ProtonBadger

@ProtonBadger@kbin.social
ProtonBadger,

Just some simple stuff:

Strix ~> alias
alias balanced 'asusctl profile -P balanced'
alias performance 'asusctl profile -P performance'
alias quiet 'asusctl profile -P quiet'
alias upd 'yay ; flatpak update'
ProtonBadger,

Himmelbjerget (Sky Mountain) in Denmark, it's an entire 147m

Well, I've also climbed some baby mountains in Western Canada, like Grouse Mountain (just a short hiking trail) and the Columbia Ice Field (basically drove up there) but how can the compete to Himmelbjerget ‽

What are we all using for video chat in 2023?

The last time I tried to make video chat work with people, we dived between jitsi, facebook messenger, zoom... until something worked well enough. what are people using here now? Jitsi? Google Meet? Whatsapp? Facebook Messenger? Zoom? Skype? Facetime, somehow? The builtin thing in matrix that used to be jitsi but I think they...

ProtonBadger,

We're all friends and some of us have both Android and iOS phones. Facetime is excellent.

I also use Signal or Skype, though the latter usually from my PC.

Languages in the EU

I’m about to sound like the ignorant American I am, so I apologize in advance! We’re looking at a trip to Germany, and possibly Prague, and we’ve noticed that a lot of the hotel names are French and a couple hotels that aren’t named in French have replied to comments with things like “Bonjour! etc etc” What’s up...

ProtonBadger, (edited )

Yes, Bonjour is a magic word. La politesse/etiquette and respect for all people is very important in France. Here in NA when we enter a store the staff greets the customer and bows and scrapes for us, in France when entering a store the customer politely acknowledges and greets the staff with Bonjour - and not just in stores. And then there's the other small phrases that goes a long way, like merci, pardon, s’il vous plait, au revoir, use monsieur/madame/mademoiselle, as in Excusez-moi, madame, etc.

Dress a little bit nicely when exploring helps, don't walk while eating, etc.

When foreigners complain that the French are rude or snobbish it is often a misinterpretation; not adhering to simple etiquette, can be offensive or insulting and they will react to that demonstratively or "in kind", more or less subtly..

I rather like La Politesse and being respectful to everyone.

Did we kill Linux's killer feature?

A few years ago we were able to upgrade everything (OS and Apps) using a single command. I remember this was something we boasted about when talking to Windows and Mac fans. It was such an amazing feature. Something that users of proprietary systems hadn’t even heard about. We had this on desktops before things like Apple’s...

ProtonBadger,

I enjoy that extra stability and separation between system and apps, especially as I use a rolling distro as a gamer. Hearing talk about Flatpak I disliked it for the same reasons, but I decided to try it out after Steam Native bugged due to a system library update. I enjoy it now also because it feels good that installing apps don't get a root password and scatter files everywhere they please in the system.

On servers it's different ofcourse, Flatpak is basically for desktop apps. Snap is also designed for text mode stuff, servers and IoT devices but there's the problem with it being controlled by one company.

Who does flatpak/snap benefit?

As a user, the best way to handle applications is a central repository where interoperability is guaranteed. Something like what Debian does with the base repos. I just run an install and it’s all taken care of for me. What’s more, I don’t deal with unnecessary bloat from dozens of different versions of the same library...

ProtonBadger,

Yes I enjoy that extra stability and organization, especially as I use a rolling distro as a gamer. Hearing talk about Flatpak I disliked it but I decided to try it out after Steam Native bugged due to a system library update. I enjoy it now also because it feels good that installing apps don't get a root password and scatter files everywhere they please in the system.

Bloat is often held up as the ultimate evil without further ado, scaring everybody. I think a little extra disk space would be more concerning on an embedded system. Snap is also aimed at embedded systems btw.

What is your comfort activity (like comfort food)?

Mine is playing AOE2 in easiest (or standard if I want a bit of challenge) mode against 3 bots. I just build my economy, wall up (and laugh at the enemy soldiers attacking my walls in vain), reach imperial age and attack once my army reaches the population limit. I also send 104 in the chat so they don’t surrender and I can...

ProtonBadger,

GuildWars 2, small scale stuff on the borderlands with my WvW guild.

ProtonBadger,

When Covid came to town I started learning French to do something constructive. I started with 1 hour+ Duolingo a day, then after a year I added comic books (Tintin/Asterix/Spirou/Natacha/etc.). Now I am reading the Maigret novels.

I finished the Duolingo course after ~3 years but they added more content so now I do ~15min a day just for fun, while most of my learning is through reading interesting novels, like Maigret.

I also took the ANUx's Astrophysics XSeries Program on EdX, it's spectacular and I learned so much from it. So I keep better up with new discoveries and understand what's going on.

ProtonBadger,

I have a version of The More Than Complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy that's genuine leather bonded with gold leaf page edges and builtin bookmark. It's on display on a special shelf. Everyone who visits thinks it's a bible, and in a way it is as it does have a lot of good advice about life, the universe and everything.

ProtonBadger,

For sure, I use a computer all day, the only time I touch my phone is to answer the door. I don't have access to iMessage on the PC but I only use Signal and WhatsApp for messaging anyway and they work nicely on my Linux desktop. Never need to fiddle with my phone.

ProtonBadger,

Yeah, homemade is best. It takes a bit of practice though because there's so many things one can use. A good burger doesn't have too much stuff and not too little and it needs balanced flavours and textures.

ProtonBadger, (edited )

Yeah, I had a friend throwing away his Dyson stick vac because it was "pulsating" on and off, well, a quick look in the manual (there's also an online troubleshooter) told me that pulsating like that is a signal to the user meaning there is a blockage, it took 30 sec to fix that.

ProtonBadger,

and there is a very useful Dyson refurbished factory store on EBay, at least here in Canada. I bought a stick vac there 12 years ago, only had to replace battery and air filter since.

ProtonBadger,

I found Steam wouldn't accept my drive unless I gave it the 'exec' option in fstab.

ProtonBadger,

Same, because it's a good browser and because of their commitment to an open internet.

I keep telemetry enabled (it can be perused openly on telemetry.mozilla.org if interested).

ProtonBadger, (edited )

Yes, everyone knows it already, they're just another company, profit is the main and first objective. Their stuff is generally good but priced high tier. But they do some virtue signalling when/where it doesn't hurt them too much, so that's why sometimes we can hope they put down their foot sometimes.

No one stopped buying apple when the forced labour of foxconn was revealed decades ago. (well, not enough to offset the savings to apple by using foxconn)

I think people know that almost everything in their homes (everything from kitchen utensils to speakers, even my mop) is made in the same type of factories or use components that are, except my furniture maybe, that's from Vietnam and clothing often from India/Pakistan/Bangladesh (still sweatshops, just different countries).

At least Apple had to improve conditions somewhat for their production lines which all the other companies supplying the west with cheap products didn't. They also audit it, which works somewhat though there's also evidence manufacturers tries to "hide" problems so nothing is perfect. One brand that tries harder is Fairphone and they are saying it's currently impossible to be 100% "Fair". But I guess if one wants to make a statement with their purchase they'll have to buy Fairphone.

Another company that had to do something was Nike, but I wouldn't be surprised they've reverted to closing their eyes to pure sweatshop suppliers now everyone have forgotten the scandal. Nobody's forgetting Apple's scandal because they're the most in the spotlight.

Rant about Nvidia related updates on Linux

There are many reasons to dislike Nvidia on Linux. Here is a little thing that bugs me all the time, the updates. Normally the system updates would be quick and fast, but with the proprietary drivers of Nvidia involved, it gets quiet slow process. And I am not even talking about any other problem I encounter, just about the...

ProtonBadger, (edited )

I have an alias I call "upd" that runs "yay ; flatpak update", I just run that, press Y at the first prompts and then let it run in the background while I do other work. It really doesn't matter at all how long it takes. I do have NVidia but generally I don't feel it takes very long as we don't get new kernels every day. You could use the linux-lts kernel for much more rare kernel updates.

It's a bit like bittorrents, I don't need them to download in 30sec, I start it and return to check on it whenever I think of it.

I have changed my opinion on flatpak btw, I really like that the apps are not spread all over my system but instead sandboxed neatly, have fewer dependency versioning issues and it's really easy to use.

ProtonBadger, (edited )

That's abnormal, it shouldn't be like that. My flatpak rarely has updates (compared to Arch/yay) and they're quite fast, still less than a minute even if there's updates to the NV libs (I didn't time it). There must be some kind of particular issue? What's your setup?

Looking at it - I got flatseal, chrome, firefox, thunderbird, dropbox, steam, joplin, cryptomator, mesa, NV libs, gimp, discord, resynthesizer, libreoffice and some other bits on flatpak. It's on an SSD, Internet 150Mbps. Is it installation or download that's slow for you? With it being 20min I would guess there's a problem with the download speed from the server, routing issue to flathub, etc? Flatpak is not that much of a slog.

ProtonBadger,

NVIDIA is shit

I would call that an exaggeration. It's not perfect sure, but it has finally improved a lot in the last year and it works for some. I had to get a new gaming laptop earlier this year and the only good option I could afford had an NV card. It was a great deal from Bestbuy certified open box, $500 off (I love those open box deals with 30day return).

It works well, I play Guildwars2 and BG3 flawlessly through XWayland+proton with great performance. Maybe it works well because I put it into Dedicated Nvidia mode, instead of using Optimus? (I never liked Optimus)

Sure it's not perfect, I get graphics glitches in KDE if bringing the laptop out of sleep, funny colors and a mouse with a funny trail, but I don't need to use sleep, I boot it in the morning and shut it down in the evening, it's no biggie for my use-case.

ProtonBadger,

Yeah, Pocket does nothing unless you press the button.

And as for telemetry that's publicly available on telemetry.mozilla.org if anyone wants to see what's being sent. It's very useful for Mozilla to see what and how features are used.

Mozilla is our last tiny hope for freedom really, in this Chrome/Blink world..

ProtonBadger,

I cancelled cable TV ($100) , Netflix (which in Canada is $16+tax without ads) and Prime (it's too easy to buy stuff there as well, I'm trying to support more local stores), downgraded my Internet to 150Mbps because I calculated my usage and discovered I was paying for speeds I very rarely really needed, MMORPG gaming is less than 1Mbps, streaming HD <10Mbps, streaming 4K <30Mbps (though I don't do that), instead I only pay for Mullvad and cheaper Internet. I save a lot every month from that perspective.

In addition I occasionally need Mullvad for other things than bittorrent, like to access websites in other countries/etc. It can be handy to have a VPN sometimes.

ProtonBadger,

I buy a lottery ticket once a month just for the fun of some cheap fantasies/dreams. A few years ago I won $2000. I wouldn't mind a repeat.

ProtonBadger,

What matters is whether the majority of the market cares. Some of the most popular phones today don't have the Headphone Jack or SD card. I doubt the Fairphone business is going to live or die by the headphone jack, it will be things live price and consumer interest in their mission, which I think is probably low, sadly.

ProtonBadger,

As a laptop user I love the idea that some of the titlebar space being utilized. I don't use GNOME though. I hope there will continue to be good UXs for both of us.

ProtonBadger,

Yeah, I recently moved from Authy to 2FAS, took about an hour moving everything over. It can do cloud backup and export/import files manually as well.

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