The Zen Cow Says Mu

I’d ditch the HTPC, and go for an Android based media player

This is the way. Especially given the number of streaming services that work much better as an android app than in a browser.

Used to run an HTPC in the living room (linux, ran kodi-standalone). Now replaced with a back-end server in the basement (serving plex and mythtv) and a googleTV chromecast running plex and kodi and various subscription apps attached to the TV

Ed is the standard editor

unfortunately there’s no rhyme or reason to the naming. which came first: bookworm, buster, or bullseye? They should just use numbers.

It was 1993, so not super impressed, but I needed a tex distribution, and PC dos tex sucked. The best option was a Nextcube, but that was a little out of reach being as much as tuition. Or use the x terminals in the crowded computer lab (shudder).

But I was able to keep that slackware install up and working just long enough to get my thesis done.

It’s a contemporary 4 core processor. It can run anything.

Heck, my 8gig 2010 MacBook with a core duo runs gnome on Debian without any issues.

Separating the function of the backend out from the frontend

this is the way.

home server in basement running almalinux, which provides mythtv, plex library, homeassistant, calibreweb, podcast management

desktop/gaming pc in home office

chromecast/google tv in living room with kodi, plex, other streaming apps, steam link for streaming games from downstairs and using bluetooth xbox controllers

distrobox upgrade --all

no ujust recipes necessary

Way back in the early 90s I needed to use LaTeX for university. The dos version was awful and couldn’t handle large documents. So the options were (1) a nextcube for $$$$, (2) Nextstep 3.3 for PCs for $$$ (some faculty had this), or (3) linux. So I downloaded slackware on dozens of disks.

You had to configure the kernel, which wasn’t too hard since the autoconfig walked you through it. The hardest part was setting up X11, which required a lot of manual config, and if you screwed up the timings you could destroy a CRT monitor. OpenStep was an option, so there was a moderately friendly windowmanager available.

Learning Emacs was also fairly unpleasant, but that was the best option for editing TeX at the time.

Everything would work, until it suddenly would break. But nonetheless I was somehow able to get that thesis done.

Ugh, modern linux is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better

i use the universal blue silverblue-main image because it’s basically silverblue along with some packages included that I otherwise would have to manually layer in anyway (e.g., distrobox, freeworld-amd drivers from rpmfusion) and some quality-of-life improvements (some just recipes, automatic updates enabled)

I tried bluefin, but it was “too opinionated” and I didn’t agree with a lot of its opinions. Same for bazzite.

Use the universal blue silverblue-nvidia image to get silverblue with Nvidia built in

Tomb Raider 2013 reboot, although today the windows version under proton actually performs significantly better than the linux version

why not use fedora’s built-in openvpn client and just add the pia info? That should likely work. https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess.com/guides/linux/linux-installing-openvpn-through-the-terminal

or built-in wireguard client? https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess.com/guides/linux/alternative-setups-4/linux-manual-connection-scripts

DOS -> slack ware Linux -> win 3 -> os/2 warp -> win 98 -> win XP -> osx (several years on Mac) -> win 10 -> Ubuntu 14, 16, 18, 20 -> fedora 34, 35, 36 ,37, 38 -> Debian 12 --> fedora silverblue 40.

Looks interesting. Thanks!

Fair, but last time I tried them, the foss apps were awful. But that was several years ago so might be worth looking again

moneydance for household finance tracking

whelp, EPEL package updates are on a slightly different time trajectory for release, so almalinux update goes oopsie fail. gotta wait a little longer for that 9.4 goodness.

Debian: boring installer, bare-metal install completed in about 10 minutes

Almalinux: nice installer, bare-metal install completed in about 10 minutes

Opensuse: nice installer, bare-metal install completed in about an hour. WHYYYYYYYY?

ublue built zfs as a kmod.

DKMS isn’t supported on Silverblue. Only Kmods. So there’s your problem.

https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/troubleshooting/

Even if you can get it to work, running ZFS on fedora generally is an exercise in frustration because the kernels update to newer versions than what ZFS supports anyway.