dingdongitsabear

so my Fedora installation was upgraded in place from 35 onward, survived three SSD upgrades (all glory to btrfs send | receive), got switched to systemd-boot, then from Gnome to Plasma, so there's some junk hanging about.

one of those is my flatpak setup that's system-wide, as was the style at the time, instead of the current user-level. although everything works, there are enough irritants (like forcing crappy electron apps to use wayland) that the old way is just a chore now. so, here's my brief write-up on how I made the switch.

flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo  
/flathub.flatpakrepo

flatpak list --system --columns=application > system_flatpaks

edit the list by removing various org.kde., org.gtk., org.freedesktop., etc. runtimes and save it as e.g. flatpak_apps. otherwise, the following install and remove processes will ask tons of questions as to versions and nobody got time for that; the unused runtimes will be autoremoved later.

flatpak install --user $(cat flatpak_apps)

after it's done, time to pull the dependencies; no idea why they don't get pulled in the first place, when installing? anyhoo:

flatpak --user upgrade

will pull everything that's needed. thanks to the glory of btrfs deduping, this won't take up any additional space as it's already on the disk. to remove the system apps:

flatpak remove --system $(cat flatpak_apps)

after it's done, the runtimes:

flatpak remove --system --unused

and finally list all the system repos and remove them:

flatpak remotes --system

flatpak remote-del --system {flathub,flathub-beta,fedora-testing}

all app data remains safe and untouched in ~/.var/app, everything works as before and no reboots necessary. from this point forward, it's not neccessary to include the --user switch.

bonus content: if you haven't set up flatpak autoupdate, fix that post-haste.

~/.config/systemd/user/flatpak-autoupdate.service

[Unit]
Description=Update user Flatpaks  
  
[Service]  
Type=oneshot  
ExecStart=/usr/bin/flatpak update --assumeyes --noninteractive  
  
[Install]  
WantedBy=default.target

~/.config/systemd/user/flatpak-autoupdate.timer

[Unit]  
Description=Update user Flatpaks daily  
  
[Timer]  
OnCalendar=daily  
Persistent=true  
  
[Install]  
WantedBy=timers.target

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now flatpak-autoupdate.timer

hiya!

I got a cheap LED strip with PSU, controller, and IR remote. I didn't look at it too much, figured it would be easy to stick it under my kitchen cabinets.

however, this thing blinks and fades and whatnot and I'm supposed to switch it over to constant light by repeatedly pressing the remote, which a) works shitty and also b) don't wanna do that. I just want to plug it into power and it lights up and that's the end of our interaction.

so, I opened up the PSU/controller and I'd like to locate the spots that give me +12V and GND and I can bypass the whole blinky fadey mess.

it's a single-sided PCB. the top three wires on the right are for the IR receiver, ignore 'em. the bottom 4 are R, G, B, 12 V, respectively. I'm shorting RGB as it's a white-only strip.

can you hazard a guess where I'm most likely to succeed?

not really "build" a PC, more "upgrade" but I guess people here might know relevant stuff.

anyhow, I'd like to upgrade storage and get a 2 TB drive. in the $100-region I have these models available:

• ADATA Legend 710 ALEG-710-2TCS
• ADATA Legend 800 ALEG-800-2000GCS
• Crucial P3 CT2000P3SSD8
• KINGSTON SNV2S/2000G
• KINGSTON SNV3S/2000G
• Lexar LNM620 LNM620X002T-RNNNG
• Seagate BarraCuda Q5 ZP2000CV3A001
• Seagate BarraCuda ZP2000CV3A002

I imagine they're all bottom of the barrel type of deal, no DRAM cache, QLC, etc., but this would be my third drive of such variety (500 GB and 1 TB previous) and I had no issues daily driving 'em, linux with btrfs with HMB support.

so, before I start researching them all one-by-one, does one of these stand out as way better? the target hardware is AMD Ryzen 5 5600 on a B450 board. thanks!

edit: so, I got the data for the models from here and here's an image of the result (can I post tables in markdown?)

just as I though, no DRAM on either of those.

this may be old news to y'all, but I've discovered this freakin' thing: https://downloads.fcmodding.com/fc5/. it's a moding tool that allows various upgrades to the standard Far Cry experience. there's a linux version which works wonderfully - point it to the FarCry.exe and it does its thing!

in addition to the tool, there's the Resistance mod with tons of tweaks. for me, the most important one was lowering the rewards so I have to finish all the missions, side quests, etc. before facing the Seed family members. otherwise, the game is over way too soon.

I also enabled skip intro (AMD, epilepsy, etc.) and start the game at Dutch's bunker, skipping the flight in and the car chase, thus eliminating prime irritants for replaying. I might try a patch that forces Vulkan instead of DX11 later on.

also, it works without issues with my game that I found somewhere, fell off a truck or something, I don't know...

Jamie Zawinski's (of Netscape/Mozilla fame, check out Code Rush if you're unfamiliar) humorous but enfuriating take on his club's battle with the music "industry" shakedown.

I mean, come on.

other than changing theme or userChrome any other options?

the transparent hair and beards, I seem to remember there was some antialiasing setting or something that causes this but I can't remember which. naturally, searching the webs is useless. help?

all AMD, wine 9.1, lutris

are there any older ex-office mini PCs like the elitedesk, optiplex, thinkstation, etc models that can fit a 3.5" drive? Not looking for anything new and thus expensive, just want some old junker (6/7/8th gen Intel) that can host some light stuff. thanks

so, just to check, this thing's useless, right?

got a 5-year old phone with a degraded battery that lasts half a hummingbird's fart and installed lineageOS 21. yet the battery info claims the battery is in excellent condition.

after trip-digit linux installs in the past year or so, here's my list for a seamless transition for people escaping windows/macOS who need to get work done:

1) don't tailor linux to your hardware, do it the other way around. get hardware that works OOB. no nvidia. no latest hardware. no weird realtek chipsets in budget deal-of-the week e-waste, no gaming (i.e. nvidia) laptops.

that don't mean breaking the bank, a thinkpad with 8th gen or newer CPU can be had for $100ish; add $50 or so to expand RAM and storage and that covers like 90% of use cases. a competent all AMD desktop a gen or two behind current tech that can game almost anything can be easily assembled for less than $400.

fedora and adjacent forums are littered with cries for help about stuff breaking or not working at all; 90% of those are nvidia related. can you make it work - absolutely. is that something you're willing to dick around on a deadline - hell nah.

2) no theming. no icons, no fonts, no plymouth screens, nada. as few extensions/plugins as you can, run it as close to stock as possible. shit's gonna break, this is a work device, you can't afford downtime because the single dev maintaining the thingy hasn't updated it for the newest Gnome of Plasma. Gnome don't feel like macOS? you'll get used to it; muscle memory is a removed but it's a tameable one.

an additional moment, especially if you're on a laptop, is to make the thing as fungible as possible. that's an easily breakable/losable thief-magnet, you want a setup that can be reproduced with as little fuss as possible so you can be operational again.

3) don't dual/triple/whatever boot. that's an advanced scenario, it's gonna break eventually and if that's a device you depend on for work or education, you don't want any of that. run it as a single OS occupying the whole disk; encryption on a mobile device is mandatory. if you absolutely need multiple OS, a 2nd device is stupid cheap and it compartmentalises your shit, i.e. one for work, one for private/gaming, etc.

4) no weird distros. no arches, no gentoos, no immutable thisisthefuture shit. when it becomes mainstream, we'll switch. until such time, middle of the road - fedora for newest hardware, mint for ancient stuff, ubuntu for everything else. a lot of people made sure they're operational OOB, it's less likely stuff will break and if it does, there's an army of folks who asked and answered whatever's bothering you.

5) no weird DEs. wayland only, gnome for laptops and tablets, plasma for desktops, there is no third option. you're transitioning from an infinitely polished UI and the best tech that money can buy, you want the closest possible experience and the widest used environment, worked on by the largest dev community aware of the widest possible usability issues, working towards fixing/implementing them. you're already relearning shit, invest that time wisely.

6) separate your system stuff from your applications as much as possible. purge all user-facing apps, like firefox and media players and such from the system's package manager (apt or dnf) and reinstall them from flatpak. that was a headache a few years ago, nowadays almost everything works OOB on wayland. the apps include everything they need to work, the setup is easy to maintain and recreate, upgrades are better (no reboots necessary) and all your settings and data are in one place.

this covered 90% use cases of 90% of the users I've dealt with. naturally, edge cases are gonna have a bad time - you want to ollama this and that and rock bleeding edge hardware and have a normal desktop experience? it's gonna hurt. you need mac-like power management and days away from power? doable but that needs work.

remember, this is a work device. for the same reason you don't decide to "upgrade" the suspension on the car that's supposed to get you to work the morning of, you don't mess with what's likely the only device you need for work/education.

greybeards dunking on you because you're not a "real" linuxer? enamoured with the spicy screenshots from linuxporn? get a $20 thinkpad and go wild - arch it, sway it, have the scrolling text on boot, rice it till it bursts. but leave your workhorse be.

anyone tried building android for their device on a sub-stellar PC? my phone doesn't have LOS21/A14 available so I tried the build-it-yourself route... dios mio, this takes eons!

I know it's a huge code base, but I had no concept of the size... I've left it syncing the repo like two hours ago and it's at 10%. no idea if it's gonna build at all and if it takes a day to download the thing and another one to build it (Ryzen 5) maybe I should go look for a $100 replacement that still gets LineageOS.

anyone been down this road?