lemmyvore

@lemmyvore@feddit.nl

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lemmyvore,

Nobody uses SMR for live data anyway unless it’s in very particular circumstances.

Bcachefs is still at least a couple of years away from serious use. But sure, if it’s available and you have a good backup strategy you can use it today.

What Tweak, Program, ... changes a Desktop Environment from unusable to great for you?

I have used Linux on and off for 15 years. I consider myself a casual user and stuck to the mainstream DEs (mostly KDE, XFCE and some Cinnamon). Gnome has been a hurdle for me before and after the big version 40 changes, I couldn’t get my head around how they handled the workspaces and workflow. At some point I I tried out an...

lemmyvore,

That’s true, most WMs have a simplistic workspace geometry, where they spread a workspace across all monitors (regardless of their placement). I suspect that, since the workspace abstraction comes above monitors it may not even be possible for them to have a workspace split between monitors.

lemmyvore,

Add the article says, the surge is entirely thanks to the Deck. There was a 35% surge in overall use but 43% of that use is the Deck so PC/laptop use has actually dropped.

lemmyvore, (edited )

There’s high potential overlap between the profile of a PC gamer (who is often also a PC builder and general computing DIY hobbyist) and an OS like Linux that extends your tinkering ability massively on the software side.

PC/laptop users are a shrinking demographic nowadays thanks to the advent of mobile devices, but they’re a high quality demographic made up of professionals and hobbyists with above average computer savvy. So lots of companies are trying to appeal to them because the choices they make in software and hardware can translate into many other IT fields.

lemmyvore,

Any distro is “stable” if you know how to use it.

Sounds like you’re in a good place with Endeavour, why not stick to it?

lemmyvore,

Get Blu Ray discs from a reputable brand (Verbatim, Sony). They were designed to be a lot more resilient than DVDs. Nothing wrong with DVDs either btw, if the smaller size doesn’t bother you, just make sure they’re stored properly either way.

lemmyvore,

Optical discs are the least likely medium to degrade by just sitting in a drawer for long periods of time. HDDs have lots of moving parts and SSD data degrades over time. If you find a disc and an HDD in a box after 20 years and wonder which will still work, my money’s on the disc.

lemmyvore, (edited )

Always use ZFS if you want to use software RAID arrays. And never rely on RAID alone, also use some form of offline backup alongside them, and ideally you should also keep a spare ready to be used automatically in case of failure.

Which is why RAID doesn’t really make sense for small number of disks, only starts working out around 6-8 disks and up. If you only have 2-5 disks you’re much better off setting them up as backup rather than RAID, and only make small arrays if you absolutely must.

Some examples:

  • You have 2 disks: use 1 live + 1 backup.
  • 3 disks: 1 live + 1 backup + 1 another backup, or 2 in ZFS mirror + 1 backup.
  • 4 disks: 2 mirrored + 1 backup + 1 another backup, or 2 mirrored + 1 standby spare + 1 backup. Do not do RAID with 3 or 4 disks without a standby spare, it makes no sense, and even if you do RAID5 + 1 spare or RAID10 you don’t have backups, the RAID won’t protect against accidental deletions.
  • 5 disks: this is where you can do 3 in parity RAID + 1 spare + 1 backup, or triple RAID1 + 2 backups for ultra safety, or RAID6 without spare + 1 backup (provided you buy another disk as soon as one fails in the RAID6).
lemmyvore,

I do sample them every few years out of curiosity. They mostly contain very old software and game kits from the late 90s and early 2000s so the data is only interesting for historical reasons. I also check them visually for disc rot but so far there hasn’t been any. Which makes sense because they’re not scratched, and they’re stored inside CD wallets put inside boxes put inside a dry cupboard at room temperature so environmental contamination is not likely.

lemmyvore,

Over here a 25 GB BD-R is about 60 cents USD and a 4.7 GB DVD-R is 30 cents so it makes sense to use Blu Ray.

BR drives are more expensive than DVD drives, true, but I consider it a good investment.

lemmyvore,

There aren’t many options… you can either modify the share or you cannot. 🙂 Pick one.

Preparing to move from Ubuntu to Fedora

Hi! I’m seeking some advice and sanity check on hopping from Ubuntu to Fedora on my personal PC. I’ve been using Ubuntu LTS for almost two years now, switched from Windows and never looked back. But I cannot say I know Linux well. I use my PC for browsing, some gaming with Steam (I have AMD GPU), occasional video editing,...

lemmyvore, (edited )

You don’t have to use an LTS version if you don’t want to stick to it… Also Fedora is on a yearly upgrade cycle too, just so you know, it’s not a rolling distro. You can actually upgrade sooner on Ubuntu because it’s on a 6-month upgrade cycle.

lemmyvore,

Install x2go on the client machine. You need X and SSH on the target machine. That’s it, when you connect it will open a new desktop session on the server.

If you want to connect to an existing desktop session you need x2godesktopsharing installed on the target, you need to activate sharing in x2godesktopsharing, and in x2go client you need to select “session type” as “X2Go/X11 desktop sharing”.

lemmyvore,

Also even common stuff like Chromecast-ing will randomly break on Jellyfin and nobody can explain why.

lemmyvore,

Well you also get a fast cheque in exchange for that, right? 😸

lemmyvore,

I think it’s actually dead once they no longer support RHEL 9 and older.

That would be 2032.

lemmyvore,

There are several readily available key modifiers in Linux: Meta, Super and ISO-Level3-Shift. You can map them to keys and use them for various purposes.

What I do is map Meta to the left Windows key, Super to the right Windows key, and ISO-Level3-Shift to AltGr (that one might already be default). You can then use Super and Meta as modifiers to trigger all kinds of actions, like Super+T to open a terminal, Super+F to toggle fullscreen mode for current window, Super+Space to toggle music playback etc.

ISO-Level3-Shift will create diacritics when combined with normal keys, provided you choose the correct keyboard layout. This is useful for being able to type correctly in languages that use diacritics, but to also allow you to use a generic US keyboard so you can do programming for example.

To make these mappings you have to edit or create a file called .Xmodmap in your home dir. To bind a keycode to a physical key you say something like keycode 134 = Super_R, where 134 is a physical key code that you get from the tool xev and Super_R is the code for what you want it to do. Also, to make Super_R a modifier you have to say clear Mod4 and add Mod4 = Super_R. Most desktop environment will import .Xmodmap automatically on startup but if they don’t you can run xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap.

Once you got Super acting like a modifier and bind it to the key you want your desktop environment settings will probably let you define custom shortcuts for anything you want. Please note that there’s usually two different places for such shortcuts, one for generic shortcuts (for launching apps), usually in the keyboard section of preferences, and one where you can tie shortcuts to window functions (like minimize/maximize), usually found in the window section of preferences. Also in the window preferences you can do some cool stuff like use one of these modifiers to drag or resize windows.

Also see if your keyboard preferences let you pick a “compose key”. The Pause key is usually used for this, because it’s not useful for anything else on a graphical desktop. The compose key lets you create diacritics in an “intuitive” way, by combining two keys. If you press Pause then o then o you get °. Pause then 1 then 2 gives you ½. Pause then a then " gives you ä. You get the idea.

lemmyvore,

People, your only alternative to Wayland is dead and unmaintained. If you push against Wayland as the default option, you only make your transition in the future more painful than it needs to be.

Nobody’s pushing “against Wayland”. I don’t give a shit about Wayland or Xorg. What I care about is having a full-featured, easy to use desktop stack readily available. The “dead” Xorg works perfectly with everything. That’s the bar.

When I get a checkbox on the login screen saying “use Wayland” (or when the distro does it by default) I need everything to work. If everything does not work, I do not use it.

The Wayland choice of pushing complexity onto individual software projects by making them all reinvent a hundred wheels, and onto users by making them hunt down a hundred pieces of software to build a wobbly desktop stack sucks. I have no incentive to take part in this particular rat race.

lemmyvore,

Install Xorg yourself. Don’t make it easily accessible to new Linux users.

New users will drop any distro whose default desktop doesn’t work perfectly and with all the features they want. Linux already has a high enough bar competing with Windows, creating additional artificial hurdles is dumb in the extreme.

And if it does, then it’s still insecure by design.

Security vs convenience has always been a give and take. There’s a cutoff point that users will not cross if the software becomes too inconvenient to use, even if it means greater security. The Wayland stack is currently on the bad side of that line and needs to step over if it wants to see mass adoption.

Substitute Wayland for X11 here. Both Wayland and X11 are protocols. X11 is such a lackluster protocol that all implementations died, except that Xorg still has users.

Nobody cares, all they see is the stack, with Wayland leading the point on the bad decisions.

And you obviously care a lot about Wayland and Xorg.

You are projecting. If this were any other piece of software, say, a text editor that works and does everything you need, and someone came and told you “you must use this new one, it’s the way forward, but oh it doesn’t have all the features you need from a text editor” you would say “thanks but I’ll wait until it’s ready”. But you see no problem in pushing Wayland on people who can’t use it?

Please understand that nobody will ever successfuly push through incomplete software. Not on Linux. There’s nothing you or anybody can do to convince people that incomplete software is complete and usable when it’s not.

lemmyvore,

10 years was enough time to make your software work on Wayland.

By that logic, one could answer that 15 years was enough time to make Wayland work better than it does… but that would be petty and disingenous.

Desktop stacks are very complex. X.org took 30 years to beat that complexity into a usable shape. Wayland pushed most complexity up the stack and still took 15 years to finally put together a protocol of beta quality.

It will take the rest of the stack however long it will take to build on that protocol. Most of the Linux community are volunteers, and Wayland was and still is work in progress. Nobody in their right mind rushes to write software on top of an unstable protocol.

If Wayland is truly ready I think we will see meaningful stack adoption within the next 5 years. But I don’t think trying to force developers into it will achieve anything.

As for forcing users that’s completely unreasonable. If you’re using XFCE on Nvidia you’ll have to wait for XFCE to get Wayland support and for Wayland to get Nvidia support. Very few people are willing to change their whole desktop stack or able to buy a new graphics card for the sake of… of what? Bringing about the Year of the Linux Desktop?

lemmyvore,

You know what’s super ironic? I went through this exact thing with X, 25 years ago, when you had to put together a Linux desktop with spit and duct tape.

Wayland promises to be much nicer than X but the way it asks you to put together a working desktop stack yourself is straight out of the '90s.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

lemmyvore,

Also I see “Red Hat” thrown around a lot. There’s no Red Hat anymore, it’s IBM, and IBM’s target user is a RHEL customer.

I’m willing to bet most people commenting on Mastodon (and here for that matter) have very little in common with a RHEL customer. IBM, like Valve with the Deck, have very specific use cases in mind and can afford to support a Wayland-based desktop for those particular circumstances.

But does IBM care about the desktop needs of the average Linux user? I doubt it.

lemmyvore, (edited )

If you’re going to install from source at least change the compile config options so the prefix defaults to /opt/program-name.

You can further integrate with the system by adding the /opt/program/bin/ and sbin/ dirs to the PATH variable, and add lib/ to /etc/ld.so.conf but it should not be needed normally — only if other programs need to compile against this one.

You can also simplify integration by making common dirs for example /opt/.bin and /opt/.lib, adding only those to PATH and ld, and symlinking binaries and libraries from all /opt programs to them.

lemmyvore,

Try putting the browser on fullscreen, see if that keeps the screen alive while playing.

How is the piracy experience on an iPad ?

So I am planning on buying an ipad, never owned one before. I have always been an android guy and from what I have heard Ipad os or ios is pretty restrictive in nature so I was wondering how much does it hamper the piracy experience. For example on android I can torrent files of any nature or size without any restrictions and...

lemmyvore,

Torrent clients are banned from the Apple Store and you can’t sideload apps. It’s a very restrictive device in many respects.

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