GravelPieceOfSword

@GravelPieceOfSword@lemmy.ca

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GravelPieceOfSword ,

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/0932fd72-beac-4911-b6ad-eb91a3d54f61.jpeg

This is the caveat for me for now.

To run locally a powerful graphics card with at least 6 GB VRAM is recommended. Otherwise generating images will take very long!

I've got decent RAM on an I9, but my graphics card, which is what matters here, isn't up to par.

GravelPieceOfSword , (edited )

Linux Mint Debian Edition would be a pretty solid, pre-customized distribution.

I've had great experiences with Linux on Lenovo over the years: would be my first recommendation.

I currently use a Dell Inspiron, while it's works great, I had to do some extra work occasionally. I love that I can get fingerprint login with it on Linux though.

GravelPieceOfSword , (edited )

Why not try it for yourself on Linux mint first by installing plasma? Plasma 5 is available on mint - I believe Fedora has plasma 6.

I use plasma 6 on my Opensuse Slowroll laptop and plasma 5 on my LMDE desktop.

Overall, I've found plasma 6 to run slightly better (I was on plasma 5 on Slowroll too for a long time).

Once you install and try plasma 5 on your current install, that will be a much less disruptive way to see how well it works for you.

After ricing, both plasma 5 and 6 are pretty similar on my setup. The cube desktop effect isn't there by default on plasma 5 of course.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

I second endless os. Parental controls, locked down system, comes prepackaged with many educational apps.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Linux mint Debian edition or Opensuse tumbleweed.

Slow Internet/less updates, older, more tested software, slightly wider package availability: LMDE.

Faster Internet, more updates, very new (but well tested) software, needs slightly more technical knowledge sometimes: Opensuse tumbleweed.

I personally use Opensuse Slowroll, which is a slower rolling release experimental version of Opensuse tumbleweed.

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

The article states reasons which aren't limited to what happened. I understand and agree with your sentiment about the supply chain issue being something that could happen anywhere - those were my initial thoughts too.

The reasons for shifting are related to speed, other mainstream software already having made that switch years ago (pre incident), and unfortunately... More robustness in terms of maintainers.

Open source funding and resilience should be mainstream discussions. Open source verification and security reliability should be mainstream discussions: here's a recent mastodon thread I found interesting:

https://ruby.social/@getajobmike/112202543680959859

However, people switching from x to z (I did see what you did there) is something that is going to happen considering the other factors listed in the article that I summarized above.

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

As with all definitions, there is a gray area where people will have different boundaries on exact meanings. To you - a supplier relationship needs an explicit payment, which is a fair definition.

However, the more widely used definition that most people, including me, refer to, is not necessarily focused on the supplier, but on the supply - what we use in our toolchains is a supply - regardless of how it was obtained.

When there is an issue in a trusted supply, even if it was not a commercial relationship (a prerequisite by your definition), it is a supply-chain attack by the more widely used definition.

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

They do. They did. What do you do when a 'good guy' is really a bad guy? Happens outside of software too. Someone inserts themselves into an organization while secretly working against its interests.

Here's a good summary. However, you should read a few articles - plenty have been going around, including on Lemmy.

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/ff7ab46a-d36b-4581-9b39-e28dd7ce1749.jpeg

GravelPieceOfSword ,

If it's just Internet access, would you want to use something more locked down like Fedora kiosk?

GravelPieceOfSword , (edited )

Sorry, good catch.

It had been a while since I had played briefly with kiosk mode in a VM: I misremembered the project (the one I played with was still available)

I had found it interesting, and had set it up... Probably been around a year or so.

The project I used was Gnome kiosk, not Fedora kiosk.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

I run KDE on opensuse Slowroll - Intel i9 processor with plenty of RAM.

Check btrfs snapshots, and consider disabling them if you don't really need them.

Here's my story some time in the recent past:

Similar freezing issues that got more frequent. I have network and CPU monitor widgets on my desktop, and noticed my CPU usage peaking during freeze.

Ran top, saw was doing a lot of processing. It was running snapshots.

I'd like snapshots, but a responsive system is more important to me: I have frequent backups of most of my stuff anyways.

Once I disabled btrfs snapshots, I stopped having the periodic freezes (which I also noticed were often some time after system/flatpak updates).

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Spiral Linux. It's Debian with customizations on top. You probably have a HDD. Flatpak/snap won't play well with that.

You could try Opensuse tumbleweed for newer stuff, not sure how well your machine would hold up.

Puppy Linux might be an even safer choice than spiral Linux if you really want to stay lightweight.

GravelPieceOfSword , (edited )

KDE on Wayland

KDE Plasma 5 on Wayland, Opensuse Slowroll. Big Sur theme with latte dock. 4 virtual desktops in a 2x2 grid (not visible in screenshot)

Different docks for different kinds of apps.. Slightly ugly, but very convenient.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

To be honest, I've never owned an apple device: only Android phones and windows (with Linux immediately installed) laptops. However, I kind of like the icon aesthetic the most out of all the ones I've tried.

The theme also grew on me during my Gnome days, so yup, these days I pretend my device is an apple from a cosmetic sense 😂

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Ditto 😀

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Proprietary snap store backend that is controlled by Canonical: that’s it.

I used Ubuntu for years: installed it for family and friends. I moved away around a year ago.

Moving packages like Firefox to snap was what first started annoying me.

If the backend was open source, and the community could have hosted their own (like how flatpak repositories can be), I might have been slightly more forgiving.

Did a quick Google to find if someone had elaborated, here’s a good one:

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/2b915231-3062-405a-968e-4317ae77bfc3.jpeg

GravelPieceOfSword ,

smb4k, while primarily for KDE, is awesome for samba shares.

You might want to give it a spin.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

You can still try it.

Multiple mounts of the same filesystem is nothing special: I’ve done it on multiple occasions for various tests.

Keep you setup, install smb4k, see how stable it is for you.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Try running it from the command line with code --disable-gpu.

If that works, you can update the desktop shortcut files (exec section) with the same added parameter.

I recently ran into something similar (opensuse slowroll//kde)

Ref: stackoverflow/Google for the –disable-gpu argument, the desktop file editing - I did for convenience.

Here’s how you can find . desktop files

Desktop file reference.- easy format

GravelPieceOfSword ,

I’m generally not a fan of endless os (very locked down), but this might be a good low-maintenance option for libraries.

Endless comes out of the box with offline educational materials and learning apps.

Flatpak based distribution.

GravelPieceOfSword , (edited )

If you want persistent messages, use a messaging app like another poster posted. KDE connect should work, but it doesn’t work for my setup for some reason.

If you just need transient messages, which is more of my usecase, and lightweight sending, use pairdrop.

snapdrop and pairdrop app from fdroid for Android, pairdrop website in desktop.

You can just use the website instead of app on phone too.

Sending over LAN is local - it doesn’t go outside your own network.

If devices are on same WiFi, no pairing required.

You can also send across networks by pairing.

Project GitHub repository

GravelPieceOfSword ,

That would be cool.

Here’s my new setup that might not work for everyone, but I’d recommend thinking about if you’re able to.

  1. Network printers are blocked from Internet by my router. They have static IP addresses allocated (permanent DHCP leases) for convenience.
  2. I have some Canon laser printers. I don’t want to install Canon software across my devices, so I setup a cups print server (lxc container) where I installed the software.
  3. I setup and shared the printers (local network only), made them discoverable.
  4. I use the CUPS web GUI over ssh tunnel if I need to check on job queues and do maintenance/admin tasks (don’t usually have to).

Clients immediately find the printers on the server, no driver required.

As a bonus, I made the margins 0 on the CUPS ppd on the server so that I get to print without margins when so desired (Canon has fixed minimum margins otherwise).

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Wow, that’s so messed up: I didn’t know HP did that… I think it might just be a matter of time before others follow suit.

Sounds very Wireshark worthy!

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

That’s not right. Debian/suse are no less out of the box user friendly than Arch - not counting endeavouros/Manjaro, they’re more friendly.

Arch still needs extra setup and configuration after install. Endeavouros makes it a bit simpler, but there’s still configuration (and ricing) invoice. Auto-discovery of printers (cups, avahi), graphical configuration tools out of the box, user permissions/group membership setup out of the box in a way that new users (or even power users) can just set things up graphically… all of that needs extra work.

That’s the extra configuration that this is providing.

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

I see, you’re right from that perspective.

For this ‘distro’, I like the emphasis the maintainer put on out of the box usability, including proprietary codecs, extra repositories that are not enabled/added by default, but widely used, flatpak setup out of the box, printer permissions relaxing etc.

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

Yes, an opinionated customized installer that seems to be aligned with my own thoughts of great out of the box usage.

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

I have Nixos on a laptop, and have a love//hate relationship with it.

I love the customizability and declarative setup.

I hate the number of times I’ve sunk down rabbitholes trying to set specific things up on it.

The updates being done via switch are a bit inconvenient, but cool enough.

The fact that I can’t customize everything, particularly on kde, is slightly sad.

All in all, I really like it, but wouldn’t recommend it for my less technical friends, who I’d normally install Ubuntu for. This has gone up my list, close to Opensuse slowroll and Linux mint Debian edition now.

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

You’re fine.

Most distributions/derivative distributions are fine for very long periods.

It’s just that when the base distribution itself (Debian, Fedora in your case, Opensuse, etc) are themselves nicely customized out of the box to address user concerns, that’s a very attractive prospect to long time users like myself.

Debian has a lot of history and stability, so if I can use it for myself, family, friends without an additional layer or more of other parties, that’s very appealing.

Borders for LibreOffice Draw like in MS Publisher

I have stopped using Office programs, mostly because I don’t want to deal with setting up Wine. I am making a birthday card for someone, but I noticed that LibreOffice Draw doesn’t have the Borders and Accents menu like Publisher does. Is there something that can replace it (website/extension/menu)? I’m looking for...

GravelPieceOfSword ,

I’m pretty much a superficial user regarding office programs, particularly draw. However, I did want to have borders around my text recently, and found you can insert a single celled table with the border you want.

Would a worse hack with a single celled table in a single celled table (different border colors) do the trick for you?

GravelPieceOfSword ,

1000019480

older laptop distro recommendarion

Recently I’ve gave up Windows for Linux and installed Ubuntu with KDE Plasma desktop on my pc and laptop from 2007. It’s an i7 Intel processor with 8gb ddr ram so I thought it would be fine, but it seems quite sluggish. What distro could I use that would be faster and still fully functional? Thanks for your help in advance.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Ubuntu uses snaps, which I’ve found sluggish on older ide hard drives. To be honest, even flatpaks are very slow for these in my experience.

I think you might be better off with opensuse tumbleweed.

Novelty recommendation besides tumbleweed: antix.

While I haven’t used antix except out of curiosity in a virtual machine, they are lightweight, but they have a hard stance against systemd.

GravelPieceOfSword ,

Very cool.

Interesting timing that opensuse recently announced slowroll, which has a slower cadence for updates (updates with monthly frequency, rather than daily, while security updates are still ASAP.

Depending on whether frequent updates is you thing or you prefer slightly delayed cycles… you can easily convert your install to slowroll

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/e1872a9c-983f-4470-b36a-b4e022b2c241.png

en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Slowroll

GravelPieceOfSword ,

I’ve used a lot of distributions over the years, and I don’t think you have to worry about a different set of commands across most distributions. It’s some variation of distropkgmgr followed by command, where command, where command is generally one of install upgrade refresh/update remove search to name the most common. If you use a software frontend like gnome-software or discover, you don’t even need to worry about command line differences.

The only exception to that is nixos, which I wouldn’t recommend to someone just switching. It is very cool, just needs more experience.

The shell commands are the same one installed for the most part.

Out of curiosity, are you planning to use a different os when your ssd arrives? I switched from Ubuntu to endeavouros (Arch) to Opensuse tumbleweed on my primary laptop (i9 processor), no complaints 😁!

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

Gotta try this for fifteen minutes then ditch it forever. Never heard of it before, but as they say: curiosity killed the cat!

GravelPieceOfSword OP ,

Yep… definitely crazy. Tried easy, was thinking I seemed to be pretty smart up to 4 lines. Then it just kept screwing me with two alternating pieces and the holes started. It loves giving you angles that go the wrong way around given your current block layout 😅

GravelPieceOfSword ,

I bought this set of 206 stickers from Amazon a few weeks ago for $10 (9.99, but that’s really 10).

The stickers are very hard to peel off till you get the hang of it, but can vouch.

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