smeg

joined 2 years ago
[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 1 day ago

Well if you add the games to steam then you can launch them all from game mode

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago

Here is a good resource for whether you can install another OS on a particular Chromebook

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The official itch launcher works on Linux too!

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 3 points 3 days ago

They get what I have so when they have questions I'm more likely to know, and if I don't I have a machine with me that I can check. It was Mint when I was still learning, now it's Fedora Atomic. Or for the really tech-averse, ChromeOS Flex.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I have an xbox controller (I think it's a "series" one, but could be a "one" one, they look the same) and it seems to run fine with a steam deck. There's probably a little latency, but it's pretty negligible.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 7 points 1 week ago

It's basically what the steam deck does, and that's very much for Linux noobs!

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 4 points 2 weeks ago

I've only been a Linux user for a couple of years though so I've got no excuse!

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 23 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

XFCE is fine, it seems to largely behave and while it doesn't have any bells and whistles it can do everything it tries to do fine. Gnome on the other hand... everything I wanted it to do required a plugin which had since been broken by a new version. Plasma seems great so far!

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 62 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

I just moved to Plasma from XFCE and my first thought was wow, this runs fine on old hardware, why have I been suffering through the 2010 experience when I could have had features all this time!?

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 2 weeks ago

Maybe they'd only ever used it headless?

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 9 points 2 weeks ago

I did my first fedora atomic install yesterday. I'm doing my part!

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 30 points 3 weeks ago

I set up Mint for a non-techy relative on their old desktop.

  • Their use-case is almost entirely web browser, so there was no need to cover installing programs. Click the same browser icon and it should behave basically the same way.
  • No need to explain the terminal beyond "this is where you can type advanced commands, you don't need to worry about it".
  • If there's an error message, read it and try to understand what it's actually saying rather than just dismissing it. Do a web search if you're feeling confident, send me a photo of the screen if you're not.
  • Explain how to install updates (or just configure automatic backups and updates for them).
  • Explain when and why the computer will ask for a password (e.g. login and updates) and how that password is for the computer, not for their email or whatever.
  • Explain the basics of folders. This is your home directory, here's where downloads go, here's how to create a folder and drag your files into it.
  • Tell them not to panic. I've seen a lot of older people terrified of pressing the wrong button, make sure they know how to understand what they're doing and undo their mistakes.
  • Be patient!
 

cross-posted from the Linux phones community as nobody there knew

Has anyone actually successfully installed PostmarketOS on an old device recently? I've had a long struggle through trying to prepare a Nexus 7 (2012) and the result seems to be a dead device before I even got to actually installing PostmarketOS.

The rough steps I followed are listed here:

  • Create backups
  • Get SBK
  • Build and prepare U-Boot
    • Actually flashing U-Boot seems to be where things went wrong
      • Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin or ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin from fusee-tools hung on waiting for bootloader to initialize
      • Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../u-boot/u-boot-dtb-tegra.bin failed like this
      • skipping that step and running ./utils/nvflash_v1.13.87205 --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin hung on [resume mode]
      • Consulting a different version of the docs and running ./wheelie --blob ./generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin seemed to work so I ran ./nvflash --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ./re-crypt/repart-block.bin which also seemed to work
      • I then powered off as instructed and the device has been completely unresponsive since

I've tried connecting to a charger, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, and every combination of holding down buttons but it appears to be completely dead. Any suggestions as to what I did wrong or anything I might be able to do now? Obviously it's not the end of the world to have lost a 13 year old tablet that was just gathering dust, but at the moment I'm not feeling positive about ever trying this again on another device!

 

Disney World is arguing a man cannot sue it over the death of his wife because of terms he signed up to in a free trial of Disney+.

It says Mr Piccolo agreed to these terms of use when he signed up to a one month free trial of its streaming service, Disney+, in 2019.

 

I'm a regular user of Linux systems but apart from a couple of test Ubuntu installs many years ago they've always been containers or VMs with no DE which I can throw away when I break them. The Steam Deck showcasing how far Wine/Proton has come combined with Windows being Windows has given me the push; I've made a Mint live USB and it's running beautifully on my desktop. I come to you, the masters, with questions before I hit install:

  1. What do you recommend I do about disk partitions? I'm keeping a Windows install for the few things that demand it, does Windows still occasionally destroy Linux partitions? Do I need separate partitions for data and OS? Is it straightforward to add additional distros as new partitions or is that asking for trouble?
  2. Is disk encryption straightforward? And is that likely to upset the Windows partition?
  3. Is cloud storage sync straightforward? It's my off-site backup solution on Android and Windows (using Cryptomator with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) but I don't think that many providers have Linux clients. Is something like rclone recommended?
  4. Should I just use apt to install software? I know there's some kind of graphical package manager (synaptic?), does that use apt under the covers or is it separate? Is it recommended to install something like Flathub too?
  5. Any other pearls of wisdom? How do I keep everything tidy? Any warnings about what not to do? Should I use a particular terminal emulator or Firefox fork?
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/12861354

Despite today’s date, this is not an April Fool’s prank. At a press conference in Tokyo last weekend, professor Hiroshi Yoshida from the Tohoku University Research Center for Aged Economy and Society, sounded the alarm bell for a looming crisis. By the year 2531, everyone in Japan will have the surname Sato.

 

Not, as I read, "Swan and Paedo"

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