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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • ARC is the in-memory cache used by ZFS. If it’s completely off the effect can be dramatic. Under no circumstances should a larger cache cause anything to get slower, ever. Even the raspi didn’t have memory that is that slow that this is a reasonable outcome. By default on most distros, ARC size is capped to 50% of physical system memory. Keep in mind it is a cache: if something else needs needs the RAM, it will be released.

    As a concrete example: I was recently working on a server where a maintenance task that should take like 12hrs or so at the worst somehow took 2 weeks (!) and still wasn’t finished. That was ARC being disabled.


  • What size is the ARC set to? I’ve seen cases where it was fully disabled, which (unsurprisingly) seemed to murder performance and is probably even worse when in such a CPU limited platform. You stating that only 1.5 GB of 16 GB were in use makes this seem likely.

    In general, if you care even remotely about performance, a raspberry pi is probably the wrong choice for a NAS. Even a single disk should have no issues saturating a 1gbe link. That being said, even a pi should manage 1 GBit/s on ZFS, especially when reading.


  • You can also connecta portable screen for 100-200 bucks and have effectively 2 monitors. This starts breaking weight and size of “normal” laptop (only one screen but higher resolution and size than just the deck), but still costs significantly less for quite the bang-for-buck ratio.

    I did use mine for a trip like a laptop for a full trip once. My conclusion is that for me personally a laptop (also with additional screen) is better, but I also happen to have one. I’m not sure I’d buy one already having the deck+monitor+keyboard+mouse.


  • The 2nd and even 3rd point is not automatically true for every phone and setting. I have a combined fingerprint reader and power button on my Fairphone 5, and the 2nd thing has always worked just fine.

    It also has the option to only enable the fingerprint reader if the display is on, which addresses your 3rd point completely. It means you can pick the phone up, including having a finger in the reader, and it won’t turn on or unlock. You need to press down in the button to trigger the screen, then it can be unlocked. That also means that when locking it and turning off the screen actively by pressing the power button with the phone on, it never re-unlocks. To be honest this part wasn’t a problem before the setting became available, as the locking would disable the fingerprint reader anyway, but letting your grip go slightly could trigger re-unlock.


  • I finally switched from Windows to Linux and chose CachyOS. This was months ago. I never had to fix anything (so far). There was a fuck up by me once, but that wasn’t the distros and could’ve happened on any distro. Honestly couldn’t be happier with it being arch based, as it’s really nice to basically get anything that is released instantly as a package update.

    I haven’t had to hunt for packages that aren’t years old for anything as I was used to on Debian (used on most of my servers). And while the AUR is there, I think I got a total of two things installed from there, anything else was just there in the repos.

    But if you’ve got a setup that already works, and you’re happy with, why change anything? Having something that works for you is what makes the large amounts of choices in the Linux world so great.



  • I’ve had nothing but issues with NC instant upload, and stopped using it. It’s error prone and needs constant hand holding for no good reason. It didn’t handle taking a picture and then deleting it instantly very well (and will throw your notifications at you for this, often more than 1). When you have limited connectivity it will utterly confuse itself and ask you to resolve conflicts for 100 files for no reason, when it could just checksum server and client files and notice they are all the exact same. Also when set to only upload on WiFi, and not being connected to WiFi it often still spams notifications that the “upload failed”, despite not being supposed to upload anything. And btw. it could upload files just fine, they failed only because upload on mobile is disabled!

    It’s a nightmare. Commonly also referred to as a cluster fuck.


  • So you’re basically saying “I don’t have any proof of any of this, but I’m scared so I’m scaring others as well”.

    Your first point makes zero sense: it can’t be both “for profit” and have “no means of generating income”.

    Their way of generating income is the reason they created the distro/OS in the first place: selling hardware. To my knowledge, they wanted to ship their mini servers (ZimaBoard) and later NAS-like devices (ZimaCube I think?) with an easy to use OS that can do all basic home server tasks. That didn’t exist, so they made one. They didn’t need to make money from the OS, it’s a catalyst to bring able to sell (more) hardware. I personally think that is a great way to use Linux as a company and contribute to the wider ecosystem, why does it scare you so much? They could’ve closed this of much more, but made it for available to everyone, on any hardware.

    From what I heard, they did achieve their design goals. It’s a bit simplistic for me personally, but probably great for a beginner.

    I get that enshittyfication is everywhere these days, but maybe don’t try to stop people from using things that haven’t actually seen ANY yet, just because they might? With no indication that they will, either.

    4&5 might be fair points though, I for know enough about the details.


  • As far as analogies go, is pretty far off. It doesn’t hold even for basic behaviors of the two cases, let alone complex ones. A better analogy would be that you buy a (small) car that always happens to come with an included, free trailer for more cargo capacity. You can of course take it off and have a small car. And it’s also as magic trailer that doesn’t take up any space at all when not in use, but can also not be sold.

    I’m actually not a fan, an am also using it somewhat reluctantly personally, though self hosted. I’ve had my issues with it, but an still using it because it solves some issues that are much harder to solve without it. I’m not using the contacts/calendar functionality.

    But your original statement was that you couldn’t understand who would need calendar and contacts (in their file sharing app). There’s enough I object to in this statement that I wrote my comment. First of, in this context, specifically in their article/blog/whatever, it’s about nextcloud as a whole, not the fact that it can do file sharing. That’s what it evolved from, but not all it is any more, more better or worse. Secondly, it’s about an advertised alternative to O365, which includes the very common and almost universal requirement for teams (be it a company, family, …) to have events (=calendar) like schedule meetings with people (=contacts). Even if you work with just like 5 people you are probably gonna need that. There you probably want to share files, but probably more so it’s about the office functionality and collaborative, simultaneous editing of files. Obviously replacing Word, PowerPoint, Excel. And yes, Outlook (calendar,& contacts, also email).

    This isn’t meant for individuals who need a few GB to store some files. It’s for teams of some description that need office like, cloud based tools.


  • Your analogy doesn’t make any sense, so I assume you really don’t know. So let me explain:

    If you buy a 4wd, it’s always a 4wd, usually that means s relatively large vehicle. You might be able to turn it to 2wd, but it doesn’t make the car smaller. If you just needed a tiny car in all (or most cases), you can’t push a button to make it smaller. You always drive around the extra equipment to possibly make it 4wd.

    Nextcloud is plugin based. Assuming this isn’t locked away on an instance like this, you can literally push a button and make that whole functionality go away everywhere. You can fully remove that ‘clutter’, if that’s of no use to you. They are offering it always, as it adds no additional effort on the hosters side: they don’t need to add gear boxes or whatever to make it have calendar & contacts. If you don’t want/need it, turn it off and it’s gone.