We just had long conversations about open source alternatives to Alexa and similar devices at home. 

The problem is, they're still sourcing a lot of the information they gather and storing it on the usual culprits. Google, Apple, Amazon. 

I'm definitely going to automate my office using Mycroft, the Linux Alexa which doesn't have to connect to the internet. It has a sort of blood-brain barrier. I'm getting closer and closer!

Also I've been watching a bunch of DIY videos and it's making me increasingly sure that I'll be able to use my outmoded tablets and things to my advantage. I'll probably have a magic mirror (a normal mirror with a screen behind it) and very likely a weather station made out of my busted tablet and phone, respectively.

Thanks for telling me 500 times to use Linux, guys. 

Figuring out innovative uses for old, deprecated electronic mobile devices is a major win, to me. I end up just giving them to younger family members. :) 

Fri Feb 05 2021 02:16:34 MST from Wangiss

I'm definitely going to automate my office using Mycroft, the Linux Alexa which doesn't have to connect to the internet. It has a sort of blood-brain barrier. I'm getting closer and closer!

Also I've been watching a bunch of DIY videos and it's making me increasingly sure that I'll be able to use my outmoded tablets and things to my advantage. I'll probably have a magic mirror (a normal mirror with a screen behind it) and very likely a weather station made out of my busted tablet and phone, respectively.

Thanks for telling me 500 times to use Linux, guys. 

Fri Feb 05 2021 02:16:34 MST from Wangiss

I'm definitely going to automate my office using Mycroft, the Linux Alexa which doesn't have to connect to the internet. It has a sort of blood-brain barrier. I'm getting closer and closer!

Also I've been watching a bunch of DIY videos and it's making me increasingly sure that I'll be able to use my outmoded tablets and things to my advantage. I'll probably have a magic mirror (a normal mirror with a screen behind it) and very likely a weather station made out of my busted tablet and phone, respectively.

Thanks for telling me 500 times to use Linux, guys. 

501: Unix is best OS for everything except playing windows based games.

I can't quite articulate it - but although many organizations are moving to cloud based apps...

Microsoft has a flexibility that means a SMB can run Exchange, AD and MS-SQL based apps but they can scale to an organization the size of Intel. 

Linux is much more difficult for a SMB to run with these kinds of apps - and at scale - many organizations need more advanced features than a lot of the *nix versions of these apps provide. 

Centralized, departmentalized, global account management (Active Directory/Group Policy) - is something that *nix doesn't really do like Windows does. The "groupware" integration - what Citadel approaches - Exchange does better in a large corporate environment. Part of it is in *nix you're usually dealing with a lot of little components that it is up to you to plug into one another how YOU want them to work. They're not all designed specifically to work with another product. MS Windows has this suite of productivity apps that are all designed with an eye to integrating with one another... it is an ecosystem. 

Sat Feb 06 2021 02:27:43 MST from TheDave

 

Fri Feb 05 2021 02:16:34 MST from Wangiss

I'm definitely going to automate my office using Mycroft, the Linux Alexa which doesn't have to connect to the internet. It has a sort of blood-brain barrier. I'm getting closer and closer!

Also I've been watching a bunch of DIY videos and it's making me increasingly sure that I'll be able to use my outmoded tablets and things to my advantage. I'll probably have a magic mirror (a normal mirror with a screen behind it) and very likely a weather station made out of my busted tablet and phone, respectively.

Thanks for telling me 500 times to use Linux, guys. 

501: Unix is best OS for everything except playing windows based games.

Yeah, the years of effort put into making Windows the OS you buy to make money in a team office environment haven't been wasted. It would be nice if I weren't on my third straight week of trying to get my Raspberry Pi to boot from SSD (five minutes at a time, three times a day, lol). Plug and play not only of hardware but of humans has been a big win for the Microsoft team. 

If you were nearby, I'd gladly help you troubleshoot your Pi issues. Linux is stubborn and difficult unnecessarily. It isn't the SSD or the Linux - it is *you* - but finding out WHAT it is you're doing wrong is the thing that takes all the time. 

Mon Mar 01 2021 06:55:50 MST from Wangiss

Yeah, the years of effort put into making Windows the OS you buy to make money in a team office environment haven't been wasted. It would be nice if I weren't on my third straight week of trying to get my Raspberry Pi to boot from SSD (five minutes at a time, three times a day, lol). Plug and play not only of hardware but of humans has been a big win for the Microsoft team. 

SSD on the Pi 4 was plug and play, all I did was verify the firmware version was recent enough. I might try it on one of my Pi 3's and report back.

Right, it's plug and play, but I'm still doing it wrong. My approach to the EEPROM update last time was off, and I used an incorrect file system to install the last distro. All of these are learning moments, and I'm happy to be learning.

I've decided this week to hook up my two Raspberry Pis with AC relays to digitally switch off and on on each other's power supplies. So I'll be able to do a remote hard reboot over SSH. This is such fun. 

I hate firmware updates. What file system did you use, Ext-3 or Ext-4? It is 11 years later, and I still don't have a definitive answer on how to approach cache and SSD storage - if it matters or not, or... whatever. 

So far, my SSDs have been pretty solid, though. *Knocks on wood*. 


Some guy on the Retro forums recently was saying that he throws out all his SD cards every 13-18 months. I was like, "jesus... that sounds expensive." 

Fri Mar 05 2021 23:27:30 MST from Wangiss

Right, it's plug and play, but I'm still doing it wrong. My approach to the EEPROM update last time was off, and I used an incorrect file system to install the last distro. All of these are learning moments, and I'm happy to be learning.

I've decided this week to hook up my two Raspberry Pis with AC relays to digitally switch off and on on each other's power supplies. So I'll be able to do a remote hard reboot over SSH. This is such fun. 

Oh... I get it... 

I also think no one in YOUR realm of Linux user uses ext3 anymore. I think a lot of less passionate users go with ext3 or ext4 because they're offered as the defaults with most distro installs. 

I don't have a /swap partition on the SSD on my i5 that runs Citadel. But, IS this really a problem, anymore? I never hear the buzz about it I did when SSD first hit the market. Prices have come down so tremendously - it doesn't really *matter* that much to me. 1TB is about $80. 

I think like most things - it got to the point where most people don't worry about it at all... which is why Windows is so popular, it is the total "don't worry about it at all" user's OS. ;) 

Fri Mar 12 2021 06:41:56 MST from IGnatius T Foobar

I hate firmware updates. What file system did you use, Ext-3 or
Ext-4? It is 11 years later, and I still don't have a definitive
answer on how to approach cache and SSD storage - if it matters or
not, or... whatever. 

No one uses ext3 anymore. ext4, xfs, or btrfs are the ones you use on a new build.

More importantly: if your disk is an SSD, and especially if it's an SD card, you want the "noatime" and "discard" options set on your filesystem mounts.
These will extend the life of your drive.

Explained:

When a file is accessed, the kernel normally marks the file with a timestamp.
If you don't care about that, "noatime" makes that not happen, eliminating unnecessary writes to the drive.

"discard" causes the filesystem to tell the hardware when a block is no longer in use. This is, of course, awesome for SSD because the drive firmware can use that information for wear leveling.

Yeah, try finding *those* options in your WinClown OS. :)

Ig, or anyone else Linux savvy... 

Is there a good music player that will convert from formats - in particular from Apple music to MP3, on Linux? 

Sat Mar 13 2021 20:30:49 MST from ParanoidDelusions

Ig, or anyone else Linux savvy... 

Is there a good music player that will convert from formats - in particular from Apple music to MP3, on Linux? 

 

I'm pretty sure VLC will play literally any format.

Here's the debian version of VLC: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-debian.html

I think I remember you saying Debian was your distro, there are other distro versions too.

If you were asking for a program that will make you a copy in another format, I'm not sure that works in VLC, but it might, haven't checked.

*smacking my forehead* 

I'm not sure why I didn't think of that. If anything will do it, VLC seems like the best candidate, and I bet I have it installed... well, I know I do on my Debian test box - but I bet it is on my Pi400 too. 

Wed Mar 17 2021 19:21:43 MST from TheDave

 

Sat Mar 13 2021 20:30:49 MST from ParanoidDelusions

Ig, or anyone else Linux savvy... 

Is there a good music player that will convert from formats - in particular from Apple music to MP3, on Linux? 

 

I'm pretty sure VLC will play literally any format.

Here's the debian version of VLC: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-debian.html

I think I remember you saying Debian was your distro, there are other distro versions too.

If you were asking for a program that will make you a copy in another format, I'm not sure that works in VLC, but it might, haven't checked.

Linux lost this round. Being able to copy an image into a browser message is far more difficult to figure out on Debian than on Mac or Windows.