This isn’t really meant to be a hate post or “linux sucks” kind of thing, in fact I like Linux (EndeavourOS being my distro of choice). This post is more about the little things that nobody really talks about when comparing OS’s, but then you face them and they can be a dealbreaker or a pain in the neck.

This weekend I decided to try running CachyOS in my gaming desktop. For quick context, my desktop is dedicated to gaming, everything else I do on my laptop. The desktop is plugged to a 1080p 60hz monitor and a 4k 120hz TV (hz relevant for later), uses sunshine for streaming, and also Virtual Desktop for my meta quest.

So, I grab the USB and plug it into the PC. Turn it on and here comes the first issue: the background image appears and nothing else.

Well, my first suspicion due to a similar issue I had with ubuntu a decade ago, must be the Nvidia GPU causing issues. Without investigating further, I restarted the PC and used the legacy mode. The resolution was extremely low in my monitor, but it was manageable. Installed the thing and restarted.

Once the PC is back on, the login screen appears. I input the pass, enter and…. Exact same issue. Background image, no UI whatsoever.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time here, investigating the error. Checking the drivers, etc.

But long story short: the actual problem was that my monitor was the second screen, the TV was the primary. The desktop was outputting to both screens. The UI was on the TV.

I curse myself for not remembering that this may have been it, but in my defense:
1- the terminal commands that appear when turning on the OS appeared in my monitor
2- the legacy mode worked on my monitor
3- on windows, the OS is smart enough to figure out which screen is turned on, so I was used to it automatically outputting to the correct screen

Well, once I fixed that, here came the second (small) issue:
Scaling is broken.

Windows used to have this problem but nowadays, when you change screen Windows does a good job scaling things, despite some issues with some apps. At the very least, you won’t get blurry windows.

On KDE… Yeah. Blurry all around. I don’t have a habit of swapping screens mid session, so I could live with it.

Then came the third issue:
KDE is limited by the lower highest possible framerate in both screens. Meaning, on my TV, I was stuck with the 60hz because of my monitor

From what I found out, this is not exclusive to KDE and seems to be a problem with Nvidia. Regardless, for me it was a dealbreaker. In my case, Windows can use the respective framerate of each screen, while Linux can’t.

As I said, this is where I threw the towel and went back to windows. Which is really a pity because I really don’t like where Windows 11 is going, but it’s something I can live with as long it doesn’t get in the way between me and gaming.

Meanwhile Linux, because of these little things, introduced more issues than rewards for my use case, thus why I can’t jump to it on my desktop.

I'm buying a WiFi router for a new house. What would we get from using a router that works with OpenWRT, versus just going with Wirecutter's top pick?

Since we upgraded to fiber, I'm pretty happy with the network speeds at our current house. We don't have WiFi 6. I'm fairly unlikely to mess with advanced networking features as long as the networking just works.

The new house will also have fiber. The previous owners left us some kind of mesh networking devices, which I need to go look at tomorrow.

If we did go with OpenWRT, is there any particular recommended hardware?

This is just a random thought I had. I don't do gardening currently and not looking for advice per se. Just thinking about how the physical world feels far behind in terms of automation compared to the digital world, and wondering what kind of possibilities are out there. I was wondering how close we are to having consumer-form-factor robots to help with various things, and growing food is a natural starting place.

I was imagining what kind of robots are needed to deal with a garden—assuming a house with a plot of land suitable for a large garden—with tasks like:

• Fetching water, either from plumbed water or a natural water source
• Getting seeds from somewhere. Maybe online shopping and then the robot knowing how to open the box. (Probably not by identifying existing plants and picking/stealing them.)
• Planting the seeds in the right place
• Watering the plants regularly
• Maintaining temperature and sun exposure
• Digging up the plant and bringing it indoors so I can inspect or smell it without having to go outside. Then replanting it safely.
• Determining when food is ripe, picking it, reusing the seeds
• Washing and cooking it

It feels like a lot of these are already available off-the-shelf today. I searched and there is a project which I hadn't heard of before called FarmBot which seems neat and geared toward enthusiasts ("prosumers") and education, and includes open source hardware and software. To be clear I'm not affiliated with them in any way.

FarmBot probably handles a lot of the important parts of gardening, but I'm sure it doesn't handle everything on my list. How far are we from a 100% automated experience?

Other than that there was some recent marketing around cheap robots like LeRobot by HuggingFace (the company where basically all the open-weight AI models are hosted). It has nothing to do with farming except that they have one shaped like a hand, so it could probably be programmed to grasp and move things around.

Sorry for the rambling post. Really curious to hear if anyone else has gone into robotics and interested in hearing your experiences and also other resources on what state-of-the-art looks like. Also I bet a lot of this is solved in proprietary solutions and by Big Agriculture, but right now I'm more curious on the consumer-grade level.

A general thought that came from a more specific one I had the other day: I've been trying to make sure I eat breakfast by making overnight oats, but it can be a pain on tired nights to get it set up.

Are there any gotchas with making your own mixes of dry goods? I feel like I know enough to scare myself with things like "oh well that might not be shelf-stable when mixed since xyz pathogen from it grows well when provided with abc".

At the moment, I'm just imagining prepping like a weeks worth of oats, chia seeds, raisins, etc. so that I can dump milk in each night, which seems like it would be totally fine.

Some background: this trip was originally my 40th birthday present from my now ex-wife. We've since divorced and I'm insistent on going by myself, as something always seems to come up and ruin my overseas travel plans. So, I want to treat this as a sort of growth/healing/looking forward trip.

About me: I've traveled quite a bit but I've never been outside of North America. Europe is completely new to me. I am very fond of football, food, beer, hiking, history, and new experiences. I prefer to stay away from tourist traps and I'd rather find hole in the wall type places that are recommended to me by locals. When I travel somewhere, I want to immerse myself.

I'll be there for ~9 days and I have the first 5 days fully worked out. What I need help with is figuring out what I want to do in London for the last 3 days of the trip before I head back to the airport. Other than going to a Fulham game next Saturday, I'm completely wide open. I would prefer to stay in the greater London area since the first half of the trip already involves quite a bit of travel.

I'd love to hear your recommendations do's/don'ts, or general guidance. I'm open to pretty much anything.

BY RAW PHOTOGRAPHY I MEAN THE EDITED OUTPUT OF RAW FILES TRANSFORMED INTO IMAGES BY PHOTOGRAPHERS

Yes, I understand that raw photographies are not all the same and soulfull photography exist today. I also understand that all digital photography is data and there is no such a thing as photo that is more real than another. That said, I hate what most people do with raw photography.

A lot of raw photography resemble paintings more than photographs. If every single thing about a photo is completely perfect, I don't know. It causes me no emotion.

We hired a photographer to take some pitures of our kid. The images are beautiful. They also look like a deodorant commercial or an episode of Please Like Me. It is too perfect. The colors are perfectly in harmony to each other. The bright light spots were atenuaded. We have a naked lightbulb above the table and I know it should be blown out. In the photos, the lightbulb is much dimmer. I can see the bulb in perfect detail (which I can't even to the naked eye...), but the light coming from still manages to illuminate our faces in the same way.

I hate that we inadvertently reacreated a Pampers advertising campaign.

We had this topic a couple of months ago where Framework was mentioned in a few response threads, but the overarching discussion was across a wider subject.

My 2016 (I think? It was snagged from e waste) era thinkpad is struggling to keep up with my usage of it. The screen is small, the keyboard sucks, the touchpad is not quite right, it is beyond its useful life.

I like the idea of a Framework laptop. I am leaning toward getting one on principal. It seems like this company is going to survive for a while. I think the last thing I am looking for is anecdotes.

If you use or have used a Framework as a daily driver, what are the pros and cons that you have with them compared to a similar less-modular system? How is support?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I’m calling a “sore thumb” lyric a bad line (or lines) in an otherwise good, well-written song. Something that sticks out like, well, a sore thumb.

It’s something that’s bad enough to be noteworthy, potentially even bad enough to ruin the entire song if it’s really potent. It is, of course, also entirely a matter of personal taste and preference. One person’s “sore thumb” lyric might be another person’s highlight.

Of note: it’s not a sore thumb lyric if you don’t like the song or think it’s poorly written in the first place. The point of the topic isn’t to highlight bad songwriting but to highlight misfires in otherwise good songwriting.

What are some examples of these lines in songs you like?

Explain why they stick out like a sore thumb for you personally.