@bbbhltz@beehaw.org
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

bbbhltz

@bbbhltz@beehaw.org

Music lover and English teacher with an interest in slightly geeky things

mastodon / blog / listenbrainz

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bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Strawberry if I had to have something visual with buttons.

cmus right now because it loads my rather large library in a split second. mpd works great as well.

More important than the player for me is sorting, though. Beets is my saviour. I could never sort the 5 or 6 albums I get by hand and tag them by hand.

I used to like deadbeef as well, quod libet is great. There really is something for everyone when it comes to something for music. If only there were as many great email clients.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

You can achieve this through graphical utilities.

Self-updating apps aren’t a big thing on Linux, so the Windows way isn’t an option…

The signing key is important for security reasons, so you definitely need to add that. After adding the repo you can just use Synaptic or whatever app store thingy Ubuntu uses.

Most of the time you shouldn’t need to fiddle with the command line and the apps you will need are available through the Software Centre and the entire process will work like on Windows.

For me, Linux was the first operating system I used that had an app store or software centre and I was pretty glad to not need to…

  • open a browser,
  • navigate to a site,
  • (hope it is the right site…)
  • download a binary executable,
  • open a file explorer,
  • launch the binary,
  • click through a list of options and agreements,
  • and finally delete the binary.

(Constructively) What is your least favorite distro & why?

I’ve been distrohopping for a while now, and eventually I landed on Arch. Part of the reason I have stuck with it is I think I had a balanced introduction, since I was exposed to both praise and criticism. We often discuss our favorite distros, but I think it’s equally important to talk about the ones that didn’t quite hit...

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

The distro I came here to mention has been hated on already. My dislike goes to the distros that start off fine, and somehow screw it up.

Honestly, I remember using Manjaro ages ago. It had an official Openbox spin (not a community thing). I had already used Arch but I didn’t even check to see what it was based on when I tried. I thought, “green is nice” and it was. It very quickly became less nice. I didn’t use it after that, but I’ve heard plenty of hate since then.

I’m going to put another one out there just for fun.

Distrowatch’s n°1… MX Linux

Nothing wrong with it, but the fact that it is number 1 (I know their ranking is just for fun and based on page hits) and doesn’t deserve it is the issue. It works great, when I used it I didn’t like how there was a second application for installating certain software. I think I used the Xfce setup. Again, it’s fine, but if a first-time Linux desktop user sat down and installed that, it might not be the best initiation.

Popular and highly ranked distros give Desktop Linux a bad name sometimes is what I’m saying.

"Must Try" distros and DEs?

Hey folks! I’m getting a fresh laptop for the first time in about a decade (Framework 16) in a couple of months and am looking forward to doing some low-level tinkering both on the OS and hardware. I’m planning to convert into a “cyberdeck” with quick-release hinges for the screen since I usually use an HMD, built-in...

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

It’s easy. After running setup-alpine and rebooting with a bar install there is built-in script setup-desktop that lets you install Gnome, Plasma or Xfce.

You can find install scripts like Alpine Suck around the web git.sr.ht/~bt/alpine-suck

Or check out the wiki for other inspiration wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Category:Desktop

If you use Edge, I would recommend subscribing to the user mailing list though, just in case.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Don’t know if it is a must-try, but LXQt has come a long way. The file browser is excellent. Everything is fast and snappy and very traditional (start button, system tray, etc.). Runner up I guess.

You can run Alpine as a desktop. The Edge branch. New software, got what you need, installs and updates fast.

bbbhltz, (edited )
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I have a friend / colleague who was a bit like this. It is a “see it to believe” situation. For her it was when she was at work and she watched her mouse stat moving on its own.

When she thought about how she never did anything bad on her work computer, but sometimes accessed her personal email… She got it.

And now she pays closer attention to things. Like in our city you’re pinged via WiFi when you get on a bus, but you can opt-out or jut turn of your WiFi, so she does that. And she makes email aliases now too. Nothing too serious, mind you, but she is 50 and figuring this out on her own and then teaching her friends and colleagues about it which is way better than going down the rabbit hole. Now there’s a bunch of boomers refusing to use Teams or access work email on their personal devices because she explained that they do have things to hide: the names and ages of their children and grandchildren, where they go for drinks after work, what they watch on YT, etc.

I don’t get into it with people though. People just write me off as some nerd, which is not the case.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Did you delete them outright or modify the text and then delete it? That is the tinfoil hat way! If you lived in Europe you could request your data to be deleted. You can also request your data and they are supposed to comply at some point. If you did that you could see what they have.

The rabbit hole will drive you a little bonkers so maybe don’t overthink it for now and take a look at www.reveddit.com and archive.org to see if your username pops up.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Got like 3 hours sleep last night, slept in, ate too fast, stomach ache all day due to that. Other than that, easy work day and the week is light on work to boot. Might get snow where I live too. That would be…cool.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Maybe. The newest Rpi can I believe.

bbbhltz,
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Agreed. But, my old 3B is still kickin so I won’t be too harsh.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Amazing that I can live in the country and hear nothing about this. I’ve just read the Guardian article and I guess not living in Paris or another major city might be one of the reasons.

recommendations for lightweight window managers for an old netbook

Hi, I’ve got an old netbook from Samsung that has an old Intel Atom CPU (Intel Atom N455 1.66 GHz). I installed Arch on it and am now thinking of a suitable window manager. I tried Hyprland (kinda expecting it to not work really) whick didn’t start at all. Before I had Debian with Gnome, which technically worked, but...

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Just a window manager? Not a DE?

Under X11 there is Openbox, bspwm, herbstluftwm, dwm, i3, Awesome, Ratpoison, spectrwm, Qtile, …

Under Wayland: Weston, LabWC, Wayfire, Sway, River, Cagebreak, dwl, …

I keep things pretty dull and use Openbox + LXQt. It is a stacking WM that is stable, and LXQt is snappy.

If you are looking for a light DE LXQt is very light, Plasma is lighter than it used to be, but it also has loads of features. Xfce has more options for configuration than LXQt and I think it isn’t quite ready for Wayland.

Maybe Sway would be up your alley?

(Note to self: check arewewaylandyet.com)

Today 4 years ago, Dr. Li Wenliang warned of a suspected SARS patient in a Wuhan WeChat group. Soon later, he was arrested for “making false comments on the Internet about unconfirmed SARS outbreak.” (harakahdaily.net)

Dr. Wenliang’s message went viral, becoming the earliest warning of what we now know today as Covid-19. He returned to work, but contracted Covid from a patient, and died on February 7, 2020....

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I’ve told this tale 3 years running now:

I work at an international business school. I try to stay up to day on world news. There was a paragraph written about “infectious pneumonia” in Time magazine or The Economist the last week of 2019 (so the issue published the first week of 2020, I think).

Returning to work a week later I mentioned it in class, because that year I had about 6 students from different parts of China.

They said, “it’s nothing, just a flu.”

The next week, as numbers started to be published they said, “no, it’s an exaggeration.”

The week after they were the first students to start wearing masks.

Week 4, they told us they hadn’t heard from their families in several days. This would have been February 2020.

I felt so horrible for those students that year. They were only 18 or 19 years old. Sent to France in January 2019 (they are required to come several months before classes start in order to learn French and pass some tests). They were locked down March 16th 2020 and forced to take lessons on Zoom. Unable to return home for the summer. Took another semester on Zoom, etc., etc.…

I think they finally managed to head home in the spring of 2021.

What is a small .EPUB reader that is easy to install for my small Puppy remaster?

My question is basically the title. I’m making my own Puppy Linux remaster and it already has a .PDF reader for it that is very small. I think it’s called Evince? It has a native GTK UI and starts in a second, uses very little RAM and CPU. Now I need a .EPUB reader. I’ve seen a couple different .EPUB reader apps out there...

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I have no idea how I would be banned, I’m not super active. How can I find out if I’ve been banned?

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

MuPDF mupdf.com It does PDF and Epub and is pretty light.

epy github.com/wustho/epy is a cli Epub reader

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Just checked the modlog. I don’t appear to be banned. Funky Federation stuff.

how do i efficiently attach audio to an image

hi all, ive tried using shotcut and kdenlive but the outputted file ends up being huge. i have a single image and want to put audio on top (releasing a song) but these programs end up making video files where they render the same image on each frame and the files end up being huge. what is the best way to achieve my use case of...

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Recommended YT settings might be helpful here.

What command have you been using?

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

True! Guardian is British but still, they need a better analogy.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Probably a private school thing in that case. I haven’t taught at a public uni since 2008, but parents wouldn’t have tried to get involved back then.

I cannot contact parents, but administrators will without question.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I am a professor as several different schools in France (business, notarial studies, agricultural engineers, communication). I would day 95% of my students are from well-to-do families. But, most of them are required to find paid internships. The notary students usually get unpaid internships.

As an internship advisor, I can confirm one thing: paid or not, they put in the hours and take the same crap as a paid employee. Sometimes it is worse. For example, if an intern is absent from work, the message gets to me, and I send it up the chain of command and sometimes parents get involved. It is stressful for the students. My business students get paid internships (about €1400/month) but still need help from their parents and many of them will be doing something they don’t really want to do (think finance instead of marketing).

Now, being a professor I am in contact with a rather large network of of profs spanning the private and public sector… My colleagues from the public sector are worried about this looming change to laws. It would lead to an overhaul of the system as the internship is counted as a credit. If it is decided that they should be paid, how many companies will want to pay when they can just hire a part-timer for the summer?

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

This shocked me as well because my parents weren’t involved with my work or education after finishing high school.

In France, this is not the case. The majority of people are supported by their parents until the end of secondary education, especially when it comes to my students who are all in private institutions.

It is extremely rare for a student to have a job, for example.

Parents do get involved for even minor things, and will come stomping into the school flanked by a lawyer.

Why would they be involved?

Because they pay. That’s all.

Now, university is practically free and lots of students get a bursary (not a loan) to help them along. But, their parents will still pay rent sometimes because a full-time student with a job is seen as the most amazing thing here.

I will often bring up this stark contrast to how when I was a student I had 4 different jobs and still ended my studies 60k in debt and didn’t even see my parents during the school year, let alone get any money from them.

Desktop icons not loading (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

I’ve had this issue for a while now, since I thought I could fix it myself. Almost all my programs have lost their icon image, which is not fixable by applying a different icon theme unfortunately. Just installed the Reversal icon pack to test that. My settings are attached here, sorry for the german:...

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

Somehow it might be possible the adwaita-icon-theme package was removed and not reinstalled.

You could also try running dconf reset -f /org/gnome/ and rebooting to see if that helps.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

☝️ this is correct. GSF calls home and /e/ is a different beast. The founder of Murena and /e/ is on Fedi so you could drop him a message on Mastodon and see how he answers.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

I use MuPDF but there is also the GrapheneOS PDF viewer available on their GitHub

github.com/GrapheneOS/PdfViewer

You can install it using Obtainium or jus grab it from the GitHub page.

bbbhltz,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

This sounds like a privacy concern. Maybe one of the privacy communities will have a better answer.

You’re worried that the bios will ping hp and hand over info, is this something that you have info on?

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