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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Man, you’re basically saying “I want to move to a new country, but I don’t want to lose any of my friends, I can’t change my job, I don’t want to learn a new language, I want to bring all my furniture and appliances with me, and we just had a new baby a month ago so I’m sleep deprived and don’t have any spare time. How do I do it?”







  • I get how this could be interpreted as offensive, but I think it is just poorly worded.

    This option is for if you are using a legacy version of Linux such as 2.6.x (eg, on an old RedHat distro that your business systems are designed to be run on).

    This enables a compatibility mode so the old kernels don’t complain.


  • This particular bug (from the OP) only affects games that use a lot of rapid mouse and keyboard inputs over the period of an hour or two.

    And it only happens (weirdly) when you launch from steam, but have Steam Overlay turned off.

    When launching from Steam, there is a layer that captures all keyboard and mouse inputs before they get to the game (for example, for capturing hotkeys to show the steam overlay). A separate layer called vulkan-steam-overlay (that is responsible for rendering the overlay over the game) periodically clears the input buffer so it doesn’t get too big. If steam overlay is disabled in settings, the input-capture layer is still used, but the vulkan-steam-overlay layer is not used. So the input buffer captures all inputs and never gets cleared, it gets so big it needs to start paging to disk. That is what introduces the lag spikes after an hour or two.

    Launching from Lutris doesn’t use that input-capture layer, so that’s why it’s not affected.




  • The term Display Manager is a vestige of the use of X11.

    X11 is a Server/Client protocol.

    When a user logs in to an XServer, they are given an Xsession. The user can use that Xsession to create one or more X11 Displays (they are just IDs). The X11 Display ID is passed to the X11 client application (that’s what the XDISPLAY environment variable is for). The client apps render their content to that Display ID. This whole thing allows for more than one user to be able to use a single operating system on a single XServer at the same time.

    All of that is pretty cumbersome for a user to do themselves in their terminal, that’s what Display Managers are for. They:

    • Start the XServer if it isn’t started yet
    • Provide a method (eg, login with username and password), to start a new XSession.
    • Use that XSession to create an empty X11 Display.
    • Look up which is your configured default DE or WM
    • Launch the DE or WM with the right parameters, passing it the new XSession and XDisplay

    If you’re using Wayland, then the architecture is very different. The Display Manager then simply operates as a login screen.




  • These are some rules of mindset I’ve given to others in the past when trying linux-based operating systems.

    1. Don’t try to apply the same computing and productivity patterns you’ve learned from Windows. Don’t try to force Windows concepts onto Linux OS, you will confuse yourself and get frustrated.
    2. If something doesn’t work the way you expect it to, doesn’t mean it’s broken.
    3. Just because something doesn’t behave the same as in Windows, doesn’t mean it’s worse. It’s probably designed that way for a good reason.
    4. If your daily work routine or gaming life revolves around the use programs developed specifically for the Windows platform, you’re gonna need to invest time and effort to try to recreate that in Linux. It may not even be possible to fully replicate it. And that’s not the fault of Linux, it’s not designed to be a drop-in Windows replacement.
    5. Everyone has their own taste and preferences. Just like some people prefer driving a manual car and some prefer auto. If you try Linux and hate it, that’s okay, that doesn’t make you bad or wrong, but keep in mind that those who do prefer Linux are not weird or daft or wrong either.




  • I’m on an Edge 30 Pro now, it’s the best smartphone I’ve ever used. I’ve had it for 2 years, and it was 1 year old when I bought it.

    I skipped the Edge 40 and Edge 50 (they are pretty good, but not worth upgrading), this Edge 60 pro will likely be my next new phone.

    I will wait until I can buy a lightly used one. I don’t buy new smartphones anymore. There are many people who upgrade their phone every year, and unlike iPhones, most android smartphones depreciate in value rapidly after they are even lightly used, so it’s easy to get a good deal on a 1 year old phone that’s in near-new condition.



  • Yep, not bricked. Just frozen.

    There are two forms of bricked:

    1. hard bricked. This is when a software change (eg, installing a custom firmware) caused the system to fail to boot, and there is no possible way to ever get it to run again.
    2. soft bricked. Where a software change caused the failure to boot but there is a way (eg, reflashing using UART) to recover back to an older version that does boot.

    Both are terms from the Phone modding community (ie, a phone has become as useful as a brick after this update) it’s quite hard to actually brick a modern PC.