Shdwdrgn

@Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz

A person with way too many hobbies, but I still continue to learn new things.

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Just finished season 2 of Star Trek: Prodigy--it is absolutely criminal that Paramount (or CBS or whoever) cancelled it

That show was already great and season 2 delivered and then some. Sure at points it feels kinda star wars-y but you can tell the creators really love Star Trek. The fact it was so unceremoniously cancelled then dumped really shows how out of touch studio executives are with the IP’s they own. Especially considering how god...

Shdwdrgn,

56 here, I discovered and was blasting through first season last Summer when I realized that was the only season so far so I started pacing myself… and then all the crap came down about it being cancelled and I was flabbergasted. I mean yeah it’s an animated series, that doesn’t mean it’s ONLY for children. Hell look at how many animated shows Star Wars has and I would never expect something “Bad Batch” to be marketed as a kids show. Prodigy feels more like DS9 to me, showing the really dark side of the Federation and things that slip through the cracks, it’s not the typical show where everything gets wrapped up in the last five minutes and you move on to the next episode, and I really love that. Hopefully it will get picked up for more seasons but meanwhile I’m taking my time going through the episodes.

Why do you still hate Windows?

I realize this is a Linux community, but I was wondering why you still hate Windows. I mean, I love Linux, but I will not argue that it’s more convenient to the average person in most use cases to use Windows, I recently had to switch back to Windows and I realized how convenient it all was and how I was missing so many things...

Shdwdrgn,

It’s been a long time since I used Windows myself, however one of the big reasons for switching was the inherent instability. At once point I was developing code in Visual Studio and constantly loading/closing quite a few different programs to test things out. Windows just didn’t seem to handle memory-recovery and I would have to reboot every week or two (usually because of the whole OS locking up). In comparison, I run a variety of software on my linux machines which can involve anything from testing code in multiple browsers to image editing to 3D CAD drawings. Sure that tends to drain the memory but when I close something I get that memory back. I’ll frequently get down to the last 100K of RAM, close a couple programs that may be holding large caches (Firefox really hates me having hundreds of open tabs), and then I’m right back up and running again. Reboots may occur about every 6 months.

I have to support other people using Windows at work, which reminds me how much I’ll never go back to it. My biggest frustration is that Microsoft is constantly changing things. Hell you can’t even directly reach the control panel any more, you have to run searches to find the specific item you want. Want to check the settings of a certain printer? Good luck, that doesn’t seem to be available in the right-click menu any more. It’s just all these idiotic changes making it difficult to actually use or maintain Windows. Why should I have to google how to find something when everything used to be under the control panel or a right-click away?

Shdwdrgn,

Kinda like dealing with Microsoft Office… You can’t find anything in that “new” toolbar design because so many options are grouped together in ways that don’t make any sense. I’m so glad I never had to actually use that garbage even though I did enjoy the older versions.

Do you have a more complicated shell history scheme than the distro default?

I’ve used distrobox more and more and am at the point where I need to start saving and integrating history differently. Or like, when I’m installing and building something complicated, I need to start saving that specific session’s history. I am curious what others might be doing and looking for simple advice and ideas.

Shdwdrgn,

I think this is the only change I’ve made that affects my history… It simply ignores multiple copies of a command when you repeat it multiple times, making it easier to up-arrow through the unique things I’ve executed.

export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups

Shdwdrgn,

I only include it because pretty much every guide on zfs setups recommends disabling it these days. I don’t believe it’s anything I’ve every had to use despite several drive crashes over the years.

Shdwdrgn,

Heh sorry about that. There’s also a zfs conversation going on where I had suggested disabling the ‘dedup’ option. I’ve never heard of dedupe being used in the context of the shell history, so yeah, I got confused.

CAD Software Suggestion

I am currently on win10 but have been toying with mint and liking it. I intend on fully switching over soon. I have also been toying with the idea of some simple 3D modeling, like making custom parts for projects around my house. Maybe using a CAD software to generate stls for a 3D print or using it to spec out parts for a...

Shdwdrgn,

A lot will depend on your preferred workflow, and since you mentioned SolidWorks I assume that means you prefer a more GUI-oriented approach. However as an alternative, if you are comfortable with more of a programming approach, you might look in to OpenSCAD. Most things are done from a more primitive standpoint in how you create each part of an object, but I like having the direct control over every aspect.

Shdwdrgn,

SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments in Season 5, Episode 1 of “Star Trek: Discovery,” now streaming on Paramount+.

Guess I won’t be reading this until after I get a chance to watch the episode.

Shdwdrgn,

So you’re not simply trying to delete old emails based on the date they were sent to you? It might help to know where these dates are located, if in the subject line or in the body. And is consistently a straightforward date like “2024-02-11”, or are you also trying to look for vague references like “Feb 11”? That might make a difference for how the question is answered, however a quick google search suggests that the FiltaQuilla add-on will support regular expressions in the message filters for addresses and subjects, while “Expression Search / GmailUI” adds expressions for body searches.

Shdwdrgn,

Something thing to keep in mind when getting started is to manage your expectations. You’ve spent all this time using Windows so you already know where everything is – for Windows. In a lot of respects you are going to be starting over from scratch, learning new ways to install software, get around the desktop, and doing simple things like changing your settings. Don’t get discouraged, you’ve done this before, you can do it again.

One way to cope with the initial frustration is to start out loading up something like VirtualBox on your Windows desktop, and installing a linux distribution there. Then you can play around, take your time to find a desktop that’s right for you, and learn how to actually DO things in linux that you already do daily in Windows. That way you eliminate the pressure of trying to figure out how to do everything at once.

Another reason to start with a virtual machine is that there are a LOT of possible linux distributions to choose from. There are also quite a number of different desktop environments to choose from. It pays to take a bit of time and play around with different options to find out what you like. You also need to decide if you want something running the cutting-edge releases, or if you prefer stability with slightly older software. For example, Ubuntu is a good choice for the absolute latest releases but can introduce bugs that the devs refuse to fix. On the other hand, Debian (which is actually the base system that Ubuntu is built on) only releases slightly older software that has been tested over the past few months. However in all cases, you will always get immediate patches for security issues.

As already mentioned, any old computer laying around is a viable candidate for Linux. Until last year I was running internet-facing web servers on 1GB of memory and a single core. If you have something built in the last 20 years it will work for your purposes. Hell my desktop is someone else’s throw-away because under Windows they considered it “too slow to get email or browse the internet”. I use it for writing arduino code and building models for my 3D printer.

Shdwdrgn,

The core of Ubuntu is built on Debian, but the maintainers create a lot of their own packages based on the latest versions of software available. So for example both distributions have a version of Python available, but the one in Ubuntu might be the very latest release while the one in Debian may be several months old because it goes through more testing. I like to compare their usage to the difference between using Ubuntu for a desktop computer (where it’s not the end of the world if something breaks) to using Debian for a server (where you absolutely need rock-solid services that will never fail you). And of course Ubuntu and Debian are not your only choices, there are even other distributions which are based on Debian or Ubuntu, several distributions based on Redhat, and plenty of others which are completely built in other ways. If you really want to learn the nuts and bolts of it, check into the Linux-from-scratch project which walks you through building your own system completely from compiled source code.

Now the desktop environment is a whole different thing, and Linux gives you a lot of choices there too, from very lightweight desktops that could run on a twenty year old computer to much heavier desktops with a ton on features which require more modern hardware. The nice thing about desktop environments is you’re not stuck with just one. You can actually load up several and choose which one to load when you log in to the desktop, then later on dump the ones you don’t like. So the important thing is finding a base OS you like first, then everything on top of that can be changed as you learn more about Linux.

Shdwdrgn,

Hey this has nothing to do with OS/2. Seems kinda shady to embed the name of another known operating system into your own name?

Shdwdrgn,

Heh I figured as much, it was just on my mind because I saw an article yesterday that the OS/2 archive is being shut down soon. It was one of my first attempts to escape Windows but it never quite made the cut.

Linux file transfer speed bottlenecks?

I’m currently watching the progress of a 4tB rsync file transfer, and i’m curious why the speeds are less than the theoretical read/write maximum speeds of the drives involved with the transfer. I know there’s a lot that can effect transfer speeds, so I guess i’m not asking why my transfer itself isn’t going faster....

Shdwdrgn,

You didn’t mention if this is a HDD or an SDD. If it’s a HDD, you will never even reach SATA 2 speeds, although you should be able to saturate SATA 1. Realistically you might be able to push around 200MB/s on newer HDDs but that’s assuming nothing else gets in your way.

Shdwdrgn,

As I mentioned in my previous post below, even in theory a spinning platter is not going to reach anywhere near 5Gb/s speeds, not even 1/20th of that. You can google the specs as easily as I can, but a 4TB WD Blue drive is only 5400rpm which seriously hampers its speed, limiting it to about 175MB/s (bytes, not bits).

The 4TB Seagate Ironwolf is another slow drive at only 5900rpm, but does manage to creep up to about 190MB/s transfer speeds.

You didn’t mention which one is your 4TB drive, but the speed of the slowest drive is going to dictate your top transfer speeds. No matter how you slice it, you can expect a long wait to transfer 4TB of data. If you want more speed, you can get better performing 7200rpm drives, but you won’t see any substantial increases until you move into a multi-drive RAID. I would recommend a minimum of 5 drives, but for comparison I have eight 18TB drives set up through ZFS as a raidZ2 configuration (similar to RAID6) which gives me a sustained transfer rate of around 450MB/s. If you need faster, you really have no choice but to upgrade to SSD.

Shdwdrgn,

Haha and now you know exactly WHY they do that! The manufacturers were more than happy to let people keep believing SATA3 drives would be faster than SATA2 drives until they started facing public backlash and the costs of returns, but they still try to bury it in the fine print.

Keep in mind that any transfer speeds on the box are also going to be best-case scenarios, for read access only (because writing takes longer than reading even on an SSD). The numbers I found on reviews are generally going to be more real-world conditions including a combination of simultaneous read/write operations. Personally I don’t trust anything except what I can get in my own installations because everyone’s hardware and software are different, but if you decide to do your own testing make sure that it disables cached operations during the tests or you’re not doing anything but checking the speed of your RAM.

Shdwdrgn,

I think my biggest tip is to manage your expectations. What you are attempting is not the same as simply moving to a new version of Windows – literally everything will be different. You’ve spent a lifetime learning how to perform all these tasks until they became second-nature, but now you plan to move to a whole new system. Thing will be in different places, the way you tweak settings or access content will be different, and it’s going to be very frustrating because hey, this task should be easy. Don’t expect to cram all those years of experience into re-learning a new system in a few weeks.

The good news is that there’s a huge support community, and just about anything you want to do has already been asked and can be found through a quick search. Stick with it, and you’ll discover that linux actually gives you quite a lot more control over what you can do with your hardware (not to mention nearly all the software is free). It won’t be long before you’re asking how you ever survived without many of these tools.

Shdwdrgn,

In the beginning it seemed like everything was a task – how do I install new software, how do I set up the right display or printer driver, how do I upgrade the whole OS? Then it quickly got down to making things look and act in a way that made more sense to me, or even adding and moving things around on the start menu. Back when I started, setting up dual monitors required manually building an X11 startup file and upgrading the OS usually meant compiling a new display driver, but that was around 2005 so of course things are MUCH better now.

Eventually you’ll get down to the point of simply finding compatible software to reproduce something you did in Windows, which usually isn’t difficult. A lot of this is going to depend on exactly how you use your computer and what you expect from it. I was already using Firefox and Thunderbird when I made the switch so that covered like half the things I needed at the time. Microsoft Office is (thankfully) gone although some parts of Libre Office still feel a bit rough. There’s pretty much no remaining support for Adobe pdf files, so if your employer makes use of advanced features for filling out forms then you may run into trouble (of course standard PDFs are very well supported). You will find things along the way where some business has made a point of locking people in to their product and there’s not much you can do except point out to your employer that they’re buying licenses for something that is free and more widely supported in open source products, but mostly you’ll just find your own solutions to work around these issues.

Shdwdrgn,

Somebody at my company got a hard-on for Microsoft products several years ago and I’d like to beat them senseless with all the problems it has caused. They started by moving all email to Microsoft “because we’ll save a ton of money not having to pay techs to manage the servers.” Within the month our mailboxes were full of spam and they’ve had to open up multiple new tech teams to deal with the constant fallout from phishing scams. And they just keep doubling down and ignoring things like the recent news of Microsoft ignoring a full remote-access vulnerability for more than a year and then mis-representing it when they did finally decide to patch it.

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