The big 2⁵!

To be fair to macOS, it’s still Unix-based, which at least makes it less miserable for development than Windows.

I would still go for Linux any time, though.

You’re right in some ways; Windows is closer to a microkernel than Linux, though it doesn’t perfectly adhere to the philosophy of - there’s supposedly weird things like drawing calls in the Windows kernel that should be in microservice, I’ve heard

However, I wouldn’t necessarily call microkernels a detriment; in fact, Linux is a bit of an odd duck for going monolithic - modern Apple operating systems also run on a microkernel. Monolithic is an older architecture, and there are worries about the separation between components and system resilience e.g the webcam driver can’t crash the whole kernel.

In practice, it’s less of an issue, and there really aren’t any open source microkernel operating systems that are practical for production desktop and server use, which has a microkernel though there are certainly solutions for embedded systems.

QubesOS is built on Xen hypervisor, which uses a microkernel design, but Linux is then run in multiple VMs on top of it, which makes it more of a technicality in my eyes. RedoxOS also runs on a microkernel and is certainly intended as a desktop operating system, but its hardware support is limited; GNU Hurd is even more limited in that respect and not really usable.

Neat. I love Debian, but its documentation is crap! I hope this works out and I can see an improvement.

I think including the word “OpenAI” in the post name is somewhat a misnomer that implies an encrapification not really happening to the FFMPEG project.

Yes, it is true OpenAI originally developed the Whisper model, and I hate OpenAI; however:

• Whisper is actually open source, unlike most OpenAI crap.
• FFmpeg isn’t even directly using the OpenAI version, written in Python - they’re using a port to C++ called Whisper.cpp
• We’ve been able to use speech recognition for decades, so unlike other AI models, I don’t think a speech recognition model that does it better is problem.
• You don’t even necessarily have to compile FFmpeg with Whisper support.

I get the dislike of AI, but the idea of association with OpenAI is overblown and not really reflective of reality. Now I can get not wanting to use open source projects whose developers don’t reflect your principles; however, I think this ethical issue is more indirect than may initially appear and is not a strong reason to quit using what is still the most effective media conversion tool.

No need to panic in this case. While I hate OpenAI, there’s two things to note here:

• Whisper is an open source library for speech recognition rather than generative AI, run entirely locally. It’s just using ML to do something we could already do with computers (speech recognition), but better.
• They aren’t even directly using the OpenAI version - they’re using whisper.cpp, a port of the model.

Maybe it’s because I only use stable on my laptop with Flatpaks, but honestly, Bookworm never got that crusty to me until recently - it feels like new software versions didn’t introduce a lot of must have features in the past two years. Only hiccup was I had to install the backports kernel to get Wi-Fi working.

I used to use this, but I always found it really janky - window boundaries not updating, weird graphical glitches, etcetera.

It was especially annoying to use with Photoshop and GPU acceleration (I do GPU passthrough to my VM).

In the end, I just abandoned it and just used the monitor the VM’s GPU is plugged into.

As a completely new user who’s self-described as “not very tech savvy”, Arch is probably a terrible idea, and you should switch distros.

I really like Debian, but something like Linux Mint or Fedora might be wiser for you; all three hold your hand more, which would be very important in your case. Fedora and Debian specifically are designed to work well with KDE, although Fedora will have newer versions.

You certainly seem willing to learn (you got through the Arch install process), and I think you still have a great opportunity to enjoy Linux, but considering you’re calling the terminal emulator “Konsole”, your self-description is probably apt. FYI Konsole is just one application to access the terminal, kind of like how Firefox and Chrome are both web browsers, but you don’t use “Chrome” to refer to web browsers.

I’d take a well-maintained native package for my distro over a Flatpak, but sometimes, a Flatpak is just the the easiest way to get the latest version of an application working on Debian without too much tinkering - not always no tinkering, but better than nothing.

This is especially true of GIMP - Flatpak GIMP + Resynthesizer feels like the easiest way to experience GIMP these days. Same with OBS - although I have to weather the Flatpak directory structure, plugins otherwise feel easier to get working than the native package. The bundled runtimes are somewhat annoying, but I’m also not exactly hurting for storage at the moment - I could probaby do to put more of my 2 TB main SSD to use.

I usually just manage Flatpaks from the terminal, though I often have to refresh myself on application URLs. I somewhat wish one could set nicknames so they need not remember the full name.

And that is still largely true - I’m still running XFCE with xorg on Debian, and I think the only issue I’ve had was Waydroid.

Will there come a day where what you say is true? Yes.

However, right now, a more apt example to convey your point is systemd; that’s true for most distros with a lot of community support. Even then, its hold isn’t absolute - Alpine seems like the most livable non-systemd distro, though I could be wrong.

As I’ve commented elsewhere on this post and others have said, this is a change that affects pretty much no one. I didn’t even know MBR (legacy BIOS) partition tables on UEFI boot was possible, honestly.

By no longer putting in the effort to maintain this bit that no one uses, work can be put to something someone uses.

Also, with Linux, specific distros can get encrapified (kind of happened to Ubuntu), but as others have said, there’s usually always another distro to jump to at worst.

For those panicking about it, this is not something you need to worry about. Here’s what this actually does:

Enforce the use of GPT partition tables for all UEFI-based Fedora installations for x86 architecture. This removes support for installing Fedora in UEFI mode on MBR-partitioned disks on x86 systems

You probably have already been using GPT on your UEFI system since you had a UEFI system. Even if you somehow were using MBR, this probably;

1. Won’t break existing installations, as it’s merely support for installs of this type
2. Would not be a problem even if somehow the broke existing installs, as it’s not difficult to convert MBR to GPT.

As much as I resonate with the issues, in this case, this isn’t what they’re doing at all.

This drops support only for UEFI on the MBR partition scheme typically used by a BIOS setup, which I honestly didn’t even know was possible.

This ends support for no hardware - almost all distro installations on UEFI have defaulted to GPT partition tables for a long time.

That’s not what this is saying.

It’s only support for UEFI on the old MBR partition table - GPT partitioning has been the default for ages now.

Also used it before, for Rounds I believe.

You’re right that it was power-related - one of the options was an ASPM modification - but the issue seemed to be common to this chipset accross laptop brands.

The fix I used came from this post: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=286109

My machine was a Thinkpad, but this article was also talking about problems on HP, Asus, etcetera. I think the 8852BE might just be cursed

To be fair, I was using an E series Thinkpad, but in my defense, the E series seems to have improved a lot in the past few years - this was luckily the only issue I’ve had. I’ve had much more difficult times with Linux on other laptops. Heck, even my desktop had more setup than this when I was first starting out, though it was because I was using a Broadcom Wi-Fi card, as I also dual-booted with a Hackintosh and macOS only supports Broadcom Wi-Fi chipsets.

Otherwise agree, but I did run into pain with Realtek on my Thinkpad - the module would sometimes crash and disconnect entirely (on a PCI-e level) from the system.

I did manage to find a fix, but I would not recommend Realtek to someone.

I once experimented with something similar, except it was supported to trigger my smart speaker and drop into another part of the house to tell me.

Honestly, I really need to replace my proprietary smart speaker system with something self-hosted; it’s just I only recently have had the time to start cinsidering.

Vulnerabilities certainly do exist, but I’m pretty sure the attacker has to be well-equipped

I’d call it a protection against data getting cracked in a petty theft, but if your attack vector is much more than that, there are other measures you should probably take. I think Clevis also works with Yubikeys and similar, meaning the system won’t decrypt without it plugged in.

Heck, I think I know someone who just keeps their boot partition with the keys on it on a flash drive and hide it on their person.