The other benefit of being in highschool is many people have loads of time to spend.

I honestly don’t know if there is any advice I can give to someone with a fulltime job and care giving responsibilities that would be convincing.

because zsh I swapped out ~ -> $HOME. In addition to some permission denied that you always get finding over the home dir, I get these weird hits:

find "$HOME" -type l -exec /bin/sh /path/to/the/script "/path/to/target/dir" {} +
/home/user/.konan/dependencies/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc-8.3.0-glibc-2.19-kernel-4.9-2/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/lib64/libatomic.so
/home/user/.mozilla/firefox/xxx000xx.someprofile/chrome/dir/file.css

lib atomic is something I’ve heard of vaguely but certainly not anything I use. I couldn’t identify any way this file was doing anything outside the ~/.konan dir.

the CSS files there were a few different ones in a couple different Firefox profiles. it’s the user customization. But I don’t think it should have anything to do with the directory I was asking for.

If I give it a bit more of a hint, telling to look in ~/.config specifically, now I get some (but not all) the links I expect.

find "$HOME/.config" -type l -exec /bin/sh /path/to/the/script "/path/to/target/dir" {} +
/home/user/.config/dir02
/home/user/.config/dir01/subdir/file
/home/user/.config/dir01/subdir2/file2

And suggesting it searches in the .konan dir where it found lib atomimc, it now doesn’t find anything.

find "$HOME/.konan" -type l -exec /bin/sh /path/to/the/script "/path/to/target/dir" {} +

Could be all kinds of things getting the way. Different versions of relevant tools, filesystems/setups, permissions…

Ventoy is just soooo fucking useful.

Idk which has worked best. Currently it is running on a debian derivative called “sparky” for no particular reason. As I said, bluethooth magically started working so I’m not changing anything.

I really strongly recommend you prioritize a popular distro as a novice user. When you have problems, it will be a lot harder to get help if you are using something obscure. People who are using more common distros won’t be able to know if your problem could be due to some oddity of your distro. So they will be more reluctant to offer solutions.

Mint is a really good first choice. And you should just try the thing I suggested about booting from USBs and seeing if networking and other basics work properly.

Only proceed to something like sparky if nothing else works.

The good news about having a device from 2018, is there should be no (few) surprises. Other people will have tried things already. It’s a similar benefit as choosing a popular distro.

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You are thinking too hard I think in the wrong direction. Use Mint unless you have a strong feeling/need for something else. In which case, use that. Choice of first distro is not really that important. Pick a popular one and if it’s wrong for you, you’ll figure it out.

What you haven’t mentioned is any research you have done regarding hardware support/compatibility for your specific device. I searched the specs you listed and it came up with some netbooks like CB012DX. I actually have an older, shittier version of this device running a debian derivative. (Mint is also in the debian family FYI.) And I’ve had fun installing various linuxes on even older, shittier chromenetbooks over the years.

Assuming yours is in this ballpark, I have one really important piece of advice for you. Before you think anymore about it, download ISOs of your top 1 or 3 distro choices, flash them to USB and attempt to boot. These super cheap devices cut corners on components. It is not unlikely that you will have some hardware that either doesn’t have open source drivers, or has some sort of theoretical support that will be too esoteric for you to implement at your current skill level. It is quite common on these devices that everything works fine except networking or something like that. So you might be able to exclude some of your choices based on that. Try to find a distro that works reasonably well out of the box.

You should find the various names your device goes by

As you have probably read, booting from a flashed USB is non-destructive of you normal system (unless you choose to format your disk or something of course). Assuming you have no issues booting, try out all the hardware features you have like: trackpad (different kinds of click, drag, zoom etc), ethernet, wireless (2.4 + 5ghz network), bluetooth, speakers, headphones, external input device, external displays, fingerprint scanner, touch screen, all keys and buttons, cameras, mics, sensors, keyboard lights. Any external devices you like to use: mice, keyboards, dongles, should also be included. I suggest making a list and systematically checking each item.

You can use this amazing tool called ventoy to flash one USB boot drive to have multiple distros available. You can even keep a windows ISO on there. It will even let you reserve a portion of the disk for persistent storage. Ventoy substantially improves this whole process so you don’t have to have 10 different USB disks floating around. It is well designed and straight forward to use.

So on my current netbook, I was lucky that networking has been no problem. people with a slightly different model have to use an external wifi dongle (and not all wifi dongles are compatible with linux). I have never gotten anything form the speakers, but they might have arrived broken, apparently it’s pretty easy to blow out the speakers and I didn’t test while ChromeOS was still installed. Using an arch-based distro, the touch screen worked but now in Debian it doesn’t. I don’t really care about that. I really wanted Bluetooth to work and I couldn’t for the longest time til one day it just magically solved itself and I haven’t reinstalled since then because I am not sure I’d be able to re-solve it.

The other piece of advice has to do with storage. Depending what software you run, it can require a bit of space. 64gb could be gone quickly. This will be somewhat controversial (for good reason) but I always end up devoting the full eMMC to the system partition and having a permanently mounted SD card for /home, user storage and maybe even some of the system temp directories. This goes against common advice because SD cards are more prone to failure. So you need to have a good backup plan or just accept the risk. But if you run out of storage space on your system drive you can get yourself into the kind of mess that requires reinstalling.

In terms of both storage and RAM/CPU use, you will want to be extremely judicious of you application use. Firefox is a beast on any operating system.If you like to have a bunch of hungry tabs going on, you can’t really optimize the OS.

In another subthread I came up with the below, is this what you mean? I haven’t tried it yet.

• /home/user/folderApple is always empty
• /home/user/folderApple-original mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple at boot
• then /mnt/drive/folderBanana also mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple when/if it becomes available (later in the order)

Ideally I’d like to avoid a script because my experience is they aren’t very durable. I make mistakes and they are difficult to troubleshoot. So I am trying to just use the tools that are already available in the system.

But maybe there is something in the idea of using a second mount, like if

• /home/user/folderApple is always empty
• /home/user/folderApple-original mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple at boot
• then /mnt/drive/folderBanana also mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple when/if it becomes available (later in the order)

The results are the same no matter which order I do the mounts in.

don’t delete your post, people wrote things here.

You can tell hugo to build from an arbitrary directory of markdown in the config file. Then it’ll just do it’s best. I have done this experimentally on completely un-optimized obsidian vaults for just my own local use. IIRC there are some mandatory frontmatter elements that hugo requires (date, draft status, and/or title? consult the docs) which will prevent a file from appearing at all if they are missing. Depending how vigilant you are with that kind of thing you can get a more or less janky site straight away.

There are also some plugins, bash scripts etc around that will assist in this. In tidying up the files, selecting which ones to publish, mirroring to another directory etc. I have had mixed success personally, but my vaults are sprawling, badly organized and the frontmatter is often a mess which is all on me. Someone who is less/differently negligent would have different luck. I can provide some links to relevant projects if anyone is interested.

For nonidentical devices you create additional packages prefixed with specific device name. You don’t need to link all packages at once with stow, pass a name of a package to link it alone.uuu

Sooo… I find some way to share the dotfiles directory across devices (rsync, syncthing, git, nextcloud, DAV) then make specific subdirs like this?:

~
  - dotfiles
      - bash-desktop
         dot-bashrc
         dot-bash_profile
      - bash-laptop
         dot-bashrc
         dot-profile
         dot-bash_profile

But what is the software doing for me? I’m manually moving all these files and putting them together in the specific way requested. Setting the whole thing up is most of the work. Anyone who can write a script to create the structure can just as easily write it to make symlinks. I’m sure I’m missing something here.

yadm is the one I liked the best and tried it a few times. fact is that I am unlikely to keep a repo like this even part way up to date. New files are created all the time and not added, old ones don’t get updated or removed. There’s not even a good way to notice in any file manager what is included and what’s not as far as I know. yadm doesn’t work with tools like eza which can display the git status of files in repos. (and it probably wouldn’t be feasible.)

Plus I have some specific config collections already in change tracking and it makes more sense to keep it that way. Having so many unrelated files together in one project is too chaotic and distracting.

It’s not realistic for me to manage merges, modules, cherry picking, branches all that for so many files that change constantly without direct intervention. Quickly enough git will tie itself into some knot and I won’t be able to pick it apart.

Ya you’re right I am thinking “partial upgrade”; I just thought the concept might generalize.

I guess the worst that could happen with a partial install would be some deps installed in the system but then not actually required.

It’s taken me forever to reply because (a) I feel guilty about short replies to long messages, (b) I had to think about this a bit, and © I almost exclusively access Lemmy on my phone and I hate typing long messages on my phone. Not an excuse, just an explanation. There are no good Lemmy desktop clients, but I’ve finally logged in to my instance’s web interface to respond to this. 3 months later.

well I appreciate the time and tbh and in no hurry for any of this. I’m glad it was on an account I actively monitor. I also don’t have a perfect system set up to keep track of lemmy stuff so probably I miss things sometimes.

The argument that because the currency isn’t endorsed or backed by a government means it’s not real seems debatable, at best.

So as to the nature of crypto vs fiat. Fiat is not only backed by The State, it is created and controlled by The State. I have never done a deep dive but superficially I find the ideas of MMT as explained by Cory Doctow compelling in the context of capitalism

MMT’s core precept is that governments first spend money into existence and then tax it out of existence (contrast this with the standard account that says that governments must tax citizens to pay for programs, which raises the question, “How did the citizens get the money to pay for their taxes unless the government first spent that money into existence, given that governments are the sole source of currency?”).

I first encountered it on some podcast he was on, it might have been this one but not totally sure tbh.

So in terms of whether it’s “real” that is one difference.

People have been scamming people using regular money for far longer than cryptocurrency has existed.

It is an interesting point, and I’m compelled to agree that lots of scams have been conducted with fiat currency. If it were possible to count it all up, way, way more value has been scammed out of people via fiat.

Just to disclose my priors: To be honest, I am not too interested in “fortunes” being scammed because I don’t think anyone comes by massive quantities of money by means which are defensible. An old saying: “if one man has a dollar he didn’t work for, it means another man worked for a dollar he didn’t get.” It is clumsy and imprecise but summarizes how I feel about wealthy individuals.

But crypto has been extensively marketed to people without fortunes. Small people like you (I assume) and me and our families and communities. These people will never get redress for their lost money and it can be devastating. It has specifically targets for example racialized communities who have been systematically excluded from systems that would allow them to accumulate fiat and property.

Unlike fiat, which is created and required by the state, crypto is more like an MLM (pyramid scheme). It is only valuable while new people are buying into it with fiat. If the money pump stops or even slow down, there is a crash. Fiat doesn’t need people to buy into it with crypto and it never will.

Back to the topic of chat apps.

I think it feels sleezy to you because the devs are also interested in integrating cryptocurrency into the Session ecosystem, and you believe cryptocurrency=bad.

Disagree. I wouldn’t use a chat app that was run by Wells Fargo or PayPal or Visa or a local credit union or any other such organization. That would be weird. My use case for a chat app is 100% in social communication and I see no reason for that to be entangled in financials unless I was directly choosing to contribute money to the development costs of the app.

However I can see different use cases where integration of financial exchange into the platform would be of benefit. Those would be for conducting relationships with a significant transactional nature. Platforms like ebay and aliexpress have chat/mail features and that makes sense. And think of facebook marketplace; also combines chat and transactions. People do business on instagram and whatsapp. It appears that the primary application of something like session would be as an adjunct or replacement for those kinds of conversations.

The question is: Is this a chat app that also has a way to send money, or a financial transaction app with a chat feature? I think it is the latter.

I will admit I don’t deeply understand the inners of blockchains. But we know they are unstable so I still find it strange to mix up other unrelated features so intimately. For example aliexpress has a chat feature, and ultimately the stability of the chat is reliant on the business continuity of the organization. But on a day to day level, the reliability of the infrastructure isn’t changing according to how much business is being conducted, how popular aliexpress is. I also wouldn’t use aliexpress chat to conduct my personal relationships. If I made a friend on aliexpress somehow, I would move that to a more appropriate platform.

You’ve correctly compared crypto to the stock market. It is very apt as they share a lot of structural elements; only the stock market is older, more entrenched. My opinion: stock market is completely indefensible; get rid of it. Same premise different conclusion. :D I wouldn’t use a chat app that was relying on some penny stock for it’s technical viability.

further reading if this wasn’t enough:

Molly White follows and explains crypto et al; her website: Web3 is Going Just Great is updated frequently. If you are a podcast weirdo like me, she appears on them from time to time, search through your app.

Thanks! I always appreciate another tool for this. I tried to run it but have dep issues.

What is gwc? I can’t find a package by that name nor is it included that I can see.

Websearch finds GeoWebCache, Gnome Wave Cleaner, GtkWaveCleaner, several IT companies… nothing that looks relevant.

edit: also stumped looking for gsort. it seems to be associated with something called STATA which is statistical analysis software. Is that something you are involved with maybe running some special stuff on your system?

PS you missed a newline at the end before closing the code block which is why the image was showing up as markdown instead of displaying properly.

Change:

    }```

to:

    }
    ```

Nice! I’m sure they will appreciate your thorough report.

I wonder if they also plan to make an option about crossing filesystem boundaries. I have seen it commonly in this sort of use case.

Maybe all this complexity this is the reason why total dir size has not previously been integrated into this kind of tool. (Notable exception: lsd if you are interested.) I really hope the development persists though because being able to easily manipulate so many different kinds of information about the filesystem without spending hours/days/weeks/years creating bespoke shell scripts is super handy.

I am inclined to agree with you. See my comment in cross post of this thread.

I’m just a home admin of my own local systems and while I try to avoid doing stuff that’s too wacky, in the context I don’t mind playing a bit fast n loose. If I screw it up, the consequences are my own.

At work, I am an end user of systems with much higher grade of importance to lots of people. I would not be impressed to learn there was a bunch of novel bleeding edge stuff running on those systems. Administering them has a higher burden of care and responsibility and I expect the people in charge to apply more scrutiny. If it’s screwed up, the consequences are on a lot of people with no agency over the situation.

Just like other things done at small vs large scale. Most people with long hair don’t wear a hairnet when cooking at home, although it is a requirement in some industrial food prep situations. Most home fridges don’t have strict rules about how to store different kinds of foods to avoid cross contamination, nor do they have a thermometer which is checked regularly and logged to show the food is being stored appropriately. Although this needs to be done in a professional context. Pressures, risks and consequences are different.

To summarize: I certainly hope sysadmins aren’t on here installing every doohicky some dumbass like me suggests on their production systems. :D

Some of the distros actually just included an alias from exa to eza when the project forked. I didn’t even realize I was using eza for a long time!

ooops you commented similar/same twice. I think this one was a draft. :)