Why? I have a hard time imagine a use case where restoring the OS itself would be appropriate.

I can imagine restoring data, obviously, and services running with their personalization … but the OS is something generic that should be discarded at whim IMHO. You probably chance few basic configuration of some services and most likely that’s stored in /etc but even then 99% is default.

You can identify what you modified via shell history, e.g. history | grep /etc and potentially save them or you can also use find /etc -type f -newerXY with a date later than the OS installation and you should find what you modified. That’s probably just a few files.

If you do back up anything beyond /home (which should be on another partition or even disk than the OS anyway) you’ll most likely save garbage like /dev that might actually hinder your ability to restore.

So… sure, image the OS if you actually have a good reason for it but unless you work on archiving and restoring legacy hardware for a museum then I doubt you do need that.

Check using e.g. top for your CPU (nvidia-smi or amd-smi for your GPU) or System Monitor on KDE if any of your resource is being maxed out. If so then most likely you found the culprit.

Regarding what the actual codec is being used you can use ffprobe but anyway what matters if resource bottleneck and thus if you can have hardware acceleration for it.

It’s probably worth investigating so that you don’t keep on getting video files too big for your computer to handle. I imagine it’s something very high resolution with very recent compression. If so, look for something less demanding, e.g. x265 720p and if that’s still leading to performance hiccups the older x264 720p or even 480p.

It’s rare that the media player itself, e.g. VLC or mpv, actually is the bottleneck.

I’m using fWallet for Eurostar, plane tickets, etc anything with PkPass. Very minimalist, just does the job.

• code repository https://gitlab.com/TheOneWithTheBraid/f_wallet
• f-droid delivery https://f-droid.org/packages/business.braid.f_wallet/

knowing my software is up to date

Wouldn’t that be solved with random notifications saying software X has been updated to version Y.Z even though it might not be true?

The excitement of features from the cutting edge

I don’t understand how Debian limits that. You can use Debian for your distribution BUT for whatever you want to be cutting edge, use whatever alternative method you want. It can be alternative package managers, e.g. am but if you want the absolute bleeding edge, go on the repository of the project, get a specific branch, build, install, use. That’s absolutely no problem with even Debian stable.

I’m genuinely confused at comments implying that have a stable distribution means having outdated software.

I guess it depends what you mean by “chip production”.

AFAICT mostly via Chip War (2022) and reading a bit on the topic there are few bottlenecks, e.g chip design IP like ARM (UK) or lithography machines like ASML (NL) or high efficiency chip production like TSMC (Taiwan) but overall the grip from the US is mostly on democratization and scale with AMD, NVIDIA, Broadcom or even Intel, namely making a LOT of chips, not necessarily high end (some are) or mobile (also some), for a relatively low price. What I mean is that China is already claiming that they are producing about on-par IPS with e.g. Loongson.

So yes there are for sure incumbents based in the US that do not want RISCV and overall open architectures to make significant progress but is it fair to call them “the US” I’m not sure. Are they heavily leaning on US lawmakers to get their positions strengthened? Maybe. Maybe they do not yet do so simply because they don’t believe it’s a threat yet, nor it might be ever be.

I believe that in chip production you can lock production via innovation but also, like in other sectors, solely with the supply chain. ASML is powerful because they basically own their markets but also because who would contract with newcomers versus a very well established company that can provide all the insurances imaginable that they will indeed deliver on time a specific amount? Why risk it when you are already contracting with the leader?

Sure there is a potential innovator dilemma but what could prevent e.g. NVIDIA or Intel to switch to RISC-V if somehow they can dominate there too thanks to both their existing expertise but also supply chain stronghold?

If you like working in slow motion, yes, sure.

Source : I have a Banana-Pi SBC https://www.banana-pi.org/en/banana-pi-sbcs/175.html and… it works, running Linux proper, with a desktop environment, which is in itself pretty cool IMHO but damn, you have to be patient. That being said “just” already being at that stage on economically affordable hardware is amazing. We are probably not far, say few years at most, with usable RISC-V chips for mundane tasks, e.g. text authoring, coding, Web browsing, but don’t expect compilation of a browser, Blender, or gaming on this for few more years. IMHO it will go fast because it’s catching up so the path is rather well laid down, which is much harder than innovating and pushing the envelope.

I won’t enter the arguments about Debian itself (did that often enough, feel free to check my history or ignore entirely) rather my point is to have a default suggestion rather than “pick any” for newcomers which precisely are scared by the plethora of choices, as this very post suggests.

It’s rare that a software compatibility is distribution specific but just in case for games you can verify with ProtonDB and for the rest WineHQ AppDB. That’s assuming there is no native support which in this case according to a quick DuckDuckGo search returns https://linuxvox.com/blog/unreal-engine-linux/ indicating that it seems fine.

So… I’d suggest you pick whatever distribution you heard most about, if you are unsure I’d advise on Debian (Stable) but honestly I don’t think it matters much. There might be slight difference in hardware support and performances but assuming you use mainstream hardware it hopefully should have minimal impact.

Regardless of what you choose, document the process and as long as you learn while doing it, you’re going forward!

If you are in rush… maybe postpone the transition to after that project or do it with a 2nd computer.

Right, and I’d add a default option, e.g. “Unsure what to try first?” -> Yes ( Not -> rest of chart) -> “Try Debian Stable” -> “Do you like it?” (rest of chat)

why cell phones don’t authenticate the towers they connect to.

I believe it’s because they assume it’s not necessary because it was until now

• prohibitively expensive, but now a “tower” is less than 2k EUR e.g. https://www.crowdsupply.com/ukama/ukama
• prohibitively complex, see above, namely you don’t need to be a TelCo engineer to get it going
• probably illegal, namely you needed (and I bet still need in most places) wireless band allocation before you could deploy anything

… so I imagine there was no authentication because there was no practical threat beside few “fun” examples in CCC or DEF Con.

even programs that may likely just sit there until the next release comes along. … the only thing you can do is install flatpaks for your preferred programs so that they’d be up to date. … Wine (gamers, you’re gonna cry a lot unless you work it around with flatpaks

I already posted on this a while ago but that’s is a recurring misconception. No distribution, literally 0, provides all software to the latest version or to the version one expects. Consequently IMHO it is perfectly acceptable to go beyond what the official package manager of the distribution offers. It can be flatpaks, am, build from source, etc but the point precisely is that the distribution is about a shared practical common ground to build on top of. A distribution is how to efficiently get to a good place. I also run Debian stable on my desktop and for gaming, I use Steam. It allows me to get Wine, yes, but also Proton and even ProtonFix so that I basically point and click to run games. I do NOT tinker to play Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, Clair Obscur, etc and my hardware is well supported.

So… sure if you consider a distribution as something you must accept as-is and NOT rely on any of the available tools to get the latest software you actually need, can be games but can be tools e.g. Blender, Cura, etc, then you WILL have a tough time but that’s the case for all distributions anyway.

TL;DR: a distribution is the base layer to build on. Its package manager, on Debian and elsewhere, is not the mandatory and sole way to get the software you need.

Debian stable.

Everybody think they are a special snowflake who needs bleeding edge, or a specific package manager or DE or whatever. Truth is 99.99% do not. They just like to believe they do, claim they do, try it, inflict self pain for longer than they need, convince themselves that truly they are, because of the pain, special.

Chill, just go with stable, it’s actually fine.

Edit: posted from Arch, not even sarcasm.

Interesting, could be nice to help move away from Firefox Profile by being able to import from it rather than “just” the current installed Firefox instance.

Who in the EU wants a US car

Bunch of people according to most EU capitals where one can see, sadly, plenty of Swatzicars.

move somewhere I can get around with just a bicycle.

So… FWIW that’d be Brussels and I bet most European cities. By bike you can get your food in, get to the nearby Brico to fix pretty much anything in your house, get deliveries with national post service, but you can cycle all the way to the airport (if somehow you don’t want to use the train), park there and get… well pretty much anywhere else in the World.

There were and still are into quantum computing.

They are absolute champions of tech-washing and green-washing.

It’s literally anything to say, do and spending money on to make people forget that their core business is actually advertising.

What I mean is that MacOS is proprietary and runs on specific hardware, it’s by design not meant to be interoperable so it’s not “just” popularity.

Proton is built on top of Wine in order to make sure games specifically work well.

You can check https://www.protondb.com/ before buying a game (with Steam or otherwise) to insure it works as expected. A lot will work with 0 tinkering but some might next extra command line parameters.

You might get the same result with Wine directly but Proton it doing everything it can to “hide” away those (hopefully small) challenges away from the final user, a gamer (like me) who wants to just sit down and play.

So… the heuristic is basically :

• games? Proton
• not games but Windows applications that somehow do not have a better open-source equivalent running on Linux? Wine

Edit: for the anecdote I wrote this reply on my SteamDeck, the gaming console by Valve coming with Steam, and Proton, and running Linux to… just play BUT I also use it to work while traveling. So yes, works like a charm!

Isn’t it what passthrough is for?