They will never learn because they make Windows for Microsoft not for users. They do whatever suits them and they think will maximises profitability and their share price. They have to keep “growing” so they have to find new ways to make money.

As for the article; what shill bullshit is this?

It probably makes sense for a lot of users to have their default browser of choice open automatically at login, as most people spend the majority of their time in a web browser. Windows already automatically preloads Edge in the background by default to increase its startup performance, so it’s not a huge leap to automatically display the app itself if Windows knows you’re going to open it anyway.

No, it does not make sense to do this. Apps can be set to auto launch if users want them to. This only makes sense from the perspective of Microsoft trying to push Edge onto user so it can grow it’s market share and harvest even more data.

Yeah, could also have two Pi-Hole instances. One is network wide and block ads for everyone, and the other is the DNS the kids PCs use, set with a white list of approved sites only. You can set Pi-hole to block everything (set * as the a RegEx filter) and then add domains to the white list to be allowed through.

Groups is probably more efficient but two instances could be offer more options/nuance on how you run things.

That’s great! Here’s a few tips to take it a bit further; the world is your oyster!

Open your .bashrc file (e.g. /home/yourusername/.bashrc) and add the following:

alias get="/path/to/your/bash/file"

Now open a terminal and type get, and it’ll launch the script. No clicking needed, it’ll run anytime from any terminal!

And if you do use the alias then you can use another refinement, you can drop the echo: instead of $a, you can use $1 and remove the echo & read as you no longer need them:

#! /usr/bin/bash yt-dlp -x $1

Now for example you can type in a terminal:

get http://url.to.video/

And yt-dlp will do it’s stuff. $1 passes the first parameter after starting the script as a variable to it.

You can use the keyboard shortcut Control+shift+v to paste a URL into the terminal, no mouse needed; just remember to add a space after typing get

Miracast (e.g. vis Miraclecast on linux) is a wireless standard for streaming video and audio from one device to another however this is not quite what youre talking about. Miracast basically runs the video on your phone and uses a remote device as a display via wifi. Chromecast actually mostly sends a link to a google device and then launches it on the device to play; there isnt a direct replacement to that. You could run Chrome or Chromium and cast to the browser but im not sure it’d work like a chromecaat device running the video locally.

I have a living room linux PC and I generally use Firefox on my phone and the PC to send links/tabs via firefox sync.

In addition KDE Connect (app on phone and also running on your linux PC) allows you to interact with your PC directly via your phone. You can send files back and forth, but also control media, share the clipboard, and send URLs from your phone to your PC to open in your default browser. This should work for Youtube and Netflix etc.

I personally usually send a tab to my firefox browser via firefox sync, but you could also share link instead via android share to the KDE connect app which will send it to your device and it should open in you’re default browser.

Also fyi KDE Connect doesnt need KDE to work - it works with any desktop environment.

This is a wierd article. It was originally Googles fault, then it was AI and google is now sponsering the project?

Yes you can do loads with your Raspberry Pi. Certainly you can install ARM based linux distros onto it, but with an older model you’re best using a Pi specific linux distro.

The official Raspberry Pi OS is linux and is compatible with all Raspberry Pi models - there is a universal 32bit version and a 64bit version for newer models 3+.

There is also Dietpi which tries to be more lightweight and optimised.

You can image either distro onto an SD card and run it on the Pi. If you connect the pi to your network you can run it headless and access it via SSH on your PC.

However, if you main aim is to learn and play with Linux, then it is worth considering alternatives. For example, you could install VirtualBox on your Windows PC, and create a virtual PC to run any X86 linux distro you’d like on it. That can include small systems with command line only or a full desktop environment of your choice. That would likely give you much higher performance and options than a 10 year old raspberry pi can offer.

The Pi is good if you want an always on server device to play with Linux on. The Virtual machine route is good if you want a more powerful system to play with occasionally when you feel like it.

Out of interest, which aspect don’t you believe? The article is clear the broken update effects a specific subset of enterprise users, on a specific mix of base versions and cumulative updates.

This seems like a classic windows update issue. In fairness to Microsoft it is difficult to prevent bugs when there is a huge install base, with a huge range of hardware, with a huge range of users on different mixes of updates and updating at their own. I personally think that’s totally believable.

What’s not clear is perhaps the implied overarching story that W11 is worse for this than other versions of Windows. I can’t answer that about windows updates themselves, but I certainly believe W11 is the worst version of Windows I’ve ever used (and I’ve used every version back to 3.11 as a kid). I have to use W11 at work: the UI is absolutely terrible and unfriendly but far worse it constantly and inexplicably slows down, programs become unresponsive repeatedly and I come across errors constantly.

I work in a big organisation and I don’t even bother to report most errors now - we hop between PCs because of the nature of my Job, and I’ve come up across so many I just can’t be bothered opening more tickets. I’d describe it as a mostly large volume of minor issues and inconveniences that cumulatively, on top of the bad design, that make it a shit experience. But I’ve also had numerous major errors since we moved from W10 to W11 on different PCs - they all have the same hardware and software yet the problems are different on each. I’ve given up reporting the problems and just avoid the PCs, and I think a lot of my colleagues are the same.

My organisation (I work in a large Hospital), is already stretched due to high work volume and low staffing and we now have a constantly little drag from Windows 11 on everything we do. It’s like Microsoft sprinkle a little bit of shit onto every computer, every day, all day. The cumulative effect in just my organisation must be massive - I shudder to think how bad it is across the whole economy.

The publicity will have little impact; only the AI bubble popping will make them change course. But the damage is already done - they’ve pivoted their company to AI, forced it into all there products and force their employees to use it. Once the bubble pops that’s going to take time to undo and fix.

AI of course will still be a thing, but at the moment they’re wasting billions on it as everyone wants to be to AI as Google is to search.

So bizarrely the best experience is to self host and pirate. That’s what you get when the entire entertainment industry is hostile to consumers.

When Netflix first became big, it was popular because it was a one-stop shop for almost all your content. It was like a big library of content in one place, you pay a reasonable monthly fee and it’s all there. Piracy dipped as a result.

Now all the content is fragmented into numerous walled gardens you have to pay separate fees to access. People can only consume the same amount but now they have to pay 4 or 5 fees as the content is spread out.

Unsurprisingly piracy is booming again.

Yes it’ll fix the issue. That tells the system that your hardware clock should be in UTC. The time in your hardware clock will then be corrected from the internet as long as your time zone is correct.

It sounds like your system clock may be the issue.You have a system clock inside your device. Linux usually uses the internet to set your clock but still refers to your system clock. If the internet provided time is too far off your system clock it may ignore it and display your system time.

KDE respects the NTP clock settings used by your linux system, while ironically Gnome does not and does its own thing directly with the time date control. This is probably why you’re now noticing a problem.

So either your system clock is supposed to be UTC and actually set to local time, or your system clock is correct but your timezone in linux is way off.

If you use timedatectl status in a terminal it’ll show your current local time, UTC and RTC time, as well as your timezone and whether the RTC is set to your local timezone or UTC. RTC is your hardware clock on your device.

If “RTC is local tz” says no, then the value for RTC and UTC should be the same, as your hardware clock is set to be the UTC time. And if the UTC time is wrong then your system is uaing your hardware clock to incorrectly work out the UTC. UTC is the 0 timezone worldwide and has an absolute value - its the same for everyone and you can esily.find it with a search engine. If the displayed UTC is wrong on your system, then you’re out of sync with everyone.

So how to fix it if its wrong:

One way would be to tell your systen what the hardware clock should be and then set it correct. Use “timedatectl set-local-rtc 1” to make it set to be in your local time zone. Or if you want it to be UTC you can use timedatectl set-local-rtc 0. You can use either but UTC is better.

That should fix the issue as the network time will now come in correctly.

But if you wanted you can also manually set the local time and date with timedatectl set-time hh:mm:ss. Once that is set then your RTC should also be changed and be back in sync depending on whether you set it up to be also local or UTC. When you set the local tine it will work out the UTC value based on your timezone. Note if the timezone is wrong it’ll still be wrong!

If you can’t set the time because NTP (network time) is running, you could.leave it and the clock should now sort itself out. But if you want to force mannually set the time you can turn off NTP if you want: “timedatctl set-ntp false” You could leave it off and set the time manually using “timedatectl set-time hh:mm:ss”

If still getting NTP error messagss you could also disable the NTP system job temporarily: systemctl disable --now chronyd. Turn it back on afterwards with systemctl enable --now chronyd

Finally do make sure the timezone is correct. I know you say it is but timedatectl shows you what the system thinks it is, and if ita wrong then rtc/utc will still be wrong as the timezone is used to convert from local time to UTC. You can use timedatectl to change the timezone: timedatectl set-timezone name.

There are loads of valid timezones but only valid ones will work. Get your local timezones official name online or use timedatectl list-timezones to see all the options. You can filter uaing egrep etc.

Hopefully that’ll fix the issue for you. You can also boot into your bios and manually set the hardware clock if needs be but linux still needs to know whether its supposed to be utc ir local time.

I’d recommend either OpenSuSE or Fedora, both with KDE. They’re big, well supported distros, which should install without issue and provide a slick modern experience. I use OpenSuSE, as I find the YaST system tools convenient and user friendly.

I’d avoid Ubuntu, multiple issues. Mint is a good distro but I think any big mainstream distro “just works” now, so I’d go for something that uses a slicker desktop. I prefer KDE, which is available on Mint but just isn’t as tightly integrated as their own Cinnamon desktop.

Scarcity manufactured by the AI “boom”. When the AI bubble pops, expect a huge slump in hardware prices as companies try to offload huge stockpiles of worthless RAM, CPUs and GPUs.

Would just add, while you can change the permissions on NTFS drives in Linux, I’d generally recommend using a Linux dedicated partition (Ext4 for example) for games. It’s faster and also much less likely to cause unexpected issues.

The headline doesn’t quite reflect the situation, but it is difficult to capture in a headline.

Essentially add “for now”. Many of the issues are fixable but not necessarily by one laptop maker. As the article said by the time the issues were likely resolved the laptop would be obsolete as the version 2 of the chip would release.

Having said that, it’s not clear how fast the issues will resolve as without any devices there won’t be impetus to put fixes in to different parts of the ecosystem to get the full potential of the chipset.

The GPU sounds like the most serious problem and without manufacturer engagement may be the longest to get fixed.

Yes it’s fairly simple to do, essentially the user needs to download an image of a Linux install disc, flash it onto a USB stick (or a Dvd I guess), and then reboot their PC. They may need to press a key at boot to open the boot menu and select the USB (or the bios to change the boot order).

After that, most distros offer a very easy to follow installer which will install the new OS.

Most Linux installs can be done alongside windows (on the same hard drive or it’s own drive) but windows tends to break the boot loader with updates. It’s gernallt better to only dual boot if you’re good at fixing things - otherwise a full Linux install is better.

The most inportant thing is back up all your important data, and only do this if you genuinely want to leave windows. I’d make sure your windows license is digital before doing this too as that allows using windows again if you want to go back.

I’d say anyone can use Linux, it’s user friendly and robust. In terms of installing Linux, I’d only do it if you are sure you know what you’re doing - installing any OS - including windows - can involved trouble shooting problems.

I’ve tried Arch - it allows you to make a system that is exactly what you want. So no bloat installing stuff you never need or use. It also gives you absolute control.

On other distros like Fedora, you get a pre configured system set up for a wide range of users. You can reduce down the packages somewhat but you will often have core stuff installed that is more than you’ll need as it caters to everyone.

Arch allows you to build it yourself, and only install exactly the things you actually want, and configure then exactly how you want.

Also you learn an awful lot about Linux building your system in this way.

I liked building an arch system in a virtual machine, but I don’t think I could commit to maintaining an arch install on my host. I’m happy to trade bloat for a “standard” experience that means I can get generic support. The more unique your system the more unique your problems can be I think. But I can see the appeal of arch - “I made this” is a powerful feeling.

For me it seems to be when you go through to download the windows binary, you get an iframe on the page containing another site. That has ads and serves up the download. So I’m guessing the ads are on the website that provides videolan with hosting for its binaries?

They are old fashioned intrusive ads pretending you need to click then to start your download. But the download starts already.

I think Nextcloud with the libreoffice plugins is the main Google docs self hosting alternative at this point.

• OS - - > Linux OpenSuSE with KDE

• YouTube - - > Freetube - opensource, private YouTube client for Linux, MacOS and Windows

• Downloading music/videos --> yt-dlp

• Downloading videos/images --> gallery-dl

• Email - - > Thunderbird (really moved forward in last few years)

• Notes - - > Joplin

Selfhosting (mine is on raspberry pi) :

• Streaming library - Jellyfin

• Photo library - imich

• Downloads - qbittorrent, prowlaar, radaar, sonaar, lazy librarian in a docker stack with VPN

• smart home - Homeassistant

• filesync - - > Syncthing (I don’t have problems with long file names - maybe a Windows issue or Linux FS? I use EXT4 on all my devices and don’t use Windows anymore)