I used one of these (might even be the exact same model) as a little music player attached to an old soundbar. I could connect via ssh and play music through the speakers. The main challenge was finding a distribution that worked well with the internal sound card, since I wanted to use the aux output for sound. I don’t think that I ever tried connecting a monitor to it, but it worked well for what I used it for, right up until I needed the sound bar for something else.
Bob Smith
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Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Linux@lemmy.ml•psa: snapd leads to massive slowdowns in boot time23·12 days agoSnap turned several of my oldest Ubuntu boxes into unuseable e-waste before I jumped to a different distribution. This is the sole reason that I left Ubuntu behind back in the day and switched to something else on ALL of my computers. I’m not going through that again.
I’ve been running various unofficial versions of LineageOS on a Pixel C for years because the screen is beautiful and the battery remained good until this year.
Official Google support ended with 8.1 Oreo in 2017, but it is currently running 13. I don’t think that it’ll get any more updates, but I squeezed an extra 7 or 8 years out of it. Plus, I can probably keep using it as a stationary screen on my treadmill for a few more years. Potentially, It’ll be useful for a full decade past that final release date.
That’s why I use custom roms.
If notetaking is going to be your primary use, you’ll definitely want to focus on the keyboard experience. Touch-typing on a screen isn’t a fun way to take class notes and a lot of cheap bluetooth keyboards end up being laggy or otherwise unsatisfactory.
I’ve heard good things about Surface tablets and their attachable keyboards. I’ve personally had good luck with two-in-one laptops, where the keyboards are built-in.
When/if you try for a pure tablet experience, be prepared for rough edges. Outside of KDE, Gnome and maybe Budgie, most desktop environments/WMs aren’t designed to work on tablets without keyboards. Getting an on-screen keyboard to act how you want it to act isn’t something that has been solved universally. Another fun wrinkle is that there’s no guarantee that the tablet’s accelerometer will be detected, so it may be challenging to rotate the screen orientation. If you like messing around with settings and downloading half-finished projects from github, then you’ll love playing around with Linux tablets.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Linux@lemmy.ml•Researching making the switch from Windows on my main PC and I have questions.171·4 months agoThis seems like a solid take. Never fuck with your bread and butter.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Showerthoughts@lemmy.world•People in the office who don't take used K-Cups out of the machine are the new equivalent "you kill it, you fill it"507·6 months agoTheir way is optimal. If you remove the old k cup while putting in the next k cup, you open and close the machine half as many times. This reduces wear and tear while forcibly obligating each user to remove exactly one k cup per use.
If your showerthought is true, then what do you suppose that I have been doing while shuffling aimlessly through life since the invention of paperback books and smartphones, eh? Living like a pig? How dare you.
Stay away from Chromebooks. Even if you get a Chromebook that is reported to play well with Linux, there can be issues. I have/had two different Linux Chromebooks. They both had unique pitfalls.
I had an arm-based Chromebook that was actually the development target of a custom distro. At its best, it still required a fairly specific wifi dongle to work without kernel hacks. Even then, the processor was slooow and storage was a bit of a problem if I was using it for anything other than text editing.
I’m running an intel-based Chromebook these days with Arch. The biggest bottleneck is the built-in nonupgradeable storage (16gb). Most of my home folder is symlinked to an SD card that I keep in the slot at all times. It works well and has great battery life, but there are easier ways to play with linux on a laptop.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Showerthoughts@lemmy.world•If you have a circle of friends, then by definition they are all fringe2·7 months agoWith a circle you actually get the lowest possible ratio of friend-fringe to total friend-area, when compared to alternative 2-D friendship n-gons.
Mint is based on Ubuntu, both of which are versioned release distributions. The idea behind versioned releases is that the kernel and a lot of the software are all chosen and tested to work well together. It gives the user a system that won’t change much for several years. Rather than getting the latest and greatest, you get a known, relatively static set that works smoothly and gets security/stability updates rather than big upgrades. Typically, distributions like Mint only get minor security updates to the chosen kernel during their lifetime. You’ll see additional patches to kernel 6.8, but nothing beyond that.
To get a newer kernel, the safets option is to wait until Mint 23 gets released and do a full upgrade to the new version of Mint. Along with the kernel, other pieces of the operating system will get a bump to much newer versions. Mint gives you the option to try newer kernels, but this is less stable and could break your system.
There are other types of Linux distributions that ship new versions of the kernel much more regularly. Rolling releases (to one extent or another) update the kernel and other software shortly after the new code is available and tested.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Technology@lemmy.world•Where do I buy computer parts nowdays?English31·9 months agoIt depends on what you’re looking for. If size and weight aren’t a concern, Unicomp is making slightly modernized Model M keyboards in the US and you can order directly from their website.
I have a Classic and an EnduraPro, both of which work just fine and could be used as a hammer if necessary.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Linux@lemmy.ml•How many Linux kernel developers does it take for the project to stall?102·11 months agoIf the lessons that I’ve learned about lightbulb replacement are applicable, then the nationality of the developers on the bus will impact the answer to your question.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Linux@lemmy.ml•Linux distros not shipping Gavin Howard's bc for licensing reasons11·1 year agoI wish you luck with your campaign!
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Linux@lemmy.ml•for those worried about the impact of sanctions on linux, is any of the bsds a better alternative?14·1 year agoThe sanctions apply to the BSDs too. The only difference with sanctions that I could imagine would be if one of the BSDs had (through happenstance or other factors) a lower starting proportion of Russian developers relative to Linux. If that were the case, then the impact of sanctions on that BSD would be proportionally smaller.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Technology@lemmy.world•New Kindle e-readers no longer appear on computersEnglish1·1 year agoI saw that, too. I haven’t had a lot of headaches with MTP using my Android devices, but I’m always surprised at how there always seems to be a plan to make my devices worse than they already are.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Technology@lemmy.world•New Kindle e-readers no longer appear on computersEnglish1·1 year agoNo argument here. It is insane to me that if I want content that isn’t locked into a particular ecosystem, I have to seek out public domain material or pick from the small subset of books that is sold DRM-free books in an open format. For anything else, money can’t buy flexibility. For most books, the only options for digital are accepting the DRM, waiting until copyright expires (good luck with that one), or privateering with out a letter of marque.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Technology@lemmy.world•New Kindle e-readers no longer appear on computersEnglish913·1 year agoVery user-hostile, but very unsurprising.
Kindle hardware can be very nice, but almost every software decision is designed to keep users within their walled garden.
No epub support, no third party app support, no ability to load non-store audio, and now this. What a waste. These things could be so much more useful than they are.
Bob Smith@sopuli.xyzto Technology@lemmy.world•Kroger's Plan to Use Facial Recognition Raises Concerns About Surge PricingEnglish131·1 year agoWoof. The logo was always a hint about what they were planning to do to the customers. First the K and the G came for the letter o…and I did nothing because I am not the letter o.
I’m lucky I manually ran a few jobs before I started using rsync in scripts. When I didn’t think things through, I saw the output in real-time. After that, I got very careful about testing any scripts and accounting for minor changes in setup.
Syncthing is an option on the desktop side and it works with Syncthing-Fork on Android. It takes a bit of setting up, but I’ve been using a setup like this for years now.