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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I don’t know if this is specifically possible. I’m not quite rookie-level new (been using it about a year now) but I have something I would love to have convenience-wise.

    It’s a desktop machine with regular speakers, and I have a wireless headset that connects to its own dongle (not Bluetooth). It’s there a way to switch to the headset automatically when I power it on, and revert to speakers when I turn it off?

    I feel like it’s possible hardware-wise, but I’m not tryna learn how to code to make it happen, and I don’t know how to find a software solution. I don’t even know what to call what I’m looking for.


  • That was half the reason I upgraded. I don’t know if my old box would’ve been compatible (probably was), but I wanted it off Microsoft territory so bad and heating about Copilot sent shivers all over my spine.

    I’ve never heard of installing any new OS without having to back stuff up. That’s just wishful lazy thinking lol.

    You probably won’t have to do anything manually about Wine. Steam has Proton built in and it works great. As others always mention, check ProtonDB.com for user reports on how a specific game will work out.

    I haven’t run into any problems in my library, but I honestly haven’t installed a ton of games.

    I’ve used Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris for some other launchers (like Battle.net or Epic Games), and those have been a little hit or miss, but I think the main problem is something I’m missing. Not a huge priority but I’m still working on it occasionally.

    I haven’t heard anyone call or 3D card since the 90s. They’re video cards or GPUs these days man. AMD has open source drivers that work just fine with Linux and should work just the same as the Windows version I believe.

    Nvidia has open source ones, but they seem to be pretty terrible compared to the closed source ones. I had one issue with them last week but I think that was more related to KDE than it was the drivers’ fault.

    I don’t really have any fancy hardware to describe how easy that was to get to work. Just a mouse, kb, headset(with mic) all of which worked fine without doing anything. I have a physical dongle for the controller, so I had to get a driver for that so I didn’t have to use a Bluetooth connection (pretty shitty comparatively speaking) or gasp plug it in. Had a few issues with it for a while, there was an updated version under a new name and such but it all works now. Just turn the controller on and it’s working instantly (unless I forget to charge it lol).


  • I absolutely hate AI being used in any kind of production and being turned into a whole new kind of product.

    But the technology figuring out how to do this on “its own” is very fascinating to me. Those Sora videos a whole back were pretty damn stunning. Just the fact that that kinda thing is even possible really does fascinate me. But the dystopia it seems to create makes it not worth it.












  • What kinda question is that? Seems pretty judgemental to me.

    Some people are “the computer guy” for a BUNCH of people, and if your usual pocket arrangement allows them there are a bunch of tools you can use for different jobs.

    It’s just a different kind of pocketknife at the end of the day. I don’t interact with nearly enough people to need one, but I can definitely see the possibilities.

    This seems like a question that 90s people would ask. “What are you doing with your life that necessitates carrying a globally-connected supercomputer in your pocket?”

    In different use cases I can see plenty of times where a bootable USB drive can mean you can use your own computer from any other machine. Which is super cool. It’s gonna be a much slower version of it, obviously(because of USB read/write, but pretty cool that you can carry a full copy of your system, settings, documents, and programs than can sync to/from your regular backups. Or another with copies of other boot level tools to have on hand. If you help a bunch of people with covering from microshit to Linux, then keeping a LiveISO on hand for them to try out and install seems like a good idea to keep around.

    There’s just so many reasons why you would ask this. Personally I don’t, but if I did I would like to think I could ask the question.

    If nothing else, it’s interesting to think about for sure. Now I kinda wanna imagine what kind of stuff is even possible to run like this that would be useful to me.

    I only own one such at all, and I’ve only used it a very few times. Once to install my own OS, once to install a different one I leave at my brother’s house because his laptop is having issues and I go over there to watch movies with him, and once to install that same one (Mint in those cases, Pop for mine) on my parent’s computer.

    If I find a good enough use case, I would start carrying at least one. But for now I just rewrite this one for whatever things I need at the time.



  • I remember those old UI elements. I tried it a couple years later (edgy eft) but I just toyed with it in VirtualBox. And my computer at the time wasn’t able to give a virtual machine a whole lot of oomph, so the experience was lackluster.

    But it was a marvel to me to see what a UI really could be other than specifically Windows. I knew conceptually what an OS. I knew that DOS was one (even if it looked totally different), and that Windows was basically just a graphical version of a terminal at the end of the day. I knew Windows was just one example of an OS, but it was still the only reference point I had to what one looked like and how it worked. I never even saw a Mac computer in person til my first year in college when I started seeing MacBooks on campus.

    So I knew of Linux, but if you remember 2004, it was such a primitive time for computer power and operating system design, and setup was much clunkier than the easy installers we have now.

    Ubuntu was the first one I heard of that had an installer similar to Windows that didn’t need a tech manual or crash course in using the CLI to get running.

    I am not a canonical fan or anything, but I didn’t know anything about so that back then, and was just giving it a whirl.

    I didn’t give it a whole lot of time tho, as most of my computer use was for gaming and I didn’t have games for Linux, and proton wasn’t a thing yet. I had just heard of Steam. It wasn’t even a year old yet at the time. Not that any of that mattered since I was running in in a virtual machine anyway, so even if I had gotten the games to work, they would’ve been super underpowered. My AthlonXP system with my Radeon9800pro and 512MB RAM wasn’t gonna have the overhead to run the game that way in a virtual machine less than half the power of that machine. Halo just wouldn’t have been fun.

    Which now that I think about it, that was the first simultaneous online game I ever played. I had messed with pool on Yahoo before, but that’s just turn based. Brand New horizon for me. We only had dial up until the time I got that computer.


  • I was on 10 and now I’m on Pop. That’s the first I’ve heard of them prioritizing development of a DE.

    I really don’t like GNOME, but switching to KDE was literally the first change I made, so I honestly don’t know much about it.

    But I don’t really care as long as what I do with it works. I don’t foresee any killer features upcoming soon or anything. I don’t really keep up on news about it or anything though.

    I’ve had a mostly smooth experience with it so far. But I don’t use it for anything crazy. I just pay games and stream YouTube and music.

    Not trying to convince you that “the water’s fine, jump in” or anything. But it worked for me. I don’t hear a lot about other people picking it up.

    You find a million posts about trying Mint or Ubuntu to get their feet wet, but you don’t hear a lot other than those for Linux noobs.

    I bought a tiny PC to hookup to my brother’s TV at his house because I go over there on weekends and we always watch a movie followed by a few episodes of whatever TV show we’re working on at the time. His laptop cord is having issues and want able to power the laptop while it’s on. So rather than deal with that I just bought the tiny PC and I did put Mint on that one.

    Partly to convert another Windows dependant too.


  • I tried it when the first one I tried didn’t work out.

    Ctrl+C hard locked it instantly every time I pushed it. I could right-click and choose “Copy”, but pushing Ctrl-C just froze whatever image was on screen. No response at all after that. Plus it was giving me a headache trying to get Nvidia drivers installed.

    So then I moved to Pop since the correct driver was baked in, and it’s been mostly smooth since.