I would gladly move there if i could afford it. I love Death Valley like few places on Earth. In the Winter it’s a paradise.

The trouble is finding work in the area that pays enough to cover the usurious loan needed to finance the move

Agreed. I won the device in a raffle, i don’t think i’d buy one or recommended doing so. Converting books into mobi before uploading is an annoyance

Devices should be supported longer than 14 years. There is nothing about a 1st gen kindle that makes it incompatible with modern technology. For Amazon, an immortal entity, to act like 14 years is already gracious is nonsense. A 20 year lifespan (including repairs) should be the bare minimum standard.

Humans live 80-100 years. I shouldnt have to buy 6 or more e-readers (or 25+ smartphones) over my lifespan just to have access to one

Cutting them off from the online store is one thing, but the fact that they are bricked if you deregister or factory reset them is awful

I have a kindle keyboard that hasn’t been online in over a decade, but still gets regular use. i upload drm-free ebooks i own using Calibre. Now it will be impossible for me to give it away since it is forever zombie locked to my Amazon account

Thank you lol i will look into this next chance i get. I only remember looking at man systemd

my one critique is pretty subjective, but i find it difficult to find simple clear documentation online about how certain syntax works and how certain tasks are accomplished.

Recently i was trying to set up a cron-job type automation to run a script every minute. I know how to do that in cron (and if i didn’t, there are tons of good resources online) but i had a hell of a time figuring it out for systemd. I also wanted to have the script run at boot or user login and i couldn’t figure that one out (but i know how to do it with cron)

i’m not a power user so it’s entirely likely the information was hidden in plain sight and i completely missed it

I remember booting Gentoo in about 7 seconds to the GUI desktop around 2013. A lot more than systemd has changed in the Linux ecosystem since then. It feels like everything has gotten just a little slower.

That’s kind of the best case scenario though: there isn’t even a significant benefit

And by hoops i only mean the kind of thing you just described (despite not being a systemd thing specifically) : small differences with the mainstream distros that might cause friction for someone inexperienced. It’s not the end of the world. I was being a bit hyperbolic admittedly

I think there are plenty of pragmatic reasons an experienced sysadmin or Linux power user might prefer OpenRC or something sysVinit compatible over systemd, but i think those reasons make a lot less sense to someone who is, respectfully, obviously a beginner (revealed by their use of the phrase “gaming compatibility”)

20 seconds isn’t that fast…

I’m using Fedora on a sata SSD and mine boots in about 15 seconds. My laptop running Ubuntu on a sata SSD is about 17. Both running normal systemd

edit: i just timed ubuntu at 12 seconds. i do not have luks encryption though

If you are asking about “gaming compatibility” you should not switch to a non-systemd distro. You will end up going through extra hoops for zero benefit.

Linux over 15 years

currently Fedora KDE and it’s fine

in the coast range we call this layer “redwood duff”, i’d imagine the same term applies

I haven’t found the right extensions yet but hopefully someday

I can’t blame the devs for not advertising regressions, but it’s not something that pointieststick’s blog tends to cover.

The most recent one from the current plasma version was the removal of tiled slideshow wallpapers. You can have a tiled wallpaper or a slideshow, but you can’t have a slideshow of tiled images any longer.

The justification was to reduce memory overhead, which i understand for all the Steam Decks running Plasma, but i’ve got RAM to spare (also xfce and GNOME do this just fine). Now i need to manually make new wallpapers

Another one is window shade. Worked in all apps up until 5.27 or one of the other very late 5 releases. Still worked in 6.0 and 6.1 in non-qt apps. Fully broke sometime before 6.2 and hasn’t been looked at since.

Scroll to change desktop was disabled around 6.3. Thankfully it wasn’t removed, but it’s annoying to have a core part of one’s workflow seemingly broken after an update

Vertical taskbars set to expand automatically would crash the “configure taskbar” interface from 6.1-6.5 for me. Thankfully this one has been fixed.

Window positions are no longer remembered after a restart or log out. Setting applications to autostart in specific locations has been broken for me for a while.

I can probably come up with a couple more but i’m sure you get the picture. In each case the breakage was known before the actual release, and in each case it was decided to proceed anyway.

Don’t get me wrong. Plasma is the best desktop available IMO. I’m just disappointed any time it regresses at all.

except xfce, those are both GNOME forks. Maybe the solution is Trinity DE but for Plasma 5 (Pentarchy?)

just because you find it fun doesn’t mean everyone does. i know a couple Linux users who see Linux as a worthwhile chore: boring, frustrating, annoying, but ultimately worthwhile to get away from Microsoft or to gain functionality Windows does not have.

I agree that Linux is also often a step to the actual hobby: gaming, self-hosting, photography, audio production. I empathize with someone reluctant to learn the ins and outs of Unix file ownership when they are just trying to make beats without paying Microsoft. Sure the knowledge is rewarding, but i can’t blame a person for not grokking it the first time when on the surface is seems pointless

If someone is making an effort to learn and doesnt take my time for granted i’m happy to help them.

Also man pages are usually good but lots of software half-asses them these days

no “ultimate distro”, but i do wish there was a bigger culture of “no regressions for users”

Plasma 6 has been a series of regressions for me, such that i find my computer a little less functional almost every time i update.

That said i still like it miles better than mac or Windows, which are even worse about this

the problem was that nobody paid ooops@feddit.org to read any of this

i’m not seeing that stuff much but i do believe you

RTFM makes more sense in a professional context. I don’t expect anybody to read anything unless 1 they want to or 2 they are being paid to

Saying RTFM in a hobby or recreational space is just being an asshole for no good reason

IMO the biggest downside is that you need to use a Pixel: a $500-$900 phone with the build quality of a $200 phone. You can get them cheaper used or refurbished, but it’s still not the best value proposition.

Battery life and camera quality (no manual focus, no focus locking, autofocus is slow and inaccurate) are pretty bad. It’s also missing the physical slider for silent mode that many phones have. Also some usb-c aux adapters do not work. These problems are exactly the same in vanilla android as they are in Graphene OS, so the hardware is the weak link.

If you are happy with Android on a Pixel, you will be happy with GrapheneOS