sudo apt update/sudo apt upgrade

It is actually very easy to break your install by doing this if you have made a habit of installing random .deb files from around the internet

APT can’t update things that are not in the repository and .deb files typically only work for a specific version of the OS (which is to say, they will probably work when you install them but break when you update).

You should in general never install a .deb file directly. Sometimes it might be necessary in order to install a program that the developer doesn’t support, but that lack of support should be a flashing warning light that the package will probably break something in the future.

There are ways to purge your system of orphaned .deb installs, and I suggest doing that before large upgrades

In Soviet Russia, bar keep tabs on YOU!

I just wanted to say, I enjoy your writing style. You very vividly illustrated your emotions

For web browsing I can navigate alright using spacebar to scroll. Naturally, that works best with a bluetooth keyboard attached, but you could resize the window and use the soft keyboard if you prefer. The “vimium” extension for Firefox makes keyboard navigation much nicer.

I also have one and agree with your conclusion. My PineNote is so cool and really fun to use!

I use mine most often for displaying and editing my character sheet while playing tabletop RPGs.

The display looks great and mine doesn’t have the stuck pixel or the buggy lines issue you experienced, though I do have very noticeable ghosting artifacts. Probably this is because I mainly use the “performance” optimization setting rather than “quality”. Animations play very poorly, so I found it necessary to use extensions to disable animations wherever possible.

Also, of course, the screen is only black and white so sometimes you lose out on information. E.g. if my GM says “the goblin that stole the flask is highlighted yellow. The one highlighted pink is standing his ground. What do you do?” I would not be able to tell them apart.

I get acceptable but not fantastic battery life. Usually after about 3 hours I’ll have around 60% life left. It would probably be better if I was using a lighter program than Firefox. Mine also has phantom battery drain and loses maybe 15% battery life per day if left unplugged while suspended.

I paid $460 USD for mine, shortly before the import tariffs were implemented.

Overall, I would recommend it for someone who meets these criteria:

• is a Linux enthusiast comfortable with the command line and willing to read and follow various guides (there’s a long README that opens on boot which has crucial information in it, like how to fix critical bugs)
• wants to avoid proprietary lock in wherever possible
• wants to avoid shovel ware and use mainline Linux
• wants to support FOSS development and doesn’t mind paying extra to do so
• understands the severe limitations of an e-ink display

I would not recommend it to most people because it is an enthusiast Linux device with an e-ink display. If you’re the kind of person that specifically wants an enthusiast Linux device with an e-ink display then I think you’ll love it

Slashvertisements? In your community? It’s more likely than you think

These algorithms are not solely based on the things you watch. I believe it’s also based on your location and even close contacts. So if, hypothetically, I live in shithole Trumpistan with my racist uncle and he likes watching Hitler Youth “own the libs” then YouTube will recommend it to me too

The internet got a lot less annoying after I learned how to use uBlock Origin’s “Enter element picker mode”

On desktop I really like Vimium. It enables keyboard navigation on basically any site

…Or to go first bright flashes in the distance

A very similar thing happened to me a while back. Mine was “only” a 10% pay cut but it was extremely demotivating.

Of course, since I was in the US I had no such thing as a tribunal

Yep. I’m on Debian for many years now. Every broken update I can recall was either caused by an undocumented PPA or nvidia drivers (which have finally been fixed, for my card at least)

Plus it was usually yellowed and sticky with nicotine tar

Also an old fart, also love XFCE

I am a longtime fan of Debian Stable, for exactly that reason. I installed the XFCE version using the custom installer about 8 years ago and have had very few issues.

Initially my GPU wasn’t well supported so I had to use the installer from Nvidia, forcing me to manually reinstall the driver after every kernel update. That issue has been fixed in recent years so now I can just use the driver from the Debian repos.

I installed the unattended-updates package about 2 years ago and it has been smooth sailing since

What a world we have created where “we won’t have to work anymore” means “we’re all doomed”

We could be creating a new utopia, but we know the people in power will hoard every scrap

This is the one I got. I wonder why they use different photos sometimes

Shelled and unshelled both also mean unshelled and shelled, respectively

Invalid USB-A male to USB-A male cables are also commonly used on low cost KVM switches.

The one I got from Amazon has two of them - one for each computer, then the other end of each cable connects to the switch. The switch has its own micro-USB power supply but it is optional, so the cables must pass power

I first used XFCE on my old 700mhz processor Thinkpad back in the day. Back then, Gnome and especially KDE were known to use excessive resources on low-end machines so XFCE was preferred.

However, I actually quite liked the DE so I just switched to it permanently, even on my more capable machines. I’ve been running XFCE for around 15 years 😆