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
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.
If my American university has a system in place for students that don’t own Windows, I would not be surprised if yours has a better one :)
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.
Yeah, only thing I can think of is the few banking apps that don’t have web versions.
I was lucky enough to have all my banking and 2FA apps work perfectly on GrapheneOS. The only app that gave me a significant amount of trouble was iClicker, which my school uses for attendance. That was fixed by enabling Google Play location services, and there was a (fairly expensive) alternative anyway.
I did have to buy a new phone to use Graphene, because I got my previous one as part of a carrier’s cell plan, and it had a locked BIOS. Though I think the purchase was worth it, and just moving my SIM card from one device to another was enough to get it working.
From what I’ve heard uBlock Origin Lite only barely falls short of the ad-blocking coverage that regular uBO offers, so there will still be options for Chrome users after this happens, not to mention the multitude of alternative browsers and app stores for Android.
I still think that making Linux phones a viable alternative is very important, but it’s not significantly more important now than it was a month ago.
“Move Along Home” would work so much better as a Doctor Who episode. Has a kind of absurdity that is perfect for Who, but stands out in a bad way in Trek.
Niccolo Ve did a pretty comprehensive summary of all his problems recently: https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=mhqeuO9RKKk
He’s been on a right-wing, transphobic, anti-woke downward spiral for years now.
I don’t have much PC building experience, but these specs seem sufficient. Only comment is that you might need to use a distro with a new-ish kernel and graphics stack, given the very recent CPU and GPU. So not Debian stable, but Fedora, Ubuntu, or any rolling release distro will be fine.
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.
Handbrake will probably still work if you compile it from source, but it seems like upstream isn’t paying much attention to libdvdcss support.
The version in Debian’s repo still works for me, anyway.
I’ll probably use Codeberg or another Forgejo server for my next programming project, if/when I have one that is far enough along to publish (motivating myself to get that far is a tall task). Until then, everything I’d consider contributing to is either on GitHub, or is self-hosting some other software, so I don’t have a reason to create an account yet.
Saru and Kelvin Spock would probably get along really well. Everyone else would be having heated arguments that I think would be amazing to witness, if not take part in.
I think I’d most like to sit between Mariner and Pike, though.
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.
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.
I’ve switched to FreeTube for now, it still works using the Invidious API. This is happening because YouTube is testing forced login to watch videos or use the API. There is a workaround it seems, but we’ll have to wait for all the major clients to roll it out.
Unlikely. While in theory someone could create a compatibility layer, it would be quite a challenge, as obviously, kernel modules are very closely tied to the specific kernel. I did some web searches, and only found the same few dead projects (that didn’t completely solve this issue anyway) that you found, and other forum posts that offer little encouragement.
Make sure you have the latest version of Windows 10 or 11, and the latest drivers for your network hardware. If you do, then there’s probably not much you can do about this.
Personally, I’ve had no problems whatsoever running the Office 365 apps needed by my school on Debian’s version of Firefox ESR. Aside from Outlook and Teams, I’m not asked to use them very often, as most assignments are turned in as PDFs, but when I have been required to use Word and Excel, I have had no problems.
Apparently GNOME 46 introduced support for Microsoft 365 accounts including OneDrive support in the file manager, so a distro that runs a recent GNOME version, such as Fedora or Ubuntu, may be your best option. But without that, you can still use a third-party project like onedriver or abraunegg’s OneDrive client.
“I can’t stop the heterocyclic declination!” (TNG: “Samaritan Snare”)