• 1 Post
  • 249 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 16th, 2023

help-circle

  • So bizarrely the best experience is to self host and pirate. That’s what you get when the entire entertainment industry is hostile to consumers.

    When Netflix first became big, it was popular because it was a one-stop shop for almost all your content. It was like a big library of content in one place, you pay a reasonable monthly fee and it’s all there. Piracy dipped as a result.

    Now all the content is fragmented into numerous walled gardens you have to pay separate fees to access. People can only consume the same amount but now they have to pay 4 or 5 fees as the content is spread out.

    Unsurprisingly piracy is booming again.



  • It sounds like your system clock may be the issue.You have a system clock inside your device. Linux usually uses the internet to set your clock but still refers to your system clock. If the internet provided time is too far off your system clock it may ignore it and display your system time.

    KDE respects the NTP clock settings used by your linux system, while ironically Gnome does not and does its own thing directly with the time date control. This is probably why you’re now noticing a problem.

    So either your system clock is supposed to be UTC and actually set to local time, or your system clock is correct but your timezone in linux is way off.

    If you use timedatectl status in a terminal it’ll show your current local time, UTC and RTC time, as well as your timezone and whether the RTC is set to your local timezone or UTC. RTC is your hardware clock on your device.

    If “RTC is local tz” says no, then the value for RTC and UTC should be the same, as your hardware clock is set to be the UTC time. And if the UTC time is wrong then your system is uaing your hardware clock to incorrectly work out the UTC. UTC is the 0 timezone worldwide and has an absolute value - its the same for everyone and you can esily.find it with a search engine. If the displayed UTC is wrong on your system, then you’re out of sync with everyone.

    So how to fix it if its wrong:

    One way would be to tell your systen what the hardware clock should be and then set it correct. Use “timedatectl set-local-rtc 1” to make it set to be in your local time zone. Or if you want it to be UTC you can use timedatectl set-local-rtc 0. You can use either but UTC is better.

    That should fix the issue as the network time will now come in correctly.

    But if you wanted you can also manually set the local time and date with timedatectl set-time hh:mm:ss. Once that is set then your RTC should also be changed and be back in sync depending on whether you set it up to be also local or UTC. When you set the local tine it will work out the UTC value based on your timezone. Note if the timezone is wrong it’ll still be wrong!

    If you can’t set the time because NTP (network time) is running, you could.leave it and the clock should now sort itself out. But if you want to force mannually set the time you can turn off NTP if you want: “timedatctl set-ntp false” You could leave it off and set the time manually using “timedatectl set-time hh:mm:ss”

    If still getting NTP error messagss you could also disable the NTP system job temporarily: systemctl disable --now chronyd. Turn it back on afterwards with systemctl enable --now chronyd

    Finally do make sure the timezone is correct. I know you say it is but timedatectl shows you what the system thinks it is, and if ita wrong then rtc/utc will still be wrong as the timezone is used to convert from local time to UTC. You can use timedatectl to change the timezone: timedatectl set-timezone name.

    There are loads of valid timezones but only valid ones will work. Get your local timezones official name online or use timedatectl list-timezones to see all the options. You can filter uaing egrep etc.

    Hopefully that’ll fix the issue for you. You can also boot into your bios and manually set the hardware clock if needs be but linux still needs to know whether its supposed to be utc ir local time.


  • I’d recommend either OpenSuSE or Fedora, both with KDE. They’re big, well supported distros, which should install without issue and provide a slick modern experience. I use OpenSuSE, as I find the YaST system tools convenient and user friendly.

    I’d avoid Ubuntu, multiple issues. Mint is a good distro but I think any big mainstream distro “just works” now, so I’d go for something that uses a slicker desktop. I prefer KDE, which is available on Mint but just isn’t as tightly integrated as their own Cinnamon desktop.




  • A master is the original of something. For example, in the music industry when they printed records, they would print a master record from which duplicates would be made for manufacture. They still use the phrase mastering to describe finalising music in production.

    Master copy has become widely used to mean the original version of something from which other copies are made.

    Apparently the whole concept dates back to the renaissance where artists would learn by copying the works and techniques of a Master artist. Master in that context is referring to someone who is the best at what they do (the most famous renaissance artists are still referred to as the masters), which presumably derives from the honorific Master used to refer to a male teacher in English.

    While perhaps understandable, moving away from Master to Main is based on ignorance of the fact the word has a totally different meaning and origin to master/slave. Ironically master/slave is also used in engineering and computer hardware to describe the relationship between a controlling piece of hardware and it’s subordinates, but that is nothing to do with the source of truth use of master which comes from the concept of a master being the best at something (or now the best version of something).



  • Yes it’s fairly simple to do, essentially the user needs to download an image of a Linux install disc, flash it onto a USB stick (or a Dvd I guess), and then reboot their PC. They may need to press a key at boot to open the boot menu and select the USB (or the bios to change the boot order).

    After that, most distros offer a very easy to follow installer which will install the new OS.

    Most Linux installs can be done alongside windows (on the same hard drive or it’s own drive) but windows tends to break the boot loader with updates. It’s gernallt better to only dual boot if you’re good at fixing things - otherwise a full Linux install is better.

    The most inportant thing is back up all your important data, and only do this if you genuinely want to leave windows. I’d make sure your windows license is digital before doing this too as that allows using windows again if you want to go back.

    I’d say anyone can use Linux, it’s user friendly and robust. In terms of installing Linux, I’d only do it if you are sure you know what you’re doing - installing any OS - including windows - can involved trouble shooting problems.


  • I know it’s supposed to be a little tongue in cheek but in reality: if you have a steam deck and like it, just dock it to your TV and you have a low powered steam machine.

    I have a deck but got a MiniPC and have that plugged into my TV. Essentially a steam machine.

    Why? I wanted to game at 4k (the deck can do it but struggles), I wanted more convenience (I had to unlock my steam deck on its front face before I could use it which was annoying if I wanted to game from the sofa), i wanted to play more powerful games at higher settings generally (not just 4k, but simulations games that need more cpu and ram to play well so I wanted a more powerful machine). I also make more extensive use of the desktop mode and use it for browsing and streaming - it’s become an all-in-one device in a way Microsoft or Sony failed to achieve.

    I don’t think the Steam Machine will be as big as the deck, but it’ll have a decent market. If you want a mobile gaming platform get the deck, but the subset who only really wanted to living room game will be better off with a steam machine. The real competition for the steam machine is other living room PCs.

    I do think Valve could to with adding an app store in their client for installing progressive Web apps. Because being able to stream video content easily from within steam itself opens all their devices into being multimedia machines.


  • I’ve tried Arch - it allows you to make a system that is exactly what you want. So no bloat installing stuff you never need or use. It also gives you absolute control.

    On other distros like Fedora, you get a pre configured system set up for a wide range of users. You can reduce down the packages somewhat but you will often have core stuff installed that is more than you’ll need as it caters to everyone.

    Arch allows you to build it yourself, and only install exactly the things you actually want, and configure then exactly how you want.

    Also you learn an awful lot about Linux building your system in this way.

    I liked building an arch system in a virtual machine, but I don’t think I could commit to maintaining an arch install on my host. I’m happy to trade bloat for a “standard” experience that means I can get generic support. The more unique your system the more unique your problems can be I think. But I can see the appeal of arch - “I made this” is a powerful feeling.


  • I think the new device is good news. I can see what you’re saying - the benefit is if Steam Machines expand the PC games market with former console only players. But otherwise the threshold for PC development is already much lower than consoles; there are no dev kit fees, a wide choice of engines to target, relatively greater independence etc.

    The steam machine may help somewhat in having a specific hardware profile to target, but the games are still on steam’s store so still have to be able to run widely on Windows or Linux. That’s always been the complexity of PC development - the steam machine doesn’t change that much. Although admittedly the Steam Verified benchmarks are useful for users to simplify understanding what their kit can actually run which will benefit indie devs.


  • For me it seems to be when you go through to download the windows binary, you get an iframe on the page containing another site. That has ads and serves up the download. So I’m guessing the ads are on the website that provides videolan with hosting for its binaries?

    They are old fashioned intrusive ads pretending you need to click then to start your download. But the download starts already.


  • Tesla’s share price is a joke - it’s entirely predicated on the wishful fulfilment of a drugged up narcissist. Judged as a car company - which is what it is - it’s in terminal decline, with global falling sales, no new products and a major image problem. Elons other companies are spending money to buy up excess Cyber truck stock to inflate its performance and even that’s not enough. Yet it’s shares continue to soar based on nonsensical promises by its clown in chief.

    Tesla won’t be selling robotaxis because Elon Musk in his infinite wisdom forced the company to slash the tech in his cars. That made them cheaper but it also made them unable to compete with the safer lidar focused tech of his competitors.

    Meanwhile it’s “robots” are remote controlled nonsense; tesla doesn’t have the tech to back up it’s ambition.

    Elon won’t be getting his trillion dollar payout. When the AI bubble pops, Tesla’s share price will also collapse.



    • OS - - > Linux OpenSuSE with KDE

    • YouTube - - > Freetube - opensource, private YouTube client for Linux, MacOS and Windows

    • Downloading music/videos --> yt-dlp

    • Downloading videos/images --> gallery-dl

    • Email - - > Thunderbird (really moved forward in last few years)

    • Notes - - > Joplin

    Selfhosting (mine is on raspberry pi) :

    • Streaming library - Jellyfin

    • Photo library - imich

    • Downloads - qbittorrent, prowlaar, radaar, sonaar, lazy librarian in a docker stack with VPN

    • smart home - Homeassistant

    • filesync - - > Syncthing (I don’t have problems with long file names - maybe a Windows issue or Linux FS? I use EXT4 on all my devices and don’t use Windows anymore)