jrgd

jrgd, 4 days ago

Windows does have memory compression, though you can’t really change the algorithm or how aggressive it is. AFAIK it is just a toggle of on or off.

jrgd, 22 days ago

Beyond the article being ancient at this point (in terms of AOSP and Android development lifetime), Stallman’s argument boils down to the same talking points of Free Software purism.

To the first real point being transformed here: Android is not GNU/Linux because it does not contain much of the GNU Project’s software. While it’s correct to claim it’s not GNU/Linux, how does it not make it Linux still? Is Alpine Linux not considered “Linux” because it doesn’t contain GNU? Please elaborate on this point of Linux being Linux because it has GNU.

To the second point of including proprietary drivers, firmware, and appplications: we once again meet the questionable argument of transforming an OS to something else. Points are made that Android doesn’t fit the GNU ideals due to its usage and inclusion of proprietary kernel modules, firmware, and userland applications. These are valid points to be made in that these additions muddy the aspect of Android (as packaged by Google and major smartphone manufacturers) being truly free software. However the same can be said about traditional “GNU/Linux distributions”. Any device running on x86 (Intel, AMD) will be subject to needing proprietary firmware in order to function with that firmware having a higher control level than the kernel itself, just as Android would. There is also the note that while it is less necessary now to have a functioning desktop, a good portion of hardware (NVidia, Broadcom, Intel, etc.) require proprietary kernel modules and/or userland drivers in order to have full functionality that the average user may want. Finally, there is proprietary applications as well. Some Linux desktops include proprietary applications like Spotify, Steam, Google Chrome by default. Are we really to also exclude an overwhelming majority of the biggest Linux distros as Linux as well being that they include proprietary software or rely on proprietary code in some fashion? GNU itself lists very few distros as GNU-approved.

To note, AOSP does have a different userland environment than your standard Linux distro running X11 or Wayland. That is by far the best reason I could think of to classify Android as a different category of ‘Linux’ from say Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, and others. However, AOSP is still capable of running with no proprietary userland software and can even be made to still run cli applications as well as run an X11 server that is capable of launching familiar desktop Linux applications. I really think that the arbitrary exclusion of Android from being Linux by virtue that RMS doesn’t think it fits with GNU ideals is silly. If there are better arguments to be said for why Android (especially AOSP) shouldn’t be seen as Linux with a different userland ecosystem rather than not Linux entirely, I’d love to see them. However, I remain unconvinced so far.

jrgd, 1 month ago

The A485 is actually such a terrible laptop. I would never reccomend such garbage to anyone considering mine almost never worked properly. I had in three years have six main board replacements for various hardware faults. Not a single of the boards has been free from severe hardware faults.

jrgd, 1 month ago

I have been utilizing BunkerWeb for some of my selfhost sites since it was bunkerized-nginx. It is indeed powerful and flexible, allowing multi-site proxying, hosting while allowing semi-flexible per-site security tweaks (some security options are forcibly global still, a limitation).

I use it on podman myself, and while it is generally great for having OWasp CRS, general traffic filtering targets and more built on top of nginx in a Docker container, the way Bunkerweb needs to be run hasn’t really remained stable between versions. Throughout several version upgrades, there have been be severe breaking changes that will require reading the setup documentation again to get the new version functional.

jrgd, 1 month ago

A few things Fedora centers itself around:

• Wayland-oriented Workstations
• SELinux support OOTB
• BTRFS as default filesystem
• General attitude toward using close to bleeding edge packages as defaults
• Package order of Fedora rpm repos, Fedora Flatpak -> RPMFusion, Flathub -> copr -> external installation
• Immutable variants of Fedora exist for the major desktops

Fedora generally prides itself on being a Wayland-focused and oriented workstation distro. There is still active support for desktop environments/window managers that run on Xorg, but you should consider moving toward a Wayland-supporting environment (Gnome, KDE, Sway, Hyprland).

SELinux (a Mandatory Access Control system) is enabled by default and has pretuned policies installed that should support most use cases out of the box. SEApplet is a useful utility to find active SELinux denials in case an application is getting permission denied issues for seemingly no reason.

If you intend to use BTRFS as your filesystem of choice and want to utilize it to its fullest (encrypted partitions, subvolume encryption, automatic snapshots), it is best to read up how BTRFS and subvolumes work before partitioning so that your subvolumes will be correct the first time. It can be tedious to edit subvolumes, move their contents, and remount portions of the filesystem after they have already been populated.

I’m sure you’re used to how things on Arch with bleeding edge works, and understand that on Arch you should always read patch notes before updating. Generally, updates on Fedora are fine to just push through. It is worth generally reading what is new when performing system upgrades to a new version of Fedora, I have noticed occasionally in over five years of usage the first target release of a new version of Fedora can sometimes have breakages that tend to get fixed within the next couple of weeks. There is extensive testing for system upgrades that can be openly viewed, but the testing doesn’t always catch everything before a new release.

By default, the best way to grab packages on Fedora is from the official repos or from the Fedora Flatpaks. Barring that or if you aren’t satisfied by a default package for whatever reason (some stuff in default repos doesn’t have ffmpeg support or others due to codec licensing issues), you can add the second-party RPMFusion repos or add Flathub to grab additional or alternative packages as well. If those avenues fail, you might be able to find someone maintaining the package you need or want to test on Copr, which is essentially like Ubuntu’s Launchpad PPA platform. Barring all else, you could manually install a given application externally, though obviously this typically isn’t the best solution in most cases. Some cases where you might want RPMFusion packages are for things like audacity-freeworld, which includes proper ffmpeg support for Audacity. This package comes from rpmfusion-free. Or you might want something like akmod-nvidia to install the proprietary NVidia drivers or steam to install Steam. These packages come from rpmfusion-nonfree. Also, if you are not familiar with Flatpak, it might be worth becoming familiar with how it works (Flatseal is an excellent application that lets you modify how certain Flatpaks are sandboxed).

Immutable variants of Fedora (Silverblue, Kinoite, Sway Atomic, Budgie Atomic) also exist and provide an immutable base image that won’t typically get modified across boots. Most of the custom user installation of programs is intended to be installed via Flatpaks (Fedora or Flathub) or through using toolboxes to create sandboxed environments for certain workflows. If you absolutely need to rebase the system image with extra utilities, rpm-ostree is available to modify the system package selection, though this method is not recommended to just be used to install everything (needless rebasing of the immutable image defeats the point of using an immutable distro). Obviously these spins aren’t for everyone, but are there for those who want to use them.

jrgd, 1 month ago

For the longest time reading this post, I didn’t catch that you were setting up a simple dual boot for an internal SSD and thought with using tools like Ventoy you were making a multiboot portable install.

You are obscenely overcomplicating this. Your current approach is almost completely wrong to getting a functional multiboot system that passes secure boot and everything else.

Quite literally, bootstrapping from windows can use Rufus or ventoy on a USB stick to dump the ISOs on. Then boot into bios from the USB EFI entry. From there, simply install Fedora (no VM necessary). You’ll get Fedora installed in a GPT/EFI configuration (if you formatted your drive for install). If doing manual partitioning to leave space or do other configurations, format the drive to GPT. If multibooting, you may want to expand your EFI partition beyond 512MiB for multiple distros.

For other Linux OS to install alongside, you can then install them in the free space. Another comment mentioned to not install a bootloader on the secondary OS(es), which is generally a good idea.

For Tails, it is not meant to be installed on an SSD. It is best to use it on a flash drive.

Overall, a majority of your issues stem from the following:

• trying to use live distro images as an actual OS install
• using Ventoy as your bootloader
• using legacy MBR partition tables instead of GPT without expressed need for them
• Using virtualbox in general to provision bare metal hardware (changes need to be made in your VM software of choice to get EFI booting to work)

I’d argue your conclusion of people not switching to Linux because you found it too hard is almost entirely not because of any issue on Linux, but the factors you wedged yourself into on a modern x86 PC due to your methods in accomplishing your goal.

jrgd, 1 month ago

Ah, that would put a bit of complication into things. If you want to actually accomplish this though, you should largely start with the same steps as a standard system install, using a second USB flash drive to write the distro onto the external SSD, leaving enough space to build the rest of the partitions you need. If you intend to make a Windows-shared partition (exfat, fat32, or NTFS), it is probably best to put that partition either first or just behind the EFI partition so that Windows systems won’t have a hard time finding it. Exfat or NTFS would be a better choice for this type of partition.

I would still generally recommend keeping the live distros on a separate bootable drive, but you can size and reserve dummy partitions after the rest of your normal dual-boot installs and shared data partitions for live installers to overwrite. There is likely going to be some experimentation with getting the OS bootloader (such as on GRUB provided by Fedora in this case) to pick them up and add them as boot entries. You should (depending on the live image) be able to dd write them to the ending partitions reserved for the image for as long as the partition is sized equal or larger than the ISO image’s size (it’s best to give at least a few blocks of oversize on the partition when writing ISO’s directly).

Edit: In a proper Fedora install, you should almost never need to disable selinux or set it to permissive unless you know why you don’t want it.

jrgd, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I just did some testing in the past hour or so and did a portable install from scratch using the Fedora Workstation 39 iso. I’m not exactly sure what your hardware detection issue would have been, but I can say that Anaconda could detect both a USB flash drive and an external hard drive I had plugged in.

Going with the USB flash drive, I did skip using the automatic partitioning and went for using blivet to do my work. I did format the drive beforehand as I have always had issues with that drive properly accepting various partitioning commands (the installer no exception as tested). I did reserve a partition for a shared storage filesystem, but didn’t actually give it a filesystem here.

In blivet, here is a sample of the kind of partition schema I was talking about (something that might be helpful to OP or anyone else that wants to try this setup):

Blivet GUI Partitioning screen showcasing empty, EFI, boot, and root partitions

Blivet GUI Partitioning screen showcasing boot btrfs volume with singular subvolume

Blivet GUI Partitioning screen showcasing primary btrfs volume with root, snapshots, home, var, and var/log subvolumes

I was able to then complete the install as normal and boot into the finished USB drive. I noted a small non-fatal complaint from grub on boot, but I imagine this is fixed with updating the system. All systemd units boot without failure and I am able to get the system working with minimal issue. The only real issue I could note is that the installation is very sluggish (due to it being on a flash drive rather than an external ssd or some other more suitable media). After booting, I then opened Disks and added the missing exfat (or NTFS) filesystem I reserved a partition for. The reason I didn’t do this in blivet during install is because the option doesn’t actually exist to make an exfat fs in the tool.

Fedora 39 with GNOME Disks window and terminal reading out the contents of /etc/os-release

Hopefully, this comment is helpful toward getting such a setup working.

EDIT:

Something I did notice with GRUB on Fedora Workstation 39 is that by default, the menu will not show unless pressing escape on boot. There is a useful AskUbuntu post that explains in detail how to access the grub menu and how to change it to behave in a better fashion for a multiboot system.

jrgd, 1 month ago

The username release is quite recent for those not participating in beta versions of Signal.

jrgd, 1 month ago

Could you elaborate on this? As someone who uses SystemD extensively on workstations and servers for spawning and managing both system-level and user-level services, I do find minimal issues overall with SystemD minus some certain functionalities such as socket spawning/respawning.

Of course some of default SystemD’s housekeeping services do suck and I replace them with others. I would like to see the ability to just remove those services outright from my systems as separate packages since they do remain useless, but it isn’t that big of an issue.

jrgd, 2 months ago

This is render offloading, not GPU switching. GPU switching implies switching the primary rendering device (the one power the displays) entirely rather than rendering on a separate GPU and copying the output to the primary.

jrgd, 2 months ago

I’m glad I am not the only one who calls my little ASUS netbook craptop. Kinda flimsy and definitely underpowered, but a perfect little device to run basic applications and terminal applications on a minimal window manager.

jrgd, 3 months ago

Before going any further to adjust your Z offset and other factors to tune for better bed adhesion, you should probably adjust your bed to actually be level as well as ensure (seeing that you only have one z lead screw?) that the X axis frame isn’t sagging on the side not containing your Z lead screw. Once you’ve got those factors sorted out, you should check your probe repeatability and then set your Z offset accordingly.

Bed adhesion even with proper, clean first layers can be a pain depending on the bed surface, material being printed, how clean the bed is of oils and other contaminants, how hot the material is being extruded, and how hot the bed is among other factors. While using a bed mesh will greatly help to account for off-zero unevenness in your bed surface, you really shouldn’t use it to compensate for uneven bed leveling (especially when it looks like you are nearing more than 0.5 mm in unevenness).

To diagnose other print issues, it will be helpful to see a picture showcasing the problems described in a failed print.

---

As a side note, it is somewhat difficult to read your Klipper config file without using view source as it is being markdown formatted. You can negate it by using three graves on the lines above and below it so that it is wrapped in a ‘code block’ and isn’t formatted.

Some code  
 eeeee  
 fffff  

Turns into

<span style="color:#323232;">Some code
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  eeeee
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  fffff
</span>

jrgd, 3 months ago

Just a wild guess, but does your i3 setup have Polkit setup fully like it would be in KDE? The “the name is not activatable” is a string typically stemming from DBus. Especially for potential cross-user services that may require various permission sets, polkit is often utilized to bridge what is necessary. If you don’t have an authentication agent setup for your i3 desktop, you should probably set one up, even if it is something basic like xfce’s or lxqt’s.

jrgd, 3 months ago

So you executed KDE’s auth agent in a terminal and then ran the mysql service through the same terminal and everything worked? If so, that’s good. I believe the only thing missing to getting SQL Workbench working is by having your authorization agent of choice launched in your i3 .xinitrc file. That way it should initialize any environment variables for your full graphical session rather just for a single terminal.

jrgd, 3 months ago

Traditionally, one using a “from-scratch” Linux install might start in a console TTY and then use the startx command to start X.org and other applications alongside it (including the window manager like i3). This is often done through the .xinitrc file. In your case, it’s likely that you aren’t using such a method, and rather using a display manager (most likely sddm since you are using KDE Plasma) to launch your user session (a bit of an oversight on my part, my bad). When not having some kind of pre-launch file or some other service list to launch everything surrounding your desktop, you might have to rely on your window manager to ensure secondary processes are launched. I do believe sddm can be configured to allow for additional processes to be launched, but I’ll point you in the direction of doing it from i3’s config files as it’s quite simple to do.

Within your i3 config file, you can add exec entries into it. Typically exec entries are meant to be used with bindsym to launch things with a keybind, but you can use exec entries on their own line to launch applications when the configuration file is read (on startup). For instance, you could add the line exec --no-startup-id “/usr/lib/polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1 &” in order to launch KDE’s polkit authentication agent with your i3 instance, at which point applications (like SQL Workbench) should be able to make use of. As usual, changing your i3 config does require restarting your session for changes to take effect.

jrgd, 3 months ago

Perhaps it is possible that multiple issues are involved? Looking back at other issues with SQL Workbench causing DBus failures due to missing DBus endpoints could include the fact that SQL Workbench seems to rely on a keyring (be it Gnome Keyring or KDE Wallet). In an issue posted from 2022, SQL Workbench outright fails to connect to DBs in the same manner described if the keyring application isn’t running. It might be worth using KWalletManager to check through your KDE keyring to see if SQL Workbench has been attempting to store and resolve database passwords through your keyring, which won’t be running by default in a plain i3 session.

jrgd, 3 months ago

As the original issues over on MySQL forums suggested, using DBeaver or other similar software rather than SQL Workbench is the best option. You unfortunately seem to be locked into using a keychain solution if you want to use SQL Workbench.

jrgd, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

User-Centric Innovation: Unveiling the Industry-Leading Battery Life

We know how a smartwatch becomes integral to its wearer’s life, and battery life can’t be a concern. That’s why we went back to the drawing board, driven by community feedback, to ensure the OnePlus Watch 2 delivers an exceptional user experience. With up to 100-hour battery life in full Smart Mode, it sets a new industry standard, ensuring that your watch keeps pace with your life, uninterrupted.

Really impressive how OnePlus is touting a relatively mediocre 4-day (at best) battery life on a smartwatch as something exceptional or something that they (falsely) claim as industry-leading. Maybe it is good by typical WearOS device standards, but is by no means top of the line for the smartwatch industry.

jrgd, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

One can comfortably use NTFS to read and write files on modern Linux distributions, but NTFS in general is not very suitable for running applications on or using for long-term usage between a dual-boot. Windows can and will often lock up NTFS partitions whenever it decides to hibernate rather than shutdown or sometimes suspend. NTFS while not being the greatest FS in general will also have worse performance on Linux than Windows. You can totally keep data stores on a Linux system, though you won’t be able to make use of many of the advanced features some Linux/BSD-oriented filesystems offer. You can totally keep your drives as they are now, though if you intend to make a full switch you should consider migrating your drives’ data over to more Linux-oriented filesystems (be it Btrfs, Xfs, or Ext4 is your choice depending on the features you want). In short, NTFS works but lacks a lot of features and performance that a more suitable filesystem would offer.

jrgd, 3 months ago

In general, Microsoft doesn’t support many filesystem formats at all. In the same way you shouldn’t attempt to cross-run a steam library from Windows on Linux, you really shouldn’t do from Linux to Windows. It’s in part due to how permissions, execution flags, filesystem case sensitivity, file metadata, is interpreted by Windows applications vs. Unix-like applications. There will be issues going either way when using foreign filesystems in complex tasks.

While it should be expected that the files will have the same contents where they are actually the same (i.e. a Proton game will be the same as a Windows game as it comes from the same steam depot), there is a good chance that translation of interpretation isn’t to be 1:1 on either side. Furthermore with using Steam libraries, Steam includes additional data beyond just the game files, which is likely why they are invalidated. A significant portion of visible cross-os portability issues is due to many applications like Steam using OS-specific file structures. More than likely Steam is going to intentionally make the library metadata not fully compatible between Linux and Windows Steam and force validation before launch because there is a good chance the games aren’t even compatible builds or otherwise have additional compatibility content dragged along (such as Proton WINE prefixes that are to be completely ignored when launching from actual Windows or having additional libraries, modded executable binaries that have platform-oriented patches).

If you seriously want to run a cross-share of a Steam Library between Linux and Windows, you should really utilize Steam Cloud save. If you want to “deduplicate” your games, your best bet would be if you can open the foreign fs and have a compatible copy of the game, to simply clone the game files to the current filesystem and remove from remote rather than attempt to force a multi-os single-partition shared library. You are less likely to destroy your Steam library if you treat the actual libraries separate, but move the games like they were downloaded externally. Barring being able to do that, just don’t cross-share games. Simply reboot into the OS that has the game you want to play instead.

jrgd, 3 months ago

I am not sure if jest, but you could always take a few seconds at protondb to see that yes, all of those games do in fact run on Linux. Forza in particular seems to have issues for some users, but everything else works with minimal hassle.

jrgd, 3 months ago

The desired alternative is not Matrix simply because privacy-conscious, open-source ecosystem vs. proprietary solution is not the goal. Matrix would still generally be terrible for support. What people want is publicly searchable content that is ideally indexed like a wiki. Many will happily settle for issue boards or even forums though. Discord has pathetic search capabilities in comparison to any search engine and has no way to properly and publicly backup information that is posted to the platform. With a website of any kind, one could clone the site for mirroring or simply get a web archive service to crawl relevant sections.

jrgd, 4 months ago

Not the same person, but I greatly enjoy my (now second) Pebble classic for several reasons, which I imagine some are shared between Starayo.

• Always-on Display
• Week-long battery life
• High contrast display that can be read easily in low light as well as in direct sunlight
• Simple notifications support, with quick canned replies
• physical button navigation that make the watch easy to use without needing to look at it
• Isn’t obscenely large
• quick launch application shortcuts from holding side buttons
• simple media playback control that is responsive
• Doesn’t attempt to be another smartphone, but rather as a local companion to your existing smartphone (doesn’t thrive on individual apps, but rather companion apps to complement smartphone usage)
• Customizable and relatively simple to write applications and watchfaces for.

Unfortunately for me, fossil’s watches do not match up. Looking at the gen 6, still uses an ill-suited AMOLED display that is bound to have poor contrast in direct sunlight unless the brightness is cranked so far that it will blow through the battery. Even then, the average battery life on the gen 6 is atrocious compared to most Pebble models as many reports say it can make it through one day. I’m sure by now, WearOS devices have worked out some of the kinks to make them easier and faster to use, though I am not sold on needing a personal assistant in order to do basic tasks (as Fossil markets their gen 6 smartwatch; I do doubt that this is necessary for general function).

Also, this might be controversial, but I personally feel that a device that has Bluetooth and is intended to communicate with a device that is often within ten feet of it really doesn’t need to waste resources and probably become more of a privacy nightmare by including Wi-Fi, LTE, and other data communication methods (beside NFC). Furthermore, pretty much every WearOS device I have seen has had a struggle to keep battery life for more than a couple days, and everyone deems that devices that can should be praised for whatever reason. Seeing as my ancient smartwatch that does most of what these newer watches do yet can effortlessly hold a six day battery life at worst, I seriously question why newer watches that have so much compromise and are incredibly misguided as to what a complementary wearable should be are what are being developed. Not to mention that the Pebble classic on launch was $99 USD whereas one can easily find $400+ smartwatches that still have way too much compromise in comparison.

jrgd, 4 months ago

There are not many Android phones that actually let you flex the open source benefits of AOSP. Android as it is packaged on many devices is not open source, and nor are the devices willing to fully let you install what you want. Ironically some of the only choices you have with the highest degree of freedom are from google.