what's a reliable way to determine my device's battery health? something like Coconutbattery for macOS - charge cycles, health, factory/remaining mAh, etc...

tried CPU-Z, says health is "Good". gee, thanks... out of what, "Excellent" through "Shit" or what?

backstory, I got a Samsung Tab S6 used, wiped it and installed LineageOS 20 and I'm using for a couple of months. the battery kinda sucks. granted, I have like 3-4 hours SOT/day but a 7000 mAh battery should last a couple of days; pure guesstimation, I had an iPad some years ago and that thing lasted for eons.

if I leave it overnight with 10ish% battery remaining and battery saver on, it's dead by morning. that sort of drain can't be normal? on the other hand, I don't have google services so every app has its own running service - syncthing, KDE Connect, Allcast, Jellyfin Player, etc.

there's the stuff I can read from /sys/class/power_supply/battery/ but nothing useful in there; like charge_full and charge_full_design are the same (70400) and other promising sounding items are unset or nonsensical.

tried the same on my Redmi phone w/LOS, completely different files there and equally useless.

I don't wanna go through sourcing the battery, prying the thing open and replacing it, only to find out that's how it's supposed to work. any ideas?

so, I have a weird problem with a Dell Latitude 5285, that's a 2-in-1 with a detachable keyboard akin to the MS Surface Pro 5. it has an i5-7300u, 16 GB LPDDR3 (on-board), 500 GB NVMe, 12.3" 1920x1280 3:2 touch screen.

I got it second-hand, unknown history, without a battery. they're stuck at 400 MHz without one, but Thottlestop in Windows and msr-tools in Linux fix the BD_PROCHOT throttling and the machine performed adequately for months.

I've sourced a replacement battery, removed the patch and my problems started. there's weird screen flickering, looks like bad video ram or a flaky connection. it's intermittent, sometimes it runs without issues for hours, sometimes minutes and sometimes it flickers from the start, so troubleshooting and checking if this or that fixed things takes days.

the artefacts are inconsistent with anything that is or isn't happening (load, temps, etc) or power source. the problem is mostly exacerbated when the battery is full and/or when waking from sleep, it's almost always super glitchy then.

here's a demonstration:

would be great if I could try a different battery or try this one in another device, but don't have that option.

at no point are there ANY glitches on the external display (tried DP-Alt over USB Type-C and HDMI over Dell WD19 Dock), regardless if the internal screen is enabled or not.

so, bad luck - faulty screen or backlight or RAM or something, right?

except, when I unplug the battery (but leave it in place) and connect it to power and reenable the BD_PROCHOT patch - zero glitches! it runs for hours - videos, GPU and CPU stress test, not one hiccup, tear, nothing!

if it were a normal laptop, I'd just leave it be and use it as a desktop. it feels like such a waste with the functional touchscreen though.

what I've tried:

• different USB Type-C chargers
• fresh paste on CPU, clean vent
• latest firmware, tried downgrading, no change
• memtest passed twice on thorough, all clear
• internal diagnostics also
• it never froze or crashed
• screenshot during glitches doesn't contain them
• disabling turbo, upping/lowering the max/boost GPU clock, forcing cores offline, limiting max frequencies with TLP
• the battery isn't deformed and doesn't exert pressure on the screen or any cables; also tried running it with the screen slightly lifted from the case, no change
• pressing, jerking, wiggling of the internal display cable/connector, no change
• same issues in Windows 11, Ubuntu 23.04 and Fedora WS 38; rarely but sometimes in BIOS/during boot
• sadly, can't undervolt the CPU/GPU (Throttlestop FIVER says it's locked) but some MSR writes are apparently OK (like disabling BD_PROCHOT works).

at some point, it had both charger and dock with PD attached at the same time to both USB Type-C ports; it's possible this fried something, although I have no evidence of that.

so, I'm sure this is NOT a linux hardware problem, but I would like to use linux to fix the problem. at this point, I am sure it's defective, whether it's age or physical or manufacturing defect or whatever; but since it definitely works perfectly without the battery, I'm looking for some tweaks that makes it perform with the battery the same as without it.

seriously doubt anyone's seen anything similar but are there any ideas what to look at? what to try?

edit: I'm not asking for free hardware troubleshooting, maybe I haven't expressed myself succintly. what I'd like is some sort of snapshot of all relevant registers with battery working. and then one without. and then have somehow the difference between those two computed, so I can see which setting I need to tweak. would this be doable?

I can't resolve (ping, ssh) any computer on my network from a newly installed minimal Gnome Desktop F39 on a laptop; since it's minimal, it's possible something's missing from the installation.

trying from the laptop gives:

$ ping server.local
ping: server.local: Temporary failure in name resolution

pinging .box static DNS entries as well as IP addresses works. all other computers can resolve each other and the new laptop (1 debian, 1 fedora, 1 macOS), some have static, some dynamic IPs. they all get the DNS IP of my pi-hole, which resolves everything fine. resolve.conf and all other relevant files are stock. avahi and systemd-resolve are running and report no issues. same behaviour with WiFi and LAN.

I could switch to static IPs and assign e.g. .box suffixes all around via local DNS but I don't want to do that, this setup is/was working on every other PC.

any ideas what I'm missing?

edit: just booted off of a live USB with F39, resolves server.local just fine. so I'm missing something in my installation, right?

edit II: installed it (minimal) on another laptop, same deal - no .local resolution.

I haven't had anything to do with windows in like 5+ years. I need to set up a laptop with it for someone tomorrow, I'm guessing W11 is nowadays recommended? what's currently the best option for a hassle free experience (no ads, no random game installs, no migrations to onedrive, etc)?

last time I did it, I used the W10 ISO from Microsoft, applied the hwidsomething and ran some debloater from github. back then there were some ~~ESR~~ LTSC ISOs available on torrent sites, is that still a thing?

the install is going to use firefox, chrome, skype, libreoffice, etc., they all autoupdate themselves, so it's going to be reasonably secure. what's my best bet for a set & forget situation? thanks.

is there some API or other mechanism that allows me to create a contact form on my site and have the messages delivered to my mastodon inbox?

just added a second cheap NVMe drive to my system and am in the process of moving my games folder to it. the folder has a coupla prefixes and individual game folders. presently it's ext4, my boot drive is btrfs and encrypted LVM, the ext4 drive gets mounted to ~/Games via fstab.

is there a better combination? like, would I benefit from CoW or compression for this use case? or even going with ntfs?

edit: went with btrfs. super easy to convert from ext4, just unmount the 2nd drive, btrfs-convert and change the UUID in fstab. also added the compress=zstd:1 option. looks like everything is working thus far.

that's the sequel to FC 5. tried a couple of times to get it to work with various wine versions, had no luck. apparently, it has some unbreakable protection. not sure if that's correct, I can run both Far Cry 5 and 6 without issues, why would they just protect the interim version?

tried plasma a year back and gave up because I couldn't get the above setup to work (annoying lines appearing while typing) on three different laptops (125, 133, 150%). there was supposedly a fix (increasing line spacing) but that didn't work for me. just checking in to see if some workaround came to light? thanks.

same thing with lemmy clients, manually clicking through 100 check boxes of supported domains... can't the app ask to do it on first launch? or is my setup to blame?

so I found a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite Wifi, one of the few tablets that have official LOS support. the specs aren't too bad either, 10" 2000x1200 screen, 4/64GB, 7000 mAh battery (remains to be seen in what condition); for $120 with some shitty cover/stand and dubious charger, one hell of a deal. only problem is, it can't be reset or it'll lock itself.

thought on passing, but the dude assures me it's not stolen as he has a bunch of these, so most likely scenario is some corporate client dumped these and upgraded to newest and best without unenrolling them from this knox bullshit. either that or there's a crew ripping exclusively gta4xlwifis all over Germany.

although I can endure Samsung's OneUI for basic shit, I happen to know a little bit about Android, bootloaders and stuff and I'm fairly confident I can wipe this crap and install LOS without issues. what is the saying, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing? so let's start.

first off, LOS instructions say you gotta have the latest firmware on the device. this one's on Android 11, so launch software update. update, reboot, hold breath - will it lock itself, annnd... booted just fine, we're done!

except, no we're not. inspecting software properties shows it's on A12 and the update process is already downloading another package. current LOS ROM is 20/A13, so we need A13 and latest patches, looks like it's gonna take a while.

well we're finally done. all in all, FIVE different upgrades, one after another, and then each does some "optimising" shit, took hours. dios mio, you couldn't just ship a cumulative update, it had to be piecemeal?

anyhoo, tried each of the versions for a couple of minutes - sluggish, stuttering, occasional single-digit fps animations, boatloads of G and S services running in the background, each one is sending you Super Important Notifications All The Time, can't wait to be rid of this crap.

alright, A13 and latest patches in the house. now comes the step I'm dreading - according to LOS instructions, I have to boot in download (proprietary fastboot) mode where I should unlock bootloader and thus erase user data. this equates to doing a factory reset which, according to the seller, should lock the device. although I've tried to educate myself on what this knox business actually is, I've come up short (chip busts a fuse when tripped, what?!?) so in lieu of succinct info I guess I'm learning by first-hand experience.

so, power off, disconnect USB cable. press both volume keys and connect the USB cable. one disgusting turquoise screen appears, instructing you to press vol up once for download mode or to longpress vol up for device unlock; not what LOS instructions say.

so press volume up for a couple of seconds and the screen asks for confirmation you really wanna unlock it, calls you a bad person and an even worse user but it acknowledges your intention. reboot and... it stays for eons on the samsung loading screen. I'm fucked, right?

eventually, the system boots up, says it's knox locked and wants access to the wifi. it connects and the onboarding process begins. I've tapped "Skip" everywhere I was allowed and eventually the desktop appears! we're off to settings, re-enable developer mode, USB debugging and check the unlock bootloader switch is on. then we have to turn off this bixby whatever-the-fuck-this-is popping up when we wanna shut the tablet down.

alright, tablet is off, disconnect cable. press both vol keys and connect the USB cable. ugly screen appears. this time, press vol up once and we're in download mode. heimdall detect and... not detected. wtf. ~~different USB port?~~ that works, flash successful! edit: turns out, you have to disconnect the USB cable after ugly screen appears and then reconnect it after launching download mode.

now to rebooting. as this tortured soul found out, LOS instructions are kinda off, so what's needed is keep the tablet connected to your PC the whole time, press vol down and power until the screen turns black, let go for a split second and immediately press and hold power and vol up and don't let go until you see the LOS recovery. you mess up any of these steps, a) you won't get into recovery and b) your recovery will get overwritten by the stock recovery and you have to start over with heimdall.

so, finally in the recovery, we select factory reset and then adb sideload. first comes the LOS zip. when it's done, select adb sideload again and send magisk (you have to rename .apk to .zip before you do). done, reboot. here we go...

and it works! no knox nothing, no google, no samsung crap, I have a beautiful, fast, thin device, bereft of any bloatware. without dicking around with animation scales, the UI is infinitely faster and more responsive.

now getting f-droid and installing essentials.

have to research these questions:

1. the annoying nag screens while booting (you're a bad person for unlocking it, press power if you agree, etc.) can't be removed?
2. does LOS support the pen? I haven't got it, but might consider getting one if it works.

thanks for reading!

some junkers are selling several tablets here and they all have the knox bypass installed. you can install whatever you want from the play store but no system resets or it'll lock itself.

there are tutorials on how to bypass knox and it all seems pretty straightforward. I don't really want Samsung's bloatware and have zero use for any google services, so I'd like to flash LOS.

so, if I flash TWRP, wipe it and then LOS, will that work? don't wanna buy it if I can't.

thanks!

anyone had any luck with sourcing replacement earbuds? seems kinda wasteful to junk the whole thing because one earbud is gone.

Soundpeats Air3 Deluxe HS, if it matters. searching turned up nada, same with filling out the contact form on their site.