'No Stupid Questions' (NSQ) Internet & Technology Edition

What the hell is Flatpak/Snaps?

I tried reading the web sites for these programs, and either I can't parse information anymore, or they don't explain it (both cases may be true). The only thing I could gleam is that the people who made/use these are from one or two camps (not necessarily exclusively): people who develop proprietary software, or people who are too stupid/malicious to go through the process of getting their software into a distribution's repository.
 
nah said:
What the hell is Flatpak/Snaps?

I tried reading the web sites for these programs, and either I can't parse information anymore, or they don't explain it (both cases may be true). The only thing I could gleam is that the people who made/use these are from one or two camps (not necessarily exclusively): people who develop proprietary software, or people who are too stupid/malicious to go through the process of getting their software into a distribution's repository.
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They are software deployment&package management utilities. Snap was developed and is being maintained by Canonical, so it's probably the former - proprietary shit, while Flatpak has its own repository which could mean either.

Nothing a short search couldn't find.
 
Boris Blank's glass eye said:
They are software deployment&package management utilities. Snap was developed and is being maintained by Canonical, so it's probably the former - proprietary shit, while Flatpak has its own repository which could mean either.

Nothing a short search couldn't find.
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I'm reading over the dev docs for flatpak as I am asking. I am under the impression it's akin to working with makepkg, but the output seems to be something like a chroot bsd jail that has to be run through flatpak.

Thanks
 
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talk sh1t said:
I have two external HDDs I use for my stuff, which should be identical copies. It's about 90% audio files. How do I mirror the actions I do in one HDD to the other?
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What you're looking for is RAID Level 1. Hardware NAS boxes will typically do this for you automatically, or I believe it's also possible to set it up in software on Windows using Disk Management or something.
 
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talk sh1t said:
Does it make sense to setup something like that considering my HDDs are USB connected and all I have is a laptop these days?
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Are you actually taking the laptop and drives around with you or are you using it strictly as a desktop replacement?
Assuming your budget and network setup permits, I think a NAS would be the right solution here. Offload all that RAID stuff to a separate piece of hardware. I'm not a super-expert, but the idea of trying to do it in software on a laptop with 2 USB drives rubs me the wrong way.
 
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talk sh1t said:
1 - I don't like "always on" tech; when I leave home I switch off everything including my WLAN and would probably want to switch off the NAS rig as well, rendering it unavailable for remote access.
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Oh yeah, I definitely wouldn't do remote access.
Really, I guess the question is why do you need mirroring? Are you really doing that many changes on the road that you need to "sync up" with your home copy of things, especially given that you said it's mostly audio?
Particularly for audio I like to just say the "master copy" is the one on my home NAS, and anything I take with me on a USB stick or whatever is a disposable temp copy.
 
talk sh1t said:
Right, that's mostly my plan, but I just have a second disk as back-up that in theory is just a mirror of the first one. So once again, I'd like any minor changes I do to files in the first disk to be copied by the second disk, no remote access needed. I'm a disorganized anal sperg who is constantly re-categorizing my music collection, basically.
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Okay, so you have the first disk to store your data since I presume it won't fit on your laptop's drive, and the second disk to back up the first. Is that correct?

If you don't want to host your own NAS, a remote backup service like Backblaze might be an option. They basically store an encrypted copy of your laptop and any external drives you select through the Internet. It all happens automatically and in the background, so you don't have to manually move files into a certain directory like with Dropbox or Google Drive or what have you. If you need to retrieve a file, you can download it through their web site; if you need to restore a whole drive, they can send you an external drive with your data on it for a deposit fee which gets refunded when you mail the drive back (the details of this varies by company but that's the general idea). Of course these services are more expensive in the long run than hosting your own NAS, but if you don't want the hassle it might be worth it - Backblaze's personal plans start at $7 a month.

With one of these services, you just need the one external drive which will be periodically backed up so long as you have an Internet connection. If you have to restore, there's a chance your back-up will be a few hours old, but if you can live with that it sounds more convenient than dragging around two drives everywhere.
 
talk sh1t said:
Right, that's mostly my plan, but I just have a second disk as back-up that in theory is just a mirror of the first one. So once again, I'd like any minor changes I do to files in the first disk to be copied by the second disk, no remote access needed. I'm a disorganized anal sperg who is constantly re-categorizing my music collection, basically, and it's time I learnt to use scripts for file organizing or something like that.
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A temporary solution might be rsync and a batch file that runs it. Click on the batch file once a day/when you're done mucking around with metadata/schedule it to run, and it will save the changes from DriveA to DriveB. It will also copy any new files from DriveA to B.

I'm not very familiar with rsync but that was what came to mind. There's also various backup programs that can do it for you but those probably cost money and might be absolute garbage that constantly saturates the USB connection by transferring large amounts of data due to small changes.
 
Gender: Xenomorph said:
Trying to clean up 5 year old android phones, and 60% of the memory is just "System and various"

Is there a way to salvage without doing a full wipe?
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It's probably because of all the over-the-air updates the OS received over the years. The factory image is obviously still there as all Android phones can be reset to it, but all the updates need to be present too and sometimes they overwrite most of the stock system.

You could try to uninstall or disable some non-essential bloat programs that you normally can't via adb but that's about it. It's not uncommon nowadays to have whatever "System" is take up 10-15 GB on a phone. Even if you do the full wipe, all the updates might fill up that 60% again. I like formatting a fast SD card as internal memory for old phones. Anything installed on external storage will suffer extra startup latency, but it's tolerable. However, some apps, especially social media bloat, really doesn't like being on SD.
 
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Look over there said:
Setting up Cygwin competently is harder than actually installing Linux if you don't know what you're doing. Reminds me of the old days where you had to manually tick each package.
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According to this page it will work under WSL too. Not sure if that's any easier to install but the instructions on that page seem pretty straightforward.

I'd be really surprised if there's not some sort of rsync-like tool for Windows, though, if not an entire port. Here on Unix/Linux-land it's pretty ubiquitous.
 
Least Concern said:
According to this page it will work under WSL too. Not sure if that's any easier to install but the instructions on that page seem pretty straightforward.

I'd be really surprised if there's not some sort of rsync-like tool for Windows, though, if not an entire port. Here on Unix/Linux-land it's pretty ubiquitous.
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WSL is a steaming pile of dogshit and an affront to god.
 
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Considering everything but CPUs and GPUs are relatively cheap and can be found, should I bother shelling out to build a new PC now or is there a reason to cross my fingers and wait for importation to settle down?
 
MysticLord said:
What's a good site streaming site for watching Netflix shows? I want to finish watching Invincible.
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Netflix is a good one.

WhoBusTank69 said:
Considering everything but CPUs and GPUs are relatively cheap and can be found, should I bother shelling out to build a new PC now or is there a reason to cross my fingers and wait for importation to settle down?
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I guess it depends on how unsatisfied you are with what you have now. I'd say that if you can tolerate waiting another 9-12 months, we'll probably be in at least a slightly better situation than we are now.
 
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Least Concern said:
I guess it depends on how unsatisfied you are with what you have now. I'd say that if you can tolerate waiting another 9-12 months, we'll probably be in at least a slightly better situation than we are now.
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Automotive industry experts expect the chip shortage to last until 2023.
WhoBusTank69 said:
Considering everything but CPUs and GPUs are relatively cheap and can be found, should I bother shelling out to build a new PC now or is there a reason to cross my fingers and wait for importation to settle down?
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What CPU and GPU do you have now?
 
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