highball @ highball @lemmy.world

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Negative. Windows on Desktop uses vendor lock-in to maintain it's user base. It's been that way for nearly 30 years. People only think they are choosing Windows themselves. Anywhere Microsoft can not enforce vendor lock-in, Linux dominates. Even IoT, a brand new market (well it was brand new ten years ago), 80% dominated by Linux. Microsoft had to make Windows free for IoT and 9" or less devices just to try and be competitive. People only think everything is made for Windows, because OEMs are forced to sell a Windows license with every PC or lose their volume licensing deals. That means every OEM has to spend engineering dollars on Windows drivers, software, and testing. When your business has very thin margins, you can't afford to have second or even third engineering efforts for competitor OSes. Imagine how Linux would be if PC companies were spending engineering dollars on Linux for the last 30 years. Right now the money comes primarily from server sales money. If there was demand for Linux on Desktop in the workplace, there would be tons of competing FOSS Group Policy implementations.

They are all pretty good. I usually go with Ubuntu server + Docker Compose and turn on live kernel patches. If it's not getting exposed to the internet, you probably don't care about live kernel patching. What ever server distro you choose, Docker Compose makes it all easy. If you are used to Red Hat, I think RHEL has a few solid derivatives that you'll be easily familiar with.

You can make a live thumb drive that will walk you through. The installers for server look the same as they did 20+ years ago.

I'm sure the OS doesn't have schizophrenia.

More like the "Tech Wizards" like Linus from LTT have the elitist attitude of being good with Windows means they should automagically be "Tech Wizards" with every other OS. Or the elitist attitude of just expecting the hardware you bought that's Windows compatible should be Linux compatible or it's a failure of Linux. No body does that when switching from Windows to Mac or Mac to Windows. When upgrading to the latest version of Windows and suddenly your hardware is not compatible anymore, nobody says, OMG all of Windows is a failure. It's Microsoft's vendor lock-in strategy that has forced companies to spend their engineering dollars primarily on Windows.

I think people are pretty lucky today, that there is a high probability that their hardware will be supported out of the box with Linux. It never used to be that way. You just bought Linux compatible hardware, just like people bought Windows compatible hardware and Mac compatible hardware. If it wasn't for the BSOD situation in Windows caused by crappy Windows drivers that forced Microsoft to develop and enforce WHQL certification. OEM manufacturers wouldn't have all unified around the same IP's for the components in their machines. This allowed the IP vendor to do the Windows and Linux driver support. With out that, all these Windows users would be stuck with Windows10.

So how about a these "tech wizards" take a bite of humble pie, learn the Linux way of doing things and go to their local LUG and get help, so it is "that easy". So they spend 20 minutes getting setup and learning the ropes instead of assuming they know everything and expecting everything to be done the Windows way. That's what we did, twenty and thirty years ago.

I might be there with you. Going to try avoiding the distros that attract the mental-illness crowd first. Maybe I have to go back to Slackware.

lol, 25+ years for me. Fortunately it looks like I just have to avoid certain distros. Hopefully mental-illness will go out of vogue soon, so we can move past all this garbage and get back to computing.

Day 1 title on Linux. Give it a go.

I used the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 for 7 or 8 years as my main computer. I used Ubuntu on it the whole time so it always felt fast and new. The only reason I had to upgrade, I started running more and more docker containers for the project I was doing and the Yoga Pro 2 just didn't have the cores and ram. I gave it to my cousin. I switched to a mini-pc (lots of ram and lots of cores) and bought a portable 4k monitor. It's lame that the whole Yoga Pro 2 had to be replaced, when all I needed was more cores and more ram. Now I just buy a new mini-pc when I need. Or just a new monitor when I need, etc. A laptop would have a battery, but I don't need that; just the portability. But hands down would have just upgraded my Yoga Pro 2 if I could have.

I'm not a Fedora user, but seems like a middle ground between Bazzite and Fedora for your desktop, could be to use distrobox to have the mutable part. I don't know exactly how much configuration fedora needs, maybe none. Anyways, distrobox is a good tool to have no matter what distro or type.

I have a good inverse example. I started a new job as a government contractor. The machine I get is Windows. I need docker-desktop. I have a basic user account. They install docker-desktop. But it doesn't work for me because I don't have permissions. I tell them, hey docker says I don't have the right permissions. They say, oh you have to apply for an elevated Developer account. Which I wont get because I'm a contractor. This is what you are asking about. The Windows way is just to increase the user's permissions over the entire system. Which is utter bullshit coming from Linux. Anyways, I know the person helping me is just ignorant. And all they did was, next next next accept. But if you look at docker install instructions, for Linux and Windows, they create a docker user group and you just add your account to it. Super easy, and it's one line in the terminal if you are on Windows or Linux. Windows admins just assume power user for everybody. No concept of localized security. Anyways, round and round with the back and forth, he finally adds me to the docker user group. And it worked, and I didn't need to have elevated security or apply for a Developer account, wait two weeks doing nothing on the tax payer dime to only get denied.

I meant rclone. You might be able to do it with rsync too, but rclone is the one I was thinking of. I actually setup my own self hosted Nextcloud server. Then I used rclone to sync everything from gdrive and onedrive to my Nextcloud servers block storage. Then I just use rclone, scheduled on a cronjob, to back up that block storage to storj.io. Anyways, worse case scenario, with rclone, you got something.

If you boot off the thumbdrive to the live OS, you can use Gparted to resize the partition. I'm not sure what Mint has for syncing Google Drive, but I'm sure it has something. Worse case, absolutely worse case you could use rsync. That should really not be necessary though. Gnome has an online accounts area and you setup your online drives there like Google Drive and OneDrive and all that. I've never used Mint before but, Mate or Cinnamon probably have something similar. I'd be shocked if they didn't.

I think that's what Valve is doing. Valve said the OLED was the actual device they wanted to build in the first place. They could further iterate on the OLED but, as far as I have heard, everybody is really happy with that device. Valve also said there wouldn't be a Steam Deck 2 until there is a significant leap in performance that matches the same power profile. I'm guessing that means 2027 but really that could be 2028 or 2029 with the way things are going. If things get pushed out to 2028 or 2029, I definitely think an OLED refresh could be on order. I still have the LCD and I'm not really in a rush to replace it. Really, for me a Steam Deck 2 would be a nice to have right now.

What I think Valve is actually working on right now is a Steam console. I wouldn't hesitate to buy one of those. I use my Steam Deck as console all the time. It's great, but it would be great to have a console that's unconstrained by the power profile required for the hand held. I'll probably just build my own console and throw Bazzite on there, but still I'd rather just buy the Steam Console.

I've not had any issues with the WIFI. At least nothing that would have bothered me. I've taken the deck with me riding around the U.S. and Mexico for a couple years on my motorcycle. I've definitely connected to a lot of different WIFI's. Everything seems normal.

You can set your Steam Deck up to stream the PS5 with Chiaki (https://git.sr.ht/~thestr4ng3r/chiaki). Pretty cool feature for when the TV is in use.

Good call. I still have mine from 2022. I payed the 5 bucks to pre-order on the first day. I really just thought I was at least putting money into Linux and showing interest. I wasn't expecting much but, shocked at how good the Steam Deck actually was. Valve really stepped up and turned a decent handheld (that I would still be using today in the state it was released in), into really well done polished device. The LCD is even getting Wake-on-BT in the next Steam OS 3.7 release. I tried the preview, it works great. In a couple years when the Steam Deck 2 releases, if I'm still playing older titles, I'll probably just wait for the first sale to buy. You can't go wrong with a Steam Deck. It'll change the way you play games.

Exactly. Plus live kernel updates. There is really no reason to reboot. Occasionally I have to shutdown to unplug everything and rearrange my office. Once or twice a year, that's good enough.

That's what sleep is for. Just lock Gnome and let the computer sleep in a sensible amount of time. Instant on when you need.

No point. Sleep works great and live updates are flawless.

CPU interrupts. There are timer interrupts that can be used for this. In hibernate, only a tiny fraction of the CPU is changing the transistor states. A transistor only uses power when it changes state; i.e. "off" or Hibernate. Transistor state changes when you cycle the clock on a CPU. Anyways, set the register for the timer interrupt and signal the CPU for Hibernate. The timer circuit is still listening to the clock while the rest of the CPU stops listening to the clock. Each clock cycle you subtract one from the register. When the register reaches zero, the timer interrupt wakes the rest of the CPU. Just like moving your mouse or pressing the power button; they signal an interrupt which wakes the CPU.