Here to follow content related to Star Trek, Linux, open-source software, and anything else I like that happens to have a substantial Lemmy community for it.

Main fediverse account: @f00fc7c8@woem.space

  • 2 Posts
  • 101 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 4th, 2023

help-circle
  • It’s nice that major news outlets are saying what we nerds have been screaming for the past two decades. Microsoft only shares a small portion of the blame for the recent outage (they could have built their OS better so software vendors don’t feel the need to use kernel modules, but the rest is on CrowdStrike) but we are too depenent on them.



  • LibreOffice has opened every DOC(X) the school has sent me, albeit imperfectly, and all assignments are turned in as PDFs, which I usually make using Markdown and LaTeX. I have had to use Office 365 for collaboration, but only about twice a year, and that runs very smoothly in Firefox. On one occasion I tried to collaborate with CryptPad, but it didn’t work as well as I hoped.

    Most computer labs at my uni run Windows 10, rarely 11, but a lot of the science labs run Linux. A surprising amount of the software required for classes has been open-source, too.

    The most frustrating thing has been the lockdown browser used for some exams. My university library has computers I can borrow for exams, but yours might not, and they detect VMs, so you might have to dual boot for that.





  • For a while I daily drove a Purism Librem 14 with Debian’s fully free kernel, and installed as few non-free packages as possible, including firmware blobs (which I didn’t install any of until I decided I needed Bluetooth). My experience with gaming was generally fine.

    With linux-libre you really have to buy your hardware specifically with support in mind. You’re limited to Intel and non-bleeding-edge AMD graphics cards, a very small range of wifi cards, and no Bluetooth. Otherwise, video games should work as well as they would on any other computers with the same specs. Especially if you’re also limiting yourself to games with free engines - I’m not aware of a single libre game that demands more than a modern Intel integrated graphics card can provide, even on high settings.





  • f00f/eris@startrek.websiteOPtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldLinux "Anti"-Piracy Screen
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I came across a bunch of those recently, which is how I came up with the idea for this, as a parody :)

    Internet horror is disappointingly un-creative. I have no idea why the weakest works (sonic.exe, anti-piracy, kill screens) always end up becoming huge trends, or why so few people try to put a significant twist on said trends.






  • If you haven’t set up this laptop yet, then I’d suggest installing a server-oriented distro like Debian, AlmaLinux, or Ubuntu Server. Those have minimal install options that come without a desktop environment installed, as most servers do not need one. If you’d like to make the install harder for yourself, this might be a good excuse to give Arch Linux or Gentoo a try, as those have the option of a fully manual install. If you’d like, you can install a desktop environment afterwards using the package manager.

    If you already have a Linux with a graphical desktop installed, you can configure the system not to automatically start it with sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target. (Do not do this on your main device!) You can re-enable it with sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target.

    Regardless, you can then start a graphical session using startx, or whatever command is more appropriate for your desktop environment (gnome-session to start GNOME on Wayland, startplasma-wayland to start KDE Plasma), or by sudo systemctl starting your login screen manager (sddm, gdm, lightdm, etc).


  • No modern AAA games have been released this way, but there is at least one game made specifically for libretro (Dinothawr) and a few other games that have been converted into “contentless” libretro cores (Cave Story, Mr. Boom, Rick Dangerous).

    The games (or their engines/emulators) would have to be modified to use the libretro API for things like input, rendering, and sound. Though it doesn’t look terribly hard to program for, it does tie the game to RetroArch (or another libretro frontend) and possibly limit what the program can do.

    I thought I’d also bring up Lutris, which is not only a libretro frontend but also a frontend for numerous other game platforms. It may not have the game console-like UI of RetroArch, but I think if you must have all games under one launcher, it’s the best you could hope for.


  • f00f/eris@startrek.websitetoLinux@lemmy.mlIs the RHCSA worth it?
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    I’m currently on the RHCSA path myself, and I can tell you that the courses are not worth the thousands that Red Hat charges. There are plenty of unofficial video courses on YouTube and Udemy and study guides and practice tests on GitHub that are free or cheap, and other resources for every individual study topic, which will be good enough.

    However, though I can’t speak from experience, it seems like the cert itself will look good enough on a resume to justify the investment of $500 and a month of studying.


  • f00f/eris@startrek.websitetoLinux@lemmy.mlDistro for n100
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Assuming you mean the Beelink S12 (which is the first thing that comes up in a search for “n100 mini pc”), that’s quite similar to my own computer specs, which can run just about any distro, with enough resources to spare for a VM or two. I don’t think it’s necessary to go really lightweight or pick something special. If there’s a distro you’re already familiar with and know you can do all of those things on, install that.

    If you like Garuda, you could always try a different Arch spin which is lighter out of the box, like CachyOS or EndeavourOS.