The biggest issue I’ve had with my Pinebook Pro is getting any external display to work. I have bought multiple dongles and none of them are working. In fact, there are multiple smaller issues all different depending on the OS installed. I settled on Manjaro but wifi stops working after coming back from suspend, and it needs to be rebooted. The speakers are weak too.

And there’s software compatibility. Most of the software have ARM packages in multiple versions, but sometimes it doesn’t exists or can’t work. Like wine.

It’s not very polished and it requires knowing tech and Linux a good deal. It’s functional enough and could be useful for development, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an everyday laptop.

I tried to have it nearby and use it from time to time but I just end up getting back to my x86 laptop.

Torrenting a song from cassette? From what specific era should that be? You forgot Napster, Kazaa, and IRC.

Who is going to arrest/fine FOSS developers for not doing anything about that? Would Brazil and US states go after uuuh, the systemd developers? What about distros not using systemd, like Slackware. Who is ultimately responsible for a collaborative project? Are they gonna send the police after Torvalds?

Plus, other countries don’t have this obligation.

All that dev had to do is nothing. Instead he chose to comply with something that was never asked.

Most distributions use systemd but there are still distros and other unix-like operating systems that are using something else. However, they are not “user friendly” and will probably not be what most people are looking for.

Slackware uses its own init system and never used systemd but it has the reputation of being difficult to use. Gentoo also lets users choose between systemd and OpenRC. Alpine Linux uses OpenRC too. There’s more than a dozen distros not using systemd, but again, probably not what most people want to use. It’s also possible to replace systemd with OpenRC on some distros, but it possibly, probably, might cause some quirks.

Otherwise, there are other unix-like operating systems. Debian GNU Hurd also has its own init system but it’s not using the Linux kernel, so it’s a different beast. OpenBSD and FreeBSD also have their own init system, but not Linux. And AFAIK there’s no such thing as modern gaming on those.

There are ways not to use systemd, but realistically speaking, it will probably not be worth it unless you’re really militant about this. I started with Slackware at the end of the 90ies, I know how to compile a kernel, and tried GNU Hurd at some point, but I will not change something unless it’s really implemented deeper into the general software. It’s frustrating that the systemd devs are “collaborating”, but we’ll see what happens after a few rounds of updates.

Not a federated platform but some of my friends are from the IRC era and they still come on my network. I did not have to convince them but we switched to The Lounge for the client a few years ago, so we can paste images and see url preview on the channel. Otherwise they would have insisted that I join Discord, but the small features of the “modern” IRC client was just enough to keep them coming back.

Mild guess. The dev(s) don’t know about navigation buttons. Gestures have been “standard” for a while now so maybe someone forgot about this as a possibility?

Star Trek

And IRC now has web clients that can display inline images, upload them on a channel, preview URLs, push notifications, keep history, and more.

I use The Lounge but there is also Convos and a few others.

Fuck cars. I’m car free and glad to be. My bike doesn’t spy on me. And I don’t really fancy getting an e-bike that requires an app just to work. The only thing spying on me is my Android phone.

Seeed - Ding

The article doesn’t mention any “miles per hour”. Do people in Australia use mph?

In December, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, announced a plan to halve ebikes’ power – and therefore reduce their top speeds – to 250 watts…

This reminds me of a Republican politician interviewed on TV being told that crime rates were down, and him replying “but I don’t FEEL safe”.

Reality doesn’t matter.

Aside from specific dependencies that may want some installed packages even if you don’t use them, yes, it’s fine.

I have used Debian for 15 years, with Gnome 2 then MATE, and now I’m using Cinnamon, while mixing with any GTK apps I can find.

If I understand correctly, no fix for easily setting up/connecting to RTP yet. I get that it’s probably not a very requested feature but the downgrade from pulseaudio’s GUI options to having to type long strings is a tad disappointing for me. I just hope it will be possible again some day.

In French, il has always looked a bit weird when typed at the beginning of a sentence.

Il y a un I suivi d’un l.

Microsoft. I have used Linux for more than 25 years but also worked in a helpdesk. In some jobs I’ve been able to avoid their stuff completely but most of the time I’m stuck using Windows and worst of all, Teams.

Cars. I don’t drive and won’t drive. I hate cars and hate seeing them everywhere. I moved to a city where there’s bike paths and public transit and it’s great for me but the city is still choked with noisy polluting cars. And I still need one to go back in my little shitty town that had passenger trains for a century before being cut in the 90ies. The whole society is pushing and bullying people into getting cars. You’ll love your new car! You’re not a real adult until you have a car. Get a car!

I’m afraid I’ve been using Linux for so long that I’m not very knowledgeable about backup software for Windows. But I’ve been using Duplicati for a single Windows computer for years, and it’s apparently also running on Linux. I never tried on Linux though, so don’t take my words for cash.

There’s also Duplicity, but it’s command line and will probably require installing the Windows Subsystem for Linux. There’s also Bacula but it’s mostly for businesses. This Wikipedia page may know more than me.

On Linux, Deja Dup acts as a graphical interface for Duplicity, is easy, and is the default for GNOME and Cinnamon. Compatible with Duplicity but as mentioned, it’s complicated for Windows.

However I think those are “too complicated” (I prefer raw files instead of archives) and for Linux I’ve been using rsync with a job scheduler (cron) for years. It’s technically not a backup solution in itself but many backup software, like those mentioned, use rsync in some form anyway. Unfortunately it does not work on Windows. My strategy is to use rsync to copy my important files to an older HDD, then the very important files are also sent on an online drive.

The TLDR would be to give Duplicati a try if you really want a backup solution that is cross platform and graphical. Otherwise, there’s nothing more certain than making copies yourself.

I guess I don’t need to remind you to be careful. Take your time. Try restoring to be sure it works. Good luck!

I have created directories of my own in several odd locations which I cannot recall but they also contain some critical files.

O_o If those files are critical, they should be backed up in multiple locations. But if you cannot recall, are those files really critical? Regardless, one day a drive will fail and those files will be lost. Critical data should be backed up in multiple locations.

I only have a single NVMe SSD installed that is almost out of space so I cannot dualboot

How do you intend to switch to Linux without available disk space? It is possible to install and boot Linux from an external drive but performance will obviously suffer. But any way you get Linux running, if it’s on the same computer and if your Windows drives are not encrypted, you should have access to them from Linux. There is no need to copy them or move them if Linux is on another drive but on the same computer. Simply installing Linux will not risk the data, as long as you don’t format the wrong partition. You can leave it there and probably access it from Linux to do what you want with it.

I can make use of an external HDD during the transfer.

Why not backup the critical data on an external HDD?

Please don’t tell me I have to copy and paste all files by hand because given the criticality of the stored data I would rather stay in Windows than risking data loss.

Erm, how do you proceed when you change your computer with Windows? Do you use specialized software to “migrate” your data for you? And if you want an automatic way to do it, how would you ensure the automatic way did it correctly? If this is what stops you from migrating, maybe it’s preferable to keep things as they are for you?! Maybe try a live USB drive environment instead of installing?!

In any way, seeing your other replies, I can only strongly encourage you to make proper backups as this may one day save your critical data, and also facilitate any future PC or OS migration.

I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful or positive but if you made a mess and want to make sure you don’t lose anything, you may want to start by cleaning up, know what you have, where it is, and have it in multiple locations. Then you can start thinking about migrating without worrying about the data.

Genuine. I still wonder if I pronounced it correctly every time I use the word.

It can be expressed by a graffiti that I saw on the side of a bike path in Montreal, in French: “L’humanité ne court pas à sa perte, elle y va en voiture”. Or something like “Humanity is not running to ruins, it’s taking a car”.

As much as I want to blame giant corporations and capitalism for a lot of our societal problems, this sentence resumes so well how common people also enable all of this by refusing to change and just going with the easiest option. I know we won’t reach our climate change goals. I know because when I say I organized my life around the fact that I don’t need a car, everyone tells me that they couldn’t live without a car, that it’s very useful, and that I should get one. I’m not even a real adult as long as I don’t have a car. I’ll feel so much freedom when I’ll have a car. I should just get a car! Just get an electric one! Like, instead of encouraging people to live without a car, the vast vast majority of people will actually encourage others to get one.

So yeah, we’re not “running” to our loss. We’re wasting energy to move our fat asses in individual motorized multi ton metal cubes to go there faster. It’s so useful! So practical! So fast! There’s no time to waste. Like Marge Simpson once said: “Outta my way, Nature!”

It’s a giant metaphor for the rest of our society. Same with all the AI hype, food delivery apps, and over consumption in general. We’re digging our graves out of excessive “convenience”, and cars are one example of this.