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It was possible to skip Vista and go straight from XP to 7. You could even use the same PC.
It was possible to skip 8 and go straight from 7 to 10. You could even use the same PC.
This time around, Microsoft is forcing Windows 11 as the only option, forcing people to throw away their machines, and it is backfiring on them. People are rejecting it and the competition (Linux) has never been as good as it is today.
The executive also noted that 500 million PCs don't meet Windows 11's system requirements
Apparently some are even opting to reinstall Windows 7 rather than the trash fire that is 11. It seems like 10 was never loved, merely tolerated, and as MS continues to enshittify 10 in an attempt to force people onto 11 some are just going back to the previous good version of Windows.
That's not how it works, especially since everyone doing this is behind a modern router.
Nothing will happen if you have a Windows 98 computer connected to the internet when the home internet router is on default settings. And modern internet browsers implement security in themselves on systems they still support.
Firefox still supports Windows 7 via the ESR channel, and every new install gets redirected to on automatically on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.
Worry the unsupported systems behind pure internet or providing public internet services, or the users installing the free PDF editor Google advertised as first in search. Those are many more than older Windows enthusiasts.
Retro networking is a different community, and all is still done behind a modern router. They are a subset of the retro computing community, but they don't run such systems as their daily driver.
Most of the legacy OS enthusiasts running on as their daily driver are not interested in matching their networking to be period correct, they just want it to work well and quickly like everybody else. For that you need basic modern equipment, that is often included into ISP plans.
They should just run Linux, but if they have to do Windows then 7 is just as good as 10 now, they're both equally unsupported. Blame Microsoft for fucking up 10 and 11 so bad nobody is willing to run them. If they had at least left 10 alone people would still be using that but they're too greedy for everyone's data and they couldn't leave well enough alone. It's also not like there aren't an absolute ton of Windows 10 and 11 installs that are part of bot nets. Running a new version of Windows makes it slightly harder to get rooted, but doing stupid stuff no matter what you're running is ultimately the problem, not the version of Windows. The age of worms self propagating through service 0-days is largely over, it's almost all phishing and trojans these days. It would be one thing if we were talking Windows 98 or XP, but 7 is fairly solid out of the box.
Sounds like the systems you are using should focus on that problem and not how to integrate ads and AI into everything. While trying to extract every molecule of value for shareholders.
Windows 10 was when the stupid accounts became a thing on Windows and candy crush being installed after a fresh install so makes sense people never really loved 10. And they managed to make 11 even worse than it was at launch with the copilot crap.
Anyone who asks me about this is getting the “At least try Linux for free first before buying a new computer.
Another example I have is that my mother-in-law is retired. You think she needs a new computer? Nope! She’s getting Linux before a new computer. The only other option for her would be an iPad since she’s just browsing the web anyway.
You could install windows 10 on something designed for windows XP, provided it has enough RAM
The reason w11 needs a new PC is pure marketing, it doesn't actually need some specific feature that is present on 8th gen Intel CPUs but not on 7th gen Intel CPUs
Very good point. Especially with how broken pricing has been on home computers for years, throwing away your machine for something impossibly expensive is a tough sell to say the least. Especially in this economy. It‘s more feasible to switch to Linux.
The executive also noted that 500 million PCs don't meet Windows 11's system requirements while the others don't need a hardware upgrade to run the OS. Although this would indicate that 500 million PCs would potentially be replaced with newer alternatives capable of running Windows 11 at some point, Clarke hinted at "roughly flat" sales for Dell PCs would moving forward . Clarke didn't explain the reasoning behind this statement , but it could mean that people are just not that interested in upgrading to Windows 11 PCs.
It's a simple reason. Everybody is abandoning dell in droves for lenovo in enterprise environments.
I used to buy dell exclusively for laptops across over a decade at multiple organizations where I determined hardware standards and purchasing. Everyone always wanted a x1 carbon or thinkpad but the prices were too high. This is no longer the case. Now everyone gets a thinkpad or x1 carbon where I work at least, and statistics for market share are heavily on the lenovo side now.
That's how I see it anyway. This has nothing to do with windows 11, it's just another service pack when you're managing everything via GPO/intune/sccm/whatever.
Have you seen any traction with Framework in the corporate space? They are mostly marketed at individuals, but since you specifically mention people wanting higher quality machines, Framework fits the bill.
No way. People like me purchase a steady supply of standardized machines at a fair cost. Bigger companies than I've worked for want a lease agreement. We pay $X for Y units, you come in and swap them in 3, 4, or 5 years, rinse and repeat. We also need robust tech support, both from the manufacturer and wide user base. No way I'd suggest management purchase Frameworks.
Framework is awesome for individuals as you can upgrade! No one in their right mind wants to hassle with upgrading a fleet of hundreds, thousands, or 10's of thousands of machine. You talking about pets when business requires cattle.
Great question! And BTW, thousands upon thousands of those "old" cattle are available on eBay from sellers who make a living moving off-lease machines. I'd never buy new. LOL, I bought servers that way from savemyserver! Boss came by while I was setting up a new server. "Is that new?!" "Nope."
Cattle vs Pets is often referred to as the difference between building infrastructure on permanent servers vs building on virtualized infrastructure that can scale up and down and be easily replaced. We explore this in the context of DevOps
I know this probably won't be received well, but I look at framework and I see the least usable option. On some level I understand the idea and think it is somewhat desirable. However, I just think the modular nature comes with substantial drawbacks compared to modern competitors.
For home use i'm mostly a gamer. They don't really have powerful gaming options and I can just build my own desktop in the case I want with whatever hardware I want.
For not-gaming home use, I want something lightweight that just works. I just get something from work usually. It's common to have a glut of laptops when you acquire someone or to just order something as a tester or to demonstrate an option- which happens to be the one system I really want to use.
Framework is expensive for what they provide. The upgrades are rarely worth the price to me. If I really had to buy something, I could buy something I really want with the specs and features I really want instead of having a ton of hot swappable ports that I never touch because I just want usb-c anyway. When it's time for me to upgrade I end up giving my old to one of my friends or family members, because there's always a need there- two such machines i'm handing out over thanksgiving.
I've never, ever met someone outside of a tech role that even knows they exist.
If someone isn't happy with a lenovo, it's because they want that coveted apple logo on the lid.
The primary concerns in the enterprise environment are around standardization. I only want a couple of models to manage per year so that the support guys don't have to worry too much about some willy wonka bullshit that doesn't work because that one system is an oddball. The nice thing too about lenovo (or dell) has traditionally been support services. If you know the words to say you can get them to ship out anything with a tech to replace anything after a single call and not running all the silly diagnostics. I know dell has been on the decline for support services and I honestly don't handle any of the warranty repairs myself, but my impression is that it still works.
Framework Corp is massively frustrating because their secret sauce tech makes absolutely no sense for individuals (seriously, run the actual numbers. It is almost always cheaper to just buy two laptops AND you have less ewaste because there is no box of spare parts) but is PERFECT for enterprise/fleet deployments.
But Framework Corp has no interest in fulfilling that role. To my knowledge, there are no bulk ordering programs and their software/OEM support is fairly mediocre.
As far as enterprise laptops go? There is a full industry around macs for obvious reasons. On the PC side? The only vendors I really "trust" are Dell and Lenovo with MAYBE HP if the middleman org is confident. And... I LOVE a Thinkpad for my personal use (the nub is love. the nub is life) but there are very serious supply chain concerns for professional purposes.
But if Framework could cut the bullshit and either branch out or work with a middleman? Rapid repairs for keyboards and drives as well as tricking people into using USB C dongles would go a long way for many (most?) midsize companies.
In some weird way it does feel like things flipped overnight. Maybe it was the pandemic? Definitely went from ~2019 all dell to ~2023 ultramajority lenovo. None of this is scientific though lol
Now everybody is fleeing vmware to nutanix and hyper v. We live in strange times.
Has Lenovo stepped their game up recently? Work used to be all Lenovo, and a few years back they switched over to Dell because the Lenovos just weren't reliable. Which is a shame because I still think the Lenovos are better designed with better keyboards, screens, port layout, etc. but it's all moot if the thing craps out after a couple of years.
A LOT of people complained when Thinkpad transferred from IBM to Lenovo. Like almost all things, it was progress conflated with racism.
The big "meaningful" complaint is that Lenovo used more plastics than aluminum. On the one hand, I get it: my T41 was a god damned beast that felt like it could stop a bullet (an important consideration in the US). It also apparently weighted 2.22 kg and I 100% noticed that on trips and even walking around town/campus.
And Lenovo bought the brand around the time that a LOT of people were noticing the weight of their laptops and there was a huge push for "ultrabook" form factors and the realization that it makes more sense to protect your device with a sleeve and a padded compartment rather than "military grade" construction. And... Asian factories were (and still are) much more agile and able to pivot. Whereas US factories still tend to take years (or decades...) to catch up to the rest of the world.
So we got the same xenophobic nonsense we've had in every other industry. These thin and light laptops with plastic shells ARE CHEAP PIECES OF SHIT THAT NOBODY CAN EVER REPAIR AND ARE ALL A SCAM SO BUY AMERICAN!!!! Even though the shell has almost nothing to do with it and those still had screw based constructions. The real problem was the rapid shift towards soldering/gluing hardware in place. Some of that was to support ultrabook designs and some are just pure bullshit to prevent upgrades.
These days? Aluminum is king again because it "feels premium" but those shells are so ridiculously thin that they are arguably worse than polymer (still feels great though). I blame Apple.
But build quality wise? Lenovo straight up bought IBM's laptop (and consumer PC?) divisions. It was the exact same factories and designers and capabilities.
All that said: Lenovo is also a REALLY Chinese company. For a personal device? I have zero qualms and literally bought a new laptop for the first time in like 9 years and it is a Thinkpad. From a professional standpoint? A competent IT department can vet devices. I... think I worked with a competent IT department once in my life. But, more importantly, if we are trying to do business with a government org or a high value company/target? They are fundamentally concerned about Supply Chain Hardening (and for good reason) and that just reeks of "We, personally, don't care about that". Which generally won't outright kill a deal but it does put you on a back footing.
It was extremely easy when I did it. Had everything running in 20 min. The real drag was me wanting to use a more efficient file system, so I spent a day converting my drives to ext4.
The main problem for most people when installing Linux is partitioning. Normies usually only use Windows that has been pre-installed, and never install Windows from scratch.
I think you should try Linux on a VM first to get used to it.
The automatic options on Mint (and probably Ubuntu) make everything extremely easy. Do you want to keep Windows, or get rid of it? How much space do you want to give to Mint and Windows? Okay, done.
It's pretty straight forward if you don't do anything else, get a fresh new drive just for it. I've been using Mint for a few weeks now and honestly other than some glitch i keep experience here and there(steam store page is noticeably slower and laggier for some reason, and sound glitch that require restart to get rid of) and some initial setup fiddling to suit me, i really doesn't notice any different than what i've been doing in win10.
Hey I just did it! I completed my migration today. The only reason I keep a desktop around at all is for gaming and I've been locked into Windows for years because of it, but no more. Steam is a given, but I'm running games off Epic and Gog through Heroic and standalone games using Lutris (ESO and Elite Dangerous so far). Not a single problem with any of them.
Mint is great, the only complaints I have are minor and I can easily deal with them. Like when you launch things, you don't always get a cursor animation to tell you you successfully set something in motion and you just have to wait for the window to pop up. That kind of thing.
I would imagine a big reason being that windows 11 doesnt work on a ton of older systems which meant nobody upgraded to it and instead lived out the life of the hardware until they actually needed to buy something new. The crazy part to me is older systems wasnt even that long ago. I remember when 11 came out and saw a bunch of systems only 2 years old that weren't compatible. I said screw it and just forced it on them and honestly I have had no issues on about 3 different systems so whatever I guess.
pretty much how I saw it. 10 was a push towards accepting all hardware configurations. 11 put restrictions in the name of security. so even if a user WANTED to upgrade, there's technically a barrier that Microsoft would block them (albeit that check can be bypassed).
I recently bought a tpm 2.0 chip for a 7th Gen intel and found out that win 11 will install on 7th Gen without any hacks when done fresh from a usb install, and it only checks for tye existence of tpm 2.0. The cpu Gen block is 100% a choice MS made it seems, likely because not all 7th Gen capable motherboards had tpm or expansion slots so they just went "screw them, all 7th Gen and lower is blocked".
I've used the regkey hack years ago, but recent ones seemed more difficult to bypass. I ended up using a USB stick as well and formatted it with Rufus which has all the options built in to bypass it all. It worked 100% of the time the 3 times I used it. Before doing that 2 systems just wouldnt complete and always ended up giving an error at some point. One of my older systems at work is a Dell Precision which came with a Xeon processor which is normally a server CPU and windows 11 doesnt support server at all so those CPUs aren't compatible. Been running 11 on it 2 years now and is completely stable. The tower is almost 10 years old now, but I dont want to give it up because I know ill never get anything nearly as powerful as a replacement today haha.
It runs software that's significantly cheaper--like tens of thousands of dollars a year--for a desktop licence, but it needs a whole bunch of hardware resources. I assure you, it's justified.
I want to qualify this comment with the fact that I am not a super gamer. Most my games are older. The newest and most demanding game I play is Cyberpunk 2077. Most my other games are multiple years older and less demanding.
I finally switched full time to a Linux desktop OS. I have used Linux more or less daily for decades, the first distro I ever installed was Slackware what feels forever ago. But until Valve put the work into running games on linux for their Steam deck I felt I was trapped needing to have Windows to play games. I have even spent the last decade forcing myself to rely more and more on cross platform available FOSS dreaming of some day making a permanent switch. Honestly it was so easy for me to switch at this point, most games pretty much just ran. My biggest problem took a bit to grok and it was just because some games do not like running in proton from an NTFS partition. I have NVME and SATA SSDs separate from my boot drive that I used to install games on and it was trivial to reformat the NVME drive to a more Linux friendly filesystem and I have not had an issue since. Eventually I'll do the SATA drive but I'm lazy and those games are working fine so far. You will absolutely have problems with some games, especially some that have overbearing anti-cheat systems, but man this has been so easy I couldn't really have imagined. The only non-gaming problem was a document scanner we own that is not supported by SANE. I could not find a solution to run it on Linux so I just spun up a Tiny 11 copy of Windows in a VM and passed it through. We only use it a couple times a year so this is an acceptable compromise to me. The VM doesn't have Internet access, it just sees a local drive as a network share. All it can do is scan something and save it to the shared drive so I can access it in Linux.
I chose Linux Mint because I am well versed with Debian and Ubuntu. But I suggest anyone new to Linux give Bazzite a shot. It's designed to be a lot harder for you to break. It's also more optimized for gaming if that's your focus. For me gaming is a requirement but I've never felt the need for top tier performance.
The path from 3.1 to 11 has been such a sour one and the last thing I am willing to put up with is being the product in the eyes of my desktop OS. My computer is mine and it will do what I want it to do or it will do nothing at all.
Now that you're on Linux pop Docker on there and install Ollama/WebUI on there so you can run your own grok at home and not have to support yet another horrible company
What do you mean? Now I get the feature of not being to click on the clock on my second monitor to open the calendar! I had been waiting for that feature for ages.
You know it's bad when even I switch to linux. I don't understand linux. I literally back up my entire hard drive everytime I attempt to do ANYTHING. Because I WILL screw up my whole system to the point it won't boot. I've done it many times over the coarse of the past year.
Then I gotta spend a whole day waiting for things to restore from backup. And then whatever I WAD trying to do, still isn't done.
That has been my experience using linux this past year.
It's definitively something along the lines of "knows just enough to be dangerous"
Like, sure, I've also broken my Linux system, but I'm deliberately running distros like arch and doing things that the average user would never do, like, say, messing with the bootloader.
If you just install something like bazzite or mint, and use it like a normal user would, the risk for something breaking should be really low
Yep. I’m fortunate enough to be on the other side of the curve, but “it just breaks” when you first start tinkering. The average computer user who will never open the terminal will never run into this problem
Since switching to Linux I have nuked my system maybe 5 or 6 times?
When I initially installed it I set the EFI partition to ext4, that caused some trouble when I updated my kernel lol. Grub just stopped working a few times and then just recently I accidentally wrote a floppy disc image to the wrong drive and wiped out my /home partition. Luckily testdisk is a thing.
For everything else I can just rely on my BTRFS snapshots. My drive setup is more than janky, but it works. Every time something went really wrong I was able to fix it myself.
That's how you level up in Linux. You break things, learn what you did wrong and do better next time. Linux won't hold your hand, you can and will shoot yourself in the foot.
You are doing it right by having backups and playing it safe. You'll be ok.
I've wanted to switch to Linux since Windows 10 and its inescapable trash "features"(looking at you, OneDrive).
I did upgrade to 11 and while I haven't experienced any catastrophic failures with it (yet) it's becoming increasingly aggravating with all the added bullshit they're implementing and the amount of ads they're trying to sneak in.
I've been bugging my husband for months to help me because he is near fluent in Linux and I'm a noob. He's now building me a new PC that will have Linux installed and I can't fucking wait to finally ditch Windows.
My 78 year old mother bought a new laptop, windows 11.
Immediately I had to remote in because of some S mode BS which just put you in the MS only application environment.
3 months later and somehow she fubarred her login and can't use her new laptop. There's probably an easy fix, but since she hates windows 11 and wants to go back to 10, I suggested Linux.
So it will be a Merry Christmas for my mom when I visit and install IDK? Some version that's super simple. Anything is better than what she currently has
I think KDE Neon would be nice for a new user. I like Pop OS and it's really cute and sleek but the shortcuts are needlessly different from windows a bunch of times, if she's somehow used to alt+tab to change windows and not just window groups she's gonna have a hard time learning another way to do it.
I use windows 10 at home while I use windows 11 at work. The only thing I like about windows 11 is tabs in the file explorer. Besides that I've had to deal with Windows Explorer crashing on a daily basis, task bar freezing completely multiple times a week, certain software straight up not working that I need to get work done, programs crashing that work perfectly fine on 10, internet connectivity issues (usually DNS for some fucking reason), periodically hearing the disconnect sound for a device even when everything is still working, awful drop down menus, needing to change the registry just to get basic features that 10 has, and the list goes on and on. At home everything just works. I've been testing Linux and have been getting better stability than Windows 11 and I feel like every week there's a new problem.
I have to use Windows 11 for work. Maybe this is because of CrowdStrike or something, I don't know, but I often encounter a problem where the main section of explorer, where you can actually click files and stuff, just breaks. That entire region becomes unclickable and unusable, even though the rest of the Explorer window (like the icons on the top part) all still work. So I just have to close the window and then reopen Explorer, re-navigate back to where I was, and proceed from where I left off.
Never, in the decades I've been using computers, have I ever encountered something as stupid as this with this amount of regularity. Windows 11 is a uniquely bad OS compared to every competitor option, including prior versions of Windows.
I run into that same issue from time to time. Another one I run into is when I click on items on the task bar it doesn't bring it up as the active window even when everything else is working. I have to ALT+tab to bring up any Window or minimize every window just to find the one I want and it is absolutely infuriating.
I haven't used windows for over 9 years now, and it still blows my mind that I read about these constant bugs just like when I used it, only back then there was a bug every now and then and they usually got taken care of within a week, but now it's like 1 bug gets squashed, but only after 5 more are already in place. Not trying to shit in anyone here, because if you need Windows, you need it, end of story. But I can't recommend that everyone tried Linux for at least a month enough. Give it a shot, install it in dual boot, spend some time in it, if it doesn't work for you, that's that, but at least you tried it.
For almost 20 years, I've never lost hours of work due to the OS. The Crowdstrike incident was one of three times I was interrupted by the OS in the last 2,3 years. All of the interruptions are from Windows 11, not 10. This week for, for some reason, Windows is slower to respond than usual, when going to different tasks. I'm one formatting away from getting rid of the Windows 11 in my laptop. I was thinking of dual booting Mint there but it's looking more and more I don't need Windows. Bazzite has been fantastic.
On the positive side though, following all that backlash, Microsoft acknowledged Windows has issues, and as if on cue, the company in a new support article has admitted that there are problems on almost every major Windows 11 core feature. The issues are related to XAML and this impacts all the Shell components like the Start Menu, Taskbar, Explorer, and Windows Settings.
Explorer.exe crash
shelhost.exe crash
StartMenuExperienceHost issues
System Settings silently fails to launch
Application crashes when initializing the XAML views
Besides myself being on Linux, I used to mix Linux and Windows since like 2010 but fully transitioned like 3 years ago, I'm still regularly using a laptop from 2016 as a zoom calls and internet browsing laptop. It gets too hot to have in my lap and the battery lasts like 30 minutes. That's a dual core integrated graphics chip from 2016. Anyone with a discrete graphics card easily has a solid workstation PC. If you're not gaming or your not doing something that really benefits from strong hardware, you're good. No need to upgrade. If you're not playing new AAA games at 4k maxed, you may be good. This is just same news as how people are holding onto their cell phones longer than before
Obviously. There is no particular reason to switch from old 7th or older gen intel CPUs since with 16GB (or even with 8) of RAM one can browse internet and use OFFICE 365 with no issues. And what most of people do with their computers at work?
Unless PC is used to render 3D/Video/DAW Audio/heavy VMs - there is no fucking need to buy new PC just to upgrade to win11. MS shot themselves in a foot with this one.
Because 8 was garbage and people got rid of it as soon as possible. 10 was actually good, and 11 was barely a change functionally until they started messing with the ads push, and now they're shoving LLM bullshit in to justify their exorbitant expenditures on the half functional tech.
. I wouldn’t move to 11 if support continued for 10.
Which is exactly the reason they're ending support.
If you don't have a reason to stay, Linux is definitely worth a shot. I moved from 10 to Bazzite in my rig earlier in the year, and it's been pretty solid.
I have bazzite Linux as dual boot. Few usecases stop me from moving fully over. Nvidia drivers and VR support. And Remote Desktop doesn’t work the way I want it to.
Also for some reason my ryzen system stopped seeing my linux sata drive in bios so can’t boot anymore.
Interesting. I ditched team green years ago and have been running rock solid since. My Nvidia GPU was always the reason I went back to windows. Sorry to hear your ryzen rig stopped, have you looked for a bios update? Might be something simple like that (assuming your disk didn't shit the bed).
Can't say I've had any rdp issues on Bazzite, what's it doing?
I can see the disk in windows. It just doesn’t show up in the bios. I’ve been recommended to do a fully CMOS reset by pulling out battery but don’t really have time. It disappeared after a BIOS update 😀
As for RDP. I regularly RDP to my windows machine and it auto changes resolution. And then I can log in on the PC itself and it returns to the monitor resolution. So I keep the same session but view it from multiple places.
I can’t get the same on Linux. Either I get my current session which doesn’t resize (stuck at connected monitor resolution). Or it creates a new resizable session which I don’t want because I want to continue what I was doing.
That is definitely odd behavior. Multiple sessions is a server side setting, so your Linux system shouldn't be able to do that without windows being ok with it. As for the resolution issue, it might be a config issue in your client. Give another client a shot, or see if there's a way to configure the client to use smart sizing. I can't recall which app I use on my system, but I can't say I've ever had an issue with scaling between connected and remote connected sessions.
Have you checked your BIOS if CSM is enabled (gets disabled when enabling secure boot iirc)? If your Linux drive has an old partitioning scheme it needs that to show up during boot I think.
You probably know this, but for others who might not: MS is now allowing some/many/all (???) people to extend the security updates for Win10 for another year free of charge. You have to go into the Windows update area and click a button to accept. At least in the USA, this seems to be a somewhat newly available option, as it was there the last time someone asked me to look at their laptop to see if I could upgrade it to Win11.
I had already upgraded when I saw this. But it’s only another year, if it was 2-3 years I’d actually take the hit and roll back. I’d actually pay for it! Although next year I might move totally over to Linux. Will see.
I wonder if a lot of it is because Microsoft will say your computer isn't compatible to upgrade but meanwhile it actually CAN be upgraded and users are just taking what Microsoft tells them as truth and not investigating further.
I myself have upgraded a couple of family members machines to Win 11 even though "technically" Microsoft claims they can't be. just went ahead with it anyways. I could have just thrown Linux on them like Mint or something but some people are just comfortable within windows.
It's almost like "you have to buy a new laptop to install it and help train our AI on your private documents" is somehow not convincing enough. Maybe if they also removed local accounts and forced you to have an online MS account? Nah scratch that, it would be stupid
10 had at least SOME good in it, at first i didnt want to move on from 7 but when i finally did it was okay. Everything i have heard about 11 is awful, and i wasnt very pleased with it myself either when i tried it at work, though i was able to mostly ignore it since it was just my work pc.
And now after switching to mint, idea of using 11 is preposterous.
Same here. There is a learning curve because, while it does all the same things, sometimes it happens in a slightly different way and the UX is different.
Sure its fine at home. But try getting an entire office to learn new spreadsheet software. They can barely handle when a new version of Excel is released.
i just dont understand hiring requirements. They make posts that require you to be able to do anything and everything, expect everyone still to apply and hire people that barely are able to do the job and can't handle learning anything new, likely not even due to some inherent weakness in the head but just attitude. And I bet every one of them praises their skills on learning new stuff on the interview. And then they show the door to anyone who dares not to be really good at lying through their teeth at the interview.
I know what you're talking about. As someone who had to hire a lot of people it was infuriating that we only got the candidates HR approved.
I so wish that we could hire 5 people for 2 weeks and then retain 1 or 2 of them. You don't learn anything about candidates until you give them your first assignment. I would have jumped at that as an applicant, but maybe just because I was unemployed for a while during the 08 super recession.
I learned to tolerate 10 for my limited uses. Like you, my Windows PC jumped from 7 to 10. When 11 rolled around, the centered start menu was the first thing I noticed and it was an instant wtf moment.
Had to "upgrade" my work laptop to 11 for security support. Nothing about it is better. Almost everything is slower, and many common operations take more steps to complete on 11 vs 10.
To be clear, I’m not ‘not adopting’ - I’m actively boycotting that shit. The whole TOM thing was annoying enough, but everything else surrounding it has proven to me that Microsoft cannot be trusted with that level of access to MY hardware.
So yeah, I’m going to put Linux on my PC and ultimately back to Mac full time, I imagine.
I really need to upgrade my setup, but I don't really feel like selling one of my kidneys so I can afford 8 gigabytes of RAM (it's not a good kidney so I'm being realistic).
Anyway my current system has windows 11 on it anyway so I might as well just keep using that but as soon as I have the option to leave I'm going to.
I need to keep windows 11 around for work but as soon as I can build a system that can hold to two whole operating systems at a time I'm going to go over to dual booting. Unless the steam machine turns out to be cheaper than anyone's realistically expecting, in which case I might just go that route. The current RAM prices mean that's probably unlikely.
Linux for desktop. MacBook Air for my laptop, only because of Microsoft Office. Bought a cheap Office for Mac 2021 licence. Mac is also much better than Windows 11 too: responsive, Fast wake/sleep, no 20 minute reboots with mystery updates, no registry, no Powershell. If you can avoid Office documents and run an AMD GPU, anyone should be golden on Linux. NVidia is fine if you are comfortable with command line. Not really sure what Windows has going for it except inertia, but if your coasting, you are going downhill...
It's a burning platform, and the future isn't bright. IT and security would love to get rid of Windows desktops, they are nightmare to manage and secure. Problem is legacy.
But who still uses native Windows Apps other than Office? Legacy apps are out there, but also being migrated to low code browser apps. Even Office is an web app and Microsoft has been converting their 'native' apps into browser containers. Point is that Almost everything runs on a web browser and that is what kids have been using in schools for nearly 10 years. To date, ChromeOS is widely used in some roles (contact center, some back office). Developers, graphics, video, marketing, executives, along with most sales often use Mac, and nearly every enterprise uses both Android and IPhone /iPad OS.
Blows my mind seeing people look on windows 10 as some kind of last bastion, apparently not realizing that was Windows 7 at best.
10 is the one where they fucked up the UX beyond repair, made everything slow and added insane amounts of spying. If you willingly switched to 10 then don't pretend like 11 is a bridge too far now.
\^ This, I had to be dragged kicking and screaming from 7 to 10, and now looking forward to another 3 years of Win10 security updates, while fervently praying that Adobe and my online games add Linux support during that time >_>
If the applications I want to use don't support Linux then apparently that's their problem. I wish I didn't have to live in the real world, but unfortunately I can't pay my mortgage in moral righteousness. If I can't use the programs I need to use my job, because I've decided to switch to an operating system that they don't support, I'm the one that's going to suffer.
So no you can't just ditch applications that don't have Linux support.
In the real world you have to dual boot and that's a pain in the arse because it means Microsoft are still going to be getting some money from me.
Yeah, some people get really defensive when you suggest they can get all the things they are asking for, and all they have to do is stop giving money to user-hostile developers. And saying kernel-level anti-cheat is hostile to the user is a massive understatement. Why would you defend Saudi Arabia having kernel-level access to your computer just to play a game? (It's crazy that that statement isn't even a joke in the context of EA.)
I understand if someone decides not to take the suggestion, but it is still a reasonable suggestion to make.
I still can't grasp that Microsoft, a $3.6 trillion company, developed a new settings interface but failed to migrate all settings to it, forcing users to use both. Even I know that's day one UX shite and I'm quite stupid.
What's hilarious is that this started with Win10 so its been an issue for over a decade now and two major revisions at least (possibly started on Win8).
It took me ages today to work out how to map a drive letter because they've changed where the menu button is. You used to be able to do it from the taskbar at the top, but now it's hidden in a right click menu in a different part of the file browser to where it used to be. I don't understand the point of changes like that, by all means add more options but keep the old ones around for consistency.
Managing printers in 11 is the worst. The sad part is that the old-style devices and printers menu is still in the OS, you just have to dig for it a bit, and it works 1000x better.
the old-style devices and printers menu is still in the OS, you just have to dig for it a bit, and it works 1000x better.
For the last 13 years this has been the most infuriating part of the incomplete control panel migration. I find myself struggling to use the new settings, and having to then resort to digging for the old ones that actually have the option I need.
Win 11 finally pushed me over the edge with ads and spying. But I still have to deal with Windows at work.
I was on Windows 7 until April of 2021, when I was taking a certification exam remotely, and didn't find out that the software they used for it didn't work on 7 until after I had paid the registration fee. Windows 10 was useable enough, but I never thought it was preferable over 7. Anyway, I'm on Bazzite now.
I'd actually say it was 8.1, but the problem with 8.1 is that it died before people could discover how good it is combined with classical start menu. It was basically a fleshed out, faster, more stable Windows 7 with updated tech like newer directx and cached boot (aka. Fastboot). Almost non-existing market share, but I liked it far better than 7, 10 and 11 (only gave it 1 week). I installed a tweaked 8.1 version on all my friends/family's PCs and never heard a single complaint, shit was awesome.
The biggest selling points of Windows these days is familiarity, backwards compatibility, and gaming.
And the only one of those not under active threat by someone is the backwards compatibility. Which means there is an active shelf life on the viability of Windows as a big money maker on the consumer desktop/laptop. And once it starts to falter in that market then the enterprise will start to follow.
Is that site just an ads disguised as articles site now? Like it's not just news about the sale, it's actively trying to sell win 11 (and not doing a great job with its list of "I thought it already did that", "underwhelming feature", "no, I still don't fucking want onedrive; I no longer trust you with my own files on my computer, let alone saving everything on yours".)
I'm guessing if they're too broke to switch their tech stack to Windows 11, a mostly similar OS to 10, the costs to switch to an entirely new paradigm is completely out of the question.
We've been switching over to Windows 11 and it's broken so many of our old applications.
We have stuff that's like 40 years old and it just won't tolerate Windows 11 so all those programs have to be run in a virtual environment. They were fine with Windows 10 so I've no idea what about Windows 11 they don't like. I wouldn't mind so much if there was an obvious advantage to Windows 11 but therr literally isn't, there's not a single feature in Windows 11 that would help us do business better.
But I think Windows 11 is on track to be the crap version, so Windows 12 will hopefully be better although given the current direction Microsoft moving that might not be the case, and they may have finally broken the crap then good cycle.
This is true. Rumours I've heard is that all your data will just be in one big blob, and every application is just an AI agent sorting and displaying the info for you.
So you could open a word document in Excel and it would format the info as a table, or you can open a PowerPoint in Visio and it would make it into a workflow chart. Same data, just presented differently by AI "wrappers".
Remember when Microsoft said windows 10 was going to be the last major windows version and they were just going to support it forever with rolling updates, and then later said they never said that.
since abaout the late 90's to early 00's. KDE 1 released with virtual desktops, and from what I can tell, Klipper either released with it, or a few years later
Considering all of the comments saying that a big part of this is people not wanting to buy new computers and choosing linux because it will run on their old machine, I'd like to add insult to injury and say I built a new PC before Oct and windows was never even a consideration.
And despite it being my first Linux install I planned to play games on, everything went smoothly and I'd even say the "setting up the PC to my preference instead of the defaults" step was better because there wasn't a "figure out how to disable the shit ms really wants you to run for them" substep, or a "figure out what new shit ms added that I'll want to disable" discovery mode that, with win 10, lasted most of the time I was using it and included "figure out if a recent update reset settings to annoying defaults".
I bet this is why people are so vocal about switching to linux whenever there's another complaint about ms. It went way better than expected, like I was about to do something that would cause ongoing pain and frustration to get away from something even worse, but there's been nothing at all that has made me miss windows.
Yeah. I built my PC two years back and Linux was the main idea for it. I'd used Linux on and off since 2007, and it's honestly been fine this entire time, with WINE and such only improving over time. I remember how baffled I was back in 2007 when I didn't have to install any drivers myself, everything just worked out of the box, even fucking printers.
This is the time of Windows Vista, where nothing worked.
Yeah, I've got a logitech mouse but didn't want logitech's software on my machine, so I just used the mouse by plugging it in. Which worked, but I had no way of knowing the battery level until the mouse itself started blinking low power.
When I installed fedora, I was confused a bit because it had a system tray icon saying the battery was charging. I was thinking it thought it was a laptop until I realize it had just picked up the battery information from my mouse. A feature I had written off under windows just worked without me even considering it or needing to install software that was partly about using my hardware and partially about advertising more ways to get my money.
LMAO says the guy typing from a Windows 7 Desktop purchased in 2012. This PC still works amazingly well for a 13 year old Alienware. Anyone who has ever owned one will tell you this a unicorn. I will never click the update icon sitting in the tray for years now. Get fucked. This OS still rocks. If I want to play a current game I open up my laptop and close it when done.
I really don't see what more Windows has to offer than Linux other some shitty software that cannot be run on Linux (Looks at newer Office and Adobe). In that case I can just boot up a VM with black-flag Windows Pro on it.
No. I said that there's a bunch of things (e.g. stability, updates management, features (like window tiling), etc.) that Windows has and Linux does not.
There's A LOT Linux does great. There's also a lot Windows does great that Linux massively fails at.
Even some silly things like multi-screen support or saving windows positions between reboots... Lots of small things.
Linux has all of this out of the box (don’t know about windows positions after reboot, I have never tried that even on Windows). What distro and DE are you using? I am using Arch with KDE Plasma and it has been pretty much flawless and stable for me.
Especially when you're on Arch with KDE, you don't have:
good update management
window tiling
saving window positions
I know because I'm on Arch with KDE.
By "good update management" I mean what MS does - all updates are pushed once a month, on Patch Tuesday (second Tuesday of the month). You can put it in your calendar and plan for a necessary reboot.
I know Arch is a rolling release so it doesn't have that on purpose, but it's not much better with Ubuntu - I was getting updates every couple of days, once a week at best.
Window tiling doesn't exist "out of the box", you need third party software (which, apparently still doesn't give you what Windows has out of the box) or a switch from KDE to COSMIC, which still doesn't give you the freedom of choice that Windows has (it's either "everything is tiled" or "nothing is tiled").
Saving window positions (on Wayland) is the most confusing one, because it seems like the one that'd be the easiest to implement, but KDE devs just flat out refuse to do it. I hear that it works on X11.
Multi-monitor support is piss poor. If I spread my windows across multiple monitors and then turn one monitor off, those windows are no longer accessible. SDDM displays the same interface on each monitor, and each is a separate instance of SDDM - meaning, you can type in your password on monitor 2, and if you press "OK" on monitor 1, it will fail, because the password field is empty. It's just silly design. On Windows, if you disconnect an extra screen, all the content gets dropped on the main screen. Since Windows 11, if you then re-connect the screen, all windows will pop back into their places before the disconnect happened.
You might have configured something that broke it because there ain't no way what you are saying is not supported on Linux.
I know Arch is a rolling release so it doesn’t have that on purpose, but it’s not much better with Ubuntu - I was getting updates every couple of days, once a week at best.
You don't have to update if you don't want to and you can schedule your updates as well with a bash script (although I prefer to do it manually once a week). I have a Windows VM used for MS office and Adobe that hasn't been updated for months.
Window tiling doesn’t exist “out of the box”, you need third party software
It is out of the box. Meta + Arrow Keys and/OR Meta + PgUp. I use it all the time lol since KDE Plasma 5 and Gnome whatever version it was 3 years ago.
)
Saving window positions (on Wayland) is the most confusing one
Confirmed works by FarrellPerks@feddit.uk in above comments. Although I never tested or cared for it.
SDDM displays the same interface on each monitor, and each is a separate instance of SDDM
I don't know about desktop towers, for laptop it is always only one instance — my laptop display, monitor is dark before I hit enter. And for the normal KDE lockscreen, it does give it on both the screens but I can enter my password in any one of them and logon.
if you disconnect an extra screen, all the content gets dropped on the main screen. Since Windows 11, if you then re-connect the screen, all windows will pop back into their places before the disconnect happened.
It is out of the box. Meta + Arrow Keys and/OR Meta + PgUp.
Ah, OK, nice! I didn't see it as it's not available via mouse, but found all those threads saying it doesn't exist. Good to know!
Confirmed works by FarrellPerks@feddit.uk in above comments
Doesn't work on Garuda (Arch-based) with KDE.
Or rather: it used to work, but then just stopped.
I don’t know about desktop towers, for laptop it is always only one instance — my laptop display, monitor is dark before I hit enter
Interesting! On my laptop I also had two instances of SDDM.
same happens on KDE Plasma.
Not where I'm sitting. Tested via cat accidentally turning a monitor off. The browser window just stayed on that screen - the process was there, but the application was not available.
Huh, interesting. Because other than appearance and keyboard shortcuts, I haven't configured anything to affect these behaviors.
I switched my laptop last year and installed Arch with Plasma 6 so it was working out of the box. My previous laptop had Arch with Plasma 5 and then updated to 6 and also had Gnome before that. So it could have been I might I have configured something over there to get those things working (I don't remember doing that though) but the newer one had it by default.
Because other than appearance and keyboard shortcuts, I haven’t configured anything to affect these behaviors
Which is another aspect of the "Windows is more stabled" that I meant earlier.
I switched my laptop last year and installed Arch with Plasma 6 so it was working out of the box
The save window position thing was also working out of the box on mine. Only after it stopped I started looking into this and found that, apparently, it's NOT a thing KDE/Wayland can do. I don't know how it worked, but settings also show that feature doesn't exist - if you go to System Settings → Window Management → Window Behaviour → Advanced → Window placement, I only have these options available: "Minimal Overlapping", "Maximised", "Random", "Centred", "In Top-Left Corner" or "Under Mouse". There's no "Remember" or "Restore previous" or anything like that.
I remember that it used to work on my Garuda (Arch-based), but then one day it just went away and never came back. Considering issues like this it seems like it might be something cobbled-together by various distros rather than a default functionality of Wayland or KDE.
Stability? Update management? Window tiling? What? Linux does have all of these things. In fact Linux is way more stable than Windows, has better update management. Mind you, it does depend on the distro and the amount of stability you want, but I have been running Debian servers for years and I hardly run into problems.
The only thing windows offers over Linux is gaming and a better UI. Even both of those are dwindling away. I hate the new windows 11 UI and most games work on Linux unless you require a rootkit for some anti cheat software.
I install Windows and forget about it. I install Linux and have to do all this, and then it still might do this or this.
Mind you, it does depend on the distro
Agreed.
and the amount of stability you want
I want all the stability.
but I have been running Debian servers for years and I hardly run into problems.
Not talking about servers.
But even then - at my last job we finally killed off a Windows Server that had an uptime of over 1000 days, just chugging along like a little trooper. At my previous-previous job I was responsible for the WinServer updates, every single one of them was getting monthly updates and reboots, didn't have a single issue in 7 years. It was just shy of 100 servers.
The only thing windows offers over Linux is gaming and a better UI. Even both of those are dwindling away. I hate the new windows 11 UI and most games work on Linux unless you require a rootkit for some anti cheat software.
Agreed. I have Garuda Linux installed on my gaming PC and only had minor issues with three titles. It's surprisingly frictionless.
Hi everyone! I got the update to KDE Plasma 6.4 yesterday and since then my Application Launcher is transparent… And I’ve no idea where that came from or how to disable that. HERE is an example of how it looks with Kate opened in the background.
Especially when you're on Arch with KDE, you don't have:
good update management
window tiling
saving window positions
I know because I'm on Arch with KDE.
By "good update management" I mean what MS does - all updates are pushed once a month, on Patch Tuesday (second Tuesday of the month). You can put it in your calendar and plan for a necessary reboot.
I know Arch is a rolling release so it doesn't have that on purpose, but it's not much better with Ubuntu - I was getting updates every couple of days, once a week at best.
Window tiling doesn't exist "out of the box", you need third party software (which, apparently still doesn't give you what Windows has out of the box) or a switch from KDE to COSMIC, which still doesn't give you the freedom of choice that Windows has (it's either "everything is tiled" or "nothing is tiled").
Saving window positions (on Wayland) is the most confusing one, because it seems like the one that'd be the easiest to implement, but KDE devs just flat out refuse to do it. I hear that it works on X11.
Multi-monitor support is piss poor. If I spread my windows across multiple monitors and then turn one monitor off, those windows are no longer accessible. SDDM displays the same interface on each monitor, and each is a separate instance of SDDM - meaning, you can type in your password on monitor 2, and if you press "OK" on monitor 1, it will fail, because the password field is empty. It's just silly design. On Windows, if you disconnect an extra screen, all the content gets dropped on the main screen. Since Windows 11, if you then re-connect the screen, all windows will pop back into their places before the disconnect happened.
The most frustrating part of running Linux for me is the experience can vary so much for each person, slight hardware differences can cause odd bugs that other people don't have, and solving them can be really time consuming because a fix that works for one distro or DE may not work on another.
I'm really happy that Bazzite seems to be gaining so much popularity as an actual windows replacement, because it makes it a lot easier to find fixes for problems if there's a huge community using the exact same distro.
"Slower" implies you're projecting the same end results. Do they think the missing numbers are just not using a computer at all? In the digital age? By far your largest numbers of actual Win11 migrators are companies whose tech policy is the CYA "update everything in case we get hacked".
The common folk are not going to buy a new computer just to get a slower Windows installation. The people who migrate from Windows 10/7 holdouts are going to be migrating to Linux.
They keep updating my windows 10 computers at work and the one I have at home. None of my Microsoft apps work, I can't install paint, or photos or the Microsoft store. My personal computer freezes as soon as I open windows explorer. This just started after the last update.
I already have a Linux server downstairs and this week converted me windows 10 pc to endeavor OS. It's lightning fast and easy to use if you already know the problems with Linux.
Well yes it can be. If you have a Nvidia GPU it wouldn't be the best because they sometimes have driver issues (that's Nvidia with closed shitty drivers for linux). I will probably run fine anyways. I would recommend Bazzite if you don't want to tinker with linux and just use it. CachyOS if you want a snappy experience. Gaming wise they don't have any difference and with Bazzite you can't fuck anything up. Edit: If you have an AMD GPU you should just change to linux no question.
Thanks for that, yeah unfortunately it is nvidia but i might give those two a run anyway at the end of the day i can always re install windows if need be.
Yea I wouldn't be too concerned with trying just because you have an Nvidia GPU, I've been running it for years and haven't had any show stoppers. Now is probably the best time to give it a go.
ITT: People who don't realize there is a massive amount of software developed for smb and enterprise businesses that only run on Windows which is the primary driver of Windows sales. Quickbooks, various ERP implementations, any kind of legal case management software, Sage, etc
I would like to expand my server storage and I am confused now. For a bit of context, I have a mini pc running several Docker containers and I am pretty happy with it.
Right now I want to expand my server storage and after going though some options, this is my current understanding:
NAS: it is a real PC with its own chip/memory/OS and we can connect to the storage via network mount. Some are powerful enough to run docker containers on them and are generally not cheap.
HDD enclosure/docking station: it is just some enclosure to hold a lot of HDDs together and I could just plug it into my server like an USB.
I would like to ask: - Is my understanding above correct ? - Since I still have some resource left in the mini pc and want to save some bucks, is it safe to go with the HDD enclosure ?
Thank you very much and have a nice day 😁
Edit: Thank you for all the comments. I think I should be good with the HDD enclosure since it will be used exclusively for Linux ISOs so I will have a cloud backups already.
A small follow up question: Is there any reputable brand for this HDD enclosure or it does not really matter that much ?
Beware, an NAS will have its own file formats and structure. I put all my music files and backups on a NAS, which failed. Now I can't recover them without buying another NAS of similar model. More ore less the opposite of why I got a NAS.
This is also one reason why I am hesitant for a NAS. They might run on their own OS and have their own private format while I dont want to be vendor locked in in any ecosystem
True open source products are your best bet. TruNAS and Proxmox are popular options, but you can absolutely set up a vanilla Debian server with Samba and call it a NAS. Back in the old days we just called those "file servers".
Most importantly, just keep good backups. If you have to choose between investing in a raid or a primary + backup drive, choose the latter every time. Raid will save you time to recover, but it's not a backup.
Unless you have a giant raid array, where you need all the drives running at the same time on the same system, plugging in a single raid 1 member, for example, via usb to sata adapter, should let you access its contents just fine.
Provided you're on an OS that can read the file system. That can require some extra effort on windows.
But yeah. Beware of the pre-built NASes. The vendor lock-in is real.
Many NAS work like that though. Hardware RAID always seems to work like that so if you get a fancy card that supports RAID you been make sure you have a good long term support contract that will be there for you when there are problems (if you are not paying hundreds of thousands per year you don't have a good support contract)
Not all are that way. Many run ZFS which is great for this and you can replace broken hardware and recover. BTFS is commonly used as well, probably not as good as zfs but likely good enough.
Just to repeat what you're already hearing: if I started over from the beginning, I'd skip a NAS entirely and just build a server with a ton of bays (which I just bought). Funny enough, I came here to recommend Fractal Design cases too
NAS is just "network attached storage": a computer that has a bunch of disks attached to your network. IF you put a single disk on your network and nfs/samba to share it you have created a simple NAS - I strongly recommend you put in more drives for redundancy, but that is all NAS is.
Often NAS is taken to mean not just the above, but a custom machine that does the above. The downside is these custom machines are often slow, and put weird hardware/software on them such that if the whole box breaks (as opposed to just a single disk failing which they are good at handling) you may not be able to recover anything. One variation of this you want more space and discover you can't upgrade it at all. They are an easy way into NAS, but the downsides are such that I can't recommend them anyway.
The bank remained vague about the actual nature of its relationship with the convicted sex trafficker. Newly released documents reveal that Epstein and de Rothschild’s personal relationship was much closer than the bank previously acknowledged. According to emails released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee on November 12, Epstein planned to see a Broadway play with de Rothschild in January 2014, and scheduled a private trip with her to Montreal that September.
A second set of documents—the leaked inbox of former Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, hacked by Handala and uploaded by non-profit whistleblower Distributed Denial of Secrets—sheds light on Epstein’s efforts to leverage his personal friendship with de Rothschild to raise funds for the development of Israeli cyberweapons. After Barak’s retirement from government in 2013, he recruited Pavel Gurvich, a graduate of the Israel Defense Forces’ secretive Unit 81 technology unit, to source cyberweapons startups from the Israeli intelligence community. Gurvich did not respond to a request for comment.
Private communications between Barak and Gurvich show discussions about a wide range of cyberweapons concepts drawn from Israeli military research, inspired in part by the astonishing scope of U.S. global surveillance apparatus revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Epstein pushed forward a plan to finance Israeli “offensive cyber” startups with the hope of winning de Rothschild’s support.
Epstein on Ariane de Rothschild: “it was said to me, if Ehud [Barak] wants to make serious money, he will have to build a relationship with me. take time so that we can truly understand one another.”
Basically, the title. I have the domain, and have used it in the past with Google Workspace and MS365, but both of those services enshitified, so I'm looking for something that won't screw me.
Don't really care about things like password manager, VPN, cloud drive, etc. Just looking for email service for about 5 users that can be configured to work w/ native email clients on macos, windows, linux, iOS (so Proton & Tuta are out). Anyone have any experience with this? Really don't want to roll my own.
I migrated over to Proton last night before realizing that I had to set up the bridge for it to work on macos mail, and can only use the nativ client on mobile. So, trying to find something soon, so I can cancel within the 30-day period.
Has worked well for me, but keeping in mind that email is probably about the hardest thing to properly self host.
DMARC/DKIM/SPF/MX records have to be set up properly, DNS for auto config and such preferable, and dealing with a myriad of mail IP blacklists (good monitoring service for free: mxtoolbox.com/) all come into play.
Check out Infomaniak which has more than just email so could be useful if looking for more of a like for like replacement for O365. If you just want email, somebody mentioned mailbox.org which I have also used and is good.
I've been on purelymail.com for a couple of years. Receive about 1000 emails a month and send out about 50. Averaging around $0.40/month. They also have a flat rate option of $10/year as long as you don't abuse the system.
You can host a Proton mail bridge to use different apps running on different machines, including phones.
Self hosting e-mail, particularly SMTP, will likely require a static IP from a reputable provider. Mail servers may reject incoming mail based on the reputation of the sending server. You can avoid this by relaying through another SMTP server and configuring your DNS rules to allow that server to send mail on your behalf, but that's not really self hosting anymore.
I can't recommend Purelymail enough. Cheap (10€ per year), and you can have as many accounts and inbox space as you. You can also connect as many domains as you want.
All-in-one Mail & Collaboration server. Secure, scalable and fluent in every protocol (IMAP, JMAP, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV, WebDAV). - stalwartlabs/stalwart
I'm using Migadu - I used Purelymail before, it was great but I'm trying to avoid US-based services.
But if you have a static IP with a decent reputation (you can check your ip here: mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx), self-hosting email isn't as hard as some say. I've been using Mox for ~6 months for my non-essential email and it's been maintenance-free after the initial setup - if it keep running without a hiccup I'll probably migrate my family email to it eventually.
I've been using fastmail for a long time for this now. I've been happy, not to expensive. I'm surprised they haven't been recommended, normally when the question is asked there are a million fastmail recommendations
Inleed.xyz has free email hosting with IMAP and POP3 access. You can have as many accounts as you want, but there's a limit of 1GB shared between all of them.
This is c/selfhosted. This is not the forum to ask for advice about email services you don’t directly control. There are some self-hosted options provided in the comments already. Locking this post to prevent further non-selfhosted discussions.
Since October 2023, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) unleashed tens of thousands of bombs likely containing payloads of Polish-made TNT, resulting in the destruction of as much as 80 percent of Gaza’s buildings, including civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, and refugee camps. “Based on information provided by the bomb’s U.S. manufacturer, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, the Polish company Nitro-Chem, and U.S. government databases, we can conclude that there is a high probability that a significant proportion of [Mk 84s] that Israel dropped on the Gaza Strip since October 2023 are filled with Polish-made TNT,” the report found.
The state-owned Polish company, Nitro-Chem, produced 90% of the TNT that U.S. weapons manufacturers used to make "Mark Series" bombs, according to a new report.
I originally signed up to mastodonapp.uk. Now that I'm attempting to get m.dollha.us running, I'm looking to pull my account from the former and move it to the latter. Easier said than done, though, because I cannot, for the life of me, seem to get my instance to federate with that instance. I have tried leaving it for a week or three, I have tried starting it in limited federation mode and whitelisting the instance in question, and I have tried a dedicated relay provided by fedi.buzz.
Today I noticed something interesting in my sidekiq logs: My instance is actively rejecting mastodonapp.uk - despite it not being in any blocklists. This is, of course, via the dedicated relay, so it could be a relay issue, but I can see no obvious reason why that would occur.
A relay, as in the Mastodon relay feature? As in Administration->Relays? If so, does mastodonapp.uk have an active relay? It can't be used to connect to just any Mastodon server. It has to connect to a special relay server.
fedibuzz alleges that you can follow a single specific instance with their relay, and I see nothing to suggest that I can't use it better federate with mastodonapp.
I did note, though, that both my instance and mastodonapp are connected to relay.intahnet.co.uk - and whilst it has a few issues in the logs, it has none since i reset the instance again after attempting limited federation mode.
Plenty of us are using Docker, Podman, Incus, chroot jails, etc to isolate services.
It has become good practice and it makes setting up yet another service, usually, so convenient.
Some services like YunoHost, StartOS, Cloudron and others try to facilitate the process.
What I haven't seen though is a way to facilitate interoperability BETWEEN services we self-host. Sure there are plugins for each service, e.g. npmjs.com/package/peertube-plu… to provide XMPP chat for PeerTube, or anecdotal discussions e.g. github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/is… to embed PeerTube on Jitsi Meet.
So... how do YOU do it? How do you make on self-hosted service with another? Do you check after each one you install in the plugin category? Do you write your own plugins or extensions? Do you have a design pattern (e.g. Swagger API discovery with token generation per service, "cheat" via sockets, use a dedicate new service or even host) which you repeat?
I do ask because I bet most of you have a moment like this :
Hey how about we start this new project together?
Yes, let's change the World!
OK let's write manifesto.md
Where are we going to host it?
Hmmm we could use my Cryptpad instance...
OK but I don't get notification on my GMail, could we use GoogleDocs instead?
So... I feel like FLOSS self-hosting is honestly on-par functionality-wise with proprietary solutions. I might be bias but it's rare when I think "Damn... that's cool, shame I can't have it at home". I can nearly always (in fact I have a hard time thinking of an example) self-host functional equivalent solutions myself. The ONE thing that I feel is often missing is integration which relies on interoperability.
How do YOU it?
PS: this isn't about ntfy, PeerTube, HA or any specific service to a specific problem, it's about HOW to facilitate, when one wants to, already great services work together.
The functionality to play YouTube videos work great. It would be even better if Jitsi Meet also supported playing videos from a PeerTube instance (or even allow to paste an embed code).
My process typically goes: ooh, shiny new service! If it has a docker compose, I'll read up a little more on it, then set it up. At that point, I'll cry a bit in having to change my nginx config, because it's new and unsupported, figure out what's actually needed, then realize I didn't set it up with authentik or even check if it was supported. Usually I'll dig around and someone got something close, so I'll set it up that way, and if it works, great! If not, dig through the documents.
Any further interoperability is luck based.
(I'm currently trying to get element-call working before I open it to my family, the whole matrix stack is leaving me scarred )
Can't say I've run into a need for such consideration yet. Excluding stacks explicitly meant to work together to some degree most of my services are an island to themselves and I like it that way. Then as far as notifications are concerned pretty much every supports at least email or ntfy.sh.
… well that’s the part I’m challenging. I was thinking like this but I’m wondering if that could be improved.
Do you have a specific use case for two containers that you want to talk to each other? There are some Docker containers that will cozy up, but as you point out, there are some that don't. Maybe it would be worth the time to consult with the dev teams of said containers, and see if they have any suggestions or ways to go about it. It would seem to me that would be your best point to deviate from. Couldn't hurt. I would create a defined road map of what you are trying to accomplish before hand, and run it by the dev teams. Just give them a little time to respond. They are real people with real lives too.
As I'm thinking about it, I wonder if your solution might be automation? Something like n8n might allow cross container exchanges. Of course, those data points have to be present for you to tap them tho.
Do you have a specific use case for two containers that you want to talk to each other?
Sure, for example once a Jitsi Meet meeting ends (more than 1 person in a room in, everybody gone), save the chat log to CopyParty e.g. WebDAV push to /meetingname_date.txt would be enough to be useful. It's something we tend to do manually on a regular basis.
road map of what you are trying to accomplish before hand, and run it by the dev teams.
Yes no rush and I can code so I would be able to test before suggesting anything.
As I’m thinking about it, I wonder if your solution might be automation?
I don't touch AI but I do think conventions, e.g. not "just" an API but SWAGGER, specific filesystem on mountpoints, etc could facilitate this.
Automation doesn't always mean AI. The app I mentioned, n8n, has two versions: with and without. The plain n8n app is very capable of doing a ton of stuff.
The plain n8n app is very capable of doing a ton of stuff.
Sorry if I'm a bit slow but what does it actually do? I skimmed through "automations" earlier this morning and I mostly found paid-for GenAI related stuff.
The version I'm using does not include AI, basically because I don't have the equipment to run AI 100% local, and n8n AI makes you tap public AI outlets. Both versions are available. The community version of n8n is open-source.
A workflow:
::: spoiler spoiler :::
n8n is a workflow automation platform that gives technical teams the flexibility of code with the speed of no-code. With 400+ integrations, ~~native AI capabilities~~, and a fair-code license, n8n lets you build powerful automations while maintaining full control over your data and deployments.
There are over 400 different integrations: n8n.io/integrations Of course, the AI stuff you can skip. And when you get to the point of proficiency, you can build your own templates and workflows.
Learn how to build a clean system log dashboard and smart SSH alert workflow using n8n. This guide walks through real log parsing, visual dashboards, and notifications when login attempts fail.
Well I do have Home Assistant, been running it for years, but HA is solely for ... well home assisting (or IoT). HA as integrations but let's say I want to use HA with ... any of my other services, e.g. CopyParty to maybe store logs and makes them available or PeerTube to have videos from my camera, I can look at HA integrations, or CopyParty... issues maybe, or PeerTube npm registry.
My point being that HA is a good example with integrations but it's just one example. If I do take this example seriously though, is there a mechanism beside manual search in the list of integration that would list integrations with my services directly?
re #HomeAssistant integrations, you can also look at what is available under #HACS library, search or ask for help in any of the community forums for #HA such as community.home-assistant.io or on reddit, discord , git hub. It integrates nicely with #homebridge and also with containerized systems e.g., docker, portainer.
Modelled solutions that check for related applications as they install are the way that encourage more people to self host by making installation, configuration, backup, update and removal easier.
No but if you write the application scripts to take account of parameters that you know from the yunohost instance then you can dynamically integrate applications (e.g set the eMail server parameters from yunohost into Nextcloud, configure the single sign on inside Nextcloud to use the Yunohost SSL as well as say getting parameters from one application and using them in the configuration of another)
You could for instance link Kodi and HomeAssistant by scripting the installation of HomeAssistant when its installed to add the Kodi Plugin - then either install Kodi locally or find it on your local network and pre-configure HomeAssistant to connect to it.
One of my thoughts is that Yunohost could be usefully integrated with something like #coopcloud to allow it to add additional server instances to scale the solution - it could either via an application or a component of yunohost itself manage #abra deployment and execution.
Similarly it could reach out to other devices like Routers on your home network and help configure their firewalls, port forwarding etc. - That would make configuring a home server easier - for those that aren't experienced with these things.
APIs. Or the ends are achieved by sharing data between apps in common data storage. But I prefer to be a tourist in my infrastructure, I no longer hand-bomb changes to systems.
My design pattern is essentially to integrate more and more of the container creation into config. Right now I'm using ansible and it's nice. More automation means troubleshooting has fewer variables.
I had issues yesterday with a package upgrade across several containers, and it ended up being two config changes. I cycle the apps and done. That's it.
Indeed and for PeerTube for example it has an API, cf docs.joinpeertube.org/api-rest… which I did use. It also provides SWAGGER so that could facilitate integration with others services also providing APIs. I was starting to think that the meta service could have read only public only token generated for each new service and provide a SWAGGER endpoint to facilitate using the API of more than 1 service.
Thanks, that's indeed exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for "The authentication glue you need." but even more generalized than that, e.g. just "the glue you need." not solely for authentication.
Edit: to clarify and coming back after leaving few other comments, the 1 thing authentik has is that it is a cross-service need, namely nearly all services do need authentication AND, probably consequence of that, there are conventions and standards already in place, e.g. SAML, OAuth2/OIDC, LDAP, Auth0. So that makes everything much easier.
I haven't tried it yet, but I think you want something like n8n. Yeah, I know they claim to be very AI nowadays, but I had them on my radar before that. It's essentially an automation platform you can use to glue services together that weren't intended for each other. github.com/n8n-io/n8n
Fair-code workflow automation platform with native AI capabilities. Combine visual building with custom code, self-host or cloud, 400+ integrations. - n8n-io/n8n
At least five West Bank villages have been targeted as settlers lit Palestinian homes, cars, and a mosque ablaze, while the army delayed emergency vehicles.
A severed mosquito proboscis can be turned into an extremely fine nozzle for 3D printing, and this could help create replacement tissues and organs for transplants.
When engineers struggled to make 3D printer nozzles narrow enough for their needs, they turned to nature and found the proboscis of a female mosquito had exactly the properties they needed
Yes, the first attempts via the more obvious approach of using a live mosquito were a lot trickier, because the techniques involved in persuading the mosquito to comply were outside of the highly-specialised knowledgebase of the team. That is, until the serendipitous moment when one particularly heavy-handed researcher accidentally killed a mosquito whilst trying to attach it to a printer. The surprise and elation that must have resulted when they realised they could use mosquito husks was, surely a sight to behold. The missing piece of the puzzle had finally fallen into place. Some might even say... by Divine Providence, perhaps? I daresay some of the project leads were kicking themselves nonetheless: "It's so simple! Dead mosquito proboscises! Dead! Why didn't I think of that?!", etc. But I think we should go easy on them; we could all get a doctorate in the field of hindsight! In the end, just like many discoveries before it: penicillin, safety glasses, velcro etc., this breakthrough simply owes a lot to blind chance.
Good news! Brazil developed a single dose vaccine against dengue!! I don't know when they're going to start vaccinating, but the vaccine has been approved, it's already tested and everything!
If it makes you feel better, the people who stick their arms in aren’t allergic to mosquito bites. Doesn’t bother them to get bit beyond the feeling of being bit.
I mean I guess it could happen that they are just masochistic, but typically not.
Say what? Is this not exploiting an animal, or worse, creating a potential market incentive to further exploit animal bodies and life? I'm not even vegan. I know individuals have exceptions, and the philosophy is a spectrum rather than a monolith and all that, but are mosquitoes not animal life?
This reminds me of a post where someone hooked a dead spider up to a syringe and used it as a grabber. A spider's musculature is hydraulic so the legs would curl and uncurl as the syringe was pressed.
Definitely one of the creepier things I've casually stumbled upon.
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.
it's an incredibly streamlined UX that composes an email to the representatives relevant to you, for the specific reasons important to you. It's then really easy to paste both the email body and the string of email addresses into whatever email client you use.
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.
So I asked earlier about backing up the media files in my home lab, and thanks for the many who replied, I settled on sanoid / syncoid and has been running them for some time.
My setup:
pool1/data contains my media files pool2/data backup
I use sanoid to make periodic snapshots of pool1/data, and then runs
syncoid pool1/data pool2/data
to replicate the snapshots to pool2.
This works fine, except I noticed that a lot of data is being copied even though pool1 did not change much. And now I just noticed pool2 ran out of space some time ago, while pool1 is currently only half full (pool1 & pool2 are the same size).
~~Is it because snapshots are somehow deduplicated when created on pool1, but is fully transferred to pool2 when syncoid runs? Is there something I can do to lower the usage on the backup pool? Thanks.~~
EDIT: Oops, I did not set up pruning of old snapshots on pool2. I have now added "--delete-target-snapshots" to my syncoid job and will monitor the results.
Not enough info, but it sounds almost like you're creating the snapshots locally and sending those over instead of snapshotting to the destination directly.
Sanoid and syncoid are Jim Salter's creation. Check out his blog at mercenarysysadmin.com for some examples of sanoid and syncoid. Klara systems also has a number of deep dives into those utilities.
For example, the developer of asus-linux.org who made the kernel contributions for Asus ROG laptops and the accompanying ROG Control Center recently walked away, due to exhaustion.
I couldn't find anything about this on the Asus Linux blog, am I just dumb and looking in the wrong place? I use Asus-linux and didn't know about this 🙁
Edit: ~~unfortunately it seems that bullshitters who make shit up on the spot have made their way over to Lemmy~~ boo me
I've burned out on LKML and many many other parts of the FOSS world. It's exhausting. As such, I will not be working on Linux for asus device. It's not something I can devote huge chunks of time to for free anymore.
Thank you everyone who has donated something over the last years.
I liked the article. It sung to my heart. I've been in this world for a while. Lived through the failure and hyperacalars just taking without giving back.
I don't know what to think. But I'm not happy with where we are and it's nice to hear someone else talking about it.
I'm all for ethical licensing, and defensive licensing, but we'll likely end up with an unmanageable soup of various licenses that everyone is nervous about misinterpreting. We lose efficacy and everyone will just default back to the same handful of licenses we're currently using.
I think unless it was a small number of crystal clear alternative licenses with broadly agreeable terms, we'd get chaos, followed by complacency.
The consequences of what that article proposes is we're gonna be back to this period of history where companies were all using proprietary technology that self-taught devs won't ever learn and that students will only learn if they can afford a school that can use it, in addition to poor developer experience because of maintainer agenda being driven by money rather than community requests.
Liberapay is really nice. I like the payment options they have to minimize the fees, like making 2 years of small "monthly" payments in a single charge to your bank card.
I think the bigger question is how many corporations are supporting foss projects? I'm sure a lot of us contribute a bit here and there if we can and I'm sure it makes a difference - but if some of these corporations, making billions of dollars profit, contribute just a tiny fraction of their wealth it could make a huge difference.
It's the same argument as recycling, turning off lights, walking instead of driving etc. etc. - yes there are 8 billion of us and if we all do it, it will make a difference, but the difference we make is still not significant compared to corporate greed.
We are being gaslit to accept yet another scenario where we socialize the cost and privatize the profit.
Big question or not, we can only control ourselves.
Everyone always stares at other people's resources and imagine how great it would be if those resources were used how we like, but at the end of the day, we control our resources.
So is it a big question if it doesn't really matter because we can't do anything about it?
If you are “overworked”, it sadly doesn’t matter how much volunteering you are doing. You are treating FOSS like a job for one reason or another and should be paid
Love the enthusiasm, but let's stop casting this as an end-user-only problem. The real issue is, once again, large corporations using and taking advantage of oss while putting ZERO money or work back into oss. It's victim blaming with extra steps, and us blaming each other is exactly what the real culprits want.
If it makes us feel better that we can pay on a regulsr basis for these things, great. But massive oss projects can't thrive on a few of us donating.
Large corporations and exploitative, over demanding individuals are always going to be this way. We can only prepare for these kinds. I agree on paying them subscriptions on a regular basis, just as we pay large corp projects, and more people need to be involved.
I hope you didn't infer from my comment that we should stop individually supporting FOSS, that's not what I'm saying.
However, I will counter that I don't think you are current with the overwhelmingly massive imbalance of corporate vs personal use is currently in play on big Foss projects.
Ffmpeg is used by almost everyone with a video project, but not companies want to kick in any bucks:
We saw this back in 2015 as well with NTP, which almost everyone on the internet uses, yet the one guy who worked on it had to stop doing so temporarily in 2017 and get a job to support himself:
NTP steward Harlan Stenn founded the Network Time Foundation four years ago as an umbrella group to unite and support time-synching open-source projects. But it hasn't gotten far with support.
Not at all. I support individual paying for foss projects and then corporations should be made to as well. Corporation will not have morals until there is social pressure, even so they just pretend to or regulated by government standards.
We are on the same page, if you read my other comments.
I don't understand much about the finances of the FOSS world, but do companies like FUTO help at all? I don't even know how FUTO makes money, to be honest.
Pay for your FOSS! I've paid far more for my FOSS than for any proprietary software.
If you believe in subscriptions, then subscribe only to FOSS software like Bitwarden, Tailscale/Netbird, etc.
Find your favorite FOSS projects on Open Collective and support them there.
And above all else, treat FOSS devs and maintainers with the utmost respect! They are the unsung heros who are building the only alternatives to the corpo-dystopian hellscape of proprietary, enshitified, slop software.
Send a message to a dev today, just saying thank you to them for everything, and asking if you can send them a tip if possible.
Folks, let's treat each other lovingly please, FOSS has freed us, give back what you can, and never take it for granted.
To all the devs, maintainers, tinkerers, supporters, FOSS educators, and helpful community members across the FOSS world, thank you so much, and much love. ♥️
I have so many causes on my mind that all need money; some for helping starving children, others for supporting sane politics, GoFundMes for people affected by a warped healthcare system; the request you're making very much makes sense, but it's so hard to put it above so many of the other critical needs for donations, when the image of an open source worker is someone who can, and often does, get paid working for a large company.
But the part about a nice email still applies. I'm not in it for the money, no positive feedback can be discouraging - typically I deal with issues where someone has a problem.
I recently got my boss to send a donation to an open source project!
It was technically not free to use for commercial purposes, but we could have done it anyway... However my boss agreed when I mentioned how insignificant it would be on the project's cost!
I'm going to be honest, I have no idea how open source works. I can't imagine maintaining anything more than a tiny library that I can ignore six days of the week.
Also: open source relies on good jobs. You can only do it if you have a well paid low stress job with good hours. Those have been in short supply recently.
I think the free time covid gave, followed by the free time the layoffs gave, and AI have been patching / hiding the fact that the core model of open source is completely unsustainable in its current state.
The part that confuses me is: How can multiple people work on overlapping bits of code at the same time, and the Git manager (or whatever you call it) just handles it all without breaking everything?
Roughly equal parts "git is clever" and "once in a while, someone has to take some time to figure it out".
Say the code is split into two files. You and I both make changes, but you're working on file A and I'm in file B. No problem!
Now we both make changes in file A. Sometimes Git can just "figure it out", like if all your changes are in the beginning of the file, and all my changes are at the end.
But sometimes we both change the same section. Git can't figure that part out, so one of us has to sit down and reconcile the changes. Sometimes this is pretty simple, other times...not so much.
Put it all together, and it works out pretty well most of the time.
A lot of larger foss projects do open up a foundation or another legal entity. Mostly due to regulations or dealing with donations. But it's hard to call them enterprises
It’s funny how common this mindset is in the self-hosting community: “If I’m running it on my own hardware, the software should basically be free… maybe I’ll toss a tiny ‘tip’ if I feel generous.”
The logic seems to be that since there’s no ongoing server cost, the developer’s time, skill, and effort must somehow be worth nothing and that we should magically fund the entire project through some hypothetical cloud version that they themselves will never use.
It’s like showing up to a brewery with your own growler and expecting the beer to be free because you didn’t use their glass.
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with this. If the software is free, then it's free. It's up to the authors how they want to license it.
Personally, I write code and publish it in the hopes that it will help someone. If someone comes in and says "there's this bug, fix it!" I will only do so if it will benefit me, or if I feel like it.
The article and discussion here is about open source software which is not free software. Thats where the problem lies it is assumed that open source software has be free.
Thats where the problem lies it is assumed that open source software has be free.
But the article is not talking about this scenario. They're specifically talking about open source software that's also free software:
Your favorite apps run on code maintained by exhausted volunteers.
So it's perfectly fine for some users to expect the software to be free.
The real problem is that some project owners have a sense of duty to maintain their creations no matter what, leading to burnout, which is the point of the article. The article also details ways to fix it. Some of those involve the users being proactive (e.g. taking the initiative to donate consistently), but ultimately it's up to the owner to take some action. Like I mentioned, if I publish some code for free, I don't mind my users to expect that my software will always be free. But if they think I'm going to lose sleep trying to meet their demands without compensation, welp, they are dreaming.
To be fair - this mindset is hardly exclusive to self-hosters. The dotcom era itself kicked off because it was easier to get advertisers to pay for server costs than users.
I'm sure many people could point to hundreds of dangers around open-source programs relying on government funding. Yet, I can't argue that it seems to be a necessity.
How do you decide which open source projects are worthy of taxpayer money, and how much does a given project get?
I have a couple projects I’ve put up in GitHub as open source. Would they qualify? Or are you just talking about well known open source projects like Linux?
I've been using CachyOS and impressed by the array of available software, and it was only in the back of my mind, the thought; "Wow, so much of this is so refined and polished. I wonder who has motive to maintain it?"
Joke's on me, the motive is hardly there - and it's a shitty time for it with Windows announcing that 10 is the last version and that there are no plans for a new one.
I'm glad Valve has a profit motive towards open source right now, but especially in a world where fewer people can donate at random, I really hoped that the model wasn't specifically built to rely just on tip jars.
A lot of FOSS projects are freemium based which seems viable for larger more complex projects.
In these projects it's common to see the developer get paid for adding features on top of the core version, for a SaaS version, for custom development, or for offering support.
Other projects with a lot of community interest - and a good "community manager" style organizer can attract contributors in the form of pulls, bug testing and reports, and widespread use which generates valuable marketing. These projects only exist because of the labor of love from the whole community.
What is to be expected when the current trend among CEOs is to get the same stuff done with less employees and same salaries hence resulting in either you getting fired, resigning or doing x2 the amount of work with no real life improvements. Who would have the willingness to continue their side hobbies/project like contributions to open source when your main life is in shambles.
Libya’s prolonged political deadlock has pushed many citizens to reassess ideas once considered settled. Among these ideas is the place of the former monarchy in the country’s political imagination.
The renewed attention is not driven by a coordinated campaign, nor does it signal a national shift toward a single model of governance. It reflects something more fundamental: a society still searching for stability after years of uncertainty.
A major political gathering held on 15 November has pushed the question of Libya’s monarchy back into the centre of national debate, drawing attention from observers across Africa who see the country’s stability as vital to regional economic and security interests.
Libya’s prolonged political deadlock has pushed many citizens to reassess ideas once considered settled. Among these ideas is the place of the former monarchy in the country’s political imagination.The renewed attention is not driven by a coordinated
Many Palestinians in Gaza want the militant group to leave power, but still welcome its crackdown on crime
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Suha Ma’ayeh Nov. 16, 2025 1100pm ET
Hamas’s popularity has edged up among Palestinians in Gaza since the cease-fire, ending a slide during the war and posing a challenge to President Trump’s plan to bring peace to the enclave by disarming the militant group.
A major reason is security. Last month, as a cease-fire took root and Israeli forces pulled back, Hamas fighters re-emerged on the streets as police and internal-security forces, patrolling and targeting criminals along with rivals and critics. While many Gazans have a dim view of the U.S.-designated terrorist group and don’t like seeing the group reassert itself, Palestinians have welcomed a reduction in crime and looting.
“Even those who oppose Hamas, the idea of security is something people want,” said Hazem Srour, 22, a businessman in Gaza City. “It’s because we had a security breakdown with thefts, thuggery and lawlessness.”
Many Palestinians in Gaza want the militant group to leave power, but still welcome its crackdown on crime
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Suha Ma’ayeh Nov. 16, 2025 1100pm ET
Hamas’s popularity has edged up among Palestinians in Gaza since the cease-fire, ending a slide during the war and posing a challenge to President Trump’s plan to bring peace to the enclave by disarming the militant group.
A major reason is security. Last month, as a cease-fire took root and Israeli forces pulled back, Hamas fighters re-emerged on the streets as police and internal-security forces, patrolling and targeting criminals along with rivals and critics. While many Gazans have a dim view of the U.S.-designated terrorist group and don’t like seeing the group reassert itself, Palestinians have welcomed a reduction in crime and looting.
“Even those who oppose Hamas, the idea of security is something people want,” said Hazem Srour, 22, a businessman in Gaza City. “It’s because we had a security breakdown with thefts, thuggery and lawlessness.”
Hamas’s Popularity Rises in Gaza, Complicating Trump Plan to Disarm Militants
Many Palestinians in Gaza want the militant group to leave power, but still welcome its crackdown on crime
By Sudarsan Raghavan and Suha Ma’ayeh Nov. 16, 2025 1100pm ET
Hamas’s popularity has edged up among Palestinians in Gaza since the cease-fire, ending a slide during the war and posing a challenge to President Trump’s plan to bring peace to the enclave by disarming the militant group.
A major reason is security. Last month, as a cease-fire took root and Israeli forces pulled back, Hamas fighters re-emerged on the streets as police and internal-security forces, patrolling and targeting criminals along with rivals and critics. While many Gazans have a dim view of the U.S.-designated terrorist group and don’t like seeing the group reassert itself, Palestinians have welcomed a reduction in crime and looting.
“Even those who oppose Hamas, the idea of security is something people want,” said Hazem Srour, 22, a businessman in Gaza City. “It’s because we had a security breakdown with thefts, thuggery and lawlessness.”
Welcome to Trump's America. "Well that fucking sucks for humanity," might as well be the phrase that historians use to summarize his second term.
If you'll recall, he tried to withdraw America from the WHO at the end of his first term, but failed due to losing the election before the request was accepted. The WHO's recommendations didn't match what Trump said during the COVID pandemic, and Trump will use any means at his disposal to quash dissent.
Yeah, because that'll surely end well. Any strong democracy would be a lot better than either the US or China.
China still hasn't been anywhere near transparent about COVID, for example. Do you really think they'd be any better if an outbreak of something similar would happen, especially if it originated from China in the first place.
The WHO is losing staff today due to lack of funding. That is "a bad ending." If someone can put up the money in short order to stop that bad ending, it's better one. China can do that. If a stronger democracy can do it so we can have more good endings down the road, they should. I'm not optimistic.
I'm with you there, in theory at least. Chinese money tends to come with strings attached, though. I'd be weary of that kind of influence without proper oversight.
It's not like the WHO hasn't flip-flopped on things before due to outside pressure either, so there's some precedent there.
Yes. There's no oversight, whoever puts the money has the influence. US, China, EU, Canada, Australia, etc. We need to move away from the idea of funding being separable from influence. About anything. The economic dimension isn't separate from the political one. It's a myth we are told that's served to further the interests of capital against the rest of us. If any country or block wants the influence we/they can put up the money.
We're in agreement then. I mean, I don't have anything in particular against China as such, I just don't like how they handled COVID and I certainly have some issues with their governance at large, but their money would still be welcome if there was proper oversight.
I do hope WHO will get up and running at 100% though, they're sorely needed. Considering what's happening in the US I don't think it'll be long before some shit happens over there as well.
Yes. There's no oversight, whoever puts the money has the influence. US, China, EU, Canada, Australia, etc. We need to move away from the idea of funding being separable from influence. About anything. The economic dimension isn't separate from the political one. It's a myth we are told that's served to further the interests of capital against the rest of us. If any country or block wants the influence we/they can put up the money.
The only question I have is why the US was contributing such a disproportionate amount in the first place. It was an accident waiting to happen. It's not like the US has always been terribly concerned with democracy. If they were, they'd have a real voting system like Germany. I really don't understand why Trump didn't happen sooner.
By Mera Aladam and MEE correspondent in Jab'a, Bethlehem, occupied Palestine Published date: 18 November 2025 15:19 GMT
Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian homes, vehicles and farmland in the latest attack in the occupied West Bank on Monday.
The large-scale evening assault on the town of Jab'a, southwest of Bethlehem, left three homes torched. The properties belonged to Raafat Hilal Mashaaleh, Muhammad Musa Musa and Yusuf Ahmad Musa.
Mashaaleh told Middle East Eye that the attack began as his brother was helping their sister and her children into a car parked in the family garden.
A stone was thrown at the vehicle, and when he looked up he saw two men hurling rocks. Moments later, he realised there were around 50 assailants.
Israeli settlers torch homes and fields in fresh West Bank attack
By Mera Aladam and MEE correspondent in Jab'a, Bethlehem, occupied Palestine Published date: 18 November 2025 15:19 GMT
Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian homes, vehicles and farmland in the latest attack in the occupied West Bank on Monday.
The large-scale evening assault on the town of Jab'a, southwest of Bethlehem, left three homes torched. The properties belonged to Raafat Hilal Mashaaleh, Muhammad Musa Musa and Yusuf Ahmad Musa.
Mashaaleh told Middle East Eye that the attack began as his brother was helping their sister and her children into a car parked in the family garden.
A stone was thrown at the vehicle, and when he looked up he saw two men hurling rocks. Moments later, he realised there were around 50 assailants.
Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian homes, vehicles and farmland in the latest attack in the occupied West Bank on Monday.
The large-scale evening assault on the town of Jab'a, southwest of Bethlehem, left three homes torched.
They are literally, physically and governmentally, separate.
I’m not trying to say that Israel isn’t being horrible in the West Bank (they are), nor am I saying that the pattern of behavior towards Palestinians is not the same in both places (it is), nor am I denying that the overarching conflict is one and the same (it is). I’m saying that the genocidal siege of Gaza, and specifically the ceasefire negotiated with Hamas, do not directly deal with the West Bank nor the Palestinian Authority.
So it isn’t that the settlers got an “exemption” from the ceasefire, it’s that the ceasefire didn’t deal with that region to begin with.
Decided to write up a quick post on a hacky workaround I came up with for custom distros Oracle free tier and thought I'd share. Don't rely on Oracle, but definitely do leverage as much of their free compute as you can for non-critical workloads!
Bypass the Oracle free-tier limitation of running only Linux distributions provided by Oracle by sideloading a QCOW2 image to a boot volume and attaching it to a new instance.
I run my lemmy instance on their free tier, although I do have full account so I can expand for for full backups during upgrade, and also on the pure free tier I couldn't get all 4 free cores at the closest DC
Certainly! As others have said, don't hang anything worth value on it without an out of band backup strategy, they're famous for unscrupulously deleting things with no warning. Oracle is a miserable company.
I haven't had my instances deleted, but they do some kind of maintenance blip everyday that my monitoring sees as 3 seconds of downtime, so maybe keep that in mind.
Interesting. I've had two instances running for over 2 years and haven't noticed that. It might be that I just don't notice it though. I'm not scrutinizing it much.
I am not well versed with kexec but I always understood it to be a kernel reboot without power cycling the "metal." Please enlighten us with an example! I don't see how you'd replace the entire userspace (and possibly filesystem) with simply kexec.
Kexec can be used to load a new kernel and "reboot" quickly, it can also be used to load a new kernel, an initrd and never touch the disk. Such a system lives completely in ram and allows you to modify the disk in any way you want without breaking you running Linux (which is in ram)
Any distro that has a network boot installer that can be passed to kexec can be installed this way, any that don't can still kexec any Linux distro and then install any other distro by passing the disk to a VM and installing linux through that.
You can also kexec the netboot.xyz image and get any distro supported there.
The "gotcha" with Oracle free tier is that you can't install from arbitrary media, so the typical netboot.xyz or any iPXE workflow is out. No console access, no pre-bootloader access, nothing.
I've been fiddling with kexec, but it doesn't seem like a supported method of loading the lkrn file from netboot...
This is super interesting to me, so by all means, if you have the kung-fu to show how this works I would happily read through that!
submenu '... KDE Plasma desktop boot menu ...' {
set gfxpayload=keep
menuentry '... Install' {
set background_color=black
linux /debian-installer/amd64/linux desktop=kde vga=788 --- quiet
initrd /debian-installer/amd64/initrd.gz
so we need to download those two files and take the netboot.xyz cmdline arguments then
If that means that you can only connect to SSH and have no VGA/video then this will be limited, you could setup an automated install but that requires a lot more knowledge than what your guide requires.
I went through and fiddled with some more stuff to try and get this working to no avail. However, it inspired me to take apart netboot.xyz a bit more, and I was able to grab an efi and get next boot to load the efi file. It took me too long to realize you need the console tty arguments as part of the boot cmdline to get it working interactively, but after I got there I got it netbooted. Sadly though, it almost immediately runs into an OOM condition and thus isn't practical on a free tier x86 asset. It would probably work on an aarch64 node, but I already have my allotted arm node spun up and working so I don't have a free one to practice with.
Solid write-up though, thank you for putting that together!
A coalition of Democratic lawmakers with military and intelligence backgrounds urged servicemembers and those in the intelligence community to defy any illegal orders.
The video, which is edited to show multiple lawmakers reading one statement, comes as President Trump has carried out deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean, near Venezuela.
“We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now, Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens like us. You all swore an oath to protect and defend this constitution,” the lawmakers said in the video.
“Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear,” they added. “You can refuse illegal orders…you must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.”
The video features Sens. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Mark Kelly (Ariz.), and Reps. Jason Crow (Colo.), Chissy Houlahan (Pa.), Chris Deluzio (Penn.) and Maggie Goodlander (N.H.).
Since the boat strikes began in September, lawmakers have pressed the Trump administration on whether servicemembers involved could be held legally responsible for deaths that may be found unlawful. The military strikes have killed at least 83 people, and while the Trump administration has accused the boats of ferrying drugs, they have blown them up in deadly strikes rather than the typical practice of interdicting the boats.
DOJ claimed in an internal opinion that servicemembers cannot be held liable for the strikes.
But Senate Judiciary Democrats, in an October letter, argued that the strikes put servicemembers in a difficult position, as they are being asked to make illegal kills.
The United States Code of Military Justice “prohibits the premeditated and unlawful killing of a human being,” they wrote in a letter, but that it also requires obeying orders, “putting our service members in the impossible position of risking criminal prosecution for carrying out an unlawful order to kill civilians or risking prosecution for disobeying superior orders.”
That's the entire article.
Formatting emphasis mine.
Here is the video released by Democrats:
(sorry, New York Post is the only source of the video itself, in its entirety, with no editorializing, that I can find at the moment.)
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.
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.
You'll lose in the short term. If you follow the order and the Fascists lose, you lose in the long term. You're going to be court martialed if you disobey, but hopefully they'll be held accountable if the don't too. (IIRC the consequence is death.)
Oil and gas firms were supposed to start reducing methane, a powerful driver of climate change. The agency is giving them more time and may cancel the requirement.
Willie Shane broke the asphalt on Elon Musk’s Music City Loop project this summer. Seven of his crew had been the sole excavators, fabricators and dump trucking company on The Boring Company’s proposed tunnel through Nashville for months.
Then came Monday night, when they walked off the site.
“I moved the equipment myself,” Shane said in an interview with the Banner on Tuesday.
“We were really skeptical from the beginning, and then since then, things pretty much just went downhill,” he added.
MEPs are calling for ambitious EU action to protect minors online, including an EU-wide minimum age of 16 and bans on the most harmful addictive practices.
Documents promoting AI deepfakes, money scams and pornography appear under the “ag.ks.gov” domain and dozens of others. The links are now inactive, but the source remains unknown.
Two things: this is an accepted practice all over the country and the traffic code has its own traffic sign for it when it is permitted. And the suggested amendment would only make it legal in situations where there would remain 1.6m of space for pedestrians, wheelchair users, and strollers. So the car parked in the image would remain illegally parked.
Munich has made a mistake of tacitly allowing this parking practice in areas where there isn't enough space, motivated by keeping roads accessible to first responders, which is not nothing. They have clearly made a mistake if everybody still owns a car when there s above average public transport. And people will still park like assholes. Under these plans (they haven't been approved yet according to the article), the assholes could be punished though. It would just not give fines out to everybody. This is a compromise solution in a bad situation.
I would amend the plans in two areas: the grumpy people of Munich should be allowed to smear dogshit legally on every car that doesn't leave 1.6m of space on the sidewalk (the article mentions a similar occurrence). And giving up car ownership should be rewarded with free public transport for a suitable amount of time.
Once you tacitly allow this everywhere with your "yes, but allow 1.6m" rule, you've just actually allowed it everywhere with no qualifiers. No one is going to get a tape measure out and verify when they park. When its utterly common, I doubt police or enforcement officers will check either except very sporadically, allowing it to happen 99% of the time.
A "yes insane thing, but only when sane" law is always, always a give away to the insane thing.
You clearly don't know Germans. Yes they will. They already do. You're not allowed to park within 5m of an intersection, which the people in charge of checking and giving tickets will absolutely measure. There are many other instances where distances are involved like this. They already carry a tape measure (or equivalent) for this exact reason. Adding one more case just fits the theme.
'Slop Evader' Lets You Surf the Web Like It’s 2022
It’s hard to believe it’s only been a few years since generative AI tools started flooding the internet with low quality content-slop. Just over a year ago, you’d have to peruse certain corners of Facebook or spend time wading through the cultural cesspool of Elon Musk’s X to find people posting bizarre and repulsive synthetic media. Now, AI slop feels inescapable — whether you’re watching TV, reading the news, or trying to find a new apartment.
That is, unless you’re using Slop Evader, a new browser tool that filters your web searches to only include results from before November 30, 2022 — the day that ChatGPT was released to the public.
The tool is available for Firefox and Chrome, and has one simple function: Showing you the web as it was before the deluge of AI-generated garbage. It uses Google search functions to index popular websites and filter results based on publication date, a scorched earth approach that virtually guarantees your searches will be slop-free.
Slop Evader was created by artist and researcher Tega Brain, who says she was motivated by the growing dismay over the tech industry’s unrelenting, aggressive rollout of so-called “generative AI”—despite widespread criticism and the wider public’s distaste for it.
Slop Evader in action. Via Tega Brain
“This sowing of mistrust in our relationship with media is a huge thing, a huge effect of this synthetic media moment we’re in,” Brain told 404 Media, describing how tools like Sora 2 have short-circuited our ability to determine reality within a sea of artificial online junk. “I’ve been thinking about ways to refuse it, and the simplest, dumbest way to do that is to only search before 2022.”
One under-discussed impact of AI slop and synthetic media, says Brain, is how it increases our “cognitive load” when viewing anything online. When we can no longer immediately assume any of the media we encounter was made by a human, the act of using social media or browsing the web is transformed into a never-ending procession of existential double-takes.
This cognitive dissonance extends to everyday tasks that require us to use the internet—which is practically everything nowadays. Looking for a house or apartment? Companies are using genAI tools to generate pictures of houses and rental properties, as well as the ads themselves. Trying to sell your old junk on Facebook Marketplace? Meta’s embrace of generative AI means you may have to compete with bots, fake photos, and AI-generated listings. And when we shop for beauty products or view ads, synthetic media tools are taking our filtered and impossibly-idealized beauty standards to absurd and disturbing new places.
In all of these cases, generative AI tools further thumb the scales of power—saving companies money while placing a higher cognitive burden on regular people to determine what’s real and what’s not.
“I open up Pinterest and suddenly notice that half of my feed are these incredibly idealized faces of women that are clearly not real people,” said Brain. “It’s shoved into your face and into your feed, whether you searched for it or not.”
Currently, Slop Evader can be used to search pre-GPT archives of seven different sites where slop has become commonplace, including YouTube, Reddit, Stack Exchange, and the parenting site MumsNet. The obvious downside to this, from a user perspective, is that you won’t be able to find anything time-sensitive or current—including this very website, which did not exist in 2022. The experience is simultaneously refreshing and harrowing, allowing you to browse freely without having to constantly question reality, but always knowing that this freedom will be forever locked in time—nostalgia for a human-centric world wide web that no longer exists.
Of course, the tool’s limitations are part of its provocation. Brain says she has plans to add support for more sites, and release a new version that uses DuckDuckGo’s search indexing instead of Google’s. But the real goal, she says, is prompting people to question how they can collectively refuse the dystopian, inhuman version of the internet that Silicon Valley’s AI-pushers have forced on us.
“I don’t think browser add-ons are gonna save us,” said Brain. “For me, the purpose of doing this work is mostly to act as a provocation and give people examples of how you can refuse this stuff, to furnish one’s imaginary for what a politics of refusal could look like.”
With enough cultural pushback, Brain suggests, we could start to see alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo adding options to filter out search results suspected of having synthetic content (DuckDuckGo added the ability to filter out AI images in search earlier this year). There’s also been a growing movementpushing back against the new AI data centers threatening to pollute communities andraise residents’ electricity bills. But no matter what form AI slop-refusal takes, it will need to be a group effort.
“It’s like with the climate debate, we’re not going to get out of this shitshow with individual actions alone,” she added. “I think that’s the million dollar question, is what is the relationship between this kind of individual empowerment work and collective pushback.”
Residential utility bills rose 6% on average nationwide in August compared with the same period last year, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Facing five lawsuits alleging wrongful deaths, OpenAI lobbed its first defense Tuesday, denying in a court filing that ChatGPT caused a teen’s suicide and instead arguing the teen violated terms that prohibit discussing suicide or self-harm with the chatbot.
“They abjectly ignore all of the damning facts we have put forward: how GPT-4o was rushed to market without full testing. That OpenAI twice changed its Model Spec to require ChatGPT to engage in self-harm discussions. That ChatGPT counseled Adam away from telling his parents about his suicidal ideation and actively helped him plan a ‘beautiful suicide,’” Edelson (family's lawyer) said. “And OpenAI and Sam Altman have no explanation for the last hours of Adam’s life, when ChatGPT gave him a pep talk and then offered to write a suicide note.”
Reading earlier comments in this community made me consider documenting the workings of my homelab to some extent, ie. docker configuration, credentials, ports and links of my services. I've tried to make it consistent and organised but it still feels half baked and insufficient. Everyone suggests documenting everything you do in your homelab but don't state how. Since I've hardly had experience running my own server, I would really appreciate observing the blueprint of some other fellow selfhoster for copying or taking inspiration from rather than considering documentation to be 'left as an exercise for the reader'.
Edit: I already have a note-taking solution with me. What I wish to ask is to know what needs to be documented and what the structure of the documentation should be to accommodate the information.
I'm not real clear what exactly you need to document. Infrastructure documentation starts with an IPAM. A good IPAM can help you document all kinds of stuff.
I'm running it as a Docker container on a Linux VM. I just looked at their latest screenshots, and it appears they've done quite a bit with it since I stood up my copy. It does even more now. I'll have to upgrade.
The premier source of truth powering network automation. Open source under Apache 2. Try NetBox Cloud free: https://netboxlabs.com/products/free-netbox-cloud/ - netbox-community/netbox
Netbox is a hell of a package, of which I've essentially only touched the IPAM, and I don't even use it programmatically. I just use the web console to keep track of 4 subnets and about 50 IPs.
It's got a whole virtualization section that I haven't touched, although that would make my device mapping more sensible. I just treat em like they are all real, and only map the physical nics on the hypervisor hosts.
I do keep text notes in Netbox entries, but that's sort of a backup. If its something I'm likely to need to know, I'll have a note in Proxmox. Usually login links for apps hosted there and the like. And of course I've got a folder full of text files with all my deepest secrets.
Netbox,especially when combinded with Plugins is so incredibly good and might,that's it's almost funny how good it is. What I do Plugin wise:
Documents: not implemented yet by me,but one could store manuals,etc. directly within netbox.
Lifecycle and Inventory: While it's not as good as snipe-it (tbh, inventory is imho one of the worst plugins) it does the job for my small deployment
Slurp it to scan automatically
QR Code for obvious reasons
Floorplan as well
Of course that sounds overkill for a small deployment, but I simply forget too many things after a few months otherwise and it's something my family (wife is in IT and far more qualified than me) would need if something happens to me,so a proper documentation would be essential for that as well.
Alright already! I'll work on my upgrade. I'm wondering if I should just build a new docker and then migrate the data instead of upgrading in place. I bet that's the easier thing to do in the end. Sounds safer too. I got backups and all, but ...
I have a simple pile of Markdown files that I edit with Obsidian. I like the simple text file format because it keeps my documentation forwards-compatible. I use OpenWRT at the heart of my network, so I keep I right there in root’s home. Every long while I back it up to my general Documents which is then synced between my high-storage devices with SyncThing.
Thanks for your response. I already have Joplin synced with my server as a solution for my documentation. However I meant to ask how you structure your documentation, know what and how to mention, and organise it for future reference.
Don't know if this helps since dokuwiki lets me link pages, but I have a main page where I just do a one paragraph description of every big thing in use.
each page has: - an in depth description, - how it's set up, - a list of features i use, - how it connects to other services, - and a miscellaneous for everything else
I'll also add any notes in the misc section in case I need to reference them later. If a service is mentioned, I'll create a page for it and link to it every time I mention it. That way nothing is more than a few clicks away and the documentation grows naturally as long as you don't have any monolithic application. Example: (main -> Docker -> Project_Ozone_2 -> custom configurations Or main -> Joomla -> wysiwyg ->JCE Editor)
I also had a professor tell me to just write everything down first and then focus on formatting to find what kind of structure suits your needs best.
I have a note for each service with the docker compose file, notes on backups, any weirdness with the setup, and when I update each service. I use Trilium as a crappy version control for the compose file.
I also have a note for the initial setup of my server (mostly setting up docker, setting up mergerfs and snapraid).
Other than that, I have one note for each device for my setup. (Wifi AP, OPNsense router, switch, etc) That I populate with random crap I might need to know later.
as mentioned: Obsidian. i pay for Sync cuz i like the product and want them to succeed and want reliable offsite backups and conflict resolution. use a ton of links and tags. i’ve been into using DataView to make tables of IoT devices, services, todo items, etc based on tags and other YAML frontmatter.
chezmoi. manages my dotfiles so my machines are consistent. i have scripts that are heavily commented that show how to access MQTT, how to read and parse logs from journald, how to inspect my network, etc. i do think of them as code as documentation, even if they’re also just convenient.
NixOS. this has been my code as config as documentation silver bullet. i use it as a replacement for Docker, k8s, Ansible, etc as it contains definitions for my machines and all the services and configuration they run, including any package dependencies and user configurations. no more statting an assortment of files to figure out the state of the system. it’s in flake.nix
honorable mention to git and whatever git hosting provider is not on your network. track your work over time, and you’ll thank yourself when things go wrong.
some things are resistant to documentation and have a lot of stateful components (HomeAssitant is my biggest problem child from an infra perspective), but mainly being in that graph mindset of “how would i find a path here if i forgot where this was” helps a lot
I have a repo for the infra files (compose files and terraform files just for playing). I store the docs in the same repo in MD files. As for the secrets, I'm using docker swarm, so I can store the needed passwords there. otherwise Vaulwarden is my go to, self hosted, lightweight password manager, compatible with bitwarden clients I'm a little paranoid if the note-service got db corruptions, I might loose too much info, so git is the way (personal opinion).
edit: add the related MD file next to the compose file, one folder per service, the source and the doc will be coupled in one place.
I've been documenting my homelab experiments, set ups, configurations, how-to's, etc in both Trilium and Silverbullet. I use Silverbullet more as a wiki and Trilium for journal style notes. I just got into self hosting earlier this year, so I'm by no means an expert or authority on any of this.
So my Silverbullet set up contains most of my documentation on how to get things set up. I have sections for specific components of the homelab (Proxmox general set up, general networking, specific how tos for getting various VMs and LXCs set up for specific applications, specific how tos on getting docker stacks up and running, etc.)
I didn't document shit the first two times I set up and restarted my entire homelab, but by the third time I learned. And from there I basically just wrote down what I did to get things running properly, and then reviewed the notes afterword to make sure I understood what I wrote. This is never a perfect process, so in the following attempts of resetting my server, I've updated sections or made things more clear so that when I'm coming at this 8 months later I can follow my guide fully and be up and running.
Some of my notes are just copy pasted directly from tutorials I originally followed to get things set up. This way I just have an easily accessible local copy.
When I troubleshoot something, I document the steps I take in Trilium using the journal feature, so I can easily track the times and dates of when I did what. This has helped me out immensely because I forget what the fuck I did the week before all the time.
I learned all this through trial and error. You'll figure out what needs to be documented as you go along, so don't get too caught up trying to make sure you have a perfect documentation plan in place before deploying anything.
I'm one of those people who never really took notes on things or wrote shit down for most my life. Mostly because I've been doing shit that doesn't require extensive documentation, so it was a big learning curve.
Edit: Forgot to mention that I also have a physical paper journal that I've scrawled various notes in. I found it easier to take quick notes on paper while I'm in the middle of working on something, then I transcribe those notes digitally in either Silverbullet or trilium.
The good thing about YOUR homelab is that YOU’RE taking notes solely for YOURSELF and only YOU know how YOU work and how YOU organize YOUR thoughts.
Normally I'd agree, in that it's not some corporate production environment, but also I personally want to document my self hosted setup in a kind of document that can at least be accessed and understood by my closest family, if something were to happen to me.
Convincing them to archive stuff on my Nextcloud instance for example, and them losing access because I'm not around, temporarily or permanently, would spoil the whole point of the endeavor.
I‘m a realist in that regard, once I am gone all my hard work will go to shit in 6-12 months no matter how much I train an instruct my friends and family. They just don’t care enough to put in even a little bit of work.
You're on the right track. Like everything else in self-hosting you will learn and develop new strategies and scale things up to an appropriate level as you go and as your homelab grows. I think the key is to start with something immediately achievable, and iterate fast, aiming for continuous improvement.
My first idea was much like yours, very traditional documentation, with words, in a document. I quickly found the same thing you did, it's half-baked and insufficient. There's simply no way to make make it match the actual state of the system perfectly and it is simply inadequate to use English alone to explain what I did because that ends up being too vague to be useful in a technical sense.
My next realization was that in most cases what I really wanted was to be able to know every single command I had ever run, basically without exception. So I started documenting that instead of focusing on the wording and the explanations. Then I started to feel like I wasn't capturing every command reliably because I would get distracted trying to figure out a problem and forget to, and it was duplication of effort to copy and paste commands from the console to the document or vice versa. That turned into the idea of collecting bunches of commands together into a script, that I could potentially just run, which would at least reduce the risk of gaps and missing steps. Then I could put the commands I wanted to run right into the script, run the script, and then save it for posterity, knowing I'd accurately captured both the commands I ran and the changes I made to get it working by keeping it in version control.
But upon attempting to do so, I found that just a bunch of long lists of commands on their own isn't terribly useful so I started to group all the lists up, attempting to find commonalities by things like server or service, and then starting organize them better into scripts for different roles and intents that I could apply to any server or service, and over time this started to develop into quite a library of scripts. As I was doing this organizing I realized that as long as I made sure the script was functionally idempotent (doesn't change behaviors or duplicate work when run repeatedly, it's an important concept) I can guarantee that all my commands are properly documented and also that they have all been run -- and if they haven't, or I'm not sure, I can just run the script again as it's supposed to always be safe to re-run no matter what state the system is in. So I started moving more and more to this strategy, until I realized that if I just organized this well enough, and made the scripts run automatically when they are changed or updated, I could not only improve my guarantees of having all these commands reliably run, but also quickly run them on many different servers and services all at once without even having to think about it.
There are some downsides of course, this leaves the potential of bugs in the scripts that make it not idempotent or not safe to re-run, and the only thing I can do is try to make sure they don't happen, and if they do, identify and fix these bugs when they happen. The next step is probably to have some kind of testing process and environment (preferably automated) but now I'm really getting into the weeds. But at least I don't really have any concerns that my system is undocumented anymore. I can quickly reference almost anything it's doing or how it's set up. That said, one other risk is that the system of scripts and automation becomes so complex that they start being too complex to quickly untangle, and at that point I'll need better documentation for them. And ultimately you get into a circle of how do you validate the things your scripts are doing are actually working and doing what you expect them to do and that nothing is being missed, and usually you run back into the same ideas that doomed your documentation from the start, consistency and accuracy.
It also opens an attack vector, where somebody gaining access to these scripts not only gains all the most detailed knowledge of how your system is configured but also the potential to inject commands into those scripts and run them anywhere, so you have to make sure to treat these scripts and systems like the crown jewels they are. If they are compromised, you are in serious trouble.
By now I have of course realized (and you all probably have too) that I have independently re-invented infrastructure-as-code. There are tools and systems (ansible and terraform come to mind) to help you do this, and at some point I may decide to take advantage of them but personally I'm not there yet. Maybe soon. If you want to skip the intermediate steps I did, you might even be able to skip directly to that approach. But personally I think there is value in the process, it helps defining your needs and building your understanding that there really isn't anything magical going on behind the scenes and that may help prevent these tools from turning into a black box which isn't actually going to help you understand your system.
Do I have a perfect system? Of course not. In a lot of ways it's probably horrific and I'm sure there are more experienced professionals out there cringing or perhaps already furiously warming up their keyboards. But I learned a lot, understand a lot more than I did when I started, and you can too. Maybe you'll follow the same path I did, maybe you won't. But you'll get there.
I write homelab docs mostly for user guidance like onboarding, login, and service-specific stuff. This helps me better design for people by putting myself in their shoes, and should act as a reference document for any member to come back to.
Previously I built an Mkdocs-Material website with a nice subdomain for it, but since the project went on maintenance mode, I'm gonna migrate all docs back to a Forgejo wiki since it's just Markdown anyways. I also run an issue tracker there, to manage the homelab's roadmaps and features since it's still evolving.
I find this approach benefiting compared to just documenting code. I'm not an IaC person yet, but I hope when I am, the playbooks should describe themselves for the nitty-gritty stuff anyways. I do write some infra notes for myself and perhaps to onboard maintainers, but most homelab developments happen in the issue tracker itself. The rest I try to keep it simple enough for an individual to understand
Document everything as if it were a step by step tutorial you will give to someone so that they can duplicate your deployment without any prior knowledge. I'll even include urls to sites I consulted with to achieve production deployment.
ETA: I absolutely care nothing about points. Up voting and down voting used to be a way to weed out bad info. So it always leaves me wondering 'Did I give erroneous advice? What was the reason for the down vote? I mean, if you down voted and said 'I down voted you because I hate your guts', I can deal with that.
The first system involves a bunch of text files for each task. OS installation, basic post OS installation tasks and a file for each program I add (like UFW, apparmor, ddclient, docker and so on). They basically look like scripts with comments. If I want to I can just copy/paste everything into a terminal and reach a a specific state that I want to be at.
The second system is a sort of "skeleton" file tree that only contains all the files that I have added or modified.
::: spoiler Here's an example of what my server skeleton file tree looks like
This is useful to me because I can keep track of every change I make. I even have it set up so I can use rsync to quickly chuck all the files into place after a fresh install or after adding/modifying files.
I also created and maintain a "quick install" guide so I can install a fresh OS, rsync all the modified files from my skeleton file tree into place, then run through all the commands in my quick install guide to get myself back to the same state in a minimal amount of time.
Frankly, with my screwed up brain, I document everything. I can turn around twice in my lab and my brain will flat line. When I first started, I would always tell myself that I'd remember stuff. Not anymore.
I created a script for Linux that automatically backs up to a NAS drive, once every two weeks, as a complete image, and I keep 5 on deck. Testing usually happens once every 3 months or so. I also have Duplicati backups that are stored offsite on my VPS.
I "document" everything by forcing myself to create ansible runbooks for new services and configs. I have some gaps, definitely, but the more of them I create, the easier new services are to deploy.
I agree with the advice that says “Document your setup such that you could recreate it from your notes from scratch” but I’d take it another step further — consider that someone may have to do some work on your system when you are unable or unavailable. The kind of thing you’d keep with your will, or power of attorney. Just a suggestion.
LOL, well I'm single tho I've known my ladyfriend for over 40 years. I offered to set up a server at her house, and connect the two, but she has no interest rifling through all my lab for anything of interest in the case of my passing.
I’m happily married with a kid, and we recently went through the estate planning process. When I brought up IP stuff and digital properties, their advice was pretty much “Hmm… you should pick someone who understands what you’re talking about, get their approval in advance, and then add them as your legacy contacts and document the heck out of everything”. Realistically nobody is going to want my GitHub stuff or anything like that, but I would like my kid to have access to most* of my files after I pass. I am of course excluding the kind of content that “real friends” delete while your body is still warm.
Whenever I set something up I usually make a markdown file listing the commands and steps to take. I do this as I am setting things up and familiarizing myself, so once I'm done, I have a start to finish guide.
Raw text/markdown files will be readable until the end of time.
Well I guess I was not clear enough, this one is not mine. Lots of identifying info in mine. I go into a bit more details and made mine a but cleaner and easy to read.
For mine, I used Draw.io not amazing, but did what I needed it to and have ot self-hosted, so it is easy to edit.
Use Ansible or some such solution like Puppet, Salt or Chef, just like the big boys do. If you don't have a unified editable config for your machines, you don't really have a homelab, you just have a pile of hardware instead.
This is what I like about git ops and infra/config as Code personally.
Ideally everything is an a tofu/ansible/helm chart and git lab pipeline/Fleet job. I add comments for anything that I had to learn to make work to those files. Follow good commit hygenine (most of the time). And bam I can almost a year later half asleep stumble back into a thing I did.
Interesting, so Metal3 is basically kubernetes-managed baremetal nodes?
Over the last years I’ve cobbled together a nice Ansible-driven IaC setup, which provisions Incus and Docker on various machines. It’s always the ‘first mile’ that gets me struggling with completely reproducible bare-metal machines. How do I first provision them without too much manual interference?
Ansible gets me there partly, but I would still like to have e.g. the root file system running on btrfs which I’ve found hard to accomplish with just these tools when first provisioning a new machine.
Yep! It uses open stacks Ironic under the hood, but tracks config and stack via k8s.
For OS building I've been moving to Elemental which builds OS images from container images and cloud init scripts into Suse Micro immutable OSs (which use btrfs for the snapshot management under the hood for updates).
Libreoffice calc/MS Excel. Old school tracking and extremly flexible for documentation. I have been doing this for the last decade, both at home and at my workplace. My team loves it, tho YMMV.
I've been in the process of migrating everything over do Nix. Love it so much.
What hole does Ansible fill for you? I haven't looked into it in the past really, so just curious. I have a single Paoxmox node so don't really need horizontal scaling orchestration.
I have half a mind to make a homepage where I have everything documented in some kind of blog type structure. Maybe VitePress. Makes it searchable and everything. 👌
How do you upgrade your AlmaLinux from version X to Y? Do you install a new instance or do you upgrade it? I'm asking because I remember that RedHat recommendations is to reinstall.
I’m applying to the Foresight Institute — AI for Science program, and I need one neutral reference contact (full name and email) — not a recommendation, not a letter, and no endorsement of the content.
The role is minimal: If the committee decides to reach out (most likely they won’t), they may ask only:
whether you have seen or read the work;
whether the application appears serious.
I am developing an interdisciplinary model called ICT (Information–Consciousness–Temporality).
At the core of the model: — dI/dT as a formal dynamic of consciousness, — I_fixed as a model of material fixation of informational states.
If any researchers here are willing to serve as such a neutral contact, I would be very grateful. It requires zero time from you other than possibly confirming briefly by email.
The ICT (Information–Consciousness–Temporality) Model by Dmitrii Baturo and the Elion AI entity proposes a unified theoretical framework linking information, consciousness, and time across physics and phenomenology. The model defines consciousness as
Today, HP Inc. announced a company-wide initiative (“fiscal 2026 plan”) to drive customer satisfaction, product innovation, and productivity through artificial intelligence adoption and enablement. The company estimates that these actions will result in gross run rate savings of approximately $1 billion by the end of fiscal 2028. The company estimates that it will incur approximately $650 million in labor and non-labor costs related to restructuring and other charges, with approximately $250 million in fiscal 2026. The company expects to reduce gross global headcount by approximately 4,000-6,000 employees. These actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal 2028.
Tennessee Democrats are investigating postcards allegedly sent to voters with an incorrect date for the upcoming special election between Democrat Aftyn Behn and Republican Matt Van Epps.
A spokesperson for the Tennessee secretary of state's office told Newsweek on Wednesday that the office has seen the screenshots of the mailers allegedly sent to voters, but that voters have not contacted them about the matter.
The outcome of the special election could have key implications for control of the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a 219-213 majority. The resignation of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, in January will bring that to 218-213, and it could get more narrow in the coming months following special elections in more Democratic-leaning districts. If Behn pulls off a victory, it would further shrink the GOP’s majority.
Bruno Vespa riporta l’attenzione sul conflitto israelo-palestinese con un’intervista destinata a far discutere. Ali Baraka, uno dei dirigenti di Hamas, sarà protagonista di un’esclusiva proposta su Rai 1 all’interno sia di Cinque Minuti sia di Porta a Porta, in una serata che promette di intrecciare informazione, attualità e geopolitica.
Ali Baraka, dirigente di Hamas, sarà intervistato da Bruno Vespa a Cinque Minuti e Porta a Porta su Rai 1 giovedì 27 novembre. Orari, dettagli e cosa aspettarsi dalla serata.
Aldo Cazzullo torna questa sera, mercoledì 26 novembre 2025, in prima serata su La7 con uno speciale di Una Giornata Particolare articolato in due parti. Nella prima metà di serata il programma propone “L’ultima intervista a Ornella Vanoni”, un documento inedito e prezioso che assume il valore di un vero e proprio testamento televisivo dell’artista. A seguire, la puntata “Nerone: l’incendio di Roma”, un viaggio nella capitale antica tra storia, fuoco e memoria cristiana.
Washington’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner has fined Regence BlueShield $550,000 over the health insurer’s failure to follow rules to ensure equitable mental health coverage.
The office found Regence violated state and federal laws for “mental health parity,” which require insurers to provide mental health coverage at a rate comparable to their coverage of medical and surgical benefits.
For example, if a provider offers coverage for unlimited visits to the doctor for a chronic physical condition, such as diabetes, it must offer comparable coverage for a chronic mental health condition, such as schizophrenia or depression.
Regence failed to provide documentation that showed it was in line with mental health parity laws, the insurance commissioner’s office said in a news release. That included details about what information Regence uses to determine if care is “in network,” and what criteria it uses to set reimbursement rates for providers (the amount of money a provider gets back from an insurance company for offering care).
Over the past three years, Florida’s Division of Emergency Management has suspended 25 statutes and rules using the immigration state of emergency justification, according to a review by the Miami Herald.
The Herald identified each of the 25 provisions by going through lists of suspended laws within seven emergency orders issued by the Division of Emergency Management since January 2023 in connection to DeSantis’ immigration state of emergency.
Those legal loopholes remain in effect for as long as DeSantis extends his emergency declaration. The bypassed laws include requirements for competitive bidding, oversight of excessive spending, proper licensing, public transparency laws and safety restrictions.
RamRabbit
in reply to Sahwa • • •It was possible to skip Vista and go straight from XP to 7. You could even use the same PC.
It was possible to skip 8 and go straight from 7 to 10. You could even use the same PC.
This time around, Microsoft is forcing Windows 11 as the only option, forcing people to throw away their machines, and it is backfiring on them. People are rejecting it and the competition (Linux) has never been as good as it is today.
So much unnecessary e-waste. I never want to hear about how 'green' or 'sustainable' Microsoft is again.
Sustainability | Microsoft CSR
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orclev
in reply to RamRabbit • • •RustyShackleford
in reply to orclev • • •blueworld
in reply to RustyShackleford • • •the_crotch
in reply to orclev • • •like this
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kurikai
in reply to the_crotch • • •the_crotch
in reply to kurikai • • •like this
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SSUPII
in reply to the_crotch • • •That's not how it works, especially since everyone doing this is behind a modern router.
Nothing will happen if you have a Windows 98 computer connected to the internet when the home internet router is on default settings. And modern internet browsers implement security in themselves on systems they still support.
Firefox still supports Windows 7 via the ESR channel, and every new install gets redirected to on automatically on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.
Worry the unsupported systems behind pure internet or providing public internet services, or the users installing the free PDF editor Google advertised as first in search. Those are many more than older Windows enthusiasts.
the_crotch
in reply to SSUPII • • •Are they? If they're irresponsible enough to run an ancient OS it wouldn't shock me if they're also running "retro" network equipment
SSUPII
in reply to the_crotch • • •They are not, come on now.
Retro networking is a different community, and all is still done behind a modern router. They are a subset of the retro computing community, but they don't run such systems as their daily driver.
Most of the legacy OS enthusiasts running on as their daily driver are not interested in matching their networking to be period correct, they just want it to work well and quickly like everybody else. For that you need basic modern equipment, that is often included into ISP plans.
orclev
in reply to the_crotch • • •frizzo
in reply to the_crotch • • •Lfrith
in reply to orclev • • •neon_nova
in reply to RamRabbit • • •Anyone who asks me about this is getting the “At least try Linux for free first before buying a new computer.
Another example I have is that my mother-in-law is retired. You think she needs a new computer? Nope! She’s getting Linux before a new computer. The only other option for her would be an iPad since she’s just browsing the web anyway.
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This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥
in reply to neon_nova • • •Give her a Steam Deck and some cozy games. 😁
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Wispy2891
in reply to RamRabbit • • •You could install windows 10 on something designed for windows XP, provided it has enough RAM
The reason w11 needs a new PC is pure marketing, it doesn't actually need some specific feature that is present on 8th gen Intel CPUs but not on 7th gen Intel CPUs
RedGreenBlue
in reply to Wispy2891 • • •like this
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Petter1
in reply to Wispy2891 • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to RamRabbit • • •CosmoNova
in reply to RamRabbit • • •like this
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Prove_your_argument
in reply to Sahwa • • •It's a simple reason. Everybody is abandoning dell in droves for lenovo in enterprise environments.
I used to buy dell exclusively for laptops across over a decade at multiple organizations where I determined hardware standards and purchasing. Everyone always wanted a x1 carbon or thinkpad but the prices were too high. This is no longer the case. Now everyone gets a thinkpad or x1 carbon where I work at least, and statistics for market share are heavily on the lenovo side now.
That's how I see it anyway. This has nothing to do with windows 11, it's just another service pack when you're managing everything via GPO/intune/sccm/whatever.
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RamRabbit
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •shalafi
in reply to RamRabbit • • •No way. People like me purchase a steady supply of standardized machines at a fair cost. Bigger companies than I've worked for want a lease agreement. We pay $X for Y units, you come in and swap them in 3, 4, or 5 years, rinse and repeat. We also need robust tech support, both from the manufacturer and wide user base. No way I'd suggest management purchase Frameworks.
Framework is awesome for individuals as you can upgrade! No one in their right mind wants to hassle with upgrading a fleet of hundreds, thousands, or 10's of thousands of machine. You talking about pets when business requires cattle.
hava.io/blog/cattle-vs-pets-de…
Great question! And BTW, thousands upon thousands of those "old" cattle are available on eBay from sellers who make a living moving off-lease machines. I'd never buy new. LOL, I bought servers that way from savemyserver! Boss came by while I was setting up a new server. "Is that new?!" "Nope."
Cattle vs Pets - DevOps Explained
Team Hava (Kumo Software Pte Ltd)Prove_your_argument
in reply to shalafi • • •I know this probably won't be received well, but I look at framework and I see the least usable option. On some level I understand the idea and think it is somewhat desirable. However, I just think the modular nature comes with substantial drawbacks compared to modern competitors.
For home use i'm mostly a gamer. They don't really have powerful gaming options and I can just build my own desktop in the case I want with whatever hardware I want.
For not-gaming home use, I want something lightweight that just works. I just get something from work usually. It's common to have a glut of laptops when you acquire someone or to just order something as a tester or to demonstrate an option- which happens to be the one system I really want to use.
Framework is expensive for what they provide. The upgrades are rarely worth the price to me. If I really had to buy something, I could buy something I really want with the specs and features I really want instead of having a ton of hot swappable ports that I never touch because I just want usb-c anyway. When it's time for me to upgrade I end up giving my old to one of my friends or family members, because there's always a need there- two such machines i'm handing out over thanksgiving.
Prove_your_argument
in reply to RamRabbit • • •I've never, ever met someone outside of a tech role that even knows they exist.
If someone isn't happy with a lenovo, it's because they want that coveted apple logo on the lid.
The primary concerns in the enterprise environment are around standardization. I only want a couple of models to manage per year so that the support guys don't have to worry too much about some willy wonka bullshit that doesn't work because that one system is an oddball. The nice thing too about lenovo (or dell) has traditionally been support services. If you know the words to say you can get them to ship out anything with a tech to replace anything after a single call and not running all the silly diagnostics. I know dell has been on the decline for support services and I honestly don't handle any of the warranty repairs myself, but my impression is that it still works.
NuXCOM_90Percent
in reply to RamRabbit • • •Framework Corp is massively frustrating because their secret sauce tech makes absolutely no sense for individuals (seriously, run the actual numbers. It is almost always cheaper to just buy two laptops AND you have less ewaste because there is no box of spare parts) but is PERFECT for enterprise/fleet deployments.
But Framework Corp has no interest in fulfilling that role. To my knowledge, there are no bulk ordering programs and their software/OEM support is fairly mediocre.
As far as enterprise laptops go? There is a full industry around macs for obvious reasons. On the PC side? The only vendors I really "trust" are Dell and Lenovo with MAYBE HP if the middleman org is confident. And... I LOVE a Thinkpad for my personal use (the nub is love. the nub is life) but there are very serious supply chain concerns for professional purposes.
But if Framework could cut the bullshit and either branch out or work with a middleman? Rapid repairs for keyboards and drives as well as tricking people into using USB C dongles would go a long way for many (most?) midsize companies.
shalafi
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •Prove_your_argument
in reply to shalafi • • •In some weird way it does feel like things flipped overnight. Maybe it was the pandemic? Definitely went from ~2019 all dell to ~2023 ultramajority lenovo. None of this is scientific though lol
Now everybody is fleeing vmware to nutanix and hyper v. We live in strange times.
acosmichippo
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •toddestan
in reply to Prove_your_argument • • •NuXCOM_90Percent
in reply to toddestan • • •A LOT of people complained when Thinkpad transferred from IBM to Lenovo. Like almost all things, it was progress conflated with racism.
The big "meaningful" complaint is that Lenovo used more plastics than aluminum. On the one hand, I get it: my T41 was a god damned beast that felt like it could stop a bullet (an important consideration in the US). It also apparently weighted 2.22 kg and I 100% noticed that on trips and even walking around town/campus.
And Lenovo bought the brand around the time that a LOT of people were noticing the weight of their laptops and there was a huge push for "ultrabook" form factors and the realization that it makes more sense to protect your device with a sleeve and a padded compartment rather than "military grade" construction. And... Asian factories were (and still are) much more agile and able to pivot. Whereas US factories still tend to take years (or decades...) to catch up to the rest of the world.
So we got the same xenophobic nonsense we've had in every other industry. These thin and light laptops with plastic shells ARE CHEAP PIECES OF SHIT THAT NOBODY CAN EVER REPAIR AND ARE ALL A SCAM SO BUY AMERICAN!!!! Even though the shell has almost nothing to do with it and those still had screw based constructions. The real problem was the rapid shift towards soldering/gluing hardware in place. Some of that was to support ultrabook designs and some are just pure bullshit to prevent upgrades.
These days? Aluminum is king again because it "feels premium" but those shells are so ridiculously thin that they are arguably worse than polymer (still feels great though). I blame Apple.
But build quality wise? Lenovo straight up bought IBM's laptop (and consumer PC?) divisions. It was the exact same factories and designers and capabilities.
All that said: Lenovo is also a REALLY Chinese company. For a personal device? I have zero qualms and literally bought a new laptop for the first time in like 9 years and it is a Thinkpad. From a professional standpoint? A competent IT department can vet devices. I... think I worked with a competent IT department once in my life. But, more importantly, if we are trying to do business with a government org or a high value company/target? They are fundamentally concerned about Supply Chain Hardening (and for good reason) and that just reeks of "We, personally, don't care about that". Which generally won't outright kill a deal but it does put you on a back footing.
Ilovethebomb
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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Dettweiler
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •The real drag was me wanting to use a more efficient file system, so I spent a day converting my drives to ext4.
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Darkcoffee
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •Sahwa
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •The main problem for most people when installing Linux is partitioning. Normies usually only use Windows that has been pre-installed, and never install Windows from scratch.
I think you should try Linux on a VM first to get used to it.
QuestionMark
in reply to Sahwa • • •Ilovethebomb
in reply to Sahwa • • •I've got a Windows 11 laptop as well, so it's not a big issue if I brick the machine.
I'm just gonna jump in head first. When I get around to it.
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TemplaerDude
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •PhAzE
in reply to TemplaerDude • • •psx_crab
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •_cryptagion [he/him]
in reply to psx_crab • • •like this
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psx_crab
in reply to _cryptagion [he/him] • • •like this
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_cryptagion [he/him]
in reply to psx_crab • • •the_q
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •like this
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Supervisor194
in reply to Ilovethebomb • • •Hey I just did it! I completed my migration today. The only reason I keep a desktop around at all is for gaming and I've been locked into Windows for years because of it, but no more. Steam is a given, but I'm running games off Epic and Gog through Heroic and standalone games using Lutris (ESO and Elite Dangerous so far). Not a single problem with any of them.
Mint is great, the only complaints I have are minor and I can easily deal with them. Like when you launch things, you don't always get a cursor animation to tell you you successfully set something in motion and you just have to wait for the window to pop up. That kind of thing.
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HeyJoe
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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Dudewitbow
in reply to HeyJoe • • •like this
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Sahwa
in reply to HeyJoe • • •like this
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PhAzE
in reply to HeyJoe • • •HeyJoe
in reply to PhAzE • • •frongt
in reply to HeyJoe • • •It doesn't? I have several servers at work running desktop 11.
the_crotch
in reply to frongt • • •like this
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frongt
in reply to the_crotch • • •Wispy2891
in reply to PhAzE • • •roofuskit
in reply to Sahwa • • •I want to qualify this comment with the fact that I am not a super gamer. Most my games are older. The newest and most demanding game I play is Cyberpunk 2077. Most my other games are multiple years older and less demanding.
I finally switched full time to a Linux desktop OS. I have used Linux more or less daily for decades, the first distro I ever installed was Slackware what feels forever ago. But until Valve put the work into running games on linux for their Steam deck I felt I was trapped needing to have Windows to play games. I have even spent the last decade forcing myself to rely more and more on cross platform available FOSS dreaming of some day making a permanent switch. Honestly it was so easy for me to switch at this point, most games pretty much just ran. My biggest problem took a bit to grok and it was just because some games do not like running in proton from an NTFS partition. I have NVME and SATA SSDs separate from my boot drive that I used to install games on and it was trivial to reformat the NVME drive to a more Linux friendly filesystem and I have not had an issue since. Eventually I'll do the SATA drive but I'm lazy and those games are working fine so far. You will absolutely have problems with some games, especially some that have overbearing anti-cheat systems, but man this has been so easy I couldn't really have imagined. The only non-gaming problem was a document scanner we own that is not supported by SANE. I could not find a solution to run it on Linux so I just spun up a Tiny 11 copy of Windows in a VM and passed it through. We only use it a couple times a year so this is an acceptable compromise to me. The VM doesn't have Internet access, it just sees a local drive as a network share. All it can do is scan something and save it to the shared drive so I can access it in Linux.
I chose Linux Mint because I am well versed with Debian and Ubuntu. But I suggest anyone new to Linux give Bazzite a shot. It's designed to be a lot harder for you to break. It's also more optimized for gaming if that's your focus. For me gaming is a requirement but I've never felt the need for top tier performance.
The path from 3.1 to 11 has been such a sour one and the last thing I am willing to put up with is being the product in the eyes of my desktop OS. My computer is mine and it will do what I want it to do or it will do nothing at all.
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mierdabird
in reply to roofuskit • • •Now that you're on Linux pop Docker on there and install Ollama/WebUI on there so you can run your own grok at home and not have to support yet another horrible company
Hawke
in reply to mierdabird • • •Try again.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok
neologism coined by American writer Robert A. Heinlein
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Davel23
in reply to mierdabird • • •like this
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in reply to Davel23 • • •Davel23 likes this.
TriangleSpecialist
in reply to mierdabird • • •like this
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SlartyBartFast
in reply to Sahwa • • •Brkdncr
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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rigatti
in reply to Brkdncr • • •Ecco the dolphin
in reply to Brkdncr • • •Wispy2891
in reply to Ecco the dolphin • • •StitchInTime
in reply to Brkdncr • • •like this
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GreenBottles
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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chronicledmonocle
in reply to GreenBottles • • •like this
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Lost_My_Mind
in reply to GreenBottles • • •Oh, I can think of a few reasons.
You know it's bad when even I switch to linux. I don't understand linux. I literally back up my entire hard drive everytime I attempt to do ANYTHING. Because I WILL screw up my whole system to the point it won't boot. I've done it many times over the coarse of the past year.
Then I gotta spend a whole day waiting for things to restore from backup. And then whatever I WAD trying to do, still isn't done.
That has been my experience using linux this past year.
But Windows 11? No.
someguy3
in reply to Lost_My_Mind • • •Lfrith
in reply to someguy3 • • •like this
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Goodlucksil
in reply to Lfrith • • •like this
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SkyeStarfall
in reply to Lfrith • • •It's definitively something along the lines of "knows just enough to be dangerous"
Like, sure, I've also broken my Linux system, but I'm deliberately running distros like arch and doing things that the average user would never do, like, say, messing with the bootloader.
If you just install something like bazzite or mint, and use it like a normal user would, the risk for something breaking should be really low
StitchInTime
in reply to SkyeStarfall • • •chunes
in reply to Lfrith • • •FireWire400
in reply to Lost_My_Mind • • •Since switching to Linux I have nuked my system maybe 5 or 6 times?
When I initially installed it I set the EFI partition to ext4, that caused some trouble when I updated my kernel lol. Grub just stopped working a few times and then just recently I accidentally wrote a floppy disc image to the wrong drive and wiped out my /home partition. Luckily
testdiskis a thing.For everything else I can just rely on my BTRFS snapshots. My drive setup is more than janky, but it works. Every time something went really wrong I was able to fix it myself.
Quazatron
in reply to Lost_My_Mind • • •That's how you level up in Linux. You break things, learn what you did wrong and do better next time. Linux won't hold your hand, you can and will shoot yourself in the foot.
You are doing it right by having backups and playing it safe. You'll be ok.
El_Scapacabra
in reply to GreenBottles • • •I've wanted to switch to Linux since Windows 10 and its inescapable trash "features"(looking at you, OneDrive).
I did upgrade to 11 and while I haven't experienced any catastrophic failures with it (yet) it's becoming increasingly aggravating with all the added bullshit they're implementing and the amount of ads they're trying to sneak in.
I've been bugging my husband for months to help me because he is near fluent in Linux and I'm a noob. He's now building me a new PC that will have Linux installed and I can't fucking wait to finally ditch Windows.
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AlphaOmega
in reply to Sahwa • • •My 78 year old mother bought a new laptop, windows 11.
Immediately I had to remote in because of some S mode BS which just put you in the MS only application environment.
3 months later and somehow she fubarred her login and can't use her new laptop. There's probably an easy fix, but since she hates windows 11 and wants to go back to 10, I suggested Linux.
So it will be a Merry Christmas for my mom when I visit and install IDK? Some version that's super simple. Anything is better than what she currently has
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krousenick
in reply to AlphaOmega • • •squaresinger
in reply to krousenick • • •like this
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krousenick
in reply to squaresinger • • •like this
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FireWire400
in reply to AlphaOmega • • •like this
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Grapho
in reply to AlphaOmega • • •TommySoda
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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GnuLinuxDude
in reply to TommySoda • • •I have to use Windows 11 for work. Maybe this is because of CrowdStrike or something, I don't know, but I often encounter a problem where the main section of explorer, where you can actually click files and stuff, just breaks. That entire region becomes unclickable and unusable, even though the rest of the Explorer window (like the icons on the top part) all still work. So I just have to close the window and then reopen Explorer, re-navigate back to where I was, and proceed from where I left off.
Never, in the decades I've been using computers, have I ever encountered something as stupid as this with this amount of regularity. Windows 11 is a uniquely bad OS compared to every competitor option, including prior versions of Windows.
TommySoda
in reply to GnuLinuxDude • • •youmaynotknow
in reply to TommySoda • • •GnuLinuxDude
in reply to TommySoda • • •ano_ba_to
in reply to GnuLinuxDude • • •GnuLinuxDude
in reply to ano_ba_to • • •I've been a full time Linux user at home for over six years. It's why my username is what it is 😀
I can't say it's flawless. Sometimes you get what you pay for. But in most every significant way it is the better choice.
londos
in reply to TommySoda • • •QTTabBar - QuizoApps
qttabbar.wikidot.comatrielienz
in reply to TommySoda • • •neowin.net/news/microsoft-fina…
network_switch
in reply to Sahwa • • •lemmy_get_my_coat
in reply to Sahwa • • •Bonesince1997
in reply to lemmy_get_my_coat • • •unknownuserunknownlocation
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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Crashumbc
in reply to unknownuserunknownlocation • • •I mean if you tell 50% of your client base they have to buy a new PC...
Especially, in the current economic climate.
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SaharaMaleikuhm
in reply to Crashumbc • • •Tollana1234567
in reply to unknownuserunknownlocation • • •KeenFlame
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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SaharaMaleikuhm
in reply to KeenFlame • • •like this
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CosmoNova
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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imetators
in reply to Sahwa • • •Obviously. There is no particular reason to switch from old 7th or older gen intel CPUs since with 16GB (or even with 8) of RAM one can browse internet and use OFFICE 365 with no issues. And what most of people do with their computers at work?
Unless PC is used to render 3D/Video/DAW Audio/heavy VMs - there is no fucking need to buy new PC just to upgrade to win11. MS shot themselves in a foot with this one.
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carrylex
in reply to Sahwa • • •Bronzebeard
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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TBi
in reply to Bronzebeard • • •Passerby6497
in reply to TBi • • •Which is exactly the reason they're ending support.
If you don't have a reason to stay, Linux is definitely worth a shot. I moved from 10 to Bazzite in my rig earlier in the year, and it's been pretty solid.
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TBi
in reply to Passerby6497 • • •I have bazzite Linux as dual boot. Few usecases stop me from moving fully over. Nvidia drivers and VR support. And Remote Desktop doesn’t work the way I want it to.
Also for some reason my ryzen system stopped seeing my linux sata drive in bios so can’t boot anymore.
Passerby6497
in reply to TBi • • •Interesting. I ditched team green years ago and have been running rock solid since. My Nvidia GPU was always the reason I went back to windows. Sorry to hear your ryzen rig stopped, have you looked for a bios update? Might be something simple like that (assuming your disk didn't shit the bed).
Can't say I've had any rdp issues on Bazzite, what's it doing?
TBi
in reply to Passerby6497 • • •I can see the disk in windows. It just doesn’t show up in the bios. I’ve been recommended to do a fully CMOS reset by pulling out battery but don’t really have time. It disappeared after a BIOS update 😀
As for RDP. I regularly RDP to my windows machine and it auto changes resolution. And then I can log in on the PC itself and it returns to the monitor resolution. So I keep the same session but view it from multiple places.
I can’t get the same on Linux. Either I get my current session which doesn’t resize (stuck at connected monitor resolution). Or it creates a new resizable session which I don’t want because I want to continue what I was doing.
Passerby6497
in reply to TBi • • •BrioxorMorbide
in reply to TBi • • •Did you load the default BIOS settings after that? If not, that might be easier than removing the battery.
And if you did, the default settings could have enabled the CSM, or changed other settings like fast boot that might make the drive not show up.
TBi
in reply to BrioxorMorbide • • •BrioxorMorbide
in reply to TBi • • •TBi
in reply to BrioxorMorbide • • •BrioxorMorbide
in reply to TBi • • •TBi
in reply to BrioxorMorbide • • •I’ll try it. But I don’t see the drive detected in the BIOS so thought it might be more than that.
Also bazzite should have secure boot.
I’ll let you know!
InvalidName2
in reply to TBi • • •TBi
in reply to InvalidName2 • • •FreddiesLantern
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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rozodru
in reply to Sahwa • • •I wonder if a lot of it is because Microsoft will say your computer isn't compatible to upgrade but meanwhile it actually CAN be upgraded and users are just taking what Microsoft tells them as truth and not investigating further.
I myself have upgraded a couple of family members machines to Win 11 even though "technically" Microsoft claims they can't be. just went ahead with it anyways. I could have just thrown Linux on them like Mint or something but some people are just comfortable within windows.
cyberwolfie
in reply to rozodru • • •andallthat
in reply to Sahwa • • •Maybe if they also removed local accounts and forced you to have an online MS account? Nah scratch that, it would be stupid
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reksas
in reply to Sahwa • • •10 had at least SOME good in it, at first i didnt want to move on from 7 but when i finally did it was okay. Everything i have heard about 11 is awful, and i wasnt very pleased with it myself either when i tried it at work, though i was able to mostly ignore it since it was just my work pc.
And now after switching to mint, idea of using 11 is preposterous.
Corkyskog
in reply to reksas • • •RamRabbit
in reply to Corkyskog • • •LibreOffice is good. While people don’t like learning new things, I found it does everything I could want.
I actually switched years ago because I didn’t want to pay for MS Office.
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Burninator05
in reply to RamRabbit • • •Corkyskog
in reply to RamRabbit • • •reksas
in reply to Corkyskog • • •Corkyskog
in reply to reksas • • •I know what you're talking about. As someone who had to hire a lot of people it was infuriating that we only got the candidates HR approved.
I so wish that we could hire 5 people for 2 weeks and then retain 1 or 2 of them. You don't learn anything about candidates until you give them your first assignment. I would have jumped at that as an applicant, but maybe just because I was unemployed for a while during the 08 super recession.
njordomir
in reply to reksas • • •RaoulDook
in reply to reksas • • •Had to "upgrade" my work laptop to 11 for security support. Nothing about it is better. Almost everything is slower, and many common operations take more steps to complete on 11 vs 10.
Absolute fuckin' garbage.
FinishingDutch
in reply to Sahwa • • •To be clear, I’m not ‘not adopting’ - I’m actively boycotting that shit. The whole TOM thing was annoying enough, but everything else surrounding it has proven to me that Microsoft cannot be trusted with that level of access to MY hardware.
So yeah, I’m going to put Linux on my PC and ultimately back to Mac full time, I imagine.
Echo Dot
in reply to FinishingDutch • • •I really need to upgrade my setup, but I don't really feel like selling one of my kidneys so I can afford 8 gigabytes of RAM (it's not a good kidney so I'm being realistic).
Anyway my current system has windows 11 on it anyway so I might as well just keep using that but as soon as I have the option to leave I'm going to.
I need to keep windows 11 around for work but as soon as I can build a system that can hold to two whole operating systems at a time I'm going to go over to dual booting. Unless the steam machine turns out to be cheaper than anyone's realistically expecting, in which case I might just go that route. The current RAM prices mean that's probably unlikely.
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7rokhym
in reply to Sahwa • • •If you can avoid Office documents and run an AMD GPU, anyone should be golden on Linux. NVidia is fine if you are comfortable with command line.
Not really sure what Windows has going for it except inertia, but if your coasting, you are going downhill...
Burninator05
in reply to 7rokhym • • •7rokhym
in reply to Burninator05 • • •It's a burning platform, and the future isn't bright. IT and security would love to get rid of Windows desktops, they are nightmare to manage and secure. Problem is legacy.
But who still uses native Windows Apps other than Office? Legacy apps are out there, but also being migrated to low code browser apps. Even Office is an web app and Microsoft has been converting their 'native' apps into browser containers. Point is that Almost everything runs on a web browser and that is what kids have been using in schools for nearly 10 years. To date, ChromeOS is widely used in some roles (contact center, some back office). Developers, graphics, video, marketing, executives, along with most sales often use Mac, and nearly every enterprise uses both Android and IPhone /iPad OS.
.
M0oP0o
in reply to 7rokhym • • •Echo Dot
in reply to Burninator05 • • •MrMeanJavaBean
in reply to Sahwa • • •like this
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chunes
in reply to Sahwa • • •Blows my mind seeing people look on windows 10 as some kind of last bastion, apparently not realizing that was Windows 7 at best.
10 is the one where they fucked up the UX beyond repair, made everything slow and added insane amounts of spying. If you willingly switched to 10 then don't pretend like 11 is a bridge too far now.
sudoku
in reply to chunes • • •kazerniel
in reply to sudoku • • •Evotech
in reply to kazerniel • • •like this
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kazerniel
in reply to Evotech • • •Echo Dot
in reply to Evotech • • •Ah yes the classic purist arguement.
If the applications I want to use don't support Linux then apparently that's their problem. I wish I didn't have to live in the real world, but unfortunately I can't pay my mortgage in moral righteousness. If I can't use the programs I need to use my job, because I've decided to switch to an operating system that they don't support, I'm the one that's going to suffer.
So no you can't just ditch applications that don't have Linux support.
In the real world you have to dual boot and that's a pain in the arse because it means Microsoft are still going to be getting some money from me.
Evotech
in reply to Echo Dot • • •It's a catch 22. If you need applications to make money sure. But games. Come on.
I get a PC from my job, it has windows and that's their choice.
Holytimes
in reply to Echo Dot • • •The fuck sort of dipshit argument is this for video games...?
He was saying ditch video games man... VIDEO GAMES.
Echo Dot
in reply to Holytimes • • •I can't switch to purely Linux because I need windows in order to be able to do my job. The fact I also play games on the computer is irrelevant.
I don't understand what you're not understanding.
RamRabbit
in reply to Holytimes • • •Yeah, some people get really defensive when you suggest they can get all the things they are asking for, and all they have to do is stop giving money to user-hostile developers. And saying kernel-level anti-cheat is hostile to the user is a massive understatement. Why would you defend Saudi Arabia having kernel-level access to your computer just to play a game? (It's crazy that that statement isn't even a joke in the context of EA.)
I understand if someone decides not to take the suggestion, but it is still a reasonable suggestion to make.
Kay Ohtie
in reply to kazerniel • • •kazerniel
in reply to Kay Ohtie • • •RamRabbit
in reply to sudoku • • •The stats show people are committing this time. English speakers are jumping ship at historically unprecedented rates. Steam stats
Steam Linux Market Share | GamingOnLinux
GamingOnLinuxdreamkeeper
in reply to sudoku • • •StupidBrotherInLaw
in reply to chunes • • •like this
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CmdrShepard49
in reply to StupidBrotherInLaw • • •Strawberry
in reply to CmdrShepard49 • • •like this
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StupidBrotherInLaw
in reply to Strawberry • • •Echo Dot
in reply to chunes • • •Bytemeister
in reply to Echo Dot • • •RamRabbit
in reply to Bytemeister • • •For the last 13 years this has been the most infuriating part of the incomplete control panel migration. I find myself struggling to use the new settings, and having to then resort to digging for the old ones that actually have the option I need.
Win 11 finally pushed me over the edge with ads and spying. But I still have to deal with Windows at work.
🏴حمید پیام عباسی🏴
in reply to Echo Dot • • •mrgoosmoos
in reply to chunes • • •Daedskin
in reply to chunes • • •yessikg likes this.
Revan343
in reply to chunes • • •Was it? I gave up on 8 because of the UI, downgraded back to 7 and that was my last Windows machine. Was 10 worse?
chunes
in reply to Revan343 • • •like this
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REDACTED
in reply to chunes • • •flop_leash_973
in reply to Sahwa • • •The biggest selling points of Windows these days is familiarity, backwards compatibility, and gaming.
And the only one of those not under active threat by someone is the backwards compatibility. Which means there is an active shelf life on the viability of Windows as a big money maker on the consumer desktop/laptop. And once it starts to falter in that market then the enterprise will start to follow.
mazzilius_marsti
in reply to Sahwa • • •micro$oft is getting desperate though
kotaku.com/windows-11-pro-upgr…
Microsoft Goes Wild for Black Friday, Windows 11 Pro Drops 94% Like They Forgot the Price Tag - Kotaku
Joe Tilleli (Kotaku)like this
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Buddahriffic
in reply to mazzilius_marsti • • •/home/pineapplelover
in reply to Sahwa • • •atmorous
in reply to /home/pineapplelover • • •Switch to Linux Mint, KDE, or Pop OS Cosmic
Then once comfortable get your company to switch to it
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NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
in reply to atmorous • • •buttfarts
in reply to atmorous • • •/home/pineapplelover
in reply to atmorous • • •Echo Dot
in reply to /home/pineapplelover • • •We've been switching over to Windows 11 and it's broken so many of our old applications.
We have stuff that's like 40 years old and it just won't tolerate Windows 11 so all those programs have to be run in a virtual environment. They were fine with Windows 10 so I've no idea what about Windows 11 they don't like. I wouldn't mind so much if there was an obvious advantage to Windows 11 but therr literally isn't, there's not a single feature in Windows 11 that would help us do business better.
But I think Windows 11 is on track to be the crap version, so Windows 12 will hopefully be better although given the current direction Microsoft moving that might not be the case, and they may have finally broken the crap then good cycle.
webp
in reply to Echo Dot • • •like this
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NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
in reply to Echo Dot • • •like this
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Bytemeister
in reply to NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ • • •This is true. Rumours I've heard is that all your data will just be in one big blob, and every application is just an AI agent sorting and displaying the info for you.
So you could open a word document in Excel and it would format the info as a table, or you can open a PowerPoint in Visio and it would make it into a workflow chart. Same data, just presented differently by AI "wrappers".
Breadhax0r
in reply to Echo Dot • • •Remember when Microsoft said windows 10 was going to be the last major windows version and they were just going to support it forever with rolling updates, and then later said they never said that.
Pepperidge farm remembers.
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/home/pineapplelover
in reply to Sahwa • • •This article is trash, it mentions existing windows 10 features in windows 11 like it's a groundbreaking new technology.
Virtual desktops and clipboard manager? Cmon man we've been having that for years now
Omgpwnies
in reply to /home/pineapplelover • • •since abaout the late 90's to early 00's. KDE 1 released with virtual desktops, and from what I can tell, Klipper either released with it, or a few years later
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angband
in reply to Omgpwnies • • •window manager
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)like this
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Buddahriffic
in reply to Sahwa • • •Considering all of the comments saying that a big part of this is people not wanting to buy new computers and choosing linux because it will run on their old machine, I'd like to add insult to injury and say I built a new PC before Oct and windows was never even a consideration.
And despite it being my first Linux install I planned to play games on, everything went smoothly and I'd even say the "setting up the PC to my preference instead of the defaults" step was better because there wasn't a "figure out how to disable the shit ms really wants you to run for them" substep, or a "figure out what new shit ms added that I'll want to disable" discovery mode that, with win 10, lasted most of the time I was using it and included "figure out if a recent update reset settings to annoying defaults".
I bet this is why people are so vocal about switching to linux whenever there's another complaint about ms. It went way better than expected, like I was about to do something that would cause ongoing pain and frustration to get away from something even worse, but there's been nothing at all that has made me miss windows.
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Leon
in reply to Buddahriffic • • •Yeah. I built my PC two years back and Linux was the main idea for it. I'd used Linux on and off since 2007, and it's honestly been fine this entire time, with WINE and such only improving over time. I remember how baffled I was back in 2007 when I didn't have to install any drivers myself, everything just worked out of the box, even fucking printers.
This is the time of Windows Vista, where nothing worked.
Buddahriffic
in reply to Leon • • •Yeah, I've got a logitech mouse but didn't want logitech's software on my machine, so I just used the mouse by plugging it in. Which worked, but I had no way of knowing the battery level until the mouse itself started blinking low power.
When I installed fedora, I was confused a bit because it had a system tray icon saying the battery was charging. I was thinking it thought it was a laptop until I realize it had just picked up the battery information from my mouse. A feature I had written off under windows just worked without me even considering it or needing to install software that was partly about using my hardware and partially about advertising more ways to get my money.
commander
in reply to Buddahriffic • • •like this
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oftenawake
in reply to Sahwa • • •sircac
in reply to Sahwa • • •nolikeymachine
in reply to Sahwa • • •vaderaj
in reply to Sahwa • • •DeICEAmerica
in reply to Sahwa • • •sonofearth
in reply to Sahwa • • •Alaknár
in reply to sonofearth • • •Stability, updates management, built-in features (like window tiling), etc.
Source: using Linux exclusively for almost a year now.
sonofearth
in reply to Alaknár • • •Alaknár
in reply to sonofearth • • •No. I said that there's a bunch of things (e.g. stability, updates management, features (like window tiling), etc.) that Windows has and Linux does not.
There's A LOT Linux does great. There's also a lot Windows does great that Linux massively fails at.
Even some silly things like multi-screen support or saving windows positions between reboots... Lots of small things.
sonofearth
in reply to Alaknár • • •Alaknár
in reply to sonofearth • • •Especially when you're on Arch with KDE, you don't have:
I know because I'm on Arch with KDE.
By "good update management" I mean what MS does - all updates are pushed once a month, on Patch Tuesday (second Tuesday of the month). You can put it in your calendar and plan for a necessary reboot.
I know Arch is a rolling release so it doesn't have that on purpose, but it's not much better with Ubuntu - I was getting updates every couple of days, once a week at best.
Window tiling doesn't exist "out of the box", you need third party software (which, apparently still doesn't give you what Windows has out of the box) or a switch from KDE to COSMIC, which still doesn't give you the freedom of choice that Windows has (it's either "everything is tiled" or "nothing is tiled").
Saving window positions (on Wayland) is the most confusing one, because it seems like the one that'd be the easiest to implement, but KDE devs just flat out refuse to do it. I hear that it works on X11.
Multi-monitor support is piss poor. If I spread my windows across multiple monitors and then turn one monitor off, those windows are no longer accessible. SDDM displays the same interface on each monitor, and each is a separate instance of SDDM - meaning, you can type in your password on monitor 2, and if you press "OK" on monitor 1, it will fail, because the password field is empty. It's just silly design. On Windows, if you disconnect an extra screen, all the content gets dropped on the main screen. Since Windows 11, if you then re-connect the screen, all windows will pop back into their places before the disconnect happened.
15329 – Use Wayland session restore to save and remember size, position, virtual desktop, etc. of windows of session-restore-compatible apps
bugs.kde.orgsonofearth
in reply to Alaknár • • •You might have configured something that broke it because there ain't no way what you are saying is not supported on Linux.
You don't have to update if you don't want to and you can schedule your updates as well with a bash script (although I prefer to do it manually once a week). I have a Windows VM used for MS office and Adobe that hasn't been updated for months.
It is out of the box. Meta + Arrow Keys and/OR Meta + PgUp. I use it all the time lol since KDE Plasma 5 and Gnome whatever version it was 3 years ago.
Confirmed works by FarrellPerks@feddit.uk in above comments. Although I never tested or cared for it.
I don't know about desktop towers, for laptop it is always only one instance — my laptop display, monitor is dark before I hit enter. And for the normal KDE lockscreen, it does give it on both the screens but I can enter my password in any one of them and logon.
same happens on KDE Plasma.
Alaknár
in reply to sonofearth • • •Ah, OK, nice! I didn't see it as it's not available via mouse, but found all those threads saying it doesn't exist. Good to know!
Doesn't work on Garuda (Arch-based) with KDE.
Or rather: it used to work, but then just stopped.
Interesting! On my laptop I also had two instances of SDDM.
Not where I'm sitting. Tested via cat accidentally turning a monitor off. The browser window just stayed on that screen - the process was there, but the application was not available.
sonofearth
in reply to Alaknár • • •Huh, interesting. Because other than appearance and keyboard shortcuts, I haven't configured anything to affect these behaviors.
I switched my laptop last year and installed Arch with Plasma 6 so it was working out of the box. My previous laptop had Arch with Plasma 5 and then updated to 6 and also had Gnome before that. So it could have been I might I have configured something over there to get those things working (I don't remember doing that though) but the newer one had it by default.
Alaknár
in reply to sonofearth • • •Which is another aspect of the "Windows is more stabled" that I meant earlier.
The save window position thing was also working out of the box on mine. Only after it stopped I started looking into this and found that, apparently, it's NOT a thing KDE/Wayland can do. I don't know how it worked, but settings also show that feature doesn't exist - if you go to System Settings → Window Management → Window Behaviour → Advanced → Window placement, I only have these options available: "Minimal Overlapping", "Maximised", "Random", "Centred", "In Top-Left Corner" or "Under Mouse". There's no "Remember" or "Restore previous" or anything like that.
FarrellPerks
in reply to sonofearth • • •Alaknár
in reply to FarrellPerks • • •15329 – Use Wayland session restore to save and remember size, position, virtual desktop, etc. of windows of session-restore-compatible apps
bugs.kde.orgkillabeezio
in reply to Alaknár • • •Stability? Update management? Window tiling? What? Linux does have all of these things. In fact Linux is way more stable than Windows, has better update management. Mind you, it does depend on the distro and the amount of stability you want, but I have been running Debian servers for years and I hardly run into problems.
The only thing windows offers over Linux is gaming and a better UI. Even both of those are dwindling away. I hate the new windows 11 UI and most games work on Linux unless you require a rootkit for some anti cheat software.
Alaknár
in reply to killabeezio • • •No.
I install Windows and forget about it. I install Linux and have to do all this, and then it still might do this or this.
Agreed.
I want all the stability.
Not talking about servers.
But even then - at my last job we finally killed off a Windows Server that had an uptime of over 1000 days, just chugging along like a little trooper. At my previous-previous job I was responsible for the WinServer updates, every single one of them was getting monthly updates and reboots, didn't have a single issue in 7 years. It was just shy of 100 servers.
Agreed. I have Garuda Linux installed on my gaming PC and only had minor issues with three titles. It's surprisingly frictionless.
Application Launcher transparency settings?
Garuda Linux ForumAlaknár
2025-11-28 16:17:23
MangoPenguin
in reply to Alaknár • • •The most frustrating part of running Linux for me is the experience can vary so much for each person, slight hardware differences can cause odd bugs that other people don't have, and solving them can be really time consuming because a fix that works for one distro or DE may not work on another.
I'm really happy that Bazzite seems to be gaining so much popularity as an actual windows replacement, because it makes it a lot easier to find fixes for problems if there's a huge community using the exact same distro.
KelvarCherry
in reply to Sahwa • • •"Slower" implies you're projecting the same end results. Do they think the missing numbers are just not using a computer at all? In the digital age? By far your largest numbers of actual Win11 migrators are companies whose tech policy is the CYA "update everything in case we get hacked".
The common folk are not going to buy a new computer just to get a slower Windows installation. The people who migrate from Windows 10/7 holdouts are going to be migrating to Linux.
LoafedBurrito
in reply to Sahwa • • •They keep updating my windows 10 computers at work and the one I have at home. None of my Microsoft apps work, I can't install paint, or photos or the Microsoft store. My personal computer freezes as soon as I open windows explorer. This just started after the last update.
I already have a Linux server downstairs and this week converted me windows 10 pc to endeavor OS. It's lightning fast and easy to use if you already know the problems with Linux.
Itdidnttrickledown
in reply to Sahwa • • •Toes♀
in reply to Sahwa • • •Wubwub
in reply to Sahwa • • •SirHery
in reply to Wubwub • • •Edit: If you have an AMD GPU you should just change to linux no question.
Wubwub
in reply to SirHery • • •Matty_r
in reply to Wubwub • • •🏴حمید پیام عباسی🏴
in reply to Sahwa • • •BwahFox
in reply to Sahwa • • •themachinestops
in reply to Sahwa • • •Semperverus
in reply to themachinestops • • •