fhein

I just spent half an hour trying to figure this out so I thought I'd write it down somewhere in case it helps someone else in the future.

Aslain's modpack contains a whole lot of quality-of-life mods for WoWs, for example Battle Expert (formerly known as Navigator) which shows the exact relative angles between your ship and the enemy's. Almost feels like cheating to me, but Wargaming has endorsed this modpack and it even has a dedicated channel on the official discord server. Theoretically you have the same information without the mod, but it can be difficult to see how a ship is turning or changing speed by just looking at it.

These instructions are for when the game is installed through Steam, which looks like it uses some kind of overlay filesystem. This led to that the game install folder didn't show up for the modpack installer when I tried other methods.

1. Install protontricks, I used the version available in Fedora's repos.
2. Download the modpack installer from the official site
3. Find the WoWs install folder in Steam. Right-click World of Warships in the Steam games list, select Manage and "Browse local files" and the folder should open in your default file manager.
4. In a terminal, run the modpack installer .exe file in the game's Wine prefix. I'm not entirely sure this makes any difference compared to running it in a new prefix as long as it can access the game files, it mostly seemed convenient to me. The app id for WoWs is 552990 and it should never change, but you can get it with protontricks -l if you're curious. Change the file path so that it matches the file you downloaded and run:
   protontricks-launch --appid 552990 ~/Downloads/Aslains_WoWs_Modpack_Installer_v.13.6.1_01.exe
   It will print a lot of "failed to create" error messages for system dlls and exes, but that appears to be normal, and the setup window should open after a while.
5. After some release notes etc. the installer will eventually ask you for the game's install dir. As far as I can tell, the game files do not show up anywhere on C:, but Steam mounts your Linux file system on Z: so we can use that instead. Browse to the game install folder, which we located in step 3, and select it. My install folder on Linux is
   /mnt/faststore/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/World of Warships/ so I select
   Z:\mnt\faststore\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\World of Warships in the modpack installer.
6. Either manually select the mods you want or use the recommended selection. As I wrote before, many for these mods feel like they give you an in-game advantage over other players, but WG has said they're legal...
7. The first time I ran the installer it hung on "Finishing installation". It appears to happen to a few Windows users too but the mod dev doesn't know what causes it. I noticed that there was a cleanup process running in Wine C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /C DEL /s /f *.orig which shouldn't take so long time so I killed it (in Linux) and the installer continued. The next time I ran it this didn't happen, and it only took a few seconds to finish the installation.

If you have the game installed as standalone, e.g. Lutris, then I think you can just run the modpack installer in the same Wine prefix, and you should see the game's install folder under C:\Program Files as you would on Windows. I.e. select the game in Lutris, click the tiny arrow next to the wine glass button and select "Run EXE inside Wine prefix" and then choose the installer you downloaded. But I haven't done this so I promise nothing.

Please don't take this as an endorsement of World of Warships, I borderline hate this game and only play it because some of my friends are obsessed with it. The gameplay is a bit too slow paced for my taste, there are a lot of hard counters which you can't do anything about in random matchmaking, and carriers (planes) can turn any game into pure suffering. I also dislike the game's monetization scheme, lootboxes are expensive and most have a tiny chance to give something really good and a big chance to give you complete garbage. The game might be f2p, but at higher tiers it becomes unplayable without a premium subscription (€10/month) since ship maintenance gets more expensive than your earnings. To maximize your ship's performance you need a high level captain, expensive modules and also buffs which are consumed each game. My friend tries to argue that the game is not pay-to-win because you can also grind ingame resources to buy those, but you'll spend many hours playing at a disadvantage if you don't buy your way past it. Just my personal opinion of course.

If you despite my warnings felt an urge to try this game (honestly I thought it was quite fun at lower tiers) then check if any of your friends are already playing it and ask them for a referral code. Both of you get free stuff from being recruited by someone else and once you've created an account it's too late, unless you stop playing completely for 3 months. If you do that it is possible for your friend to send you a recruiting link if you want to start playing again.

Just a heads up, I've read that it's impossible to connect an existing wargaming.net account to a Steam account on Linux, so make sure you authenticate through Steam when you create the account if you plan on playing it through Steam. Though if you have Windows dual boot then I think you can link the accounts there if you need to.

Going through some boxes and found a stack of old White Dwarf. I'll keep the first issue I ever bought as a memory but planning to get rid of the rest. Just wanted to check if there are people collecting these before they go into the recycling bin. If anyone's interested I can make a list of which ones I have, and I'll send them to anyone willing to pay for postage. Located in Sweden.

Any games with less than 1000 total Steam reviews you've enjoyed and thought more people ought to know about? Not a hard limit, just a guideline for what could be classified as "undiscovered" on Steam, assuming it wasn't released yesterday.

I would recommend:

• Full Bore, a cute block-based puzzle platformer. Solid mechanics, level designs and even a somewhat engaging story. ~~Unfortunately hasn't been on a sale since 2021 according to steampricehistory.com, while it was frequently reduced to €2-3 before that. Not sure I'd recommend it to everybody at full price, but IMO it's one of the best indie platformers I've played.~~ edit: Did someone email the creator of Full Bore or something? It's suddenly on sale again, for the first time in ages :) Go buy it!

I have calibrated my monitors to create icc profiles, they show up in KDE color management and everything used to work exactly as it should. Now every time I start my computer it goes like this:

1. I log in to my account
2. It shows my desktop, with the right colour correction.
3. After a few seconds the colours revert to look un-calibrated on both monitors.
4. I restart the colord service and it loads the colour correction again.

As an alternative to step 4, if I go to KDE colour settings, select the default profile and then back to my profile then it also starts looking good again.

This problem must've started a week or two ago, but unfortunately I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly when. I haven't touched anything related to colour management in months, and don't think I've done any changes to my system other than upgrading packages.

Can't see anything colour related in the syslog except colord loading the correct profiles. I removed all the old profiles that I wasn't using anyway. I removed dispcal's profile loader from autostart to make sure it wasn't interfering with something. The profiles are both installed system wide and in my user folder.

Using Fedora 39 KDE.

Anyone have any idea what could be wrong, or even how to debug this?

Only played it for an hour but it's pretty good so far, if you like this type of gameplay. Feels somewhere in between Hell Let Loose and Battlefield 1. Native Linux version.

I'm trying to learn more about LLMs, but I haven't found any explanation for what determines which prompt template format a model requires.

For example meta-llama's llama-2 requires this format:

...INST and <> tags, BOS and EOS tokens...

But if I instead download's TheBloke's version of llama-2 the prompt template should instead be:

SYSTEM: ...

USER: {prompt}

ASSISTANT:

I thought this would have been determined how the original training data was formatted, but afaik TheBloke only converted the llama-2 models from one format to another. Looking at the documentation for the GGML format I don't see anything related to the prompt being embedded in the model file.

Anyone who understands this stuff who could point me in the right direction?

Maybe I'm using the wrong terms, but what I'm wondering is if people are running services at home that they've made accessible from the internet. I.e. not open to the public, only so that they can use their own services from anywhere.

I'm paranoid a f when it comes to our home server, and even as a fairly experienced Linux user and programmer I don't trust myself when it comes to computer security. However, it would be very convenient if my wife and I could access our self-hosted services when away from home. Or perhaps even make an album public and share a link with a few friends (e.g. Nextcloud, but I haven't set that up yet).

Currently all our services run in docker containers, with separate user accounts, but I wouldn't trust that to be 100% safe. Is there some kind of idiot proof way to expose one of the services to the internet without risking the integrity of the whole server in case it somehow gets compromised?

How are the rest of you reasoning about security? Renting a VPS for anything exposed? Using some kind of VPN to connect your phones to home network? Would you trust something like Nextcloud over HTTPS to never get hacked?

The only Linux questions community I found appears to be locked, so I hope it's ok to ask here..

For a very long time I've had the issue that occasionally, perhaps 1 out of 40 boots, my mouse does not work once the OS starts. The mouse appears to turn on during POST/BIOS/GRUB, then it goes dark again while the OS is booting, and to make it turn back on I have to crawl under the desk, unplug it and plug it back in. 39 times out of 40 (approximately) it just goes dark briefly and turns on in time for the OS. The mouse also works just fine in UEFI.

This happens in Xubuntu, Fedora and Windows, and with two different mice from different manufacturers. I've also upgraded the motherboard twice and pretty much every component in the computer. The only thing that's always has been there is GRUB, which is why I suspect it could be involved.

It happens so rarely that I never really bothered to try to find a solution for it, but it is kinda annoying when it happens.

I'm about to invest in some "prosumer" level 18V power tools, e.g. Makita, Dewalt, Metabo, etc. The general consensus appears to be that they're all more or less equal and it doesn't matter much which brand one goes with, but a few years ago I developed tinnitus which has made me more sensitive to high frequency sounds. And having tested a few cordless drill drivers at various hardware stores I can definitely tell they're not equal when it comes to what the noise sounds like, even if they measure similarly in sound pressure level.

Currently I have a Ryobi 18V brushless that I measure to 83-84 dB(c) at 1m which makes it pretty loud, and it also has a quite a quite high pitched sound which makes it worse. Looking at a spectrogram from a calibrated measurement mic there's a pretty clear peak at 6kHz. The drill drivers I've been looking at all have a rated sound pressure level (Lp) around 76 dB so they should already be noticeably less loud, but I'm hoping to find one without those high frequencies if possible.

I've been able to test a few drills in person and got some initial impressions. Unfortunately the local hardware stores have a pretty limited selection of brands, they don't have all models in the store, and you usually have to bother the staff if you want to try something with batteries in it. At first I thought I could remember my subjective opinion of different drivers, but when I later got the opportunity to re-compare two of them head to head I realised I have really bad memory..

Head-to-head comparisons that I've done:

Makita DDF484 vs Dewalt DCD791: The Makita has a very high frequency whine, kind of like dentist's drill. The Dewalt is probably just as loud, but a little lower pitch making the noise slightly more tolerable, while still not great.

Makita DDF484 vs 485 vs 486: When it comes to high pitched noise, 484 was worst, followed by 485, and the 486 was most tolerable.

Dewalt DCD791 vs DC800: The 800 had a more high pitched noise than the 791, once again reminding me of the dentist's drill.

Not compared with anything, so only subjective impression:

Hikoki (a.k.a. Metabo HPT in USA) DV18DD and Dewalt DCD777: Smaller and weaker tools but much more quiet than everything else. If I were going to buy 2 drill drivers I'd probably get something like these plus one larger for heavier work.

Metabo (the made in Germany, non-HPT, brand) DS 18 LT BL: Only had a quick try with this machine but without having anything to compare it with I thought it sounded pretty reasonably tolerable. There's a version with quick change chucks, unfortunately only the smaller (L) and larger (LTX) models have offset and angle chucks for some reason but that's a feature I would really like to have.

Anyone compared Milwaukee to other brands with respect to noise? The only store I found that sells them said they didn't have any charged batteries so I couldn't try any.

Not exactly sure what I'm expecting from this post, since the question is so subjective.. Perhaps someone with experience of multiple cordless drill drivers could share their opinion? Or someone else with a similar aversion to high pitched noises could say if they found any tool that they're happy with?

The 7.1 receiver that we've had for quite some time feels like it's about to give up so I'm considering some kind of upgrade. I'm a bit frugal when it comes to this stuff, so I'm trying to find a good value option that won't have to be replaced too soon. I.e. I'm not looking for something really cheap that doesn't sound good, but I also don't want to spend more than necessary, as one quickly gets into diminishing returns territory.

Now I'm thinking that it's the video and digital pre-processing parts of the home cinema system that age fastest, and it feels wasteful having to replace all the power amplifiers, which is the case of an integrated surround receiver. But looking at the local stores there's a complete lack of mid-range surround pre-amps.. There are plenty of good surround receivers around €1000, but for pre-amps there's a single crap model for €500, and then the rest are €4000-20000. Do companies simply not make the product I'm looking for?

I could definitely buy a surround receiver for €1000 and be happy with it, but I know I would hate it if I had to replace it the next time we buy a new TV because it has a new HDMI version or something stupid.

Been thinking about adding a little bit of bass to the home cinema system, both for watching movies (i.e. LFE) and to support the bookshelf sized front speakers. Was hoping to not spend too much money, but I also don't want something that sounds bad, or only provides rumble without much distinction to different sounds. Got a medium sized room which I've estimated to 67m³ (2350 cubic feet) so I'm leaning towards dual subs.

Current options I'm considering:

• Pre-built subs, probably XTZ 12.17 Edge
• DIY Dayton Audio 15" flat pack, with either RSS310HF-4 or HO-4
• DIY VBSS with GRS 18PT-8 18"

The total cost for either option would be around €1500, since I would need to buy some power tools to build the VBSS.

From what I've read the VBSS is supposed to sound fairly good, especially in the mid-bass region, while lacking some very low bass compared to the DA Reference and Ultimax drivers.

Anyone have some experience with the above subs, primarily the VBSS?