data1701d (He/Him)

“Life forms. You precious little lifeforms. You tiny little lifeforms. Where are you?”

- Lt. Cmdr Data, Star Trek: Generations

  • 75 Posts
  • 353 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: March 7th, 2024

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  • I think distros at least do some stuff beyond repackaging the latest software, namely default configurations (or lack thereof).

    For instance, technically Debian has the packages to do SELinux, but it’s Fedora (and OpenSUSE, I think?) that actually come out the box with them.

    They are also continually improving, if slowly, their package managers to improve the experience of sourcing new software, as seen with work on apt and dnf.

    You are right overall that new distro releases have little meaning any more. If anything, I think they are a good method for managing the upgrades to new software; when a release comes out, breakages can be addresses all at once and solved for a couple of years, whereas rolling release requires a person to be vigilant and repair breakages more often. That is not to pan rolling - I use Debian Testing on my desktop. As much as I like newer software, though, I am thinking of staying on Trixie after it becomes stable, as I get tired of applying updates all the time and then something breaking that is incredible difficult to diagnose.







  • I think MPR goes beyond boring. I think it’s an anti-masterpiece - designed to drive any viewer insane.

    They systematically build you up with that Star Trek hope, only to knock you down and step on your head.

    The only kind of redeeming moment is that sort of “We will go on” moment with the Areore at the end. Honestly, despite being a satirical Star Trek species in an otherwise terrible episode, the Areore were kind of fun and I wouldn’t mind seeing them again.



  • If ip a shows your NIC, I’d recommend checking your networking settings (you can do this via GUI in your DE’s settings) to see if everything is set correctly e.g is automatic DHCP enabled? (It seems so, based on the error messages. That’s just an example.)

    I had a situation the other day where my laptop ethernet port was being assigned to an oddball subnet that had no network connection. As it turned out, I had set the port to share internet in order to set up a Google TV (my dorm network requires a MAC address, but the TV had an old version where you couldn’t get the MAC address until after TV setup, which required a network connect) and had never reversed the setting.







  • I just discovered the source of all your problems by reading your previous post.

    The Surface Go 1 is a UEFI system. The Acer Aspire 5737z is a legacy BIOS system and thus can’t boot UEFI partitions. If your Aspire was a UEFI system, what you did probably would have worked just fine - no need for a special snazzy distro (no offense, NixOS users).

    I’m actually extremely surprised no one noticed this before me.

    From here, you have a few routes:

    • Flash the install to the drive, and try to downgrade it to a legacy BIOS system.
    • Reinstall Fedora and copy just your Gnome config over - from what I can tell, it’s just a few directories.
    • Buy a slightly newer device (maybe 2012/2013-ish at the earlist, probably originally designed for Windows 8.x) that support UEFI so you could just use the image.
      • Honestly, I am a bit conflicted on this option, as I don’t exactly like not reusing the Aspire. However, this may be the easiest way out, and maybe you could put the Aspire to use as a server in a home lab instead.
    • Try NixOS like others have been saying. Learning things is fun when you have the time - I don’t, and so stick with Debian.



  • Before I continue, you should probably specify your budget explicitly.

    With that said, almost anything older than a few years should do what you need to just fine. I have a Lenovo Yoga 710 from 2016 that works decent, and had an old Fujitsu Lifebook from 2010 that wasn’t too shabby as well. Heck, I once booted Linux off a cheap piano black Toshiba laptop originally made for Vista.

    Just choose a random old laptop and you’ll most likely be good.