Suburban Chicago since 1981.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • I’m self hosting a lot of things, but those services are mostly on Debian. I’m daily driving AlmaLinux on my main desktop. I do a decent amount of video editing using DaVinci Resolve Studio, and while I’ve consistently gotten it working on Pop!_OS and EndeavourOS, I couldn’t get the Micro Color Panel working on anything other than the CentOS successors. I tried manipulating udev rules, sniffing USB traffic, etc but it just wouldn’t go on anything else. The product was fairly new to market when I bought it so the body of knowledge may have changed since then.

    Blackmagic Design officially supports Resolve and Reaolve Studio on Linux, but only on their lightly preconfigured version of Rocky 8. Everything else is best-effort, so I started with the Blackmagic ISO, converted it to AlmaLinux 8.6, and then upgraded to 9, and the Micro Color Panel still works.

    I also love that my external disk array works with every kernel update because the kernel’s so old. I keep all my originals on an 8-disk ZFS array connected to a cross-flashed Dell PERC H810. Endeavour and Pop sometimes go beyond the kernel versions supported by zfsonlinux, and editing the source code of a file system is not something I’m particularly comfortable with.

    Also, every game I’ve played on it works, though I mainly play single-player titles.

    As for parity: I’ve got several hundred VMs at the office on Rocky, and maybe a dozen on Alma, and both are running flawlessly. They’ve been as solid as the RHEL physical machines. Quite happy with all of them, to be honest.


  • If you use a distro with the nvidia drivers preinstalled, or you get the drivers set up with dkms, you don’t need to reinstall the driver with every kernel update.

    Pop!_OS has the drivers in their repo and they get applied during system updates like any other package; I’m sure this is the case with Bazzite as well.

    I use AlmaLinux at home with the driver from nvidia’s site (yes, I’m aware that rpmfusion exists), and have never had to reinstall the drivers as the installer configures dkms to do it every time the kernel is updated. Same with my Plex server (Debian, Quadro P2200) and my office workstation (Arch, Quadro P600).





  • With UHC, this is not unrealistic in the slightest.

    I had a follow-up appointment with a specialist I’ve been seeing last Friday. My lab results didn’t show the progress we were expecting, so we decided to attack the issue with a particular medication. This medication is injectable, not a pill like the ones I’ve been taking that have proven to be ineffective, and it’s sold under three names; we discussed all three, and before I left the office, he submitted the prior authorization request.

    Given that I’m insured by UHC, the prior authorization was denied. Not only was it denied, they robo-called me to say so, sent a letter via mail, and put a copy of the letter in PDF form on my account, before I got home from the doctor’s office.

    Not only that, but the section of the letter where they’re supposed to recommend alternate drugs was blank. So basically, “we’re not going to cover that, you can keep suffering, go fuck yourself” in less than 15 minutes.

    UHC is exceedingly efficient at not giving a shit.












  • I’ll second the Pop!_OS recommendation that others have been posting. Don’t get me wrong, Linux Mint is great, though I personally prefer Linux Mint Debian Edition over the Ubuntu-based one, but I think Pop!_OS is just as easy to use while presenting a different look & feel. Pop tends to support newer hardware as well: despite being stuck on an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS base until Cosmic is finished, System76 releases new kernels to support the hardware they sell. They’re currently running kernel version 6.6.6, as opposed to Ubuntu’s 6.2.0 (I think – that’s what server’s on, at least).

    I gave my wife, who “hates computers,” a laptop running Pop!_OS when her Windows 10 one failed and, apart from the standard new PC complaints, I haven’t heard anything Linux-specific. She runs two businesses on the thing; the only changes I made to the standard Pop!_OS software were to replace LibreOffice with OnlyOffice, and to replace Geary with Thunderbird.