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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Yes, NFC the technology works. However, certain applications, like Google Wallet can be problematic and require workarounds (not because of technology itself though)

    I know that low key defeats the purpose of a privacy oriented android build but yeah

    Not everyone using a custom ROM is doing it for privacy reasons. I see privacy as a perk but I mainly use custom ROMs to keep my devices around longer and to get new features.

    Even for those who are concerned about privacy, I don’t think NFC is that big of a security hole. I know some people who turn it on only when they’re using it, but that’s pretty painless.



  • Now I am faced with needing to replace my SSD which gives me reason enough to install a new distro.

    Replacing an SSD is pretty simple on Linux; just copy over the data, adjust the partitions, select the new drive in UEFI/BIOS. If you want to try a different distro, any time is good, but a new SSD doesn’t require a reinstall.

    My advice from my distro-hopping days is to dual-boot with potential new distros (unless space is at a premium). I just made sure to share important folders like /home/. That way, if I didn’t like my new setup, I could quickly fall-back to the old.



  • It’s not a hardware compatibility problem for you or people who have reasonably new computers. However, for the last decade or so, computers have kind of stagnated and old computers are still very functional, something I couldn’t have said a decade or two ago.

    I’m typing this on a ThinkPad x201 which was released in 2010. TBF, I’ve updated it as much as I can (8GB of RAM and an SSD), it’s running Linux Mint because Windows drags, and even then it’s getting tired.

    My Spouse’s laptop is an Acer with a 5th gen i3. A couple years ago, she was complaining it was getting a bit slow, so I threw an SSD in it and now she’s happy with how it runs Windows 10, and I’m sure it would run Windows 11 fine if a TPM2.0 chip wasn’t required.

    It’s forced obsolesces for a hardware requirement most home users are never going to use.



  • In addition to what other people have said about gdebi, I’m surprised it’s not there by default in Pop. I thought it was there in pretty much all Ubuntu-based distros (except where alternatives are used).

    I totally get not wanting to use the terminal for this purpose. It’s pretty rare that I download and install a .deb, but when I do, it’s nice to just click it straight from the browser and not have to navigate to my download folder in the terminal. And given how rarely I download and install .deb files, I have to look up the command every time.


  • I’ve been using Linux Mint Cinnamon for years now, after distro-hopping for a decade. I think there’s 2 main reasons Mint has stuck:

    1. Cinnamon - I think it looks pretty while not being overly heavy (though I think that all DEs are pretty efficient nowadays, I’ll take all the performance I can get out of this 14-year-old ThinkPad x201). It has good features while operating fairly stable. It’s also stable in that there’s few drastic changes.

    2. Ubuntu, but slightly better - I like Ubuntu, and used it on-and-off for years (Warty through at least Precise), but Ubuntu’s made a lot of drastic changes over the years which messed with my workflow. Other changes I just disliked (ex Snaps), and I feel like they keep trying to force these changes on users. Whenever something’s hard or impossible on Mint, I feel it’s a technical challenge, not the distro actively preventing me from doing it. It’s nice to have a Ubuntu based distro because most instructions found online Just Work™.