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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1129 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In honor of @WhiningCoil's epic rant about Microsoft products, can we talk about "personal stacks"?

I'm about ready to jump multiple ships. Right now, we have one Windows 10 desktop chugging along, some chromebooks for just hanging out and browsing (or bringing up recipes for cooking or whatever), and android phones.1 I'm still okay with the phones. Like WhiningCoil said, Windows has gotten worse and worse, and our current desktop hardware is in the "will they, won't they?" land of whether Microsoft will even allow it to upgrade to Win11, not to mention whether I even want it. It seems like every week, I'm learning about yet another "feature" they've added that I just have to go turn off (and then put on my long list of stuff to turn off for the next time I have to bring to life a new windows machine... or reset this one (yes, I just had to reset it not long ago, because it went utterly bonkers with forgetting to let me have proper privileges)). Sunsetting of security updates (as insane as they've become) might push me over the edge.

As for the chromebooks, anyone else looking to jump ship because of Manifest V3? Maybe I need to suck it up and just try out uBlock Origin Lite for a while, see how it goes. But we've been having other issues, too. Since getting the chromebooks, we've done a lot of simple coordination stuff with google sheets, but they've been really glitchy lately; about half the time, when I navigate to an open sheets tab, the entire display is all scrambled. I have to switch tabs and switch back, and then most of the time it'll work. I don't recall seeing this behavior when I go to sheets in Chrome on my non-ChromeOS devices. On top of that, there's an issue with internet connectivity randomly dropping (still can't figure out if it's fundamentally a hardware limitation/problem or something going on in ChromeOS). For several years, these have been amazing, cheap devices that just worked for a lot of our poking around day to day, but the annoyances are building up.

I have been seriously considering just tossing both Windows and ChromeOS. Apple is too expensive; I genuinely like having super cheap chromebooks that are small (even the smallest MacBook Air is pretty big for just throwing around), have real keyboards, can be abused, and just thrown away and cheaply replaced if I break one (I could blow through at least five cheap chromebooks for the cost of one MacBook Air). Soooo... I'm thinking maybe just Linux everywhere?! Probably the biggest barrier I have to that is the Wife Approval Factor. I'm definitely her "Tech Department", and it would basically be on me to retrain her and work through her annoyance at having to learn new tech things.

Any thoughts? Has anyone else taken a similar plunge, especially with a less-techy wife involved? What are y'all currently running?

1 - Of course, we also have work computers, which will always be Windows for the rest of time. Nothing we can do about it, but there's not really any problem with the extremely small number of things that we need to have cross the work/personal barrier.

I've got a Windows 10 desktop, a custom build. I'm still pretty happy with that. Microsoft hasn't done anything I find too obnoxious yet. My setup is apparently not compatible with Windows 11, which I'm not that enthusiastic about anyways. I legitimately have no idea what I'm going to do if Microsoft ever does truly EOL Windows 10. I'd probably have to buy mostly new hardware to get Win 11 compatibility, which I'm not very enthusiastic about, or try another full switchover to Linux, which I'm also not enthusiastic about.

I also have a moderately high-end Chromebook for a personal laptop. I'm quite happy with that right now. IMO, the Manifest V3 being terrible thing is mostly ridiculous ultra-nerd rage. I installed uBlock Origin Lite, and it's just fine. You have to enable "complete" filtering mode on a few sites for it to work properly, but that's no hassle. It has a few less features than "full", but I never used those anyways. My impression is that V3 is more about a legitimate desire to lock down more tightly what extensions can do, which is probably necessary considering how many extensions have gone abusive, rather than an evil plot by the big ad giant to shut down really good ad-blocking. Same thing as the old plain C extension interface IMO. Everyone wailed and moaned about how terrible it was when I think Chrome first went over to prioritizing Javascript-based extensions. But eventually everyone came around to the viewpoint that the C extensions system was a security and compatibility nightmare that could never be fixed, and it's not really a good idea to give extensions that much power anyways.

Anyways, enough of a rant on that. I've never seen issues like you're describing on my Chromebook. Might be because it's a higher-end model, I think like $600 or $700 or so. I do like my nice high-res screens. I don't know if the somewhat higher price kills your motivation entirely, but I think the low-end hardware might be more of what's behind your issues than the OS. You might get the same sort of issues at that price point no matter what OS you use. It's still cheaper than Apple hardware, and more capable too - mine has a touchscreen and a 360-rotation hinge so it can become like a big tablet. More storage space available makes the Linux environment work better too.

I do have an Apple laptop for work. It's okay I guess. Apple seems to want to lock you into their world a little too hard for my tastes though. It's mostly avoidable on MacOS devices, but I don't really see enough of an upside to pay the premium for their hardware.

Naturally along those lines, I'm not much into iOS devices, so I use Android phones, which I'm also mostly happy with. Well, I'd like to have better Adblock experience for mobile, but nothing much else does any better, and I never liked using the web on mobile that much anyways. I've played with the custom ROM stuff off and on, but I gave it up as IMO they're all too janky and unreliable. It's more important to me that my phone be as close to 100% reliable as possible rather than have the latest and greatest of everything and best features etc.

I did try Linux on the desktop for a while. I gave that up also, as I found it too finicky and prone to random breakdowns and malfunctions on updates. Yeah, I can fix the problems, eventually, but I'd rather my personal computer Just Work than be a puzzle to solve every few months. I think that was around 10 or 15 years ago though, so it's possible it's better now. I wouldn't bet on it though. Try it out if you want, but be prepared for that kind of pain on a regular basis. Both Windows and ChromeOS have great Linux environments that IMO give you the best of both worlds.

After my experiences at work, I'm staying on Windows 10 until the bitter end, and possibly past that.

I took a screenshot on a Windows 11 computer on the production line, and went to annotate it using the default application ("Designer"). The mousewheel didn't scroll or zoom regardless of which modifier keys I was using, and ctrl+Z didn't undo. I have no idea how they could break the UI that badly on a core application.

They might make Windows 11 into a feature-complete operating system before killing Windows 10, but I'm not holding my breath.

Long term support version of 10 has many years left, right? And you can use a certain GitHub program to give yourself the industry pro version of that. I'm doing a reinstall this week, will do that myself

Officially, normal Win10 support ends October 2025, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC support ends in January 2027. There’s a one time offer of Extended Support, but it’s thirty bucks per station and gonna be pretty limited. I would expect some limited security updates after that despite Microsoft’s best promises and it’s certainly possible Microsoft does a last-second extension, but it’s not a lot of time for migration prep if you’re worried about 11.

Oh, that's less than I thought, but I still consider another two years a long time in PC terms. That pushes things out to "I'll deal with it on the next hardware change or reinstall," even if someone isn't comfortable running an unsupported system.

I took the plunge for The Year Of Linux On The Desktop, starting with a few tiptoes in 2016 and moving my personal computer default boot in 2021. I had long experience with server Linux, and that used to be important, but it's gotten a lot better today. For use cases:

  • ChromeBook replacements / web browser machines: 110%. You can just run Chrome/FireFox/Brave on a local machine, and be happy, or you can install LibreOffice/various calendars/whatever and also have good local offline functionality, if sometimes with a dated UI. The only real downside here is that new laptops running on their Linux compatibility will usually start at four or five times the price. If you're comfortable buying used equipment and swapping out batteries, you can get <150 USD pricing on three-year-old mid-range hardware, but this is extra work and has limited availability.
  • Desktop futzing around: 99.9%. Since 2021, I've had maybe three document files I couldn't open fine with LibreOffice, and about a dozen websites that didn't just accept FireFox-on-Linux-with-working-uBlock as equivalent to Chrome-on-Windows. Video streaming is fine, audio streaming is fine, Discord's updates are a little more annoying but mostly work out of the box.
  • Gaming: 90%, but highly variable. If you're playing mainstream games from Steam that don't use an anti-cheat, and run on an Xorg-based desktop, 99% of games will run with little more than checking a 'run in proton' box. GOG-based games can be a little more annoying (install Lutris to install GOG Galaxy to install No Man's Sky with online support), and I have run into games that didn't work without a lot of extra work, but it's a lot better than I expected. Other games can range from 'one extra step over Windows that's well-documented' (Vintage Story) to a lot of annoyances (Star Citizen, tbf not a Linux-specific thing) to "you have my sympathy" to 'will work, but Bungie will ban you for it' (Destiny 2). Anti-cheat updates can break perfectly-functioning games, and most anti-cheat-focused games simply won't work in Linux. Mods can sometimes break a perfectly-functioning game (which raises some very serious questions about ARK: Survival Evolved's sandboxing). There's been times where I've gone literally years without having to boot to Windows to game (FFXIV, Factorio, and Vintage Story have been pretty great out of the box), and other times where it was once a week.
  • Laptop Use: 95%. I have had some laptops where driver support, especially for things like lid-close hibernate/sleep, either didn't work or wasn't reliable. Fingerprint readers tend to be flaky as well. Battery life can range from better-than-Windows to much-worse as a result. But the core functionality has almost always been there.
  • Server functionality: 99%. Hosting your own file share and calendar setup is pretty trivial with NextCloud, collaborative document editing is a little more tedious but absolutely doable (I used to recommend Collabora, they still work but are a little naggy), Jellyfin is great for local video or media streaming, LLDAP for authentication for serious home server users, so on. My only big complaints are that Calendar sync protocols are a clusterfuck, where each calendar works fine individually but syncing to something like an iPhone's CalDAV support is basically playing Russian roulette, and that setting up your own VPN is still little too hard for nontechnical users.
  • Software- or Hardware-specific use cases: 50% coin flip. Sometimes the Linux-friendly version of a software merely has a learning curve, like compared Blender to Z-Brush; sometimes it's a cliff, like trying to go from Fusion360 to FreeCAD. Some hardware will work out of the gate, some like VR headsets might be a couple hours of fucking with text files and the command line, some is 'just build your own driver' level bad. Software built specifically to interface with hardware can be especially frustrating: Carbide Create works surprisingly well, LycheeSlicer was a crashomatic for the better part of a year, and sometimes even stuff that should work sometimes breaks in weird ways (how did Prussia fuck up their slicer?). Audio decks are notoriously hit or miss; drawing tablets (especially w/ pressure sensitivity) can be annoying.
  • Phone replacement: 1%. The ZeroPhone project hasn't updated since 2019, and a variety of competitors have simply crashed and burned. The PinePhone and Librem are probably the best options out there, but they're still pretty awful as phones. You can technically throw something together with a pocket computer and some VOIP software, and I've done it, so it's technically possible, but even as a pretty high-use techie I can't really make the argument for doing so no matter how much I want to.

However, there are some caveats, sometimes serious ones:

  • The Linux file management system is difficult for normal users to adjust around, especially for desktop environments where data horders might have three or four drives. There's ways to make it more understandable, but virtually no distro will do so by default, and a lot of tools will actively get in your way -- even the otherwise excellent Lutris and Steam launchers are prone to spreading config files across a million weird directories.
  • Trying to convert existing Chromebooks to Linux can be doable, but is seldom worth it, and it's not always even possible.
  • Xorg (most linux distros) is still more reliable than Wayland (hypr, COSMIC, Enlightenment), especially on nVidia hardware. I'd expect that this changes in the next 6 months to two years, but if you have extremely low tolerance for rare (two-three times per hour) flicker in some games, this can be a serious thing to consider early. I have no idea why or how Minecraft is one of the games most prone to it, though. When this does get better, most Xorg-based distros will probably just switch over for you or at the next distro-upgrade.
  • You will generally have to opt-in for 'proprietary drivers', both for dedicated graphic cards and for certain web browser codecs. The open-source ones are actually getting a lot better (uh, more so for AMD than nVidia), but at best expect performance loss, and sometimes stuff won't work. The web browser ones will give you a header notification and handle the install on their own when you actually need it, but the gpu drivers can require you to touch the driver manager tool -- Linux Mints is very easy, but Arch and OpenSUSE can involve some command line work.
  • Prepare an automated backup option, ideally more than one. Windows and Chrome do a lot to protect naive users, at the cost of OneDrive breaking a ton of shit, but most Linux distros at best will do some on-system backups or version rollbacks. You're very unlikely to need them -- I've had only one break across three machines in four years, and that was because of a Microsoft fuckup I was able to work around without absolutely needing the backup -- but when you need them it's often too late to hope. Windows users should do this too, but it's more essential for Linux.
  • Some normal users have zero tolerance for change or frustration, especially on their main desktop computer. I would strongly recommend starting with Chromebook replacements and your own machine well before giving a non-technical user the same thing on their main system.
  • I like tiling window managers, and hyprland looks really nice, but if you're not the sorta techie that likes learning new conventions it's a big lift. Would definitely not recommend for normal users.
  • If you dual boot (which I recommend!) or have nvidia graphics, the default Windows EFI partition at 100 MB is wayyyyyyy too small, and will result in weird and hard-to-diagnose bugs. Resizing (or even modifying it) from within Windows is an absolute nightmare, so look for guides on how to do it in your linux distro, and do it early. 600 MB is overkill, but will save you a lot of frustration down the road. This matters a lot less for machines without dual boot, and with just integrated graphics cards.
  • Most distros will be 'regular release', meaning that while they provide reliable normal updates, certain big changes in feature or function set will only occur with once-a-year-or-less version updates. Upgrading from one version to another (usually called a distro upgrade) can range from 'a single command and five minutes' to 'cross your fingers and hope' to 'nope', and most fall in the middle. Old distro versions can sometimes keep getting security updates for years, but even the long-term support versions will eventually run dry. The alternative is called rolling release, where you just get whatever package version is newest and passed whatever stability checks your distro's maintainers run. This keeps you closer to the power curve, but means you can get a lot of often-pointless upgrades (no, VSCode, I don't need a twice-weekly version update for a glorified json linter) and can rarely find problems because of weird cross-library or cross-program compatibility issues.
  • "Stable is late, experimental is broken", at the risk of quoting someone I can't find quickly. Especially for web browsers, it's important to make sure that you're keeping up to date: while Linux desktop is much less of a target for various computer crud than Windows (or even Mac), stuff that attacks just your browser or just a single service can absolutely wreck that service if it gets months or years out of date. Worse, because of the above, regular release distros will eventually just stop providing any updates at all for nearly everything, and this can be in a much shorter timeframe than in Windows environments (eg, Linux Mint usually gives 5 years for all LTS versions, Ubuntu technically goes to ten if you subscribe, some distros will just shrug and say about three).
  • While distros sell themselves based on UI and various concept specializations, for the most part they're really defined by their package manager, default package repositories, and (where present) app store. Even these things can eventually be swapped out, though it's usually painful enough that it's easier to do a reinstall instead.

For distros:

  • Linux Mint (Cinnamon edition) is kinda the default option: debian-based, robust, very well-supported, lots of good functionality out of the box outside of the Ubuntu or Debian packages, obviously not-Windows enough that it doesn't feel like you're tricking people, but very similar in design assumptions.
  • Ubuntu used to be a good choice, but they've increasingly thrown the mandate of heaven in the trash, and their app store and desktop environment has become a mess as a result, and the telemetry situation is, while nowhere near as bad as Windows, still rough. They still work, just wouldn't be my first selection anymore. If you're considering it, instead I'd point to kubuntu; it's avoided a lot of the worst bloatware, if only by accident. Just be careful with the app store.
  • You can just install Debian. It's nowhere as difficult as Arch, and while it will not have a lot of the useful packages installed by default, most mainstream stuff is in their package repository without any serious problems.
  • Gaming-focused distros exist, but they're mostly some nice UI on top of a normal distro, rather than some serious change in functionality or design. Batocera or RetroBat can be useful despite that, but I wouldn't recommend them for anything but a dedicated gaming machine, and usually only where you're basically making a console replacement -- for a normal desktop, you can just install EmulationStation on almost every mainstream distro. I've heard Nobara falls here, but I haven't tried it.
  • I don't recommend Arch for your first linux install. It's a good exercise to understand how operating systems actually work, but you can (and your first time, probably will!) install the distro without a dhcp client, git client, or text editor. That said, while it's not the only rolling-release distro, it is one of the best-known and, imo, best-supported.
  • Manjaro is in a similar boat to Arch, with the added downside that the easy installer will absolutely get too far up an Arch creek without a paddle. About the only benefit is that Manjaro vets updates a little bit more, but imo not really enough to make a big difference.
  • Alpine/AntiX aren't really great for desktop usages because their distro upgrade situation is generally pretty bad, but they do work great for lightweight Chromebook replacements -- fast boot, good security updates, very lightweight.
  • ElementaryOS is a great Mac-like environment, and Zorin as a very Windows-meets-Chromebook-like. I've got...mixed feelings about these: trying to trick someone into not knowing that they're on Linux is an awful idea, and Zorin has a bad purchase schema on top of that. But if you just really like the more traditional UIs, they're not bad options. Caveat: you can just install Elementary as a desktop environment on top of other distros.
  • Gentoo is great for every usecase you don't need. If I had three hundred identical laptops that I wanted to set up exactly to a limited set of specifications, Gentoo is a great tool. If I just want to run a local machine and I don't know what I need, it's a lot of extra work for very little benefit. Wonderful toolset that I'll literally never recommend, because if you need it you know.
  • Kali/Parrot/whatever security-focused linux, mostly these are just convenience options, usually just extra stuff strapped onto Debian. If you're not trying to do security research, you don't need these; if you are, you're mostly only going to use them so you don't have a thirty-page install list.

Don't go too deep into the What Distro questions. There's a million one-offs or specialized distros that do a lot, or have a prebuilt user interface that's just that little bit better, or has a slightly nicer support forum, or comes with a lot of tools that exactly match your use case. These can often be great things! But finding support can be much harder, and they can be behind the power curve, and it ultimately isn't that big of a deal, and you don't need to get overwhelmed by your choices. For a shorter version of Just Your First Linux Distro:

  • If you just want a Linux setup that Just Works, go with Mint (Cinnamon for a desktop or newer laptop, XCFE for an 5+year-old laptop). The UI will have a learning curve, but there's decent UI for nearly everything, the start search menu will redirect a lot of common windows tools to their linux counterpart, and it's just generally a good to a great experience.
  • For very light-weight uses (such as reviving a 7+ year-old laptop), probably AntiX. For very old systems (>10 years), Puppy Linux.
  • To minimize retraining, consider and try out on a non-critical machine Zorin (for Windows) or ElementaryOS (for Mac). These may still flunk the Wife Test, or may only pass it for some but not all use cases, and you should be crystal-clear that they are a new different thing and not just a Windows skin, but they'll have the least friction.

setting up your own VPN is still little too hard for nontechnical users

Might I interest you in some Tailscale?

Man, always a banger with you! I'm sure I'll be coming back to this comment many times, but let me start with where I was hoping to start for my actual conversion - chromebook replacements.

ChromeBook replacements / web browser machines: 110%. You can just run Chrome/FireFox/Brave on a local machine, and be happy, or you can install LibreOffice/various calendars/whatever and also have good local offline functionality, if sometimes with a dated UI. The only real downside here is that new laptops running on their Linux compatibility will usually start at four or five times the price. If you're comfortable buying used equipment and swapping out batteries, you can get <150 USD pricing on three-year-old mid-range hardware, but this is extra work and has limited availability.

and

Trying to convert existing Chromebooks to Linux can be doable, but is seldom worth it, and it's not always even possible.

This is really depressing from my perspective. What I love about the chromebooks are that they're cheap (I think I paid sub $200 for each) and small (I think both are only 11.6" screens and 2lbs or less, which I think is about perfect for rolling around and just browsing or whatever), and I barely care that their raw compute specs are abysmal (if anything, it makes the battery life even more awesome). They can play 720p video (more than enough for a small screen), and even when I've done some toy math coding on them, they just made sure that I couldn't be horribly inefficient. I don't even need hardly any storage space as far as I'm concerned; anything big can just be floated up to the NAS. It's super easy for me to have everything backed up (not even using the built-in sync with Google stuff) and just powerwash it and start over if something stupid happens. Even if my hardware just caught on fire later today, I'd be a little sad that I'd have to spend a couple hundred bucks, but honestly, I'd basically not care.

A quick search validated that most of the built-with-Linux laptops I see are significantly beefier/more expensive. I guess maybe the Venn diagram of the people who want super low end hardware and the people who are techy enough to dive in with Linux is extremely small?

Are the main problems for converting existing chromebooks mainly driver support? You called out lid-close (probably important), fingerprint readers (probably not important if I'm shooting for low-end hardware), and battery life (probably no prayer of having comparable-to-ChromeOS battery life, eh?). Anything else? Is there much point in even trying to pre-plan and figure out compatibility issues, or should I just dive in, hope, and know that I might just have to give up and reset back to ChromeOS?

Alternatively, anything in particular I should look for/avoid if I'm considering buying new low-end hardware, for the purposes of flipping it over to Linux?

Linux-in-ChromeOS is not awful, though it's very limited and you typically find the limits of the ChromeBook hard disk just in built-in-minimal-software.

For fully ripping out ChromeOS and replacing it on actual ChromeBooks, support problems can be as deep as the bootloader, firmware, and even CPU. Some are supported well-enough, but if your device is not on the mrchromebox or chrultrabook lists, getting out of ChromeOS can range from 'research project' to 'science project' to 'not gonna happen'.

If you're willing to buy a new ChromeBook specifically to convert to Linux, your options are better, but they're still going to have to be selective and do your research. In general, ARM is a ton of work to end up with a machine that may not be able to run a lot of apps (or require compiling them from source... for days), and AMD processors can have weird gaps in support or require very specific kernel versions. But I've mostly avoided it outside of a couple science projects; you're probably better off asking someone more focused, there.

I guess maybe the Venn diagram of the people who want super low end hardware and the people who are techy enough to dive in with Linux is extremely small?

A lot of it's that it's a fairly small field, and that people in it tend to be very focused and not very price sensitive. You can find a lot of not-powerful Linux-focused computers, but they're often that way because they're prioritizing an open-source-down-to-the-instruction-set ideology (not ready for primetime) or because they want it so small it fits in a cargo pants pocket (GPD Pocket), or they have other ideological attachments (eg Framework). Where Linux is focused on a mobile device that's gotten mainstream attention, it's usually for a specialized use that requires more expensive hardware (eg, SteamDecks and most competitors use a locked-down Arch variant).

The other side is that the used (and renewed, and just-trying-to-clear-old-shit) Windows market is extremely hard to compete with, and almost anyone who's interested in using Linux can install their preferred setup easily. Even mainstream clearing houses like Amazon or NewEgg have a ton of conventional Windows options under 250 USD for the 11"-14" market (caveat: specific sellers not endorsed), and if you're willing to trawl eBay or govdeals you can find stuff at half that price... at the cost of buying used.

Alternatively, anything in particular I should look for/avoid if I'm considering buying new low-end hardware, for the purposes of flipping it over to Linux?

Almost all x86-64 Windows laptops will handle common Linux distros fine. I'd avoid touchscreens unless you're actually going to use them, because disabling them in-Linux can be a little obnoxious, but that's a pretty uncommon issue. If you start looking at gaming the nVidia vs AMD (vs Intel) problem gets more complicated, but at this price range it's just not a choice.

I do recommend getting more RAM than you think you need.

Well poop. Both our Chromebooks are ARM. I guess I'm going to have to give up on this hardware, even for a trial run to see how it functions on a day-to-day basis. I guess my next steps are to look for cheap x86-64 laptops to push Linux on or to reorient my focus toward the desktop, probably starting with just making it dual-boot for now to see how things go before Win10 goes EOL and decisions become real.

Thanks for all your help!

I just use a win10 desktop and Linux (mint xfce) laptop as a "home server." Both 8th gen Intel, which is still adequate for everything, and will be until they finally come up with a better video codec than vp9.

Modern Linux is so simple a non tech person wouldn't even notice the change as long as you use the default windows background. The browser is identical, and that's all that matters 99% of the time.
Some of my friends are using Linux on their family desktops, like my dad on his 6th gen Intel. He can even watch YouTube properly because Linux actually added limited vp9 decoding support for quick sync on skylake, although that's something I had to get working for him.

I've had random wifi connectivity drops on my android phone lately. Seems like something to with ip leases expiring: it will lose Internet connectivity on the 5ghz network, but switch over to the 2.4 network within a few seconds. I should try disabling DHCP and hard coding fucking everything

Win10 PC just developed a habit of graphics crashing (window frozen, mouse still moves, hard reset needed) when dragging Firefox between monitors. Jank just seems inevitable unless you buy apple and use them exactly as prescribed.

(Re. Crashing: main monitor plugged into GPU, side ones into igpu, browsers set to run on igpu for hardware accel reasons. And it only happens with Firefox: not brave, not Vivaldi, or edge, or the five year old version of portable chromium I use for running h-(tml)games. Error seemed to start when setting the GPU to power-saving mode. There are a lot of potential factors, fuck)

The wife approval factor makes this hard, and I suspect it means that you are going to be limited to either Windows or MacOS for computer choices. Apple devices are way too expensive for what you get (don't @ me, Apple fanboys), but Apple at least hasn't turned to shit (yet) and they do care about making a good experience for customers.

If you're willing to brave the storm of wife disapproval, Linux is viable. I've been running it for a few years now and generally it just works. The only times it doesn't work tend to involve older games, which probably won't be a factor for your wife at least. But if she's anything like my wife, she will be put off by it and really want to go back to something she knows better. Only you can say if it's worth working through that one.

What I have going for me on the wife approval factor is that she's been using a Chromebook for the last few years. She was definitely annoyed at first, just because she had to learn new stuff. But once she learned, she grew to mostly like it... until the latest issues started popping up. It's a balance between feeling bad, saying, "So, uh, how about you learn another new thing?" and trying to package it as, "Yes, you'll need to learn a little bit, but this is a solution to your recent frustrations!"

  • Lenovo thinkpad, a personal machine. Windows 11, which was immediately decrapified and since then has largely been worry free. Never noticed any ads, untoward installations, or other issues

  • Work Macbook Pro. It's fine, certainly doesn't give me any desire to switch my personal machine though

  • Old Macbook Air that I kept from a previous role. Absolute piece of crap, by far the worst laptop I have ever owned, but we kept it around and now my wife uses it.

  • Phone-wise I've always stuck with Chinese mid-rangers and don't have any desire to change that. My wife is on Apple for phones as well, she took my work iPhone.

I used to have beefier laptops for gaming, but rarely have the time these days and instead just use Geforce Now streaming on any of the above devices. Pretty flawless experience for me

Personal hardware list:

  • Alienware desktop - Say what you will about Dell, I bought my desktop for $1700 at a time when the video card in it was going for over $1K. I wanted an all-purpose PC with an emphasis on gaming and there was simply no way that I could have beaten it for this.

  • Apple ecosystem stuff - MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone [whatever version], old iMac. Apple things just work better than whatever else you can get and I am not very price sensitive. Everything I buy from Apple lasts forever and just works the way that a normal person would expect it to.

  • Garmin Epix - The one exception to the above. I owned an Apple watch, and it boggles my mind that they couldn't be bothered to put out a decent setup for runners. If you give a shit about running, Garmin just blows them out of the water.

My only real complaint is that I have to take an absolutely idiotic number of chargers with me on trips.

Apple ecosystem stuff - MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone [whatever version], old iMac. Apple things just work better than whatever else you can get and I am not very price sensitive. Everything I buy from Apple lasts forever and just works the way that a normal person would expect it to.

I've bought one apple product in my life. An iPad 3. It got an unprecedented refresh in 6 mo versus the typical year, making me feel like quite the chump. At this point nearly everything has stopped working on it. Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Video, it's all shut down. Most websites load funny because of outdated SSL stuff I assume. More than half the storage has been eaten up with remnant files of OS updates that I can't get back no matter what I do. Apps don't get released for it anymore because apple dropped 32-bit support. Some of the old apps I have for it are just broken now for reasons I don't entirely understand. But storage is so gimped it's a constant chore to remove the 2 or 3 games that still fit on it to make room for others. About all I can do on it anymore is copy ebooks over from my PC.

I think I need to sack up and just switch to Linux. I have a spare machine that would probably be good for it. A 6th generation Intel I think with a Geforce 970.

It's kind of a cart before the horse problem for me though. I love my daily driver, and I actually really enjoy all the bonkers RTX features I can get in games now. Sadly it seems like these are mostly Windows only. And frankly, if I want my games to "just work", I have to keep Windows.

So, much as I have grown to hate Windows and Microsoft, if I want to say goodbye to them, I need to say goodbye to a lot of the features my fancy pants graphics card has. But maybe when I go to actually try it I'll be surprised! You never know.

Of course the other hole I've dug myself is I purchase most of my games on GOG first, then Epic, and lastly Steam. Because my top priority is how easy it is to check out without saving my credit card number, and Steam is by far the most odious, wanting my full address and phone number, and always attempting to greedily save it all by default. But Steam also has the best Linux compatibility, so fuck me I guess.

I should probably take the plunge soon, before support for Windows 10 runs out next year.

Of course the other hole I've dug myself is I purchase most of my games on GOG first, then Epic, and lastly Steam. Because my top priority is how easy it is to check out without saving my credit card number, and Steam is by far the most odious, wanting my full address and phone number, and always attempting to greedily save it all by default. But Steam also has the best Linux compatibility, so fuck me I guess.

I've gotten to the point that I sometimes forget to check ProtonDB before checking a Steam game without a Linux native build because I just never run into problems anymore. I hear that's not always true for the latest AAA games. For GOG/Epic, Heroic Games Launcher is only a little less smooth than Steam, and will handle WINE/Proton for you (it also has an option to list the games in the Steam interface).

Lutris has good_ish_ GOG support built-in now. There's still some jank, especially for handling multiplayer (thanks, GOG Galaxy!), but if you don't mind checking things out and some slightly longer install times, you may find a lot more of your library has a much better level of support than you'd expect.

RTX depends pretty heavily on the game and card, but games that support it internally are more often workable than not, usually without other jank. DLSS 2.0 is available and pretty well-supported. DLSS 3.0 is more mixed; you're pretty much dependent on proton experimental, but I have seen some games (eg Satisfactory) with it working. I haven't tried or found good answers (either yay or nay) for other people trying RTX Remix for older games.

I highly recommend taking the plunge. I did it 2 or 3 years ago, once Microsoft started to put ads in Windows 10. I do have an easier time than you will because I'm a heavy Steam user, but I think you'll find that it's still plenty doable. If you want a piece of software which can help to grease the wheels for you a bit, look into Lutris. It is a launcher/installer much like Steam, with scripts to install games provided by the community. It works pretty well, in my experience.

I saw in another comment that you're thinking you'll go with Ubuntu. Just be aware that Canonical has been taking some user-hostile steps themselves, such as hijacking where packages get installed from or having the package manager spit out "news" which is really just an ad for their paid services. It's nowhere near Microsoft level yet, but as a Windows refugee that stuff makes me kind of nervous. So I personally have been avoiding Ubuntu. But you will certainly have some of the easiest on-ramp to Linux with Ubuntu, as a lot of guides people write will be written with that audience in mind.

You son of a bitch... I'm in.

Ordered another 1 TB M.2 drive, got Mint Linux ready to go on a flash drive. We'll see how this goes. Steam on Linux and that Heroic program above sound promising.

I've been thinking about installing Linux, but I can't pick a distro. Arch is the obvious candidate so I can tell everyone about it, but something RPM-based is better for career-applicable skills.

The value you get in terms of career skills will be from daily driving Linux, and being forced to work through any issues that might come up. Whether your distro uses RPM or anything else won't matter.

I am talking about specific system tools. Like iptables vs firewalld, AppArmor vs SELinux. If I have to touch RHEL-based distros at work it makes sense to use the same distro family at home to get used to the same tools.

I strongly discourage Arch for your first desktop Linux install, unless you have an Arch-specific package or function you're looking for. It's a lot less painful than it was even five years ago, and it can be useful as a way to learn about fundamental parts of the modern boot process and distribution of functionality, but it's a lot of tedium to eventually end up with a machine that wants to update (literally) every time you boot it up, and often multiple times, and may be harder to find support for less common use cases.

If you want to get more familiar with RPM specifically, your main bets are gonna be limited to either Fedora or OpenSUSE as a desktop tool. They're not my first choice as a daily driver, but they are functional for most purposes. Mandriva/Oracle/Alma exist, but they're going to be harder to jump into, and to find support around. EDIT: if I had to pick, I'd go with OpenSUSE. /EDIT.

(Technically, you can just install most package managers on most linux distros. I wouldn't recommend it, though, and for RPM specifically you're likely to be stuck compiling from source.)

I would love to know what your top choices are for a daily driver... and if they would differ if you were considering choosing a daily driver for a less-techy wife.

Something like a decade ago I started dual-booting with Ubuntu as my main OS and Windows as a backup, "just in case". Originally I had to switch back and forth between them, either for gaming or for some piece of software that I could not do without and that did not have a Linux version. As time went on this started happening less and less, partly due to me consciously trying to avoid Windows, partly due to software moving to the web and making Linux releases moot, and partly due to Linux gaming getting better and better support from Steam. What started as keeping Windows "just in case" ended up "I haven't booted it in years, and the only reason I didn't format the whole drive is that there might be some cool stuff I have saved there and forgot about it". I suppose if I didn't miss it all these years it's not really that important, but I still haven't pulled the trigger. At some point I also got fed up of Ubuntu's bullshit, and switched to Peppermint, which is small, blazing fast, and since it's Debian-based, it was easiest to switch to from Ubuntu.

I haven't done this for my wife yet (for the same "shit saved on the hard drive" reasons), but I don't think non-techieness should be an issue. Stuff mostly works out of the box these days.

As for the chromebooks, anyone else looking to jump ship because of Manifest V3? Maybe I need to suck it up and just try out uBlock Origin Lite for a while, see how it goes.

Never owned a chromebook, does it let you install other browsers? If so, have you tried Brave? It started off pretty janky but nowadays I see it as "Chrome, except better". uBlock still works on it as of now, and it has it's own built-in adblocker that will work no matter what happens with 3rd party extensions.

Thanks for your experience!

Linux gaming

This was one of the main things that kept me from switching from Windows back before I got married. I don't really game much anymore, and it's instead the wife that is making me hesitate to switch...

At some point I also got fed up of Ubuntu's bullshit, and switched to Peppermint, which is small, blazing fast, and since it's Debian-based, it was easiest to switch to from Ubuntu.

I almost installed Peppermint on a random old device I have; downloaded the iso and everything. I was trying to solve some problems with getting Home Assistant running, but I eventually figured out how to get HAOS working on it. It does seem like a real contender. What made you fed up with Ubuntu?

Never owned a chromebook, does it let you install other browsers? If so, have you tried Brave?

Not really, but that was supposed to be kind of the point of the design. You can run Linux on it via crostini, and I've done that for a few things (just the default debian; I think you can install other distros, but I've never bothered). The GUI support is a little janky for some programs, and I've never bothered just living on a different browser in it on a regular basis. It kind of defeats the purpose, and I feel like if I was going to go down that route, I'd just say screw it and go full Linux.

I still haven't tried Brave at all. I've been sticking with Firefox outside of the Chromebooks. Nightly on my phone; I set that up a while back, because that was the only way to use extensions like uBlock on FF for Android, though I think that has probably been relaxed since then. I've not yet gotten to the point where FF is doing something annoying enough or Brave is offering a feature killer enough for me to make the switch.

What made you fed up with Ubuntu?

I don't know what exactly they did, but it started feeling bloated. Took forever to boot up, or start / close programs.

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