I just ordered thebparts for a ~$900 gaming pc that boils down to Ryzen 7500F and Radeon 7600. I’ll believe “priced like a PC” to mean that.

I’m especially talking about smaller utility programs, like a USB stick formatter. If Gnome even has one of their own, it’ll be an empty window with a single button in the top bar that says “Format Drive.” There will be no choice or indication as to the name, the format, or perhaps even which drive to format. Turns out it will always do the removable drive that was mounted first chronologically. What the pity fuck do you mean you want to format a USB drive while your external backup HDD is attached? Who could ever want to do that? Oh and it’ll be carefully designed to be unusable if you use any theme but light Adwaita. If you want to do something specific, open the terminal and use dd.

KDE’s USB stick formatter will include several different wiping algorithms, you can key in a custom string to fill the empty drive space with with unicode support, settings for physical disks and solid state memory, the weird features of SD cards, it’ll support formats only used by Sun Solaris and OS/2, you can specify a maximum write speed, and it’s got a full set of drive encryption tools built in. All of this is perfectly themeable, but the UI elements are crammed a little too dense and not quite lined up right so it has a little bit of amateurish Windows 98 jank to it.

Cinnamon’s USB stick formatter will be somewhere in the middle. It lets you choose which drive to format, what name to call it, which of about 8 formats to put on it, whether to do a “full wipe”, and that’s about it. Made in GTK for Cinnamon’s design language, it looks straightforward but competent, like it’s from Windows 7. Does what almost all users need, almost all of the time, without getting in the way. The only snag I can think of is likely the Cinnamon menu’s fault: They provide a USB Stick Formatter, and a USB Image Writer. And it will switch places in the order it presents so you can’t memorize “for the formatter, type “USB” and hit enter, for the writer, type “USB” press down and enter.” They use the same icon so you have to stop and process the written language to get the app you want.

Is there any part of Gnome that isn’t “minimal and not distracting?” In my experience, the ideal Gnome applet is a blank window with no features, only a burger menu that only has the About info and a button that says “Do Nothing” in the top bar.

I don’t know, I played with it years ago, didn’t need it and haven’t really touched it until now.

I use Syncthing for several things, especially syncing photos between my phone and desktop.

dammit I like Syncthing. does kdeconnect do a decent job at syncing files?

To quote Brian Lunduke, because the GPL is viral and functioning systems licensed under the GPL have been published, if a future Rust-based MIT version of Linux ever comes out, we can just “Fork it, then we’ll have our own Linux.”

And the very fact that there’s a million forks doesn’t make it better

Yeah I try to steer folks around the Popular Distro Of The Month because this is the kind of shit that invites. You get some minor gimmick in exchange for several janky reimplementations of software that worked perfectly fine (often package manager GUIs) and significantly poorer googlability when something goes wrong.

Several of the cheese holes* in the YES DO AS I SAY fiasco did exist are because System76 couldn’t leave well enough alone.

The bug was actually in the .deb package itself, not the software in it. The dependency data was made in such a way that if it didn’t see one of the normal, standard Linux GUIs, it would threaten to uninstall the entire GUI. This worked fine on Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, xfce, LXDE, MATE and Unity, but Pop-Desktop was a weird mutant form of Gnome that didn’t quite match. So this bug pretty much only effected Pop!_OS users. APT is designed to detect something strange like that and offer a very stern warning, and GUIs built on top of APT usually detect that warning and automatically say no and just throw an error message to the user.

This happened to a number of Pop!_OS users, who saw and reported the error to…probably both System76 and Valve. A patched version was released which worked.

The Pop!_Shop was one of those janky reimplementations of software that worked perfectly fine. For some very Apple scented reason, the Pop!_Shop doesn’t do an apt-get update when launched. I’m not sure why they made that decision, if they were relying entirely on the update routine to do it on a schedule, but in most Debian-based systems it’s typical do do an apt-get update before upgrading or installing anything. And that it doesn’t happen at any point during the install process, it means that between a fresh install and a scheduled check for updates you could have an apt cache that was last updated when the installer ISO was packaged, which may have been weeks ago.

That’s what happened to Linus. The bugged version was in his apt cache, and neither he nor the system performed an apt update before he started installing stuff.

What is Linus’ fault is how he reacted to that error. What would happen if some Windows setup.exe had failed? Would he have opened up Powershell and tried to force it to go? No, he’d google “SoftwareName failed to install on windows” and find instructions pertinent to his problem. So why didn’t he do that here? He didn’t google “failed to install steam on popos” which would have turned up discussions of the problem and the correct solution of updating and trying again. Instead, he copped an attitude about how Linux GUIs don’t work (it did; it detected a potential catastrophe and prevented it) and instead googled “How to install steam in terminal”. The page he found, he either skimmed a bit too fast, or was faulty. Because most instructions for installing something on .deb based systems will instruct you to do an apt update and apt upgrade first, which would have prevented the problem. But either someone wrote it wrong, or Linus skipped that part, did an apt install, ignored the dire dire warning, and watched X die.

Now. Remember a few paragraphs ago when I called the Pop!_Shop “Apple scented?” In another episode of LTT, Linus was reviewing a set of AirPods. They were playing audio out of sync, and needed a firmware update. The process for performing this firmware update was to pair them to an iPhone (no other Apple device would do, ONLY an iPhone), put them in their case with the lid open, on the phone go to into the settings to the version number page for the AirPods, and wait, they should update. Linus, and me, bitched about that. At the time, the only way to manually perform an apt update through the GUI was to launch the Pop!_Shop, go to the Installed tab, and wait. No “Check for updates” button. So even if it occurred to you to try, it wasn’t apparent how.

*The Swiss cheese model of accident analysis works like this: for an accident to occur, usually multiple factors have to line up just right, like the holes in random slices of Swiss cheese.

The only support I’ve ever been given with Windows was “go in this menu, click this button” or “open the Run dialog, type regedit, and change SOME_RANDOM_REGISTRY_KEY from 1 to 0.” And editing the registry happened more and more when I left 7 for 8. What’s the difference between typing a bash command and clicking some button in some menu?

“Goodbye” used to mean that, though we’ve started to take it to mean “our relationship is permanently severed, I expect to never communicate with you again in my life.” Which, kind of amazing we felt the need to have a word for that.

“Twelve ninety-nine, first window.” is what usually happens. I’m not the kind of dork that repeats it as “One Two Decimal Niner Niner.” The ham bands are full of geezers that’ll happily play that game with me if I want.

So, per the Pilot/Controller Glossary, “OVER” means “My transmission ended; I expect a response.” Because the communique at the speaker is finished and I don’t expect a response, “OUT” would be more appropriate, meaning “Conversation is over, I expect no response.” Though on the air you’ll often hear “Good day” which isn’t in the P/CG but I think is nicer.

It’s a little hard to comment on high end 4 years ago with low end now because technology marches on, but no I don’t think it would.

I also built a PC with similar specs for my cousin (we’ll call her Lila) to that in October of 2022, Ryzen 5600X/Radeon RX6800 (non-XT). Built that rig for my cousin. Socket AM4 B550 chipset, 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM. I had a budget of $1500, $500 alone went to the GPU. The 6800 was two years old at that point. Solid mid-range PC that can handle 1440p gaming with no questions asked…okay one question asked: “are you sure you want ray tracing enabled on an RDNA 2 platform?”

You could go higher. 32 or even 64GB of RAM, a 5800X3D CPU, a Radeon 6950XT or RTX-3090 would provide much more solid 4k gaming with significantly better ray tracing…for a couple more grand.

The machine I built last year, a Ryzen 7700X/Radeon 7900GRE for myself. I spent $2000, I got socket AM5, 32GB DDR5-6000, a 16 thread CPU, and the third-to-highest GPU in the range. This thing does 1440p ultrawide or reaches into 4k with aplomb and ray tracing is worth turning on. You can still go up from here; the 7900XT and XTX are even more powerful and again Nvidia offers even higher, and there’s several CPU SKUs above me. Mine is a mid-to-high end PC, I expect it to be relevant for 5 more years, then I’ll buy a Ryzen 11800X3D on clearance for it.

Meanwhile, the PC I’m building now is for a 12 year old (Lila’s daughter, let’s call her Maggy). 16GB of DDR5-5600, a spec’d down 6-core without integrated graphics, the pack-in Wraith Stealth cooler, and a x600 tier GPU for a solid 1080p experience, more than enough for the hand-me-down 1080p60 monitor she’s gonna get with it. This computer is the same generation as mine, but less than half the price at $900 and change. And I honestly struggle to build much lower than that without resorting to used parts, new old stock, or jank.

Gilette gives away razor handles to men to encourage them to buy their blades.

Inkjet printers are often cheaper than a change of ink cartridges.

I think it was Standard Oil, gave away hurricane lanterns in order to sell kerosene.

Most video game consoles are sold for less than they cost to make because the company expects to earn more in video game sales.

I’m right now in the process of building an “entry level PC” from components, here defining it as new currently produced off the rack parts, no used, no refurbished, and with a Ryzen 7500F and a Radeon RX7600 “AMD can’t decide whether their cards get an XT or not, so why should I?” I price it out right at $900. To go much below that, I’m gonna have to resort to some jank.

Dumpster dive a core i5 10400F Optiplex, stick a GTX-980 in it, install Linux Mint and you’re making 120FPS in CS:GO for the price of a foot pic.

I can see several different niches for it.

• PC gamers who want an HTPC. Which isn’t really a niche that is served without building an ITX machine, with parts that are premium priced for no reason I can think of. If you want to play some of your PC games on a television, well, there aren’t a lot of great solutions.

• Console gamers looking to convert. Consoles have come up in price significantly, the “turn on and play” aspects have eroded to the point a console is a slightly discounted mi-tier gaming PC that can’t spreadsheet. The Steam Machine will be at a little bit of a price premium, but you get a console-like user experience with all the benefits of the PC ecosystem, like mods, streaming, self-hosted multiplayer, etc.

• IT professionals who just want to play games in their spare time. I’ve heard a lot of sysadmins and developers and folks rage at the idea of coming home from a long day at the IT mines only to futz around with PCIe lanes and EFI settings. The most hacker dude I know showed me his personal phone: a non-jailbroken iPhone.

• Noobs that are sick of Microsoft. There’s people out there who would like a gaming PC without Windows, but for one reason or another can’t move past the need to buy a computer with an OS installed from a for-profit company.

• Parents buying kids a gaming PC.

we should standardize on Lojban.

that way, nobody’s happy.

And a C suite that need to have their genitals kicked in.

I use a dishwasher. It’s easier and uses less water.

I’m a pilot. At a drive through, I read back the price as a matter of reflex.

Has this video been published yet?

This honestly isn’t my experience.

A couple years ago now, I went to install Windows 10 on a PC. It got partway through the install process, and then failed with an “Error 0x76A421B3E7291A” or something. Completely opaque, like the damn thing spat out a memory pointer as the only clue. Installing Linux Mint on the same machine threw an error, “Unable to complete installation due to BIOS TBS error. Check TBS BIOS settings and try again. For more information, see this wiki page” and it gave a clickable link, because this is running in a live environment and has a functioning copy of Firefox installed, and it gave a QR code so the page could be easily pulled up on a mobile device.

Windows is not inherently more user friendly.