I finally, after 30 years, found a Debian bug. Or a me bug. I had a system with an AM5 board and thus on-board graphics but I was using a GPU. I moved the SSD and Nvidia GPU into an AM4 system. Now whenever I unlock the screen it's just black. Apparently there's some vestigial AMD setting or library hiding somewhere or something didn't get installed from a normal Nvidia-only setup. Maybe tonight I'll actually fix it. It feels like something Windows would do.
I've fixed the glitch. Well, not the way I wanted. I blew away all of my dot directories and dot files in my home directory and logged in so they could be re-created. So something was in one of my config files was obviously setting something wrong. Oh well, fixed now.
I don't think 2 years old is particularly old for an OS.
Why? I manage fine. I have Arch installed on my laptop here and Debian on another. I barely notice the difference between them. I have pretty much the same stuff installed. Often I forget which distro I am on and only find out when I type apt install <something> and it tells me the command isn't found (or vice versa).
I genuinely don't understand why people have this perception. Not that much changes anymore tbh. Maybe if you want to run the latest riced-up window manager, it probably matters.
I use rolling release for everything I run. And even then some of the rolling releases don't keep some things as up to date as I need in a few rare cases so i follow the git sources for those. And i'm running dwm most of the time. which now days isn't exactly a bleeding edge window manager. Trying to move onto a stable release distro with what I use ends up being a huge pain every time I try going to one.
There are other subtleties I tend to just not like about Debian in particular, that have nothing to do with rolling vs versioned release. Like I prefer how close to upstream something like arch keeps it's packages, as in minimal changes from the upstream programs. I don't want the distro throwing anything it doesn't need to outside of what is necessary for things to work together seamlessly. It ends up annoying me even more than how much manual intervention I need vs most rolling release distros.
one way to avoid it is using flatpaks I guess. But that's a pain in the ass in it's own way.
It's just a lot simpler for me to get the latest release, with minimal changes out of the box from the distro. I don't want to fight the distro do make the system how I want it, and I don't care about holding back packages for stability. It's never been an issue for me in the past, and I'm not concerned about staying up to date being an issue in the future.
In the era of enshittification and tranny obsession, that's a bit of a plus. By the time the updates roll out all of the major bugs have been squashed and the shit fads that make code shittier for no good reason get played out and rolled back.
Alright so im tired of Guix chads flexing their completely FOSS computers on me and I would like to buy one
I know I could use nonguix but I'm gonna go with a fully libre computer
What's a good option for that these days my starlite is almost libre compatible but I'm using that for other stuff right now.
I see some t480s on eBay with libreboot for under 300 but I don't mind paying over 1k for a good machine if it's worth it
Bad news, I'm pretty sure these still have some binary blobs in things like the network cards, storage controllers, and graphics cards. Although I wouldn't worry about it because afaik that's literally impossible to avoid outside something like a blobless rockchip SBC or exotic power9 system (and libreboot is still a big step up in freedom regardless). If you don't need a laptop you can still get some powerful older AMD workstations. Dual server cpus + 128gb of ddrc3 rdimm.
What are everyone's thoughts on the FSF free hardware definition? On the surface it seems like the burned-in firmware => free, signed firmware you can't change but the company can release updates to => not free dichotomy is stupid but I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory opinion. I will hold my thoughts for now so as not to colour the replies.
Bad news, I'm pretty sure these still have some binary blobs in things like the network cards, storage controllers, and graphics cards. Although I wouldn't worry about it because afaik that's literally impossible to avoid outside something like a blobless rockchip SBC or exotic power9 system (and libreboot is still a big step up in freedom regardless). If you don't need a laptop you can still get some powerful older AMD workstations. Dual server cpus + 128gb of ddrc3 rdimm.
What are everyone's thoughts on the FSF free hardware definition? On the surface it seems like the burned-in firmware => free, signed firmware you can't change but the company can release updates to => not free dichotomy is stupid but I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory opinion. I will hold my thoughts for now so as not to colour the replies.
Essentially, any non-free firmware is bad. Firmware that is loaded at runtime is better because presumably the non-free firmware can be changed. One of the reasons they need these blobs is because of legal issues / patents existing on certain functionality.
The issue with all of this is that, fundamentally, this is all kind of irrelevant IMO, and all this stuff is minutiae. The FSF is always fighting the last war. RMS said at a Monero conference that authorities should be able to track your payments because of terrorism. The guy that founded the organisation fundamentally doesn't understand the problems we are facing now are.
Alright so im tired of Guix chads flexing their completely FOSS computers on me and I would like to buy one
I know I could use nonguix but I'm gonna go with a fully libre computer
What's a good option for that these days my starlite is almost libre compatible but I'm using that for other stuff right now.
I see some t480s on eBay with libreboot for under 300 but I don't mind paying over 1k for a good machine if it's worth it
I'm not sure there is a fully libre computer. You'd have an me_cleaned laptop which is better than nothing, but Trannyboot started including proprietary blobs. The machines with an actual FOSS BIOS use Core 2 Duos or 12 year old AMD work station chips, except I can't actually call those "FOSS" because nobody knows what's actually in the CPU microcode. There's the Raptor Engineering computers that supposedly are fully-FOSS, even the CPU architecture, but I don't remember for certain if there isn't an oddball blob somewhere.
I used to take this shit way too seriously and get too far into my own head about the endless little blobs and how they might effect my underlying security, except I noticed a lot of FOSS fanatics cheat. So I eventually didn't care anymore that I was "cheating", too.
The biggest freetard I knew ran Parabola Linux on a T60 and was so smug about his FOSS setup. but, he played old console ROMs and made up some little lies that he "reverse engineered" those games or something? I'm not sure, it was weird. I think even Richard Stallman himself uses proprietary software, but just on other people's computers.
What are everyone's thoughts on the FSF free hardware definition? On the surface it seems like the burned-in firmware => free, signed firmware you can't change but the company can release updates to => not free dichotomy is stupid but I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory opinion. I will hold my thoughts for now so as not to colour the replies.
Their definition is dishonest pilpul nonsense but at the same time I recognise they probably see microcode as out of the foundation's scope and unrealistic to obtain because of potential trade secrets and security through obscurity
What are everyone's thoughts on the FSF free hardware definition? On the surface it seems like the burned-in firmware => free, signed firmware you can't change but the company can release updates to => not free dichotomy is stupid but I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory opinion. I will hold my thoughts for now so as not to colour the replies.
can get too autistic and has a similar catholic dishonesty (family planning, i won't explain too much on this one), sure RMS uses some libreboot t200 on the basis of his standards and what was outlined in the FSF's requirements. however for most people: just run a free OS, free BIOS if you can, free drivers if possible, along with free/foss programs & services to work with, etc.
easily attempting to be 99% free is better than being an aspie about how hard it is to be 100% free
also all the libreboot-able thinkpads are way too fucking slow, not even for gaming-sake
Bad news, I'm pretty sure these still have some binary blobs in things like the network cards, storage controllers, and graphics cards. Although I wouldn't worry about it because afaik that's literally impossible to avoid outside something like a blobless rockchip SBC or exotic power9 system (and libreboot is still a big step up in freedom regardless). If you don't need a laptop you can still get some powerful older AMD workstations. Dual server cpus + 128gb of ddrc3 rdimm.
What are everyone's thoughts on the FSF free hardware definition? On the surface it seems like the burned-in firmware => free, signed firmware you can't change but the company can release updates to => not free dichotomy is stupid but I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory opinion. I will hold my thoughts for now so as not to colour the replies.
Like others in this thread have said, its an endless goalpost. The way I go about it is a principle of least-harm. Can the neutered, no-HECI stack IME on *80 ThinkPads actually feasibly do anything malicious? Can the tiny ROMP RAM init blob in the W541? Can the graphics controller on an M710q ping my location to Mossad? All of those are almost certainly "no". The line is machines you can Coreboot but can't ME-clean, since they just flip the glowie "uwu i totawwy wown't spy on yuwu" """high assurance platform""" bit but don't actually cut out firmware code. So, for now, that means that Coffee Lake machines are the most recent ones you can run with a reasonable degree of assurance that no functional IME can phone home. There's also quite a few desktop & server motherboards that you can Coreboot + deguard manually which have not been ported to Libreboot. Worth remembering if you need something beefier.
The FSF stance on it is reductive. Ideally they'd adopt a more "hackery" view on libre computing, where instead of having free firmware from the get go, you hack away at it like Libreboot does until the dangerous bits are gone or broken. They already do that with the Libre kernel lol. The reason they don't do it for Libreboot is because the installation process re-injects bits of ME firmware and other blobs after the bulk of them have been carved out by me_cleaner, thus meaning that you're technically "re-installing" proprietary firmware. Its really retarded tbh.
I'm not sure there is a fully libre computer. You'd have an me_cleaned laptop which is better than nothing, but Trannyboot started including proprietary blobs. The machines with an actual FOSS BIOS use Core 2 Duos or 12 year old AMD work station chips, except I can't actually call those "FOSS" because nobody knows what's actually in the CPU microcode. There's the Raptor Engineering computers that supposedly are fully-FOSS, even the CPU architecture, but I don't remember for certain if there isn't an oddball blob somewhere.
After a whole lot of time spent researching this shit, I've pretty much reached the same conclusion as you. Libreboot is still the way to go for x86 systems, the "binary blobs" they use are low level init stuff for RAM, HDMI, graphics and CPU init that modern machines can't run without. IIRC machines vulnerable to deguard allow arbitrary code execution on the ME die, so maybe one day if someone puts in the effort we can get a fully Libre boot chain. For prices that won't buttrape you like Raptor does, the MNT Reform also *should have a fully open boot chain.
The issue with all of this is that, fundamentally, this is all kind of irrelevant IMO, and all this stuff is minutiae. The FSF is always fighting the last war. RMS said at a Monero conference that authorities should be able to track your payments because of terrorism. The guy that founded the organisation fundamentally doesn't understand the problems we are facing now are.
RMS is a relic and a figurehead ***but after not being retarded and actually looking up his recent statements, it seems he is still pulling his weight. He's the retired old glory founder that still drives the core FSF values forward, so he'll remain the movement's face forever.
RMS is a relic and a figurehead that hasn't actually done anything of tangible value since forever. He's the retired old glory founder that is terminally out of touch, but he still started the movement, so he'll remain its face forever.
They are absolutely not worth the premium price. To expand on this a bit;
Following the death of my E90 (rest in peace king), I began looking more seriously into the Linux phone space.
I already had some experience prior with the Pinephone, which did not meet my requirements at the time for real world usage. However I learned I could expense a Librem 5 and a Librem 14 laptop to my department with the blessings of our IT guys, which was appealing in concept.
The build quality on both was immediately and visibly cheap. The plastic on the iteration of the Librem 5 I received was below even that used on the infinitely cheaper Pinephone. Within days the charging port on the 5 failed entirely. The wireless module was additionally faulty and I did eventually replace this myself. However, even after this, the device had an average battery life of less than 4 hours usage with the brightness set on 30 (11ish hours on standby).
Meanwhile, the Librem 14 had several issues that I never fully resolved; On the minor end of the spectrum, the edges on the aluminum were coarse and painful to handle. Odd scuffs in places. Etc. More serious was that the display was improperly seated in the chassis and the mounting holes were incorrectly drilled preventing me from simply fixing this myself. Upon further examination I also found multiple points improperly soldered across both the display connection and the motherboard which explained many of the weird issues I noticed in workplace usage.
Purism took seven months to provide an initial response to my customer service tickets, refused to service the 14 at all, and sent me back a clearly previously used Librem 5 instead of the new stock replacement I was promised.
In all, the Librem 14 lasted less than four months in ordinary workplace usage (8 hours a day five days a week). The Librem 5 was an immediate nonstarter for the role I'd hoped to use it in; Even the fucking Pinephone was more useful. Cannot stress enough how disappointed I was in both products.
The T480 is a solid laptop. The reason why BTW a lot of people like these is that they are relatively cheap now, run almost any OS well and it is trivial to service / upgrade.
Or you can spend loads on one of these specialist laptops and they are barely any better than an 8 year old laptop.
Trying to get old laptops to work again has lead me to want to start a jihad against nVidia. I have an old HP Elitebook that has an nVidia video card in it, and the old proprietary drivers for it have been out of service for God knows how long, and Nouveau isn't cutting it.
THE MALADJUSTED WEEB'S GUIDE TO GETTING CATHERINE CLASSIC (893180) RUNNING ON YOUR LINUX BOX.
I spent half my morning and most of the afternoon so you don't have to
CONTEXT
Catherine Classic is such an infuriating game to actually get running properly on Linux, and I spent way too much time grepping obscure errors in my Proton logs. I have spent at least six hours today troubleshooting, I hate ProtonDB for not having a nice wiki interface the way that WineHQ's AppDB does, I hate the worthless fucking community that does nothing but shit up the goddamn search results with "guys, does it work yet?" or ProtonDB with "ya m8 shit dont bloody work. issa shame innit?" ass reviews.
WHY WOULD YOU INFLICT THIS PAIN UPON YOURSELF?
Because Catherine Full Body fucking sucks. The original Catherine from 2011 is one of ATLUS's best non-MegaTen games that they ever released. Full Body adds a half-baked re-release waifu like every goddamn MegaTen re-release they've made over the last 5-6 years, they grossly altered the OST such that "Yo" by L Vokal went from being a lowkey hip-hop affair to some fucking acid funk Jamiroquai meets Maroon 5 bullshit. Like no, absolutely the fuck not. If I'm gonna be falling to my death watching the "LOVE IS OVER" banner hang over my corpse multiple times because I panicked at the final stretch against the Shadow of Vincent fight, it damn well should be the original.
DO YOU REALLY NEED TO PLAY CATHERINE CLASSIC ON PC? WHY NOT EMULATE THE PS3 VERSION?
Technically... it's absolutely, 100% possible. I've certainly accomplished it. The game runs perfectly well at a standard 1280x720p@30fps, FSR comes in clutch to gently upscale it to where you don't wish you had antialiasing on... by all means, go ahead and download RPCS3 and attempt to scale the wall of PS3 piracy in the Year of Our Lord 2026. Good luck with that.
See, I'm a fucking retard who paid the damn $20 for Catherine Classic as a little birthday gift to myself. Problem is that I never bothered to actually check ProtonDB and realise that the game's a fucking Silver medal entry. As in "technically playable but it won't be pretty."
I'm not stupid enough to disclose the methods of traversing the seas here because this shit's obscure for a reason: if too many damn normies figure out how to do it, it becomes mainstream, and then DMCA strikes and subpoenas and litigation happen. Then it's ruined for everyone.
PERSONALLY... I would suggest the PS3 version via RPCS3 over Catherine Classic if you're able to somehow get a proper dump of the game and overcome the per-game encryption. How you accomplish that is your own business. Just know that it's possible, you need to know where to look, and no one worth their salt will ever deliberately tell you where to look. Have fun trying to find Waldo.
Until then... the only legal way for me to fucking play Catherine, this amazing goddamn puzzle platformer romantic horror drama thingamajigger from 2011 made by a weebshit gaming company, is Catherine Classic. It's still damn well worth playing... but it's basically swallowing your pride and admitting you need to lower your expectations.
STOP BELLYACHING AND GET ON WITH IT! HOW THE FUCK DO I GET CATHERINE CLASSIC WORKING ON LINUX?
STEP 1: Grab either GE-Proton9-5orGE-Proton9-9. Then move it to $HOME/.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d. Extract the folder, delete the tarball, fully exit Steam and log back into it. Properties -> Compatibility -> Force blah blah blah -> choose GE-Proton9-5 or 9-9, depending on what you downloaded. NO launch args.
STEP 2: Fire up the game. It'll take like at least two or three minutes. It will start and fire up the game window. Make damn sure that you have the Atlus logo appearing from the moment the game launches. If you don't, and it starts with the gorilla logo where pressing any of the buttons doesn't skip the opening logos, something else is afoot. Continuing further will only result in aggravation then disappointment in rapid succession.
STEP 3: Select your difficulty. Graphics settings are optional but it defaults to 720p. Start the game. This is the important litmus test. Only one of two things can happen here.
a) IF YOU SAW THE ATLUS LOGO AT THE VERY BEGINNING WHEN THE GAME LAUNCHED: The game should go from a brief loading screen to the bombastic introduction to Golden Playhouse, then it will pivot into Trisha giving you the rundown of the game's story, then it will pivot into the OP sequence. OP sequence stops, it pivots to Vincent and Katherine in an anime cutscene talking to one another, finally the game should make itself wholly playable to you. All the cutscenes are skippable. Most of the cutscenes play fine. Some of them have weird flickering effects. The actual minute-to-minute gameplay however, should be fine.
b) IF YOUR GAME STARTED IMMEDIATELY WITH THE GORILLA LOGO: You're gonna be stuck in an infinite spin where you can select your difficulty and start the game... but then you get stuck on that first loading screen that says "all the world's a stage" from As You Like It by Shakespeare. It won't ever clear up no matter how long you wait. ALT+F4, delete the WINEPREFIX altogether, and start from the beginning.
STEP 4: I don't fucking know man. Enjoy the game if you got it running. Prematurely bald over the stress of this infernal application not working correctly if you didn't get it running. Somehow get Catherine running on RPCS3 if you've got the wherewithal. I dunno, it's your life man. Not mine.
WILL THIS RUN ON X/Y/Z DISTRO?
Yes, with only one exception. If you're running normal, non-Flatpaked Steam like a sensible person does, this shit will work on literally any goddamn Linux distro under the sun. If you're at the mercy of Flatpaks through the consequences of your own actions, similar principles apply but the directory structure is different. You might need to do some shit in Flatseal. I don't know. You're the one with the Flatpak Steam. I got you like 80% of the way there. Do the remaining 20% of the legwork yourself. This is all with the assumption you're using the most up-to-date drivers your distro carries, your Mesa's good enough, details details. If made it this far deep into my rant, you're already a maladjusted turbosped just like me who's spent more than 6 hours trying to accomplish a minuscule task on your computer. You'll be fine. I trust you to pick up the slack.
Because this place is the only region free from EMMANUELEBASSIUHMUSECASESOYJAK.gif. Oh and I get to call people retards here and I'd just get autobanned on the spot by the naughty word filter on half the public-facing platforms.
