MacOS is a BSD, so go with Linux if you want variety.

I heard it in a podcast, but here’s a written source on that: https://fedoramagazine.org/pipewire-1-0-an-interview-with-pipewire-creator-wim-taymans/

The message is still to use the PulseAudio and JACK APIs. They are proven and they work and they are fully supported.

I know some projects now use the pw-stream API directly. There are some advantages for using this API such as being lower latency than the PulseAudio API and having more features than the JACK API. The problem is that I came to realize that the stream API (and filter API) are not the ultimate APIs. I want to move to a combination of the stream and filter API for the future.

Switching over to the discrete GPU work in the efi/bios might help. Optimus (the driver that chooses between discrete and integrated) is known to be a steaming pile.

PipeWire wins in the feature-set game, which is why it is being preferred over PulseAudio.

According to the inventor of PipeWire, this is the wrong perspective to take. PipeWire is preferred over PulseAudio as a server, clients (apps) should continue to use the PulseAudio/JACK APIs because the PipeWire API is not designed for general use (it’s designed for things like pipewire-pulse and pipewire-jack).

I’m not a fan of Rider, it’s just that OmniSharp outright breaks on large/real-world projects and Visual Studio doesn’t work on Linux. I don’t use their products out of choice.

The biggest hurdle to open sourcing proprietary stuff is often 3rd party code, but we can indeed hope.

What do you mean? Apple doesn’t have a package manager at all. Brew is a fucking mess that takes ages to do anything.

I use NixOS on my personal machine and nixpkgs on my work Ubuntu (22.04 LTS). In the absence of NixOS I would not be using it: it somehow breaks all the file (open, save, etc.) windows, causing any app that tries to open one to crash (particularly annoying for browsers).

Not to mention the wrapGL issue.

It needs more polish on “genericlinux”. I did previously use it on MacOS, and it did make MacOS almost bearable - definitely years ahead of brew.

GPU drivers. It uses the Ubuntu 22.04 (LTS) userspace side of drivers. Could be incompatible with your kernel. Had all sorts of graphical weirdness with my AMD GPU with flatpak Steam.

Silverblue doesn’t solve the same problems as Nix, or Ansible for that matter. I built my own in the past and it was non-trivial - although the CI process could pair quite nicely with Ansible. IMHO the primary advantage of Silverblue is that updates are a download, with practically zero work to do after the download has completed (this is a very big deal for RPM-based systems because an update boot can take a long time).

As for Ansible vs Nix, try switching from one program to another across all your machines. It’s doable but not fun. Now try switching back across all your machines. Nix makes your system equal a configuration, it does not add configuration.

Probably less resource intensive: https://conduit.rs/.

Things have changed since those days fam. For example, if you install Steam on Ubuntu (snaps) today it’s highly likely to break. If you want a solid Ubuntu recommendation go with the downstreams: Mint, PopOS, etc.

It probably won’t do anything less than 32bit, so that’s at least one thing C is good for.

I have used both C and Rust for embedded. Rust is significantly more enjoyable. https://embassy.dev/

C is good for nothing.

This is basically what I want done, composting and then burial under a redwood sapling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_composting

I had a really bad experience with a $30 hand scanner and Brother support (they included the wrong size calibration sheet in the packaging and refused to replace it, and were assholes/user blaming about it). I definitely did not want to deal with that for a $400 printer/scanner combo. I went with Xerox 6515 instead, which has been going solid for 4 years - black toner is at 25%, the rest are mostly full. I have never used it with USB, only Ethernet (plugged in network). Works great with Windows, Linux, and Mac. The scanner does great work.

Cheap printers are cheap because they make up the cost with ink. If you want something decent then bite the bullet and fork over more cash upfront. A printer designed for corporate/office work will typically be more durable - but buyer beware, may have “features” that only look good on a sales presentation. Do your research, avoid cloud storage/fax/etc.

I also got my godmother an Epson Ecotank, due to simplicity. It has been going swimmingly. Their “innovation” is (massive, mind you) refillable tanks in the printer, you must buy bottles of ink. That makes ink DRM impossible, but their ink is cheap enough that bootleg ink is unnecessary.

If you can’t afford a more expensive printer right now then take trips to your local FedEx/whatever and put some money each time you do towards a decent printer. DO NOT get a temporary cheap printer, ink will easily cost you the same as a decent printer over a short period of time.

Yep. With the 1999 MP3 quality, arbitrary intro tunes, and everything. Such a pity, Play Music was extremely good.

Try running your file manager or something else that displays icons from the terminal, it may log error messages.

Turns out electronics and moisture don’t go well together.

This has been a serious concern of mine. In the event that I prematurely die I have everything set up with automatic updates, so that hopefully my family can continue to use the self-hosted services without me.

Nextcloud will not stop shitting the bed. I’d give it a few months at most if I died, at which point my family would likely turn back to Google Drive.

I’m looking for a more reliable alternative, even if it’s not as feature-rich.