dingdongitsabear

dingdongitsabear, 4 days ago (edited 6 hours ago)

you need a swap file, a swap subvolume, or a swap partition that’s RAM + 50%, on account of zram. then you need systemd scripts that disable zram and enable swap on suspend and do the reverse on resume. also, you need some selinux tuning to allow you to write to said file. you have a detailed howto in Fedora Magazine.

stop using bullshitgpt.

edit: here’s the article.

dingdongitsabear, 10 days ago

there were some restomods, like the X62.

I wanted to do something similar with a 2007 17" macbook pro. they have LOTS of space inside and the keyboard, touchpad, camera, etc are all USB, so reusing them would be easy.

dingdongitsabear, 10 days ago

yeah, I wanted a board from a busted laptop and then transplant it along with the battery - plenty room inside.

then, all you’d need is a display controller that attaches to the motherboard’s HDMI and drives the display, those are like $20 on aliexpress. everything else is USB and can easily be soldered to USB connectors; the later unibodies would be way more difficult in that regard.

all there’s left is to incorporate some USB hub inside and that’s it.

dingdongitsabear, 11 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

jellyfin’s android app has the cast functionality built-in, it connects to jellyfin-mpv-shim. you select the video from the app and press play and that’s it - it plays on the remote device. you can then pause, ff/rewind, change subs, etc., from the android app.

as to youtube videos, select video in newpipe, share to allcast, allcast connects to macast, which uses yt-dl to play the video via mpv. you can then control the playback (stop, skip, etc) from allcast.

this all works on a full-featured desktop without problems; I’d like to strip everything but the bare necessities needed to run mpv.

dingdongitsabear, 11 days ago

doesn’t matter. in the future I might cobble something together, like a clock or weather or a slideshow, but I’m fine with a blank/black/whatever screen.

dingdongitsabear, 11 days ago

yeah, that’s the main question - do I need a window manager, when I all want is just full screen?

I’ve found something called mpv-kiosk, but that’s a snap and that monstrosity is the opposite of what I need.

dingdongitsabear, 11 days ago

the fb route would be awesome, I’m adding this to my research list. would video playback be accelerated in this case?

dingdongitsabear, 16 days ago

that (and many other irritants) is why I switched to plasma. please try it before going back, it’s way better in every regard.

dingdongitsabear, 16 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

absolutely. I have a list as long as my arm of irritants that are 99% just the absence of sane defaults. I’m not saying that’s what’s deterring people from switching over, but it’s not helping either, is it?

every DE, distro, whatevs I install, I try to imagine what this looks like to a non-techie, how would a random grams deal with this… and it’s not looking good.

apple has a vertically integrated tech stack and are free to focus their sinister efforts elsewhere; they don’t have to dick around with 15 different DEs and 27 WMs, 50 teams pulling in 127 different directions, abandoned paths and duplicated efforts galore. just imagine where The Linux Desktop would be at if we had just one DE/WM and all devs would pull in the same direction…

I don’t have the answer. it’s chaos over here and out of that chaos eventually some order emerges. it’s unquestionable that shit’s way better than five years ago, let alone 10 or more… but it’s so slow and wasteful and it pains me that I see no other option.

meanwhile this (hey, try this shit out) is the best we as users can do; I know I regarded KDE/Plasma for the longest time as something clunky and un-serious and whatnot - I couldn’t have been more wrong. things that are outright deal-breakers (like the years-long refusal to implement scroll speed in Gnome) are handled beautifully over there, and then some.

dingdongitsabear, 19 days ago

you should aim at $200 max, that’s way too expensive for 8th gen tech. ram and storage aren’t important as those can be upgraded stupid cheap; it’s not a bad idea to buy the laptop without those,

what’s infinitely more important are good batteries, you didn’t mention what condition the ones you get are in. if you need to replace those, good batteries aren’t cheap.

dingdongitsabear, 18 days ago

do not compare thinkpads to ideapads (or thinkbooks or thinkpad V-series). the former are heavy-duty devices that cost thousands of $ new (and you can feel that the moment you grab one). they’re built for road warriors and are meant to be used and abused for years. everything is so much better, from the build quality, easy repair and upgradeability (several generations share the same chassis, so replacing keyboards, screens, hinges, plastic covers, etc. is trivial and easily sourced) to way better keyboards, hinges, screens, etc.

the latter are cheap, drastic-plastic, deal-of-the-week future e-waste compatible only with themselves, maybe, with way worse build quality and very limited serviceability and cross-generational part compatibility.

same goes for hp elitebook vs probook, dell latitude vs vostro, and so on; there’s a huge difference between enterprise-class devices vs consumer-grade.

as to CPU performance, you’ll have to be the judge of what’s most important to you.

dingdongitsabear, 17 days ago

sure, take it slow. they’re only gonna get cheaper and if you’re not compiling/building large code bases daily, they’re still gonna be viable a year or two from now; same way you can today use something like a T420 without too much trouble (obv don’t buy something like that, but if you stumble upon one for free, have at it).

dingdongitsabear, 17 days ago

not really, T490 are basically the same hardware with a modest CPU refresh, otherwise almost everything is interchangeable (also with earlier T470 models). similar with T14 Gen1.

what’s troublesome are the S-suffix models and the Carbons and similar, they are slimmer and have one or both memory banks soldered and are single battery models. you can stll swap SSD, batteries, etc. and the serviceability is somewhat OK (way better than the mentioned e-waste but worse than non-S models).

dingdongitsabear, 17 days ago

it’s a fun hobby; I got rid of my T420s a couple months back. yeah, the keyboard is otherworldly, compared with what’s standard these days. and the expandability and serviceability (you can fit FOUR drives inside) - insane! there are custom BIOS available for them, enabling you to whitelist unsupported PCI cards, overclocking, 1866 DDR3, etc. cross-model compatibility is exceptional - I replaced my defunct soaked keyboard with one from a X220!

but then the novelty wears off and you can see them for what they are - really old tech.

like, the screens are dogshit, even if you get the “premium” 1600x900 ones. even with heavy tweaking you’re still in double-digits W/hr territory and you’re depending on shitty aftermarket batteries. the phenomenal keyboard isn’t backlit and is accompanied by a tiny (and shitty) touchpad. the device is thick and bulky and its power brick is that - a brick (at least on my i7 + Nvidia model).

by the time you upgrade everything (1080p IPS screen + adapter, 16 GB DDR3, fast SATA SSD, high-quality battery - none of those come cheap) you’ve already surpassed the price of a T480/490 that runs circles around it.

so, if you stumble upon one for free (or close to it), it’s a fun project, but absolutely not a wise purchase, especially not if you’re tight on funds.

dingdongitsabear, 21 days ago

I don’t understand the fascination of other commenters with mini-PCs, as the mini-ness was mentioned nowhere in the OP.

any used and decomissioned old office PC, any i5/i7 is way more powerful than you’ll need for that setup. you get everything you need right in the box and you can cram it full with cheap RAM and hard disks. you get to repurpose something that’s useless as a desktop workstation and not buy more future e-waste.

yes, the mini-PCs and the Rpis are more power efficient, but the operating costs of a $30-50 PC don’t come close to the price of buying one of these mini-things, not to mention - figuring out how to run large hard disks with it.

dingdongitsabear, 20 days ago

I have acknowledged that they’re that, but that’s not what OP asked for - they asked for a cheap setup (which the minis ain’t) and they intend to run a servarr instance, which implies large storage and those are both difficult and not cheap to cram into said minis.

dingdongitsabear, 26 days ago

maybe there’s some way to filter out the stepmothers with the stepfathers on the stepladders…?

dingdongitsabear, 26 days ago

thanks. I’m trying to find a cheap 2nd hand device that can run pmOS and has 8 GB RAM and supports USB to DP/HDMI, was hoping this one was on the list.