thayer

@thayer@lemmy.ca

github.com/thayerw

My Lemmy themes at UserStyles.world:

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thayer,

Same, I’ve switched all of my workstations to Kinoite and Silverblue over the past 18 months, and couldn’t be much happier about it.

PSA: How to install Brother HL-L5210DW printer under Fedora 40 using IPP-over-USB

I just want to share my notes for installing a Brother HL-L5210DW(T) printer via USB under Fedora Atomic 40 (Kinoite), in case it helps anyone else. This may work for other similar models too. I’ve included some background info at bottom if you’re interested....

thayer,

That’s a great post too, thanks for sharing it here. My hope is that folks might still manage to find this info through search engines, even if Lemmy isn’t yet as highly indexed as other platforms.

thayer,

I’m happy to see it’s finally happening, and I hope they left its implementation flexible.

What I’d really love to see (aside from triple buffer) is a real solution to the system tray situation. AppIndicator is problematic for some apps and under certain X11/Wayland desktops, and even when it works well it is cumbersome to use compared to traditional tray implementations. Hoping we see a new approach soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying a revisit to KDE Plasma under Kinoite and I have to say I’m really impressed with both DEs!

thayer,

And I don’t even care if they keep it as a “tray”. I’d be content with integration into the dash if they can make it work smoothly. For example, just having the app start minimized as a regular icon (or segregated icon) in the dash…just something at this point.

Campaigns Can Now See What You Watch on TV. (www.notus.org)

Televisions that can stream platforms like Hulu or Max usually come loaded with technology that collects information on what viewers are watching, and buyers consent to have their viewing tracked when they open their new TV and click through terms of service agreements. Sometimes, data firms can connect those viewing habits to a...

thayer,

As others have said, just buy a TV that meets your A/V needs and don’t connect it to the internet.

I know everyone talks about Jellyfin these days, but Kodi is an excellent option too if you don’t need streaming to multiple devices. I use Kodi via LibreElec on an rpi4 and it’s been great. All media is stored on my home server and shared over Samba, but you can easily store it locally on the box if you don’t have a server.

For music streaming, I run a separate instance of miniDLNA on my server, since I like to browse-by-directory for my music instead of relying solely on metadata. This also allows you to stream to any DLNA-friendly device on the LAN.

I’ve digitized my disc collection and just keep the physical media as a backup. The local library has a huge selection of media too…and if we don’t use it, we’ll lose it.

thayer,

I have a JF instance running on Proxmox as well, but it hasn’t won me over yet. Still, I know a lot of folks do prefer it to Kodi and others so there must be something to it.

thayer,

JF’s UI hasn’t really done it for me for whatever reason…I have it running in an LXC already and mostly use it at my workstations.

thayer,

Our Smart TV is offline 99% of the time, so I rarely see the smart features. We’ll sometimes have company stay over and they’ll connect the Ethernet to use the built-in streaming apps with their own credentials, so it’s a nice option to have and it doesn’t impact us otherwise.

thayer,

Just a suggestion…if you’ve enabled disk encryption during installation, consider enabling autologin for SDDM so you’re not having to enter two credentials at boot. You’ll rarely ever see your greeter again, so it won’t really matter which theme is used.

And if you did not enable disk encryption, consider doing so as the security and privacy benefits are significant for most users.

thayer, (edited )

No worries, the screen should always lock after sleep or idle regardless of SDDM. KDE uses a separate kscreenlocker app for that functionality once your desktop session has started. It’s worth noting the kscreenlocker doesn’t rely on the SDDM theme in any way, as the two are completely separate processes. So, your lock screen will always match your active KDE theme.

thayer, (edited )

If a layman may ask, what are folks even using AI/LLMs for mostly? Aside from playing around with some for 10-15 mins out of simple curiosity, I don’t have a practical use for platforms like ChatGPT. I’m just wondering what the average tech enthusiast uses these for, outside of academia.

thayer, (edited )

Thanks for sharing! I’m probably too set in my ways to ever utilize AI for things like this. I never use virtual assistants like Alexa or Google either, as I like to vet and interpret the source of information myself. Having the citations would be handy, but ultimately I’d want to read them myself so the IA/VA just becomes an added step.

thayer,

That sounds like a time saver for sure. I imagine that some of those elements (grammar rules) are widely available everywhere, while others (practice dialogues, activity suggestions focused on the use of language) would require a fairly specific training model.

thayer,

Like X11, xwayland is not as secure as a pure Wayland environment but I think it’s important to note that hundreds of thousands of desktop Linux users are likely still running X11.

So, in my opinion, it is not ideal to run xwayland but still completely acceptable for most users who don’t have special security requirements.

thayer,

Yep, you would just run a couple of commands in a terminal which would reset your layered apps and rebase to a ublue build of your choosing:

universal-blue.org

thayer,

I run the flatpak versions of KeepassXC and Firefox. In order to enable auto-type, I disable Wayland for both apps via Flatseal (enabling fallback to X11). Works fine in KDE and GNOME, though GNOME now prompts to share the display once per session…something to do with how the portals work now.

thayer,

Oh I’m well aware of X11’s shortcomings, and it’s a band-aid fix until Wayland and/or the DEs sort these capabilities out. If that day doesn’t come within the next year or so, I’ll consider other options then.

thayer,

I don’t know the answer offhand, but one thing I would do is see whether Mpv is equally effected. By default, the number keys 1-8 will control those settings.

De-googling and privacy on Sony xperia

I have been considering replacing my nearly 7 year old iPhone (although very reluctant) and I was checking for options. Really the only phone that caught my eye was the Sony xperia 1 V, but I found no information about how to degoogle and lock down the device. I really like the features and the built in camera apps, etc. Is...

thayer,

Quite a lot of apps cease to provide real-time notifications/messages, if they work at all, when Google Play components are not installed under GOS. At the very least, Google Services Framework is required for many mainstream apps.

thayer,

For what it’s worth, GrapheneOS includes neither Google Play nor Android Auto. Like nearly any Android-based OS, it allows you to install apps of your choosing, but it does not include either of those. It is a FOSS project through and through.

thayer,

Not OP but I think they’re just saying they’re not invested in Android as an ecosystem.

thayer,

They’re probably talking about Fedora dropping the h.264, h.265 and VC1 VA-API support back in 2022 for legal reasons due to patents:

www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API

It’s largely a non-issue as you can easily install the patched Mesa from RPM Fusion, and I believe all Flatpaks incorporate the codecs already.

Don’t get me wrong, Arch is great and it will always have a place in my heart, but I also think Fedora is a top-tier project and I completely understand why they weren’t comfortable risking patent law unnecessarily.

thayer,

This is old news and long-since resolved by RPM Fusion and/or flatpaks.

thayer,

And if you already use uBlock Origin for adblocking, you can simply enable the cookie-notice filters and avoid needing to install another extension:

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/64db9ca2-6372-435b-ac00-7abfa7b3ec06.jpeg

thayer,

I’m sorry to hear of your bad experience. Four of my Intel/AMD workstations are running Fedora Silverblue and Kiniote and I’ve thankfully never experienced the same. Either way, I’m glad you’ve found some success with Arch. It’s still my go-to for the command line and all container work.

thayer,

I have to admit one of the first things I do when setting up a Fedora atomic distro is disable the Fedora flatpak repo and replace all existing apps with Flathub equivalents. Still, good info to keep in mind!

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...

thayer,

I can’t speak to Nobara, but Arch with KDE would be my vote if tweaking, documentation, and freshness (with potential instability) are the priorities.

Arch wins with respect to documentation; hands down, it’s the best documented Linux distro in existence. KDE provides a ton of customization via GUI, and gaming is easily obtainable and quite good on any distro, largely due to Flatpak.

Where you might run afoul is the command line. I couldn’t imagine running Arch without regular terminal use, but I’m sure you could get by for most tasks once KDE is up and running.

thayer,

My Application Launcher menu is very slow with bad performance. It always freezes for half a second goes loads when I move mouse and freezes again. Does anyone experience this issue?

Assuming you’re referring to KDE, I experienced this as well when I changed my default session from GNOME to KDE. There was something in my dotfiles that was affecting KDE’s overall responsiveness, because the performance was perfectly fine when tested in a brand new profile. Ultimately, I resolved it by cleaning up my ~/.config and ~/.local folders.

Linux mint or zorin OS for layman beginners who just want everything to work and focuses on stability , privacy , security ? Also what to do if I switched to mint and WiFi stopped working ?

Hey, so I just put this part up first because this is the one I urgently and importantly need answered even tho I wrote that hideous text block first (sorry English isn’t my first language )....

thayer,

You’ve already received a ton of feedback, so I just to mention that if you ever find yourself without working WiFi, you can connect your cell phone to the computer and enable USB Tethering on the phone (Android and iOS). The computer will automatically detect this as a network connection, and use it, without the need for additional software. This works for Windows and Linux (and possibly macOS, I don’t know).

thayer,

Mind sharing what your distro and version are? The problem seems to be present on Fedora and OpenSUSE mostly, from what I can see of the issues posted online.

As far as I can tell, sddm.conf is the legacy conf location and the more recent SDDM/KDE versions are now placing the settings in /etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf…not that that itself should matter much here.

thayer,

Thanks for the info. I don’t enable the Kwallet service at all either, so I don’t think that would be it, but who knows. At any rate, I rechecked my config and even moved the settings to /etc/sddm.conf without success. It seems I’m not alone at least, so I’ll just stick with GDM until I can troubleshoot further.

thayer,

That was my first choice alternative, but I had no success with any of the available LightDM greeters under Fedora 40 Kinoite (autologin, slick or gtk). They all resulted in a “Failed to start seat: seat0” error, even after ensuring logind-check-graphical=true was set. I may give it another go when I have the time.

thayer,

Interesting. I followed the documentation from the various distros (Arch, Debian, and openSUSE), and added the following to /etc/sddm.conf.d/10-autologin.conf:


<span style="color:#323232;">[Autologin]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Relogin=false
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Session=plasma (I've also tried plasma.desktop here)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">User=thayer
</span>

I’ve confirmed that plasma.desktop exists in /usr/share/wayland-sessions/ and it’s the session I normally select regardless of DM used.

I’ve also tried placing the autologin text in /etc/sddm.conf, /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin, and the default /etc/sddm.conf.d/kde_settings.conf. No matter where it’s saved, the settings are ignored and I’m brought right back to the greeter upon reboot. Nothing is logged in journald and SDDM doesn’t write to its own log in /var/log.

I’ve also tried the above with and without the KDE Wallet service enabled (I normally keep it disabled).

If I use the System Settings GUI to set the above details (via Colors & Themes > Login Screen (SDDM) > Behavior), the System Settings app crashes upon close. I’ve had multiple updates since rebasing to Kinoite, so the chance of a corrupted package is nil.

Something is definitely afoot.

Got tracked down for my school reunion

Today I was contacted by someone at work. She graduated school with me and our 20 year reunion was coming up. Why did she contact me at work? It was the only way they were able to track me down. I was included in promotional material by name. She told me I "was the hardest to track down"and I had to smile....

thayer,

Yep. My only real goal is to reduce the amount of advertising I’m exposed to on a daily basis, and to that end it’s working…for now.

No cable, no streaming services, no broadcast radio, automated downloads of media, ad blockers everywhere, DNS sinkhole, etc. Thankfully, it’s all low maintenance once in place.

thayer,

If your hobby is technology and you enjoy spending time learning this stuff, then go for it. You’ll probably have a good time, and you likely won’t stop at Void.

If this is more of a grass is greener over there thing, then consider that constantly switching your software environment is just time taken from something else, and it’s time you’ll never get back. Ever. The pursuit of minimalism can often bring the opposite of its desire effect.

thayer,

Samba is also generally supported better than NFS on mobile file managers.

thayer,

Debian, Fedora, and OpenSUSE all offer excellent alternatives depending on your reasons for staying.

thayer,

Ubuntu is (mostly) based on Debian. This is simply a move by Ubuntu to further push their own packaging platform which is effectively proprietary at this time. Debian’s own packaging will remain unchanged.

thayer,

Nice! I’m not a KDE user, but I’m always happy to see more markdown editors under development!

thayer, (edited )

In my opinion, the web browser is the single most important application that should be sandboxed on a system. We use them to access nearly everything on the Internet, including resources that are routinely laden with obfuscated JavaScript.

Every attempt should be made to separate the browser from the host system, and circumventing that safeguard in order to facilitate direct access to your password database is risky at best.

Edit: I don’t mean to suggest that I have the perfect solution either, but I keep everything sandboxed and just opt for KeePassXC’s native global hotkey for auto-filling credentials.

thayer,

Right, here’s an enlightening synopsis thus far by Evan Boehs:

boehs.org/…/everything-i-know-about-the-xz-backdo…

thayer,

I think you’ve already received plenty of feedback here, for better or worse, so I’ll just add that you’re going find quirks in any operating system if you use it long enough; Windows is no exception.

Windows and macOS also introduce privacy and security complexities due to their proprietary nature. If that doesn’t bother you more than the annoyances you’ve encountered under Linux, do whatever works for you.

thayer,

I love how easy this has become. I can’t imagine ever going back to a traditional distro model.

thayer,

It’s available via Flatpak though. It’s been a dream to use…very fast, lots of options, and excellent container integration.

thayer,

Leveraging flatpaks, as per the recommended workflow, largely negates these issues as well. Userspace apps shouldn’t be impacted by the host OS changes in such cases.

thayer,

I admit I typically hide the RPM Firefox and stick to the flatpak version. Aside from Nautilus though, in my experience most of the core GNOME user apps are provided via flatpak under Silverblue, including things like GNOME Calendar, Text Editor, Contacts, Totem, Evince, EoG, etc.

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