eugenia

eugenia, 1 month ago

In Germany, it’s illegal to donate without the person receiving doesn’t have a company, or a non-profit. So it quickly becomes difficult in some parts of the world.

The other problem is weird moderation. A few months ago I made a post on the Linux Mint forum to ask the developers to implement the cinnamon panel to also auto-expand (so it looks more like a dock when the user wants it that way). I simply mentioned that if there’s an official bounty website for mint, that I’d gladly contribute there. I almost got banned over there just for asking that. So since then, I don’t ask anymore, and I donate less. I don’t wanna get in trouble.

eugenia, 1 month ago

Apparently it was against the ToS of the forum. Not sure why though.

eugenia, 1 month ago

That was on a mastodon discussion a few days ago, where it was said that in germany you need a legal entity to receive the money, and not as an individual. And that has complexities of its own. In the US, you can receive money as donation without a problem, as long as you pay your taxes on them, for anything above $400 per year or so.

eugenia, 1 month ago

Instead of trying to run heavy and complex apps on an OS that were never designed for, use Windows for work, and then use gaming and your personal life on Linux. Another thing you can do is switch the kind of programming you do, so it’s more linux-related, so overtime, you can only have Linux machines. But for the time being, if you’re doing windows programming, use a windows machine for work.

eugenia, 1 month ago

Android does have lots of games, and some apps that aren’t as easy to use, or as good as in native linux. For example, some painting apps (krita is powerful, but can also overwhelm someone), video editors like capcut or lumafusion, audio apps. For most of everything else, there is a web browser on linux that can do the job better probably, and native apps. But overall, I’d say that Android apps aren’t really that useful on linux, because they’re mostly geared towards apps that you use on the go, while you usually sitting on a chair at home or work when you’re using linux. To be honest, most native apps now have been replaced by a web browser, so either native linux or native android apps are only useful for high end professional usages (e.g. blender, video editing, etc) rather than everyday use.

eugenia, 1 month ago

Adjustment layers for gimp, and not all photo tools there for krita.

eugenia, 1 month ago

indeed, darktable is awesome!

eugenia, 1 month ago

The Pi won’t cast from your phone, so Im not sure how you will make things better if using your phone is must-have. I also use cast as my main way to watch stuff, and i’ve experienced my cast devices not being found from different phones and same apps. E.g. the pixel phones find the cast devices (chromecast, and a hi-fi system that has cast abilities), but a Realme no-name chinese android phone won’t. Or that my chrome browser can’t find the cast devices either, no matter which OS is used under (I have to cast the whole tab).

And even if you install emby or jellyfin on your raspberry pi, the app might not see the casting device. It’d work better if you just don’t cast, and instead just direct emby/jellyfin’s phone app to play the media on the raspberry pi connected to a tv.

Also, be aware, that 1 GB of ram is not enough to use emby/jellyfin. I have a raspberry pi 3b+ with 1 gb of ram and it swaps like crazy when i use these media servers (music only). Minimum is 2 gb, best if you can get it with 4 or 8 gb. If video is needed, you will need a Pi5 for best results.

eugenia, 1 month ago

You can try to make a raspberry pi as a chromecast receiver, not sure how well that still works, these articles are old maketecheasier.com/create-diy-chromecast-raspberr…

eugenia, 1 month ago

I’d go for Mint with XFce or xlde/lxqt for this one, or Lubuntu. Basically, you need anything that uses less than 700 MB of RAM (ideally around 350, like the Raspbery Pi version of Debian, but that doesn’t exist in the x86 world unless you go really low end, like DamnSmallLinux), and then you need to be very careful to not open more than 1-2 tabs on your browser, or you will start swapping. The biggest problem on your PC is not the speed, neither the size of the drive. It’s the 2 GB RAM. It’s a strict minimum of 4 GB these days to do adequate web browsing. But it’s still possible with 2 GB if you’re very careful what you’re loading, and how many tabs you’re using. My mom’s laptop has 2 GB of RAM too, and it’s equally slow in CPU speed, but it works for her, because she doesn’t know how to use tabs (she uses the browser with a single tab), and that’s enough at 2 GB.

And I know what I’ll suggest next is an anathema in these parts, but it’s true: Chrome uses less ram (there’s even a setting for it) and it’s significantly faster on older computers than Firefox. I have put together at least 8 old computers with Linux for friends and family, and that has been my experience consistently. On newer hardware it doesn’t make much of a difference, but on old hardware (e.g. anything less than 1500 Passmark CPU points, like yours), it does, visibly so.

Other suggestions: turn off start-up services on the xfce prefs about services you don’t need. For debian xfce, you will also need to edit a text file for policy-kit (somewhere on /usr) to make the laptop sleep on its own without intervention (otherwise it will tell you that it doesn’t have permissions to do so). Finally, Chrome might not load up on debian xfce, you will need to edit the launcher to include the basic password store chrome option, to make it load. Other ways to save RAM on xfce: include only 1 panel, don’t use applets you don’t really need, and use a color instead of a picture for background (you will be amazed how much ram that takes!).

Final advice: update the bios firmware via windows before you delete it. This will allow you to disable the fwupd service on linux, to save more ram (there are not going to be any new versions for that old model anyway).

eugenia, 1 month ago

I think that this betrays their plans: Windows will go “free with ads”, with an ad-free version that is subscription only. That doesn’t hurt their bottomline since the governments and companies of the western world will still go subscription in order to get support. The ones who don’t have enough money for that (individuals, small countries/companies, small municipalities), they will go “free with ads”. I mean, practically, Windows is free even right now. They have oem serial numbers that activate the OS for free, legally, to be reused. So why not make it profitable, it’s their thinking. Also, on newer builds of Win11 you can’t avoid logging in without an msn account.

eugenia, 1 month ago

What exactly is not supported on linux?

eugenia, 1 month ago

Upgrade to 24.04 soon and see if that fixes your issue, probably some race condition somewhere, or maybe a bug that wrote garbage to the fs, and so reading it back fails with the specific kernel in 22.04.

eugenia, 1 month ago

I’d go with a stable distro, like Debian, or Mint if you wanted something that’s also rather stable and easier to use (Ubuntu underlying structure has a lot of fixes/changes compared to debian).

eugenia, 1 month ago

You can’t. Apple’s iPads and iPhones are e-waste from the moment they run out of security and OS updates. Apple doesn’t allow third party installations.

eugenia, 1 month ago

Because it requires a very specific framework to be built from the ground up, and FDO doesn’t specify these. A lot of breakage would happen if were to shoehorn such changes into Linux suddenly. Android has many layers of security that they’re fundamentally different than that of the unix philosophy. That’s why Android, even if it’s based on Linux, it’s not really considered “a distro”.

eugenia, 1 month ago

Because it’s not guaranteed that it’ll work. FOSS projects don’t run under strict managerial definitions where they have to maintain compatibility in all their APIs etc. They are developed freely. As such, you can’t really rely on full compatibility.

eugenia, 2 months ago

That list makes me wanna get a job on a small company of up to 10-20 people, where none of these things are usually needed…

eugenia, 2 months ago

Creating an open HW and open SW based on Risc-V and linux/bsd/android (whatever) is what the EU should have done for its citizens. But instead of creating something, they only know how to alienate companies. And I don’t mean american companies, but also european ones.

eugenia, 2 months ago

I don’t think you’re right on this. When DELL is branding a laptop as “linux supported”, then the hardware normally works out of the box with at the very least, Ubuntu (and probably by most other distros too). If you’re seeing hardware incompatibilities, it’s probably because the Linux kernel itself might have dropped some of the older hardware drivers from its list of support. I’m writing this on a DELL Latitude 5480 from 2017, and I have installed the latest ubuntu without any hardware issue whatsoever. Everything’s just supported out of the box. No special image from DELL was ever required. So if you’re seeing your hardware stop working, you should look if DELL provided closed source drivers or firmware for your laptop’s hardware. If that’s the case, then you didn’t have a “linux supported” laptop, you had a laptop with specifically-added Linux support after the fact. I wouldn’t have bought that in the first place.

eugenia, 2 months ago

In that case, the solution is to buy hardware that is linux-certified.

eugenia, 2 months ago

It’s called a browser? :-)

Honestly, I don’t understand people downloading apps to run things like discord, facebook, spotify, and now lemmy. These are webpages, and were designed to work as webpages. So, best would be to use a web browser.

eugenia, 2 months ago

Linux Mint is the best IMHO, if you just want a worry free experience, in terms of what you might need and find it in gui form.

eugenia, 2 months ago

I don’t like KDE at all. Too busy, terrible-looking right click menu on the desktop (some lines long, some short). It’s that stuff that give me OCD. I like cleanliness in the UI.

eugenia, 2 months ago

I agree with you.