations=0 NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0Add this line to
/etc/environment:KWIN_DRM_DEVICES="/dev/dri/by-path/pci-0000\:01\:00.0-card:/dev/dri/by-path/pci-0000\:00\:02.0-card"You may have to modify the part that says
pci-xxxx\:xx\:xx.x-card with the appropriate values for your graphics card.Run lspci | egrep VGA to list installed PCI graphics cards and try to map the values from there
Disclaimer:
I don't know why this works but it does and it isn't malicious as far as I can tell. If anyone knows what exactly it's doing, I'd like to know please.
Thanks for that info.
I just want to add that the drm modeset is enabled by default ever since the 560 drivers. You only need to do that for the older ones, if I'm right.
Previously, you also had to disable nouveau yourself and Nvidia driver installation used to be a headache. Things have gotten better over the ages. I'm sure this multi-monitor issue will also be fixed soon as well.
Huh, this was definitely a fix I used on an older version that I just moved over to a new install with the new drivers so the drm modset line may not be necessary anymore yeah. I'll check next time I connect to my monitor.
And yeah, it's def gonna get better. I've already seen both wayland and nvidia improve significantly over the last 2-3 years so at this rate, things should "just work" pretty soon (insert meme about year of the Linux desktop).
I vividly remember struggling to get proprietary drivers working on Fedora 37 (or 38, it's been a minute) only to have them break on the next version on my previous laptop. It was definitely much MUCH easier to install on Fedora 42 on my current one and updates haven't broken anything for me since 40.
Well, it's just 4-5 lines that you're going to have to type and it's just a one-time thing. Surely, it's not that intimidating.
Bazzite seems to be based on Fedora Kinoite, an atomic desktop. Now, I haven't used atomic desktops. Although I wanted to, I ended up not doing that for the following reason.
From what I understand, you can't easily alter the base image of the system and everything else is a flatpak. This seems fine, but if you end up having to install an application for which there is no Flatpak, how would a non-tech savvy user do that? Still have to use the terminal at that point, I'd bet.
Case in point, even the other day, I came across this application called 'syncplay' for which there's no flatpak alternative and thankfully, Fedora repo had it.
I also hear that if you end up installing apps this way(Layering as it's called?), the update times become slower. You may shed some light on this.
Also, while it may not be as good as a snapshot system of the atomic desktops, the regular Fedora nonetheless shows the last two kernel installations on every boot so you could revert back to one if an update goes wrong.
I also have to mention that I always have my important files backed up on HDD or cloud that in the worst case scenario of losing my files on any update, (which hasn't happened so far btw), I can always restore them. In case of Steam games, it shouldn't be a problem if you have a fast internet connection. You should download them back in no-time.
That is another reason I can still live without having to use a stable atomic desktop.
New users find the terminal very intimidating, I've seen that come up time and again. It's kind of the whole point of Bazzite.
If you're already learning terminal to install software though, at that point you can use a distrobox, install whatever you want in it, and then export the application to your usual application menu. It'll launch the container in the background when you start the application, and shut it down automatically too. It's a little slower than a usual launch but it's still just a stripped down container so it's fine.
I tried two distros in the past week after your recommendation - Bazzite and Nobara.
Bazzite is just like you say and all's good most of the time and I'm getting used to an atomic distro too. The only problem I seem to be having is that my GPU Freezes very often even while just browsing and I have to force-restart to recover.
journalctl shows me this error.
[drm:nv_drm_gem_alloc_nvkms_memory_ioctl [nvidia_drm]] ERROR [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID ....] Failed to allocate NVKMS memory for GEM object
I don't know if this is because Bazzite uses a slightly older Nvidia (open) driver(570.64) and kernel(6.14.6) or because of something else.
However, I don't have this issue on Nobara and it uses the latest 6.15.4 and Nvidia (proprietary? akmod) driver (570.153).
Correlation is not probably causation, but this might be one thing to consider.
And I've had issues with nvidia-open drivers in the past, but surely a lot of them seem to have gone now.
Thanks. The downloader gives me an option to rebase, which I find easier to use. It shows me an option to download from ostree-unverified-registry, but I chose to do it from ostree-image-signed:docker instead. Don't know why the signed image is not shown on the downloader by default.
That said, after switching to nvidia from nvidia-open, the driver version still remains the same. Let's see if I get freezes again in the upcoming days.
Also, there are two applications that I use outside of flatpak - a firewall(Safing Portmaster) and another password manager, for which I have to install using the rpm installer.
The password manager has no problem installing using the rpm-ostree install <name.rpm> command. However, Portmaster installs, but won't work because of the following error which I found from journalctl.
<br />Jul 05 16:28:23 bazzite systemd[1]: Started portmaster.service - Portmaster by Safing.
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5786]: Error: failed to exec lock: open /opt/safing/portmaster/core-lock.pid: read-only file system
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5860]: Error: please set the data directory using --data=/path/to/data/dir
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.Someone has supposedly a work in-progress script to make this work, but I don't think I'm qualified to scrutinize if doing this brings down the security of the system in any way.
And I don't know if many other rpm installers have the same trouble installing in atomic distros because it's a read-only file system.
For now, I'll have to live without my favorite firewall.
Update:
Okay, I keep getting the same freeze again with the proprietary nvidia driver too. My suspicion is now heavily on Secureboot being enabled. Some Arch people kept warning me about this back in the day.
I'm going to use Bazzite without it and probably rebase again to open driver if there is no more freezes.
Update 2:
Unfortunately, even with secureboot disabled, I kept getting freezes. Got 3 freezes and I felt done with this. Replaced Bazzite with Nobara again.
Nvidia driver worked for a while. But, after I temporarily switched back to another atomic distro I'm dual booting on a completely separate drive(which requires secure boot for nvidia driver to work and it did work), Nobara stopped loading nvidia driver despite clearing all secure boot keys and installing the default one in UEFI/BIOS and turning off SecureBoot.
Apparently, the efi also has to be modified again. I didn't bother doing it and reinstalled Nobara again since that will reset the efi anyway.
Now, the driver is working again.
I swear to any seemingly non-existent higher power that I'll never use any distro that requires secure boot. Lol. I'm gonna reinstall Arch on my second drive now.
That said, I'd probably recommend Bazzite to anyone not having Nvidia GPU and it's a pretty impressive project. It even comes with Wallpaper Engine baked in.
My friend and I were having a hard time making it work on their system. We were trying some solutions we found on github and some C++ file didn't have a particular header or something. Took a while to get it work and it was kinda messy later on too with the plasma shell crashing cause of it.
Having additions like this would surely make life easier for regular users who would not want to deal with that mess.
People are afraid of the terminal because Windows has a shitty, unfriendly terminal. One of the things that brought me back to Linux was the cool-looking terminals. They make me feel like I'm Hackerman.
Linux isn't just a different operating system. It's a paradigm shift. Windows is always going to dominate as long as people are trapped in a Windows mindset.
I was you 18 months ago. It's certainly achievable, even with a crazy busy schedule. Highly recommended that you go for it.
Here are the unpopular opinions that attract downvotes:
* adopting Linux is painful. Stuff breaks. Stuff doesnt work. You will be battling uphill, but hopefully you'll find it worthwhile in the end.
* moving to Linux permanently wouldn't have been possible for me without AI. Now you can ask AI and it will almost always solve the problem for you. In the old days, you'd just have forum posts saying "just compile the driver and do a 10 step process with terminal that you need to figure out from the wiki....noob". But now, these previously system breaking problems are now easily solvable without spending the whole weekend on a single issue.
* don't let go of Windows to start with. Put Linux on a secondary machine. Do not dual boot, you will break your installation and won't be able to troubleshoot it and will have to do a full wipe (along with the time and data loss that comes with that).
* Don't get caught up in the distro wars. Pick Linux Mint, or a similar very beginner friendly distro. I prefer KDE desktop so I would recommend something else..... But don't go for anything with even moderate difficulty.
* Check protondB.com for the games you play. Some don't work on Linux (e.g. Apex Legends).
Yeah, this. In fact, going with hardware that's too-too new can lead to a different problem on Linux.
OP, if you're buying hardware, it's worth web searching to make sure people have tried it on Linux and are having good experiences with it. Since most manufacturers only care if their stuff works on Windows, it can take a little while for Linux devs to write drivers and get them shipped in Linux distros.
There might be a reason they are unpopular.
Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don't have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.
AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn't Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt. You shouldn't really need to do much if you can get through the install anyways.
I am really curious what "system breaking problems" you have? My latest laptop over the last 2+ years has been so uneventful and boring. Never used a command line on it, but don't forget when you see people share command line fixes, it is because it is the easiest way to directly share information. Not the only way to do something. My desktop has had a few hiccups over the last 5, but that is what I get for running Arch on it.
Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don't have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.
I've been trying to adapt to Linux Mint/Cinnamon as my daily driver and yes, stuff breaks. My sata and nvme connected drives kept disappearing every time I started my computer so I had to learn about mounting and auto mount (they are just there on Windows). My game and program installs on Bottles and Lutris kept going "missing" and losing their .exe's. I downloaded 70gb of Guild Wars 2 files at least 8 times because I thought each time I had fixed the "files missing" problem only to have them disappear on reboot. I still didn't figure out what was happening and am only able to play now because I found out how to use the provider portal on Steam. I can't make launcher short cuts from the actual executable, I have to go to the desktop and do it and when I do, it won't let me drag it to my panel for some reason. When I thought I had found a solution, I reactivated some launcher applets and ended up with three different instances of my panel launcher icons and still no ability to add new ones. My systems connected to the same ethernet used to show up in my network panel and I was able to access my shared folders and media files but they all stopped showing up a few days ago and I had to learn all about Samba share and minimum and maximum server protocols and still am trying to find a solution.
Yes, Windows breaks stuff too, but Linux is NOT a perfect product that works flawlessly for everyone and [@cRazi_man@europe.pub is right. All of their points are things I've been struggling with and would warn a Linux noob about. I personally would rather trust those random forum posts than LLM summaries (and have solved some issues that way) but otherwise I agree with each of their bullet points.
Yes mounting is different, but that is not a Linux issue. Same as when you boot into windows, but an EXT formatted drive will not appear AND it will never mount. Windows helpful choice is "unknown" and offer to format. These are just OS differences, not breakages.
Cinnamon might be part of your problem with shortcuts.....
Yeah SMB shares can be tricky. I have issues with them in Windows as well, not linux specifically.
I am not saying linux is perfect. All computers rely on a person being able to deal with them. I just find it much more stable then windows ever was. You add bottles and Lutris into the mix, and now it is a third party software issue: just like plenty of software in windows as well.
when introducing new people to Linux it’s best to acknowledge there may be some tinkering and adaptation needed to get things working as they should.
Depends on what "should" means. My printer for example will not work with windows. It works fine with linux. So.... that really is a printer driver issue. No matter which one it works with.
As for the OS out of the box, everything works on a fresh install of either - although linux is far more loaded with ready to go software, and windows requires you to add it. And any of the software you add to either can cause breakages, that is computing.
I noticed over the years that Linux works fairly well for people who did not start with windows first. Both have learning curves, but habits are habits.
I am going to take my linux laptop for an example: 2 years. No tinkering. There is nothing to do, it just works.
My other laptop (windows): damn thing need tinkering all the time: turn off this, regedit that, just to get the nagware and crap out. Won't allow remote desktop with the license, needs drivers to be updated, software that came with it is bloatware garbage.
I've been tinkering with my Linux machine for the past 8 months or so, and having random issues like the ones I listed and more besides that I've already solved. Meanwhile my old Windows 7 machine has been working flawlessly for about 8 years, no regedits or crap software issues. I think I had a driver issue with my mouse a couple years ago that I clicked a button and it fixed it. My laptop running Windows 7 also has been working flawlessly since about 2016 beyond prompting me to format media that I connect to it, but I press a button and that goes away. Recently I've been having compatibility issues with software because it's such an old OS but as you said, that's a 3rd party software issue, not a problem with Windows 7.
Glad your Linux experience is so smooth though. Must be nice!
This is a pointless conversation man. There are clearly plenty of Linux zealots on Lemmy. Noobs like me have had a hard time with Linux. I've never understood the argument that "my experience was different, so your experience is invalid". Once someone learns about something, they forget what it's like to have no knowledge of the thing.
The Linux community was reacting like this when Linus (from LTT) installed PopOS and tried to install Steam and it somehow wiped his desktop environment. Shit happens in Linux and the noob experience is brushed aside, while touting "the year of Linux". I really don't get it.
I agree with your overall point, as a long time Linux, Windows and Mac poweruser who has shepherded many into a new OS in the past. People who don't like to explore new/different technologies as a hobby get quite comfortable with whatever they're used to and the way that it works and then quickly lose empathy for those that are earlier in their journeys.
Just to clarify on the Linus Pop!_OS thing, he didn't read the prompt that said he was about to uninstall his desktop environment and then typed in "yes I understand this can break my system" or something like that, which had been added as a prompt to keep people from not reading the warning. Anyways people got mad that he did that because he literally ignored the warning and *the meaning of the words he had to type* that had been added to idiot proof the thing.
I'm glad it worked smoothly for you and it sometimes is a smooth effortless experience for some people; but if you want to "convert" people then you've got to be honest about the fact that people commonly face difficulties. I've commented about my Linux issues before and I can paste the comment again here to give an example:
One of the first issues I had problems with was figuring out what was wrong with Street Fighter 6 giving ultra low frame rates in multiplayer, but working fine in single player. It needed disabling of split lock protections in the CPU.
A recent update in OpenSUSE made the computer fail to boot half the time and made the image on the right half of the screen garbled. I rolled back to before the update and am using it without updating for a few weeks to see if the GPU driver problem gets ironed out (AMD GPU).
I installed VMware Horizon for my job's remote work login and it fucked up my Steam big picture mode and controller detection. I didn't bother trying to figure that out and just uninstalled VMware remote desktop.
I managed to install my printer driver, but manually finding the correct RPM file to install would not be tolerable for normies. Update: I'm using CachyOS now and the Brother website says Arch plainly isn't supported. When I install the driver from AUR that's specific to my printer, then it doesnt print and just spews out endless blank pages.
I still can't get my Dualshock 3 controller to pair via Bluetooth despite instructions on the OpenSUSE wiki. I've stopped trying to troubleshoot that and use my 8BitDo controller instead.
I still can't find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.
Figuring out how to edit fstab to automount my secondary drives is not a process normies would be able to execute. I still can't figure out how to use this to auto-mount my Synology NAS.
Plasma added monitor brightness controls to software and these seem to have disappeared for me now, and I can't figure out why. It reappears intermittently, but then disappears when it feels like.
My KDE Plasma task bar widgets for monitoring CPU/GPU temp worked till I reinstalled OpenSUSE, and I can't figure out why they've decided to not work on this fresh install. System monitor can see the temperature sensors just fine still. Update: this seems to have fixed itself (maybe through am update?).
Flatpak Steam app wouldn't pick up controllers for some reason. Minor issue, but unnecessary jankiness.
My laptop fingerprint reader plainly isn't supported.
Trying to set up dual boot kept destroying (I.e. making unbootable) either the Linux install or the Windows install. I have up eventually as I couldn't figure out how to fix GRUB from the command line.
I've been trying to find a solution for keeping a downloaded synchronised copy of my online storage (Mailbox.org). Can't figure out rsync. I get an error with Celeste and it doesn't sync after the initial file install. Having a 2 way sync for online storage could be considered a pretty basic requirement these days and something Mailbox can easily suggest an app for in Windows.
People do not tolerate this amount of jankiness. And this doesn't include the discomfort with relearning minor design differences between OS's when switching. Linux is a bit of a battle with relearning and troubleshooting things that would never be problematic on Windows. I know we all love Linux, but allow people to be honest rather than being dismissive. I had over 2 decades of experience with Windows and it had its quirks and problems, but my preexisting familiarity with it made it much easier to use and troubleshoot.
Sure I know I'm a noob and not doing this right. But that's the point.....can someone with limited knowleddge still work this OS?
Not so much help but hope: I got rid of Windows 11 and switched fully to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. I had no idea what I was doing but I tested things on USB and also on a very old laptop I had laying around before I made it my daily driver.
I'm not particularly a tech person. I own a small creative business and have a toddler, but I figured out what I needed to quickly. I don't game and didnt use Winsows exclusive software so have no opinions about that.
What I didn't expect: to actually be genuinely interested in my computer again for the first time since I was a teenager (which was not recent...). I love customizing my desktop. I love discovering new open source software. I'm learning more than I expected and it's just a totally different relationship with the tech I use every day, in a nice way. And no more BS ads / bloat when I'm just trying to exist on my computer.
I agree. Arch has been my current favorite distribution for several years now, but it's almost impossible to maintain without having to drop into the shell occasionally. I have EndeavourOS installed on my wife's laptop and she's been happily using it for nearly a year; bauh helps with software installs, but I still generally drop into a shell for the full -Syu upgrades, and you have to use the shell at least once just to install bauh as it's not a core package.
You might be able to avoid the shell to use bauh if you use the AppImage; I haven't tried that. bauh can apparently do system upgrades, but I haven't tried that yet and I need to see how it handles news; Arch is fairly cavalier about pushing out breaking changes that require extra user steps which need to be discovered by reading the news posts.
I agree that Arch isn't the best "first linux" distribution.
GitHub - vinifmor/bauh: Graphical user interface for managing your Linux applications. Supports AppImage, Debian and Arch packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and native Web applications
Graphical user interface for managing your Linux applications. Supports AppImage, Debian and Arch packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and native Web applications - vinifmor/bauhGitHub
There is hope lots of YouTube channels, articles by bloggers such as Its Foss, and guides to Linux all over
Especially for Linux Mint (Similar to Windows), Pop!_OS (Similar to MacOS), and Bazzite (Gaming-Productivity Distro, Similar to SteamOS)
The latter 2 work out of the box for gaming if that's your thing
You got this. Learn little by little each day and engage with community as much as you can. Maybe join some Voyager for Lemmy, Bluesky, Discord, etc communities
I'd say try Kubuntu. It's like Ubuntu but with KDE (Windows-like user interface) instead of GNOME (shitty Mac clone turned tablet like interface). It's well-supported and is easy to use. Also supports new technologies like HDR which Mint is lacking. Though you can install KDE on pretty much any distro (Mint included) but it's a good starting place.
Note to fellow Linux veterans: Yes, I know snaps suck but it is not something new users need concearn themselves with. Kubuntu is a great distro except for snaps which aren't going to affect OP's use-case (or most use-cases. Also sorry for shitting on GNOME so much. If you like it that's cool, I just don't think we should be recomending it to people coming from Windows.
Consider your library: most games will be able to run fine on Linux. However, if you predominantly play online multiplayer games which require anticheat you should check compatibility on ProtonDB.
Second, consider your hardware: if your GPU is AMD you're good to go. Nvidia might have issues (not sure if this has been resolved since I last had to look into it).
Finally, choose a distro: I'd recommend Ubuntu or anything Ubuntu-based. There's a lot of mixed answers in the Linux community and definitely a ton of hate for Ubuntu. However, as someone who has been running Linux for nearly a decade at this point, there are a few key points:
- Ubuntu is debian based, so it's extremely stable(but not as slow to update)
- Ubuntu is very beginner friendly, and you won't need to touch the terminal if you don't want to
- Everyone hates on snaps, but for you I don't think you'll run into an issue with it.
Personally, I steer towards debian based distros for my devices as well because I'd rather spend time messing with the software I'm running or other things NOT debugging why my config is suddenly shitting the bed
Distro: short for distribution. Linux is not an operating system. It's a piece of technology (specifically something called a kernel) you can use to create an OS. Those Linux based OSs are referred to as distros. We are usually not calling them "Versions" because the Linux Kernel is also frequently seeing updates and that would just cause confusion.
Debian and Ubuntu: Popular distros. Ubuntu tends to be a bit more user friendly than Debian and was the default recommendation for new user for a long time. In recent years its popularity among enthusiasts declined because of a series of unpopular decisions, mainly the adaptation of something called snaps which is not completely open source and takes a bit more time to launch apps than alternatives. Debian on the other hand really values stability. Updates arrive less frequently than on other distros but undergo really rigorose testing.
Lots of good advice here. I’ll add a bit about dual booting.
1) the problem with dual booting is when you use the same physical hard drive. Windows doesn’t play nice sometimes on the same drive. Just do yourself a favor and buy a second ssd. Then you can break linux six ways to Sunday and always have a windows backup. (And if you want to be extra safe - you can just unplug your windows drive during Linux install and you can’t f up and pick the wrong drive by accident)
2) dual booting is nice just in case something doesn’t work - you can easily switch back to windows.
3) dual booting sucks because there’s very few things that don’t work in Linux - it just requires a little elbow grease to figure out. But having a windows partition right there leads to many people giving up way too early with fixing their issues.
My recommendation is always to have more than one drive in your computer. It’s YOUR computer. Regardless of what you pick as your “main” OS, you always have another spot to screw around in. Distro hop, extra storage, set up a hiveos miner, whatever. Its flexibility and screwing around with other things helps you understand what’s YOUR computer vs what is Microsoft’s OS.
Hey, I'm glad that my Obviously Sprcial Idea of getting another ssd just for linux have legs. I decided this is my plan going forward to learn Linux as daily driver and gaming.
Now there's only the first step that I have to make.
Garuda is actually my daily driver these days, and I quite enjoy it. It does mostly just work, and I also like their desktop theming. The GUI installer is great for easy hardware detection and setup. But, that's coming from a more experienced old tinkerer who was initially looking for some lazy troubleshooting with NVIDIA graphics on a new gaming laptop, and liked the distro enough to end up switching over.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend any rolling release to someone completely new to Linux. The devs have done a pretty good job at making some things more user friendly, but we are talking about Arch with some extra tools bolted on. You'd better be prepared for things to break occasionally, and to need to do some tinkering around under the hood.
On the plus side, you ARE dealing with Arch with all the info resources/user community built up around that, plus the Garuda community tends to be pretty helpful from what I've seen. You are going to periodically need to figure out how to fix stuff, however--and better to be aware of that going in. Some people are going to be more fine with the idea than others, but it is liable to provide a steeper learning curve for someone just getting started with Linux.
I have 15 years of experience and do free infinite troubleshooting on matrix, feel free to add me. I recommend you go with aurora, because it is immutable, kde based, and well documented.
immutable means the base system is read only and updates are applied ontop of it, meaning you can easily roll back an update that went bad, and the apps are separate from the core operating system and thus can never break them (unless you try really hard).
kde is a desktop environment, it is most similar to windows and the rate of development dwarfs almost everything else, please whatever you do for your first system use kde.
aurora is a slightly modified fedora and fedora is one of the most commonly used options, the reason not to use base fedora is that aurora includes some QoL features, for example because of issues with patents twitch doesn't work on fedora but does on aurora.
Not who you asked, jumping in until they reply: Windows and most GNU/Linux distros are much further apart than most GNU/Linux distros are to each other. Unless you're doing a lot of manual meddling or using hacky tools, the biggest change between Mint (Ubuntu/Debian-based) and a Fedora-based distro, in my experience, was that apt is replaced by dnf, so if you install apps from the command line instead of a prettier software manager (I did lots of programming so this was normal for me) then the names of programs and libraries were a bit different. I'd also make a list of things you've installed (VPN software, chat apps, etc.) and look them up in the Fedora packages site or their own website and make sure they're all available. I would assume they would be, Fedora is popular enough.
The desktop environment (Cinnamon vs. KDE) will be an initial change, but they're both familiar enough with a program menu, task bar, like how Mint lets you carry over some of that same basic surface-level intuition that Windows taught.
That the worst linux distro would be vastly better than windows (not that mint is the worst, that'd be manjaro)
honestly it isn't much to learn but the returns are very diminished if you're already on a linux distro, I mostly make this recommendation if you're just starting out, if you're perfectly happy there isn't much need to switch, but more up to date software, kde over cinnamon, and immutability are huge advantages for many people.
like, just for an idea of why kde is better for beginners, the kde text editor alone gets more code changes than all of cinnamon combined per month, and by a lot. Kde is always rapidly improving.
basically on aurora you just use discover for all software and updates and don't even need the cli, it's pretty easy to learn honestly, and if something goes wrong that a simple google can't fix feel free to message me I do free infinite linux troubleshooting.
here's a copypasted post I made on mint and beginners "A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix."
This is the book that got me on the train. I have so many tech books but they all started with this. I'm a terminal afficianado now; this got me started. Anyway, good luck and I hope you have a good time.
Yes, ez one (if you have installed operating systems before and know how to paste an error passage into google )
-4hours and your done start to finish. (Given you have standard hardware and don't want to set up something crazy like dual boot with raid and nas)
Moderate complexity if you have never done anything like that, plan 2-6 evenings to get it fully working with everything you need
Also: consider your scopes. For most cases Linux will just work, you just have to get used to some different interfaces.
BUT: some things will not run under linux no matter how hard you try --> google if stuff you can't live without will work
(for me I still have a dual boot windows for playing league of legends and running my vive wireless adapter, as those will not run under Linux.
For games use protonDB
I may be oldschool, but for people not comfortable around terminals I would suggest Debian KDE as it never breaks and the transition from windows is easy. You can do everything from GUI (clicky button interfaces)
For the installation of steam you might need a terminal, but there are good guides online (and you really dont need to be a wizard for that) from where you can just copy paste (when searching just add your distro e.g. "install steam Debian", and once you've got that running you can just run every game from within steam.
Since Steam has done a lot of work with proton, most games just run under Linux. In steam: Install-->play
For nearly all games not directly running, you can just force them to run with proton. It will say:
"Game not compatible" in steam, you just click the gear icon on the right to open settings, go to "compatibilty" and tick "force use of compatibility layer" and select the newest proton from the drop down
The button where steam previously said "not compatible" magically turns into the blue "install" button we all know and love. And nearly all games run with only minor inconveniences (like showing keyboard hotkeys even when playing with a gamepad) or no issues at all.
You need to be aware that some games using kernel level anticheat (e.g. league of legends, valorant) can not and will never run on Linux, if the developers of the games don't add the possibility.
EDIT: for programs not related to gaming its often easier to use an alternative, if the program is not available for Linux. Most times its also more privacy foccused, open source and free
Adobe light room --> darktable
Microsoft office --> libre office
Adobe Premiere pro --> davinci resolve/shotcut
Paint/Photoshop --> gimp/davinci/dark table
Edge --> firfox
Notepad --> Kate
Fraps/relive/shadowPlay --> OBS
Etc. Pp.
GitHub - atar-axis/xpadneo: Advanced Linux Driver for Xbox One Wireless Controller (shipped with Xbox One S)
Advanced Linux Driver for Xbox One Wireless Controller (shipped with Xbox One S) - atar-axis/xpadneoGitHub
As others have mentioned, use Mint. Since you game, some games won’t run on Linux because of their anticheat, and to that I decided to use a dual boot system. I gave 500gb to windows, the rest to Linux. Anything that won’t run on Linux (some early access games, COD, Tarkov) goes on the windows partition. 500gb doesn’t seem like much when COD takes about 1/2 of that, but everything else I’ve played runs fine on Linux.
I also like the smaller partition because it makes me be choose what I leave installed, and if I’m not playing, I just uninstall whatever game needs to go
- As others have said, it's possible to play most steam games, but not all. You have to decide if you like those games more than you dislike MS and Goo. I find there's so many great games out there that I'll never get to all of them, so I'm ok with dropping some bangers that usually want too much access to my system.
- Here's a useful resource if you need to understand slightly technical linux foundations linuxjourney.com/ It might not be necessary but it does help to have a foundational understanding, and honestly, the command line is awesome, powerful, and one of my favorite things about linux. Beyond having a basic understanding (and maybe having one of the books the site recommends on hand), before going to an LLM as others have suggested, have official sources of various components bookmarked and go there first. There's so much BS out there now, I actually like the fact that I can read technical documentation, test it out, and know if it's true.
one other tip: I'd recommend some kind of personal knowledge management (PKM) system to take notes. Linux gives you a lot of freedom-- that's what's great about it-- it can be complex and have a learning curve at times. It's absolutely worth it though. It's a totally different paradigm than windows. After a while you can really start crafting the whole system to your needs as an individual. I'm 3 years in and was using my first setup that whole time, i didn't realize how customized I had made it until trying to set it up exactly on a new workstation. Now I'm writing a script so to automate my setup (os settings, program installs, configs) by running a single command. Then I can really start experimenting.
Everybody's different and with a little basic knowledge, everyone's setup can be tweaked to their individual needs a little better than other "user friendly/polished" operating systems. I hope you find as much joy and freedom in it as I do.
That's a big question, but I'll try my best to answer without getting too deep in the weeds.
I'll probably sound like a fanatic, but I use my PKMS for notes, logs, journaling, project and task management, snippets, and documentation. They all have their own structure and flow. It's a Gall's Law kind of situation where I started simple and it worked, so it was extended and slowly evolved to reach it's current complexity.
The beauty of PKMS over a notepad is the loose set of basic features (Wiki-links, tags, templates, etc) that be used in a personalized way to quickly capture, organize, and retrieve info that works best for you and no one else.
As a simple, but detailed example, in the context of learning linux, i might make a "linux" note and dump info there. I put everything in my own words unless I use md quotes (> quoted text) and I add useful links that I also bookmarked in my browser.
When the "linux" page gets bloated, I migrate clusters of info into new notes, wiki-linked in the "linux" note. For example a "distros," note which might have some high level comparisons. I favor making new notes over md headers so it's easier to find and open notes by name (a "quick switcher" hotkey as it's called in obsidian).
When I settle on a distro I might make a note for it to contain wiki-links of default components EG "apt (package manager)," "gnome (desktop environment)," "x (windowing system)" and dump relevant notes there.
If I try wayland, I'd make a "wayland" note but also a "windowing system" note that both wiki-links "x (window system)" and "wayland," and is wiki-linked in each of those notes.
It could get very meticulous, and some folks setup is too much for me, and I'm sure mine is too much for others, but start simple, experiment, find what works, and add to it. In the beginning I had dedicated time just to developing my PKMS. The important thing is quickly recording and retrieving info.
Sometime i do have crazy scrawlings where i just need a notepad to dump info during a deep dive. That would be loosely zettelkasten style with a time-stamped name, sometime with a few extra works for context/search. Sections could be extracted into their own note later. The note itself could be linked to more organized, related notes.
As a more complex, but shorter example, to show how similar tools can be used in a different manner: I'll make a note for a command line program, for example, cat. I have a CLI template with a Useful Flags (options) section. Kind of like a personalized tldr. I'll also have specific notes for complex snippets (AKA one-liners. Real note example: "list-and-sum-all-audio-file-durations") and if it uses cat, i'll tag it #cmd/cat. The CLI template also has a Snippets section that uses dataview to automatically list, in this case, all notes with the #cmd/cat tag. I also have a "command line programs" note that uses a dataview query to list all notes that used the CLI template. Also, a Snippets note using dataview to list all pages created with the snippets template.
There are tools specifically for snippets and personalized tldr, and I may migrate to those eventually-- especially after I have my install script up and running with linked configs-- but the simple tools in PKMSs are really adaptable and make it easy to customize and integrate. Plus it's all md files in a folder, so it's easy to sync and access on multiple machines, including mobile.
I hope that's not TMI. Starting linux can feel overwhelming and I don't want to add to that. Quiet the contrary. I started my PKMS right before my last, permanent switch linux and I think it helped it stick, and 3+ years later I still use [my PKMS] all the time. As I said before, the simple tools that turn a notepad into a PKMS can add a personalized structure to the insane scrawings, making it quick and easy to navigate, find, edit, and add info. You just have to start simple and take your time. I hope that helps. Good luck with the switch!
Just remember to turn steam play on for all titles in Steam -> Settings -> Compatibility.
As others have said, Mint is a great starting option. It looks familiar when coming from Windows, and almost everything works without having to touch a terminal.
AAA games with anti-cheat may not work, but just about everything else will. Check Proton DB for each game's compatibility.
You can add non-Steam games to Steam to take advantage of Proton. Lutris can also work for some Windows games.
If you want to try Linux distributions to see what they're like before committing, VirtualBox or other virtual machine programs can give you a risk-free preview.
Another option is a live preview. Install Linux Mint on a USB using Rufus or a similar program, then boot your computer from the USB. So long as you don't access your computer's hard drive (under devices on the left of the file manager) or run the installer, no changes should be made from your computer. You can simply reboot and remove the USB to go back to your usual OS.
If you are going to dual-boot, install Windows first. Windows has a habit of overriding or deleting Linux if it's installed second. If you just want to shrink your Windows partition to allow room for Linux, shrink it from Windows. Linux can move "unmovable" Windows files resulting in Windows not booting.
Always have a backup of everything you are not prepared to lose before you play with installing operating systems (and make sure it's disconnected from that computer). Data loss from software issues is rare, but mistakes are difficult (sometimes impossible) to reverse, particularly as a beginner.
Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way
Rufus: Create bootable USB drives the easy wayrufus.ie
You have received tons of useful responses, so I will not add more, except to tell you that the change is extremely worth it, easier than it seems and extremely entertaining.
I personally use Kubuntu (I love the KDE environment) and sometimes play Steam games by using Proton.
Good luck on your Linux journey!
thanks! right now the primary obstacle is arranging adequate backup before maling my first attempt.
I have a laptop with Win 11 for troubleshooting so I'm not worried about that. and I have most of my stuff on externals, so there's not much to backup. I just gotta figure out a good way to back up my C drive and a plan for reverting if necessary!
aklsdfjaksl;dfjkl;asdf
:::
Tor + Clearnet Privacy chat app
This app has a clearnet version and tor version as well!
- Clearnet: shadowtalk.yuzukateam.io.vn/
- Tor: 74xhglgkx3yq5o5ibiehpfwoq4jxb62323ydzam56fvqbkuo6kd7tcid (hash)
- And it open source!!!:github.com/plsgivemeachane/Sha…
I really like to get some feedback. Have fun everyone!
GitHub - plsgivemeachane/ShadowTalk
Contribute to plsgivemeachane/ShadowTalk development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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“Il periodo PIÙ DIFFICILE della mia VITA” (il conto della sfiga by ADC)
Ultimamente Alessandrone ha iniziato veramente a spingere… non che non lo facesse da anni e anni, però con questi ultimi video si sta superando pericolosamente tanto. E questo che è uscito stasera penso possa essere interessante per tutti… probabilmente anche perché l’argomento non è lo studio, ehh vabbé. Che poi… da quando ha un giardino […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
“Il periodo PIÙ DIFFICILE della mia VITA” (il conto della sfiga by ADC)
youtube.com/watch?v=5_QCU4ngCW…Ultimamente Alessandrone ha iniziato veramente a spingere… non che non lo facesse da anni e anni, però con questi ultimi video si sta superando pericolosamente tanto. E questo che è uscito stasera penso possa essere interessante per tutti… probabilmente anche perché l’argomento non è lo studio, ehh vabbé. Che poi… da quando ha un giardino di terra in cui mettersi a scavare per chissà quante ore, praticamente a vuoto, solo per poter fare le scenette cinematograficamente metaforiche che ha deciso di inserire nel video? (Spero vivamente che nessuna creatura orribile strisciante si sia fatta male durante le riprese di questa robaccia.) 🤯
Il video parla del concetto di sfiga, e di quella che tecnicamente è naturalmente intrinseca nella vita stessa di ogni persona sulla Terra, semplicemente per motivi statistici, perché al mondo ogni giorno avvengono infinite cose che semplicemente avvengono per conto loro… e alcune di queste sono soggettivamente buone, mentre altre no, fine. Ovviamente, in questo senso, la sfiga come forza superiore dispettosa non esiste davvero, quindi tecnicamente la concezione popolare che se ne ha è di per sé sbagliata… e conseguentemente dannosa, perché porta a pensare le situazioni del caso in modi sbagliati, che puntualmente possono portare a sviluppare un circolo vizioso di risposte e pensieri negativi, mandando sempre tutto più in vacca, scavando oltre quello che è già il fondo. 😶🌫️
Niente di nuovo sotto il sole, credo… cioè, non l’ho trovato rivoluzionario questo video, e i suoi concetti non mi sono nuovi… forse perché io penso troppo (come ADC, in effetti), mentre l’essere umano medio no? Però le sue metafore sono comunque interessanti e, in parte, le strategie per rimettersi in piedi (a parte il fatto stesso di realizzare queste verità). Certo, io in realtà l’unica di quelle che davvero uso, personalmente, come si vede spesso, è l’autoironia… perché per il resto lo so che le cose scomode che accadono bisogna semplicemente accettarle ed andare avanti, senza scoraggiarsi. Io in realtà in questo sono un caso particolare, perché (come ho accennato altre volte) sono una creatura solo a metà umana, proveniente dallo spazio, piazzata sulla Terra a forza per volere di un’organizzazione intergalattica senza scrupoli, che ha architettato un preciso piano per farmi vivere con tutte le difficoltà che ho… insomma, sono una ragazza magica, e questo comporta cose molto scomode, eppure non posso dare forfeit; voi vedete un po’ che giustificazione logica trovare alla natura della vostra esistenza. 👾
Ad ogni modo, vabbé, il messaggio di fondo è comunque sempre condivisibile. È bene evitare di scoraggiarsi, di arrendersi, di mettersi a rottare solo perché qualche volta o di continuo si è vittima della sfiga suprema (cioè, più propriamente, di eventi per l’appunto soggettivamente negativi, magari anche tutti in un tempo ravvicinato e che portano ad accrescere una grande amarezza di fondo)… voi magari perché si ha sempre comunque qualcosa di buono sotto sotto anche dentro la merda, e io invece perché devo farla pagare a quelli che mi hanno trasferita sulla Terra. “Cambiando il risultato, l’ordine degli addendi non cambia“, come si suol dire! (Che sia questo un messaggio utile a coloro che sotto sotto ne hanno bisogno…) 🥰
#ADC #AlessandroDeConcini #consigli #lifestyle #sfiga #sfortuna #vita
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
U.S. deports men from Asia and Latin America with criminal records to South Sudan after legal saga
The Trump administration said it deported a group of eight men convicted of serious crimes in the United States to the conflict-ridden African country of South Sudan, following a weeks-long legal saga that had kept the deportees in a military base in Djibouti for weeks.
Assistant Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the deportation flight carrying the deportees landed in South Sudan just before midnight EST on Friday. A photo provided by the department showed the deportees, with their hands and feet shackled, sitting inside an aircraft, guarded by U.S. service members.
A conceptual breakthrough has emerged for the Colorado River’s future. Here’s what it looks like.
Negotiators from the seven river basin states said in a series of meetings in recent weeks that they were discussing a plan rooted in a concept that breaks from decades of management practice. Rather than basing water releases on reservoir levels, it would base the amount released from the system’s two major reservoirs on the amount of water flowing in the river. The new concept would be more responsive as river flows become more variable.
A conceptual breakthrough has emerged for the Colorado River’s future. Here’s what it looks like.
After months of stalemate, glimmers of hope have emerged for consensus on a new plan to manage the shrinking Colorado River.Elise Schmelzer (The Denver Post)
Hegseth falsely cited weapon shortages in halting shipments to Ukraine, Democrats say
Reports indicate defense secretary unilaterally acted to halt shipment even as Pentagon suggested US arsenal is stocked
Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, unilaterally halted an agreed shipment of military aid to Ukraine due to baseless concerns that US stockpiles of weapons have run too low, it has been reported.
A batch of air defense missiles and other precision munitions were due to be sent to Ukraine to aid it in its ongoing war with Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. The aid was promised by the US during Joe Biden’s administration last year.
But the Pentagon halted the shipment, with NBC reporting that a decision to do so was made solely by Hegseth, Donald Trump’s top defense official and a former Fox News weekend host who has previously come under pressure for sharing plans of a military strike in two group chats on the messaging app Signal, one of which accidentally included a journalist.
EldenLord
in reply to FilthyShrooms • • •Clover lawns are so cool, nice to lie on and good for the bees. Still some dimwits decide to use herbicides on them.
Well, not on my lawn!