overview for Kongar

Follow up from late Linux 90s post in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

Agreed there were native linux games written for linux, but remind me because I forgot - I believe Doom had been ported or something. Because I remember running it both at home in linux and I remember people running it in the computer labs off the Unix mainframe.

Linux during the mid to late 90s (Windows 95 and 98 era) in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I went to college in 93, and they ran a Unix mainframe with thin clients connected to it in the computer labs.

I didn’t really know much about any computers then, but I learned quick and had nerdy friends teach me a lot. Home computers ran DOS, but this fancy thing called Linux had entered the scene and nerds played with it.

I remember it being a bear. My comp sci roommate did most of the work, but he’d dole out mini projects to me to help him out. You had to edit text files with your exact hardware parameters or else it wouldn’t work. Like resolutions, refresh rates, IRQs, mouse shit, printer shit - it was maddening. And then you’d compile that all for hours. And it always failed. Many hardware things just weren’t ever going to work.

Eventually we got most things working and it was cool as beans. But it took weeks - seriously. We were able to act as a thin client to the mainframe and run programs right from our apartment instead of hauling ourselves to the computer lab. Interestingly, on Linux, that was the first time I had ever gotten a modem and a mouse working together. It was either/or before that.

It was both simultaneously horrific and fantastic at the same time. By the time windows 95 rolled out, the Unix mainframe seemed old and archaic. All the cool kids were playing Warcraft 2 and duke nukem 3D.

Hard drive switch for independent boot in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

It’s fine they are identical. In the past, it was easy to just unplug the drive you didn’t want to mess with just to be sure (sata cables), but it’s a little harder with m.2 drives. Write the uuid #s down and identify them that way…

Hard drive switch for independent boot in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I’m not sure I’d go that far to be honest. 1) windows behaves much better when it has its own drive to install on and 2) linux boot loaders become less important because if you break it, you can use your bios to force boot windows and it’ll still boot.

IMHO, two drives is the way to go with dual boot. Set the Linux drive in the bios as the primary boot drive, and configure the bootloader to add the windows drive to the menu. While you’re learning that, you can boot windows through the bios, once you get it, you’re always presented with a menu upon boot to pick which one you want.

One final word of advice, buy different drives. Either manufacturer or size. It’ll be easier to tell them apart when you’re doing disk operations.

Good luck!

Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 30th in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Frostpunk - seems fun. Played a few hours.

Armored core 6 - um I died like 4 times in the tutorial. I was shamed and put it down.

But ya - it’s been Elden ring pretty much 90% of the time.

Trump vows to defund schools requiring vaccines for students if he's reelected in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Listen, I’m far from a Trump fan. And I don’t think he personally did anything productive ever personally. But facts are facts - his administration DID do a lot to help (or at least that was my personal experience). As one single example of many, I personally got help from warp speed White House / military folks to get me critical parts from the other side of the world in a little over a day. Asia to my doorstep, Friday end of day to Sunday morning. I thought I’d have to go to the port and pick it up - nope right to my damn hands. That one simple act literally got that vaccine into people about 2-3 weeks earlier.

It’s baffling - they did good things. Not all the good things, but good things nonetheless. And he was in a position to take credit for the whole thing, deserved or not and put a big feather in his cap. And then, all of a sudden, “vaccines are bad”. It’s like you can’t make this shit up. If he was smart he’d take that one thing and rile up his base with how amazing he is, and then get away with murder behind their backs. But instead he punches the gift horse in the mouth.

That’s how I know he’s not very smart.

Trump vows to defund schools requiring vaccines for students if he's reelected in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

100% - his administration is why Moderna’s Covid vaccine exists. His govt. funded the plants.

Seriously, where do I go? in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago

You really can’t get bluer than mass ri conn and vt

Southern nh and southern me are basically Boston suburbs. As you go north it gets more red. But not like sc (I have family in sc and outside of the blue cities - ya they are pretty maga stupid). They are more “leave me alone red” as opposed to “my pastor said abortion is bad and I like to make fun of the gays”

I mean there’s maga idiots everywhere-but honestly things might even tip a little too blue in southern New England.

Seriously, where do I go? in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 84 points 1 week ago

There hasn’t been “bitter cold” in the northeast for a decade. Climate change is a bitch. We barely get snow anymore - 2015 was a banger, but it’s been dustings since.

Why does nobody here ever recommend Fedora to noobs? in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I’ve actually had someone thumb their nose at linux because of that name. “You mean the hat OS? The one those weird guys use? No thanks.” I’m paraphrasing but ya, that association is there for some people.

What book(s) are you currently reading or listening? June 25 in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I just finished the first trilogy which starts with “Red Rising”. It was really entertaining, and I highly recommend it. I’ll start the follow up series soon.

Right now I’m reading both Salem’s Lot by King and The Catcher in the Rye. I like to throw in classics that I missed in high school - I didn’t appreciate them then, but I’ve found a few as an adult that I’ve absolutely loved. Both books are pretty good so far - we’ll see how they end.

How the automobile industry turned us into SUV drivers in c/[email protected]

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I agree, but I was making a different point. I think most people drove larger CARS, but today most people drive SUVs. And today’s SUVs are smaller than the cars of the past. Yes any particular model seems to have gotten bigger - but I think people in general are in smaller vehicles than they were when I was a kid.

622

Linux really has come a long way (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

208 comments fedilink

I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.

Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…

WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.

Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?

Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.

Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.

25

CD to flac recommendations? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink

Hi guys,

Anyone old like me who still likes to buy music CDs, but young enough where I want to rip perfect flac files from them? My tool of choice has been exact audio copy for like, ever.

I realized this weekend it’s the only windows software left that I still boot into windows for. Used to be the odd game here and there that didn’t work in linux, but even that has stopped.

Anyways - I’m looking for all the bells and whistles. It handles gaps correctly, can create cue sheets, does error correction, and ultimately allows me to make a 100% backup of a music CD (I can take a blank CD and make a perfect copy of the original). Anything in the AUR that does this? Anyone have success running EAC with proton/wine etc and can offer some tips? Thanks.

56

Updating Arch the right way - Please critique my practices (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

31 comments fedilink

Hello. Please critique how I'm updating / maintaining my new Arch installation so I can fix anything I'm doing wrong. This is mostly what I could gather from the Arch wiki tailored to my system. I think I know what I'm doing - but as I've often learned, it's easy to misunderstand or overlook some things.

Step 1: perform an incremental full system backup so I have something to restore if the update borks anything. I've chosen to use the rsync command as laid out on the wiki:

sudo rsync -aAXHv --delete --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} / /media/linuxhdd/archrsyncbackup

I have a large hdd mounted as a secondary drive under /media/linuxhdd. It is configured to automatically mount from fstab using uuid. Both my root drive and that hdd are formatted ext4. I'm not using the -S option because I don't think I'll be using virtual machines (I have other hard drives I can make bootable). --delete is used so I maintain one current set of files for restore purposes. This keeps the copying and transfer time to a minimum. (I maintain disk images offline with a different tool - this is simply one local copy for easy restoration purposes)

Step 2: Check the Arch wiki - follow instructions for any manual steps

Step 3: once every 1-2 months, update the mirror list using reflector

sudo reflector --protocol https --verbose --latest 25 --sort rate --save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

This should sort the fastest 25 mirrors into mirrorlist. Remember to use the -Syyu option in step 6 if this step was done

Step 4: Clean the journal

sudo journalctl --vacuum-time=4weeks

This should keep 4 weeks of files.

Step 5: Clean the cache

sudo paccache -r

This should keep no more than 3 versions laying around. Once and a while, I can clean out all uninstalled packages with -ruk0 options instead.

Step 6: Upgrade Arch packages with pacman

sudo pacman -Syu

I need to watch for pacnew and pacsave files and deal with them (although I haven't seen any yet)

Step 7: Review the pacman log

nano /var/log/pacman.log

This should tell me about any warnings, errors, instructions, or other things I need to deal with.

Step 8: Remove Orphans

pacman -Qtdq | sudo pacman -Rns -

This could be recursive and needs to be run more than once. Instead, I'll just run it once every time I update. This should keep things cleaned out.

Step 9: Update AUR packages

Check the build scripts to make sure the package hasn't been taken over and that it won't run anything funny.

yay -Sua

This should update just the AUR packages

Step 10: Remove AUR orphans

yay -Yc

The wiki says this "removes unnecessary dependencies" which I believe means AUR-only orphan packages.

Step 11: Reboot

reboot

Step 12: Update flatpaks from the GUI (Gnome-->Software-->Updates)

Any mistakes? Suggestions?

Thanks!

39

What happens with optical drives (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

20 comments fedilink

I’m trying to understand what happens with optical drives in general, and failing.

Backstory: I still have a SATA burner mounted in an expansion bay. I’ve been upgrading my pc for 15+ years and that bad boy is still kicking through all the upgrades. I bought a brand new ssd. When I went to plug it in, I realized I had run out of sata ports on my motherboard. I do have a usb portable optical drive so I really don’t need the old burner. So I unplugged the optical drive and plugged in the new ssd into the same port.

Now I knew something would break upon boot, but I didn’t care - let’s learn. It of course hangs on boot. If I undo the optical drive/ssd swap, it boots fine. Manjaro btw. But what file knows about that optical drive that needs to change? It’s not fstab-that’s just regular hard drives (no opticals listed there). Everything says that optical drives get mounted at /dev/sr0, but clearly something somewhere else needs to be deleted ala fstab file style. But what file?

I tried searching optical drive on the arch wiki and didn’t find what I was looking for with a quick skim (maybe I need to read it closer again)

Anyways thanks!