sbeak
@sbeak@sopuli.xyz
Hi, I’m sbird! I like programming and am interested in Physics. I also have a hobby of photography.
- Comment on How do I change my pfp? 1 day ago:
Summit does indeed support pfp changes! You go to the profile icon and select the gear to find Lemmy web preferences
- Comment on How do I change my pfp? 1 day ago:
- Submitted 2 days ago to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world | 38 comments
- Comment on Astronomers found clusters of new moons around Jupiter and Saturn, taking their total moon counts to 101 and 285, respectively 3 days ago:
Luna, our moon, is the 5th largest moon in the Solar System. Still quite impressive given the size of Earth compared to the Jovian planets. The largest four are Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, and Io. Both Ganymede and Titan are larger than the planet Mercury, which is quite interesting indeed, and Titan also has a dense atmosphere, the only moon with one of those! Callisto is a bit smaller and Mercury but still mightly large, and it has plenty of cool craters on its surface, Wikipedia says it’s the oldest in the Solar System. Io is potato-coloured and is very volcanic, and everyone knows volcanos are cool. Wikipedia says it’s also the densest satellite in the Solar System with the strongest surface gravity!
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 3 days ago:
But I must say, I am envious of those who are able to run LineageOS, mobile Linux, etc.
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 3 days ago:
I will say, even with the Chinese ROM, I feel like I can use so much more software and have better access to my device than my old iPhone. For one, I can connect the USB with my computer and share files quickly, and F-Droid has so many cool apps that work, and in many cases look, awesome! Being able to use different default apps, use a different launcher, and customise the icons easily with an icon pack (Apple’s sorry excuse for icon theming isn’t all that great, all you get is either a glassy colour or glassy glass)
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 3 days ago:
If I do ever switch to a new phone (which won’t be for several years, since my phone is relatively new) I would probably go for a phone that I know is supported by LineageOS or perhaps iodeOS. This would probably be a Fairphone (likely a used model) given that I really want to support their mission for fairer materials and more repairable electronics.
I could also try going for a strange little Linux phone, just for fun.
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 3 days ago:
Using a Vivo smartphone (the Chinese ROM) for its good cameras (once you disable all the AI “enhancements” to the zoom that makes it all look like a messy oil painting). The OS spin is, in a word, pretty garbage. There’s unfortunately no LineageOS support for my device it seems like.
It’s got some neat features, but there’s a whitelist for SMS apps, meaning I was stuck with the stock one. Additionally, it pops up a security warning whenever you install any app that isn’t verified by Vivo, but it doesn’t hamper my ability to install apps from F-Droid and Obtainium too much.
Using NextDNS with a few blocklists shows that it phones home to Vivo constantly, Vivo-related links are far and above blocked by NextDNS over anything else on my devices. Not very good for privacy, like at all. It also tells me off for having private DNS and assumes that it’s the problem whenever there’s a change in the network connection.
I am currently using the Kvaesitso launcher (and I know many like Lawnchair, but I favour the more efficient search-based interface of Kvaesitso) and for a long while it randomly switched me back to the stock launcher. The swipe up gesture also sent me to the home launcher like Kvaesitso was running as an app. It turns out that there’s a hidden option in settings to disable that, but it took a lot of looking around online to figure that out. With Kvaesitso, much of the oddities of OriginOS work out better (like the advertisements and Baidu results in the global search). I also disabled the “Origin Island” since it only worked for Spotify and nothing else I used, as well as a few other bits that I didn’t really need.
If you want a neat phone that is good for user privacy and all that, Chinese ROM phones aren’t the way to go, but dang the camera hardware run circles around anything Apple and Samsung can produce. If you want something that supports custom ROMs, there’s of course Fairphones, which are super repairable and use fair materials and labour, but there’s plenty of other devices that support LineageOS, iodeOS, e/OS, etc. If you really want to become independent of Google you could also try a phone that supports mobile Linux (like the OnePlus 6)
I do have photos backed up with Immich, and it works quite well!
- Comment on What does DLSS do, and what's up with DLSS 5? 5 days ago:
Nvidia’s software bits for upscaling (game plays with lower resolution, GPU does funny things to make it look higher resolution), frame insertion (in a nutshell, creating fake frames in between real frames to make gameplay look smoother), and similar. Many of the features require game support though, so many games are unable to utilise the more advanced features. These can also result in a degradation in quality and increased latency.
DLSS 4 introduced multi frame gen, where up to three fake frames were made for every one. It doesn’t magically make you have 4x the performance (so no, the 5070 is not the performance of the 4090), but it’s still pretty neat tech.
DLSS 5 is being criticised as it’s “enhancing” video game graphics to look like AI-generated images that look more “cinematic” and “photorealistic”. To quote an IGN article, “I think it looks shit.” (ign.com/…/nvidias-dlss-5-is-a-slap-in-the-face-to…)
In other words, it’s removing the human element of game graphics and nobody likes it.
- Comment on How do Superheroes or villians get their suits on is there like a magical zipper or something? Or how do they do it? 1 week ago:
Depends on the superhero. Many just change by spinning around really fast, like magic or something. Spider-man puts it on like swimwear, while Iron Man gives all the parts of his armour rockets that fly to his body (and eventually I think it’s nanobots that form the suit)
- Comment on stages of mitosis 1 week ago:
what the heck this is just a funny mitosis haha no need to bring in existential crisis
- Comment on Password manager woes. How have you solved syncing on Android? 1 week ago:
Personally, I use Keepass with syncthing and it works fine enough. If you don’t really trust the new person behind Syncthing-Fork, you could always install the older version before the handover (I think before v3.4?). If you really don’t trust syncthing at all, you could just manually back it up. New passwords aren’t made every day, so you could just copy the passwords database over between your devices whenever there’s a change. That’s what I did before I heard about syncthing, and is what I do with my music still, since I don’t regularly update what music I listen to.
- Comment on What is this red Arch Linux logo? 2 weeks ago:
today I learned about this different arch logo that happens to have a red arch, what a masterpiece
- Comment on What is this red Arch Linux logo? 2 weeks ago:
Looking up that, it looks pretty similar. The current one has a sword right through the middle, perhaps that was added later? I couldn’t find anything online about a swordless blackarch logo though. This seems like the closest answer - but why have an old blackarch logo and no regular arch logo?
- Comment on What is this red Arch Linux logo? 2 weeks ago:
It has the same shape as the Arch logo though, as well as the little scratches on either side. It’s just red for some reason
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world | 8 comments
- Comment on What is Radicale and how do I use it? 2 weeks ago:
I personly used Radicale. You have to click the plus icon to create a new calendar, then if you use an app that supports CalDAV (I personally use Thunderbird on desktop and Dav5x + Etar on Android) you can sync the calendars easily. Very nice!
- Comment on Do you stick to the same linux distro across your devices? 2 weeks ago:
For me, I am running EndeavourOS on my laptop (for its rolling release updates and its customisability) and Debian on my homeserver (for its stability). I have also set up a secondary laptop with Linux Mint that is now being used by somebody else for its ease of use :)
- Comment on How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged? 2 weeks ago:
Oh that is a good bit of evidence!
- Comment on How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged? 2 weeks ago:
I will note that indeed. Don’t worry, they do believe that the Earth is round, they’re not that nuts!
- Comment on How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged? 3 weeks ago:
That was really helpful, thanks! I will try bring up some of those points in the future. Makes sense that going to the moon is expensive especially given that NASA’s budget is so much smaller now.
- Comment on How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged? 3 weeks ago:
Woah that is kind of insane, I did not know that the modern budget was that much lower! :0
- Comment on How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged? 3 weeks ago:
They don’t say that it was definitively faked, but claims that there isn’t enough evidence that it was not. They say that “we will see” once China lands on the moon.
- Comment on Self-hostable multiplayer Parchis game 🎲 3 weeks ago:
This project seems pretty neat! I appreciate that you are upfront that it is AI-assisted (some projects don’t do that and get grilled for it), I might check it out!
- Comment on How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged? 3 weeks ago:
Okay that is actually kind of cool. I never knew this was done! I am anticipating that they would ask whether they were placed by humans or rovers/landers/non-human methods, so was it possible (at the time) to put these retroreflectors on the moon without human intervention? I’m assuming, like the collection of moon rocks, it was not (otherwise why would they bother with having humans doing it with all that human error?)
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world | 126 comments
- Comment on W10 EoL and possibly switching to Linux (various tech questions) 3 weeks ago:
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Yes, that is correct, if repositories of proprietary repositories is asked (on distros that only install open-source software by default, like Fedora), you should enable that for Nvidia and Steam. This won’t have any downside really, it just lets you install a few proprietary/closed-source software. It won’t even significantly take up more space either, as what it’s essentially doing is telling the app installer manager to check these URLs in addition to the default ones when searching for things to install. If you don’t select this option then you won’t be able to install Nvidia drivers or Steam without manually adding the repos in the menu hidden somewhere. If you are going with a gaming specific distro they might also have an Nvidia-specific version for you to download.
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LearnLinuxTV, the YouTube channel, is super useful, as well as Veronica Explains (who has both Peertube and YouTube channels)
Bread on Penguins is another channel I follow and they recommend a bunch of neat little command line tools and tips and tricks regarding the shell (like RMPC, which I really like as a music player!)
Most importantly, always read the documentation! Of your distro and of the software you are using. It can really help a lot!
Another thing, even if you don’t use Arch, ArchWiki has excellent documentation on a lot of things that apply to all Linux users.
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- Comment on W10 EoL and possibly switching to Linux (various tech questions) 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, the people there are really knowledgeable when it comes to Linux! I always get good answers there
- Comment on W10 EoL and possibly switching to Linux (various tech questions) 3 weeks ago:
Some more tips if you end up switching to Linux, specifically on methods of installing programs (because that can be confusing)
There are five main options to install programs on Linux:
- The ones packaged for your specific family of distro (like .deb for Debian based distros, .rpm for Fedora/RHEL based distros). These will work the best and should be your default.
- Flatpak, a universally compatible Linux app format that most desktop programs support. They have what’s called “sandboxing”, which basically means that apps don’t have full system-wide access by default. This can be annoying for some applications, but with a bit of configuration it seems that you can get it working. Additionally,
- AppImage, another universally compatible format. This one is more similar to a standalone exe on Windows, where it doesn’t install itself anywhere, it just runs as a program. Optionally you can get a program called “AppImageLauncher” which handles the “installing” part (e.g. adding entry in the applications menu, moving it to an applications directory) if you need that.
- Executable w/ some other stuff wrapped in a tar.gz (Linux equivalent of .zip, both formats work but tar.gz will remember Linux-specific information like symlinks and can offer better compression too I think). The executable usually doesn’t have a specific file extension. This would be similar to installing a portable application in a zip file on Windows.
- There are also snap files, but the community doesn’t really like them since they are sourced from a centralised and not-so-open repository controlled by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and it isn’t as widely adopted as Flatpak. Unless no other alternatives exist, I wouldn’t really go for this option.
Most distros have a graphical user interface to install programs, usually letting you install programs via either specific packages (like rpm for Fedora) or via Flatpak. You can also install those two through the command line (“sudo apt/dnf install [name]” and “flatpak install [name]”, note that flatpak doesn’t require admin privileges! You can update programs using “sudo apt update” and “sudo apt upgrade” on Debian-based distros, “sudo dnf update” on Fedora-based distros, and “flatpak update” with Flatpak. You need to update repos and then upgrade packages separately on Debian-based distros, while on Fedora with dnf it is done with just one command)
You can also go to the website/git repo of the software you wish to install and download the respective file to manually install stuff, as well as to get programs that come in AppImage or as tar.gz archives.
The community can’t agree on which distro is the best, because there is no best. They’re all good. Pick and choose! Personally, I have used Fedora, Linux Mint, and am currently using EndeavourOS. As long as your hardware is compatible and you aren’t using something super unstable, you should have a good experience.
For beginners, I would recommend either Linux Mint (Cinnamon) or Fedora (Workstation/GNOME or KDE, other DE spins also exist), which faster release than Mint, so it’s better for newer hardware. These are the ones I’ve personally used and was happy with. I have not yet used Bazzite, Nobara, or similar gaming-oriented distros. Nobara is a fork of Fedora that is gaming-centric, and it seems that most people are happy with it. Bazzite is also Fedora based, but it’s an atomic distro, meaning there’s some stuff you can’t do on the system (which can be good, less likely to bork it, but also bad, as it gives you less control and there are limitations on what stuff you can install)
Although Pop! OS used to be a recommended option (you can find it in a few articles here and there) they are currently transitioning to their new DE called COSMIC, which sounds really cool but is a bit buggy it seems, given that it only recently went into beta, so it needs a bit more time in the oven. Just a note so you don’t do a Linus Tech Tips and translate a bad experience with buggy COSMIC as a bad experience on Linux.
If you want to experiment and don’t mind tinkering a bit to fix issues with a more unstable distro, you could try out a rolling release distribution. If you’re a beginner simply looking for an alternate OS and don’t want to do that, I wouldn’t recommend these. You of course have the Arch-based ones, like EndeavourOS (which is more standard) and CachyOS (which has gaming optimisations) that are easier to install than vanilla Arch Linux, but you also have openSUSE Tumbleweed, which sounds like a decent option. I currently use EndeavourOS as there were a few specific software that I wanted to try that were built for Arch-based distros but weren’t built for non-Arch distros (like rmpc, an awesome mpd music player which requires manual building if you don’t use Arch), and I also wanted to experiment with being on the “bleeding edge” of software. The package manager on Arch is called “pacman”, and you can get the loading bar when installing programs to look like a yellow C pacman eating little dots rather than through hashes (e.g. [#### ]), it’s amazing!
What are the differences between GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon? Those are desktop environments, and most distros allow you to interchange between them since Linux is super modular! I started out with Fedora Workstation, which uses GNOME, and I was able to install KDE Plasma and then after remove GNOME. If you want, you can install multiple DEs and switch between them from the login screen (but then you would get duplicated system apps, like file managers and stuff). Different desktop environments give you a different user interface with different features and theming options, and it truly is simply which one you like more! GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon are the most established options, but you also have ones like XFCE and MATE.
Between the “big three”, GNOME is the most “minimal” with lots of padding and it looks very nice (but some people hate it), especially when you install apps that match its aesthetic, but is not as customisable by default (it’s kind of like macOS in a way where you need to install extensions and apps to add additional functionality). KDE Plasma is the most feature-rich and customisable out of the box, so much so that some people have mentioned that there could be too many options. It’s really polished and intuitive to use, and their default Breeze theme (which is more boxy and contrasty) looks equally good as GNOME’s libadwaita, it’s just a matter of taste. I personally use KDE for its extensive theming options, you can really make it looks like anything you want! Cinnamon is Linux Mint’s homegrown DE. It’s somewhere in the middle in terms of customisability, and out of the box (!), it is the most similar to the Windows 10 interface.
- Comment on W10 EoL and possibly switching to Linux (various tech questions) 3 weeks ago:
Last year I switched to Linux, so I’m a recent “convert” and have learned a lot. I would highly recommend moving to Linux over paying Microsoft more money!
1a) As far as I understand, Linux is usually installed using ext4 or btrfs, while Windows uses NTFS by default.
1b) Most programs should work fine through Wine, and the ones that don’t usually might have a few visual glithchs or simply crash. Usually there isn’t loss of data, unless you’re running a program where you are editing, say, a document, and it crashes before you are able to save (that would count as lost data. There are a bunch of Linux-native document editors though so that wouldn’t be a problem)
1c) To copy bookmarks, you can export them as an HTML file. Specific settings can be easily synced with Firefox sync or, if you don’t want to make a Mozilla account, I think you can also just copy the profile directory (go to about:support and there’s a button to open the directory) or the stuff in that directory that you want to keep, quite handy!
1d) Aside from .exe (and similar Windows-specific stuff, like .msi for installers), most file types should work fine (PDFs, images, videos, MS Office files, audio, all that should work!). Even some extensions related to proprietary software (like .ai for Adobe Illustrator files) can sometimes work with Linux-native apps (like Inkscape) but there might be compatibility bugs here and there.
1e) Everything stored on the USB isn’t saved in a live boot environment, it’s meant for you to test out the feel of the operating system, see if WiFi/Bluetooth/etc work, that sort. I highly recommend trying Linux distributions in a live environment first as you can test basic compatibility as well as see if you like the desktop experience (e.g. if you are deciding between GNOME, KDE Plasma, and Cinnamon)
1f) Linux is thought to be more secure not just because it has a lower desktop market share, but also because it’s open-source (meaning anyone can check the code for vulnerabilities and exploits). This is one of the reasons why Linux has a very high server market share. They do exist, so you still have to be mindful as with any operating system!!!
If you accidentally run Windows malware through Wine, unless it’s some really sophisticated stuff, it is unlikely that it will spread to your Windows drive. Even if it was likely, it’s not really a reason to not go with Linux, as Windows malware would be worse on Windows.
1g) Most distributions have the option for including Nvidia graphics drivers, but do your research as there are some cards that don’t have great compatibility. If you have very new hardware, I would recommend you go for a distribution that has a faster release cycle (like Fedora or, if you’re a tinkerer, a rolling release option like Arch-based distros) over ones that have slower ones (like Debian or Ubuntu-based distros).
If you go for Fedora, make sure to enable “third-party repositories” or “proprietary repositories” when installing the distro, as it is needed to install Nvidia drivers, Steam, and a few other things, and the option becomes hidden in a bunch of menus if you don’t click that during the setup screen. I did not select this option when installing Fedora, so it took me ages to find out how to install Steam. Don’t make the same mistake as me!
