A word about systemd
Honestly, it's 2024, and as a result, this post gives me a bit of a chuckle. For most purposes, systemd has won, and honestly, I hardly even notice. (Granted, I have only used Linux during the systemd era.) If systemd actually interferes with one's needs on a technological (not just a vague philosophical) level, little stops them from seeking out a way to use another init system.
Has it gotten more difficult to use other init systems these days? Yes. However, by the time a person has a problem where systemd can't do the job and have to use a different init system, they're probably more than competent enough to create custom services. I also feel like in terms of software support, only the most idiotic, worthless projects have no possible way to port hem to another init system.
I'm pretty sure some basic stuff is running on the Windows Dev Kit 2023 (no thanks to Qualcomm), which is very similar. See https://www.phoronix.com/news/Windows-Dev-Kit-2023-Linux
I wonder if the endgame for getting Linux running on these freakasauruses is not to create a custom UEFI firmware for each laptop that could abstract away the differences between each laptop with an ACPI API, rather that modifying the kernel itself.
It sounds daunting, but people have done it for the Raspberry Pi before. I don't think it runs as actual firmware on the device - I think it's just an ARM binary that could then execute and provide abstraction for a bootloader.
There are difficulties with that, obviously. For one, the Raspberry Pi is one hardware platform, and a Broadcom-based one at that. Still, I can't imagine that you'd have to redo everything from scratch on every platform; it'd basically just be something like a device tree to define the ACPI info built into every firmware build variant. If this idea worked, people could just have an environment to install an operating system on that is almost like a normal UEFI PC but with ARM.
Truth be told though, I kind of wish Ampere would get more into the consumer space; I feel like they have the least insane configuration of almost any ARM device, being users of UEFI. I don't know if they could viably scale down from their 192 core beasts, though. Now that BNL song is going through my head. "If I had a million dollars, I'd buy an Ampere workstation; a power-hungry ARM beast."
Honestly, no. I just use direct apt commands on my Debian installs for native stuff, assuming I even use the shell for that; sometimes, if it's not a complex update that's going to hold back 1.0*106 packages, I just use Synaptic or Package Updater, frankly, as one of those is what I have my XFCE Package Update Indicator set to use on any machine I use frequently and it's convenient sometimes.
As for Flatpaks, I just run the flatpak update command whenever I feel bored. I wish Warehouse GUI supported updating, just because I find it really weird that's excluded from an otherwise pretty slick application that gets rid of me having to muck through the Flathub.
I don't write Rust code at the moment, and as for Python, I'm either using the Debian version of Python packages or scattered venvs that follow a de facto standard for Python developers: "What's an update?"
True; as said, this is Debian Testing. By "major issue", I mean Grub occasionally gets borked and I have to chroot in and fix it, or the time_t_64 transition.
I found the compromise between stability and newer packages acceptable for my desktop machine, which I am usually only on when I would actually have the time to debug these things. However, these days, I'm busy, thus may switch to stable in the next few months.
Having used the same Testing install since early 2022, I'd say it's not too bad. Stability-wise, I only have a major problem once a year.
Eventually, you get tired of having to switch to Flatpaks while packages transition. I'll either stay on Trixie when it goes to stable or reinstall. It's still an ext4 system and I want something different, as stable as ext4 is. I've been using btrfs on my new laptop for about a month and have been happy.
Honestly, in the age of Flatpaks, stable Debian is fine for most people in my opinion.
I guess also, for Badgey facial expressions, I got some practice when I attempted to design a Lego Badgey figure (in addition to all of the Cerritos crew, most of which are fine except for Rutherford is really hard and so is T'Ana. Also, I need to fix up Billups's face. I did like how Shax's face turned out, though, even though he still needs a bit of work.)
Thanks. I actually overlayed a transparent image of Badgey over to get the relative sizing right. The eyebrows I did by myself, though, partly based on image reference; on the last one, though I tried to capture angry 10th doctor going stone cold through the ISS Cerritos hallways slaughtering fascists left and right.
I might add proportions were very hard and his eyes are actually proportionally much bigger than prime Badgey because when I tried to make the proportions the same, he looked TOO derpy.
Still a bit bizarre. I feel like with 2TB NVMe as cheap as it is, HDDs in anything remotely portable are insane.
Now they make sense in RAID/NAS stuff, but I feel like ones the 3.5” ones.
I like CoreCtrl. I don’t know how well it works with Intel and Nvidia, but it’s great on my AMD Thinkpad and desktop.
Nice thing is it’s in most distros’ repos these days.
I haven't researched this (I don't have kids), but out of curiosity, what type of mobile device is your daughter using? Also, I think PiHole is a solid recommendation like others recommend.
Otherwise, from a quick Google, I don't know of anything that can integrate both Linux PC and mobile phone screen time. Honestly, this sounds like a fun project I could implement someday if I ever had the will. However, for right now, in terms of screen time all I can think of is reading system logs (perhaps via SSH) to manually analyze your daughter's screen time.
So you felt nothing when they were briefly on DS9 and stopped by Quark's before getting lost in the Delta Quadrant? You bring dishonor to your house! (In fact, Tom gets in a barfight with Quark (not shown on screen, unfortunately) in that one timeline where Harry was never assigned to Voyager.)
Just kidding about the "dishonor to your house part". Honestly, I like some of the fun 90s Trek had with crossovers, especially how VOY sort of rehabilitated Barclay. Honorable mention to that thing where Bashir helped Data have dreams. I guess O'Brien and the eventual Worf being mains on DS9 count as well; I think despite his flaws getting really annoying, Worf gave us an excuse for the fun Klingon political plot lines.
As an actual question, though, do any of the following apply to you?:
- Didn't also watch DS9 as a kid.
- Were watching Voyager out of order, only catching random episodes, etc.
- All of the above
Delightfully 2000s. Maybe replace that icon theme, though. Also not big on any official Ubuntu derivatives, but that’s your choice in the end.
I was sticking with characters that had already been introduced at the time, which was hard because I wanted so bad to add Vic Fontaine saying, “Hey, what’s the big idea here, pally?”
ROCm is basically AMD’s GPU compute system, like CUDA but worse but better because the card is actually usable for desktop stuff.
However, they only support it on specific distros, and they’re really weird about what cards they support. This should be changing soon - Debian’s been working on packaging it natively, and I think so has Fedora.
"Such an amateur lack of focus and balance."
Moriarty or the exo-comp makes sense, but I feel like Lore's tried to blow up the Federation or whatever enough times she could at least spare an asterisk.
Assuming you have a free PCIe slot, maybe just buy a PCIe USB card to use instead of what seems to be a faulty AMD USB controller.
I agree with you on the 580, although I got mine new and use it with 2 1080P monitors. I do wonder if ROCm works any better on newer cards, but I don't have my hopes up.
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Honestly, just play with Linux in a VM for a while.
For your sanity, I have several recommendations:
- Linux has a central location to install apps called package repositories. Those packages are well-tested and tend to be extremely safe, so try to install from there first.
- Sometimes, apps aren’t available from the main package repository, so you have to source them from elsewhere. To avoid some of the fear, you can try using a thing called Flathub. I won’t go into all the intricacies of how it works or why it exists, but suffice it to say, some of the apps there have a verification checkmark.
- Also, when installing an app, research it online and find the Git(hub/lab/ea) repository. Start by checking if it’s under an open source license like GPL, BSD, or MIT. Although not a sure thing (like the XZ incident, which was an isolated incident), half the time if it’s under one of those FOSS licenses means the app is legit. In addition, check to make sure the source code is actually there- repos with just an executable file and a readme telling you to buy something are red flags.
- Finally, don’t go running random commands online without first researching what it does (with manpages or the like).
I would recommend Googling the following and reading about these:
- Linux directory structure
- Linux package managers
I may have misconveyed my meaning. I wasn't necessarily arguing that systemd has no viable alternatives. I meant to say that where systemd doesn't work (embedded systems being a good example), chances are the lack of support won't be a burden for a reasonably skilled user.