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  • 235 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: April 26th, 2025

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  • never once succeeded in any meaningful way that I’m confident I can lose the thing and restore it on another device.

    I do a full backup. transfer the backup file to the other phone. initiate restore - errors, incomplete data, apps are never to rarely transferred, a total mess. phones aren’t the same but are similar (SDM845) and the same LOS 22.2 with microG and magisk.










  • I have it running for one client (as opposed to double-digits of prosody/XMPP and synapse/Matrix) and for their very limited use case, it works. I haven’t attempted converting anyone else over there and I think there are two main concerns for wider adoption.

    uno, I happen to know a bit about the infra it’s running on, basically a dovecot/postfix/postgresql stack for the majority of cases. that thing, although battle tested and widely documented and supported, isn’t without its quirks for the intended use as an instant messenger. there are issues with long-running those services and amateur-hosting those things is a challenge. e.g. each “message” you send is essentially a separate e-mail, and so is the reply, and so on (completely obscured for the enduser). so, in 15 minutes of “chatting”, you’re creating entries in a mailbox that would take months to fill.

    dos, the client apps have bad UX and are downright spartan compared to the eye-candy-rich counterparts like Telegram or iMessage, thus hampering adoption from unmotivated users; the users had to be forced (as cajoling didn’t work) to use the thing for its intended purpose and not take their correspondence to accustomed message platforms.

    so, both those things can be worked around but I’d caution anyone to not jump headfirst without testing things out thoroughly.


  • what you describe would be an ardous journey… if the mentioned macbooks cost like $500. or $1000. truly, that sorta thing is nothing short of masochistic and no sane person should bother with that.

    you’re making broad statements based on very shitty hardware - 4 gig dual-core laptop isn’t a very representative experience when you can get solid workstations for pocket change.

    the macbooks I get are in the $20 region and for that kinda “money” I get absolute top-notch quality hardware, that, although dated, is more than adequate for the vast majority of uses. spending a coupla minutes to tweak it post-install isn’t a huge price to pay.

    here’s my headless 2014 MBP (i7-4770HQ with 16 GB, Intel Iris) doing its thing. was sold “for parts” due to busted screen for $25 ($40 asking).

    so, yeah, dicking around with broadcom’s stack is a thing, but it’s a thing that you do once and then it just works. I’m as bleeding edge as reasonably possible (F43) on all models I run and I haven’t got any issues, akmod builds the driver on every kernel install, which if you’re doing actual work on the thing isn’t something you’re doing often.

    as to how to install without LAN, you use your Android phone and tether its Wifi via USB. after five minutes (full system upgrade, install broadcom-wl via rpmfusion for e.g. Fedora) you’re done. or, use the netinstall thing the same way. there’s also a buncha stuff needed to make the experience better (undervolt, LID0 wake events, etc)

    not sure about Airs but MBP 2015 models (possibly 2013/14 as well) can be retrofitted with a $5 adapter board that lets you fit a regular Intel M.2 NGFF in there, eliminating the tainted kernel issue.



  • can’t give the thing out as-is, there’s a buncha stuff in there pertaining to our infra. restructuring and refactoring it (the thing doesn’t even use roles, just a gargantuan yml file with tasks) is long overdue and I thought your query would be the thing that pushes me over the line to finally do it, but after an hour with it I gave up it’s just too big of a mess.

    I had the same path as you, was irritated that maintaining idempotency of the existing bash scripts was such a huge task, so started piece by piece, one task, test, add another, etc. mainly by following jeff geerling’s guides and then venturing out on my own by reading the official docs. tried utilizing bullshitgpt on a coupla occasions, but the thing constantly made up shit that doesn’t exist costing me time I ain’t got, so I gave up on it.


  • 400+ installs in the past four years - discarded/donated business laptops that get fixed, cleaned, upgraded with cheapest SSDs and donated to predominantly tech illiterate users.

    99% is ubuntu lts + ansible playbook that removes snap, disables A TON of update naggings, installs flatpak, coupla apps and systemd timer to autoupdate all flatpaks. this is the only thing that has low support requests, everything else we tried (mint, debian, fedora) has a disproportionately higher support request frequency (reinstalls, wifi, fix this, remove that, etc).

    I totally could adapt debian to be as good or even better (fedora with the bi-annual versions is right out), but one of the important caveats is the user being able to install it with minimum hassle if needed and that just would not be doable.

    I’d urge everyone ITT to look at the thing through the user’s eyes and not get lost in “no true scottsman” fallacies. the goal is to convert a user over, not to demonstrate how cool you are. once they know what’s what, you can sell them on fedora and atomic and whatnot, but not as a first step.

    I don’t use ubuntu, have it on none of my stuff, and wouldn’t go out with you if you do. but it’s presently the only option for beginners for use on laptops that has a semblance of a modern desktop OS.


  • all the fascist bullshit aside, this is a project from a dude that was a decades long apple fanboy and discovered linux like yesterday has zero clue on how to do things well because he’s a Maverick Trailblazer and what do the little people know this is the way and whatnot so I guess yeah we is back at the fascist thing and yeah stay away.




  • all my hardware is recycled trash, so I ain’t got experience with those modern 12th gens, but what worked (and phenomenally so) for my old heaps is implementing suspend-then-hibernate, a feature that’s off by default and you gotta put in some leg work to make it work, especially on fedora due to zram.

    this works reliably on every platform I tried - sandybridge macbooks, coffeelake and ryzen zen plus thinkpads, etc. regardless of UEFI sleep support. you leave it in standby and if you don’t touch for, say, an hour, it dumps the RAM to SSD and turns off all power - zero battery drain! when you “wake” it, it restores RAM from the SSD and gives you your lock screen login and this is faster than cold boot and all your shit is how you left it!

    once it works, it works like a mac - you leave your laptop for hours, days, weeks and comes back up how you left it, with the battery barely losing a percentage point.