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MalReynolds

@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net

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Newish user migrating to Linux

I have been using Arch Linux with i3wm for around 5 years for work, on my ThinkPad. I am fairly comfortable with pacman and setting up a distro. I have previously tried Mint, Manjaro, KDE Neon, Elementary, and MX Linux, all for the same use case (Work: where I need a browser, Slack, and a MongoDB GUI)....

MalReynolds,
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Check out Bazzite, atomic updates and immutable OS are the future and bazzite is surprisingly stable even with nvidia. Steam is fairly frictionless for most games these days, but look at protondb.com to see if your faves are good to go. Pirated via Lutris.

Second github.com/LinSoftWin/Photoshop-CC2022-Linux

MalReynolds,
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It is, but you shouldn’t be using it, keep your OS clean and go all in on flatpak and distrobox.

MalReynolds,
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Fine, you do you.

MalReynolds,
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Fair enough, it’s not well explained. If something isn’t available, install it in a distrobox and export it, same effect, but you keep your OS clean…

MalReynolds, (edited )
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Fair enough, it’s not well explained. If something isn’t available, install it in a distrobox and export it, same effect, but you keep your OS clean…

I’m ex-Arch, but I use Arch distroboxes (yes, plural) for dev work. All the AUR goodness, none of the OS stability issues, it’s glorious.

New Linux user, here is my use case. Distro recommendations?

Update 1: Thanks for all the responses! I’ve gotten a lot of very good comments saying I should stick with Mint, and that’s sitting comfortably in my top two picks right now. Between new distros, I’m most interested in Arch’s rolling release model, as it provides some benefits for me for reasons I didn’t really get...

MalReynolds,
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Anything in the fedora stable will work great (redhat literally gave out T480s to their devs) I recommend whatever ublue variant floats your boat., atomic updates baby. If you’re smart you’ll get some PTM7950 and never need to repaste.

MalReynolds,
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Dude, it’s upgradeable, just put 32Gb in.

MalReynolds,
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Thanks, I hate it. Welcome new linux users.

MalReynolds,
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Not wrong, just a useful justification…

MalReynolds,
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If you want to redirect all mail to yourname@domain.com, that’s very easy to do AND you can still see the original e-mail address these nails were sent to.

And it’s a great way to see who’s leaking your email to spammers…

MalReynolds,
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Mayhap a Charybdis variant?

MalReynolds,
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Certainly do-able, but perhaps more of an adventure than anticipated. On the other hand, trackball works surprisingly well once you adapt.

MalReynolds,
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Fair cop.

MalReynolds,
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I’m good with that if it’s prolonging the non-violent phase of the conflict, preferably to infinity…

What is the best model of used ThinkPad to purchase?

I’m thinking of picking up a used ThinkPad on eBay for cheap to serve as my daily driver. I’ll likely run LMDE, and primarily use it for web browsing, office programs, coding, and FreeCAD. Any recommendations on which model would best hit the sweet spot of capability vs price?

MalReynolds,
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This sounds like thinking I had as carer for my mother with dementia/Alzheimer’s. If so, I found introducing new things to be not useful, it will be soon forgotten, (If not, good, and ignore this, but XY-Problem indeed). What I found actually useful was remote video monitoring on my phone (using a few RasPi’s, I’m sure there are better solutions, but I was poor, and it worked) allowing me to go out in necessity. The other thing I wish I’d done earlier is reach out to any and all available support earlier rather than later, it’s a marathon and every edge you can get will allow you to do better for all concerned, not least yourself.

That said, watches with automatic fall monitoring, with SMS alert to you would be useful. Ideally, something like Alexa (but preferably not as privacy invading, still, needs must as the devil drives) or whatever allowing her to just call out “help” and get a call to you on a speaker / microphone is probably achievable now, perhaps someone can chime in, or you can go searching. Best of luck!

MalReynolds,
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In what way are you not re-inventing the gluetun wheel ? Not trying to put you down, just that I’d need a good reason to consider anything less battle hardened.

MalReynolds,
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Just use its proxy for the host system’s needs…

MalReynolds,
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I don’t route all my system’s traffic through Gluetun, my threat model doesn’t need it, I just route relevant apps, e.g. package management is in the clear but firefox, SearXNG, and nicotine go via gluetun. SSH can look after itself, or I’m in dire trouble. If my threat model did need it, I’d be considering a similar solution to yours, but it’d be heavily cribbed from the known good of gluetun, basically the docker (podman) put to bare metal.

MalReynolds,
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You realise KDE’s had tiling for years, right? (Bismuth and then native)

MalReynolds,
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Fair cop, a matter of definition of good enough, I guess.

MalReynolds,
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Probably unenforceable, like so much of EULAs, but enough to deter the small guys who can’t afford the lawyers to defend themselves. Bully tactics. Shame, because an open playing field would benefit everyone but nvidia, also a shame that AMD, who probably could defend themselves, dropped financial support for ZLUDA.

Also,

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/a69d5866-8f6d-429c-841d-ae0191759ea8.webp

MalReynolds,
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I do this, along with pamusb, so I don’t need a password for sudo etc. (which allows a longer more secure password than I might otherwise use). Depending on the threat model, I think it’s fine to just leave it in. One day I’ll get it to shutdown --now on ripping out the key drive without dismounting first, sort of a break glass in emergency thing. Same thing can be achieved with pulling the key and holding the power button though (even if it’s a bit rude to the filesystem)

MalReynolds,
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If you’re going to be crazy, do it unique. Roddenberry was an ass (not asshole), but an interesting one, and mildly immortal.

You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it! Einstein?

MalReynolds,
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If manipulating reddit isn’t already a betting sport, it’s not far away. Guessing it is in Russia (or at least a drinking game), just like the rest of the big ‘social’ netwerks. Enjoy your next election. Wherever you are :)

As the Internet Gets Scarier, More Parents Keep Their Kids’ Photos Offline (getpocket.com)

Here's a non-paywalled link to an article published in the Washington Post a few days ago. It's great to see this kind of thing getting some mainstream attention. Young children have not made an informed decision about whether they want their photos posted online.

MalReynolds,
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If you don’t care about privacy, you’re probably blasé about backup, but if you have backups it’s as simple as 3-2-1…

billmason, to startrek
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MalReynolds,
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Boo!

MalReynolds,
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Route it through a vpn with gluetun and it does…

MalReynolds,
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I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgements and intentions are.

Gold!

MalReynolds,
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Verifiably no logs without court order (I’m guessing canary pages have gone the way of the dodo now, probably boilerplate in the orders, maybe wrong according to the article, perhaps in some jurisdictions) would be awesome. Verified by external audit is about as good as we can get, so proton, tutanota, I think, others muchly appreciated. I think one of them setup their OS in volatile RAM, which is cool, but probably not legally protective.

No, I don’t expect you to go to jail for me, but due diligence minimising knowledge will bump you up my list of providers to choose.

One problem here is those that do verify, usually don’t allow torrenting ports, so, no ratios for you. Anyone know what the over/under is on lesser tier VPNs that port share vs a VPS (with all its potential, but which country?) vs Usenet? Looking to have a clue when the time comes, knowledge gratefully accepted :)

MalReynolds,
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Good person. Much like I would like to do. I’d be happy with a VPN for personal use and another one for torrenting (gluetun compatible preferably) Shall look at AirVPN, thanks.

MalReynolds,
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In this case, you can have a primary user with no google services and a secondary with google services (Play store etc) that you can’t live without, until you find FOSS alternatives for your main. You can also revoke network permission on any app, including google’s. Rocks.

MalReynolds,
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But actually what they did, so, not really.

MalReynolds, (edited )
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The current zeitgeist is using young pig plasma (no antigens for rejection), so if that pans out, less vampire dystopia, more bacon… Eventually they’ll isolate the needed factors, and it’ll be an x-monthly shot, and then a pill.

MalReynolds,
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So, I’m on a P7 with GOS, and truly it is a brilliant way to divest oneself from google services, alongside being probably the most secure third party ROM. I think, they’re certainly very keen on it, and laudably competent, updates are around weekly, sometimes every couple of days, because there are some vulnerable (to state level actors etc.) users. It’s been great, I have a primary profile that is google free and a secondary for google stuff that I want, and over time I find, at my own pace, FOSS things to move into my primary, so I don’t need my secondary as much, until I didn’t need it at all. It’s great, and now I can move to any other ROM without google services and be (mostly, except for some bastard in real life requiring an app that I can’t install in secondary on Lineage etc, at least last time I used it, which will come up) happy. Thankyou GOS. Also, being able to revoke network permissions on any random app (including google services) via OS is Gold.

That said, P7 has some issues, it runs hot (I recorded via termux), and if you live in a hot humid environ, don’t expect longevity near the 5Yr security updates promised. Mine’s spicy pillow at 16 months, enough to break the seal and accelerate degeneration. I live in a country with consumer protection for 24 months, so it’s not so bad (I hope, batteries are special), but in the rest of the world it would suck. I do not want to replace my phone every year, assholes.

TLDR: Get a second hand Pixel (4-7), hence not giving money to google, replace the battery, install GOS. Learn, live, enjoy, at the end you will have learned to live free (if that’s what you want).

MalReynolds,
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My understanding is that GOS relies on google for security updates (and sometimes the other way around, they’ve made some flaws known to google). I would trust them to be solid, at least until google drops the P6 security updates, go look up how many years that is. At worst, you can then use LineageOS or something if you need security, hopefully by then you’re degoogled. GOS will still work, but to my knowledge, doesn’t guarantee updates after google stops updating. It’s about as good as you can expect from a ROM, I’m quite happy, personally.

MalReynolds,
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Fair enough, but P7 has 5 years of security updates, I think P8 gets 7 yrs, FWIW.

MalReynolds,
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Fedora is a “batteries included” distro

You obviously don’t have NVIDIA, kudos, but no CUDA… Also, some of us like codecs, etc.

MalReynolds,
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I was more referring to the need for RPMFusion (batteries), which is a stumbling block for newbs unless they check the what to install after you install Fedora sites etc. I appreciate the purity, but the poor confused person coming from winblows may not…

MalReynolds,
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All storage is secure if you encrypt locally first (metadata notwithstanding). Of questionable utility for phone apps (happy to be corrected, some sort of FUSE type filesystem with cached filenames etc. could probably work), but great for offsite backups (preferably using multiple services) of critical data.

MalReynolds,
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Hence multiple services…

MalReynolds,
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It’d be really nice if df -h actually worked for btrfs…

Also, the discrepancies can be way worse than that.

Which is not to say don’t use it, it’s a way superior filesystem, just needs some polishing with these things. Also, remember to occasionally sudo btrfs balance, or better, set up a systemd to do so…

I've Installed multiple Linux Distros on my Editing Rig to see how well Davinci Resolve Studio works. Here are the results.

So a couple of weeks ago, I made this post asking for help from those who used Linux and Davinci Resolve, and their experience. To those who’s response was effectively “I use arch btw”, I hear you, but that wasn’t the question I wanted to ask....

MalReynolds, (edited )
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Got as far as

I can install the driver from Nvidia itself and install it that way

and noped out. Protip, never, ever install the driver from Nvidia, that’s windows thinking. Find out how to install it from your distro (in this case RPMFusion, or better for this person, bazzite). It might even work, but it will break on updates.

Edit: Also foot shooting behaviour with cinnamon, get things working using distro default, then try on cinnamon.

MalReynolds,
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Shame it only applies to dynamited reefs, still impressive and hopeful!

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