Yeah as someone that was in the car scene during that era, I can’t recall a single time it was used to refer to a person. It was all about the car and its mods - and even then, it was used to describe any car, Asian or other, that was overdone or, often, just not to the taste of the viewer. One time since described my user of a Sony radio as “rice” because they were supposedly not reliable. I never had any issues, but that was their reaction.

I understand why people might consider it racist, and I’m not a fan of the term because of that, and I’d prefer something better. But I do not believe racism was the intent when I saw it used.

The way you wrote this, I thought you meant that if it required a cloud service you would turn it off. But now I think you’re just saying you wouldn’t use this feature.

I share the confusion over your definition of “active”. You got all defensive when someone asked, so now no one really knows what you meant.

Where was I refusing to understand its quirks? After several years of using snap-based Firefox, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like the snap based installation of firefox. So, I followed the directions to go back to a deb-based Firefox installation. But Kubuntu “helpfully” reverted it a few months later, and that cycle repeated a few times.

I specifically requested the deb-based installation and it ignored my wishes. I know what operating system that reminds me of, and it isn’t Linux.

I’m sure someone will tell me I’m wrong for wanting a .deb-based Firefox and that snaps are better anyway. Even if that’s true (I don’t care to argue), I chose a path and Kubuntu overrode my choice. Silently, too.

I’ll also note that I started using Kubuntu back in 2008 or so, and stopped last year. I used it on both my desktop and laptop machines. So, it wasn’t like I just tried it for a few hours and got upset; I was a long time user that was quite familiar with how it worked. For most of that time, I was really happy with Kubuntu, but having it override my explicit configuration was extremely frustrating.

Others can continue to use it, that’s fine with me. This isn’t a personal attack on anyone’s choices.

I’ve followed those directions, only to find snap firefox was reinstalled a few months later.

Switched to Debian, much happier.

Oh god. I started with Slackware in 1998 and used it on the desktop until around 2008, then on the server until 2017 or so.

In later years, the last panel definitely felt like Slackware. I was afraid to upgrade for fear of breaking things. Installing new software was tough because it was like, well, I need this dependency for that package, but what about this one? Will I break package A if I install the dependencies for package B? Only one way to find out!

Slackware is probably much easier to handle now, with the proliferation of docker and the like, where the software includes the libraries it needs and doesn’t rely on the system libraries. Just run everything in a container.

I do not understand why Windows lets windows steal focus like that. I have to use Windows for work, and I’ll be typing in my password or token, and it’ll steal the focus WHILE I’M TYPING. It’s infuriating behavior and potentially a security issue.

Interesting concept. I have a script that uses long term tokens and curl to tell HA to turn on certain things I need before running a certain game, then turns them back off afterward. Presumably this could take the place of that script.

It’s an interesting idea, I wonder what other ideas people will have once it’s working.

I just wish I could get my script to disable the screensaver in KDE. I have the command that should do it, and it’s changing the right setting (ie, changing the same setting manually in the gui works correctly), but it seems like KDE isn’t aware of the config change, and the things I’ve tried to get KDE to reload that config aren’t working. No error, but the screen saver stays active.

My first one was a Seagate ST-238R. 32 MB of pure storage, baby. For some reason I thought we still needed the two disk drives as well, but I don’t remember why.

“Oh what a mess we weave when we amiss interleave!”

We’d set the interleave to, say, 4:1 (four revolutions to read all data in a track, IIRC), because the hard drive was too fast for the CPU to deal with the data… ha.

The use of my ANT+ adapter with Zwift. But Bluetooth via the phone worked for 62 miles and several hours today, so I guess that will suffice.

I may have posted this before, but…late last year I realized my Debian server with circa 2009 hardware, with 4 gb of RAM and Core 2 Quad processor, was no longer up to the tasks I wanted it to perform; in particular, running a Home Assistant server. Back in 2018 or so, I added a software Linux RAID5 array with 5 active 3 TB drives and one hot spare, along with a “cold spare” that I’ve never actually used.

So, early this year, I bought hardware to upgrade my desktop machine, which was still plenty fast for me, and move the guts to my server. This is how my server usually gets upgraded. Upgrade the desktop machine, give it a few days or weeks to make sure it’s stable, and then upgrade the server.

I installed the hardware without a problem, booted it up, and everything seemed okay, except that I …couldn’t access the RAID. At first it was like, well, I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but then when mdadm could even FIND it, I started to get extremely worried. Fear set in.

Long story short: When I built the RAID, I followed directions that used the entire discs as the RAID, instead of making a partition on the disc and using that partition. The old motherboard didn’t care, but the new one saw the bare discs and was like, “Hey, those are messed up, I’ll fix the partition table for you!” Turns out, building Linux RAIDs by using the full discs like that is a VERY BAD IDEA for exactly this reason - but there are still guides out there showing that method and not mentioning the risks.

I was panicking. I spent days trying to figure out what to do and nothing was working. I was asking for help on the Linux-RAID list (and most of them were as helpful as they could be). Unfortunately my backups were NOT up to par (something I should have checked before starting), and I was at the point where I was like, well, I’ve lost x, y, and z.

I had basically given up and was just recreating the RAID using the “create command” then trying to see if I could mount the drive read-only. With 6 drives, there are quite a few possible combinations that could be the right one. If I remember correctly, I was able to figure out which drive was the spare, so I could limit my searches to the other 5, and knowing all 5 were in use, it was a matter of trying different orders. I think I got close one time and ext4 gave me weird read error, so after that I swapped two drives, and hit the right order.

Eventually … I found it. I found the right combination and could reload it! Everything was there, untouched! As quickly as I could, I copied everything to a 10 TB drive I bought and installed into the desktop system. I saved the command, rebooted, and the same thing happened again - so it was definitely a motherboard problem - but this time I knew how to recreate it, and did so.

Since I now had a backup, I partitioned each drive and rebuilt the array using partitions…and I saved every piece of data I could think of about building the array, outputs of mdadm, outputs of /proc/mdstat, partition IDs, etc. Naturally, having that info likely means I’ll never need it.

I was so relieved when I saw that mount command work without error. I spent close to a week worrying about it, and in that moment it was a huge rush.

New setup handles HA and other duties with aplomb and is very reliable, so in the end it was very worth it.

This is less “silly” and more “horrifying”. Sorry.

Zwiftinsider isn’t run by Zwift - he just reports on them (though he definitely has inside information, and they work with him on various things, like letting him use “bots” to test various functionalities).

That is pretty old. I think there are several approaches now. The one he lists, one using docker (I actually had it running on my desktop Linux machine, but I didn’t actually test it), and I think some people got it working under WINE.

Zwift’s saving grace is that you can connect most hardware via your phone - trainer, cadence, heart rate monitor, etc. - because it’s designed to also run on things like Apple TVs, iPads, and Android phones and tablets, albeit with probably lower graphics settings. So, you don’t need to worry about the hardware end of it (ANT+ dongle), which very much simplifies the issue. Which reminds me, my heart rate monitor is ANT+ only, and I’d need a bluetooth-capable one to do this.

(Also, at worst, I could run it on my tablet and hook that up to a monitor, so even if I can’t get it running on Linux, I still have options.)

Got that the other day on my gaming computer. Very irritating.

Especially since I bought the computer in 2021 specifically to run the virtual cycling program Zwift. I’m not replacing it just to placate Microsoft. It’s more than powerful enough to run Zwift and will be for years. I’m hoping the options for using Zwift on Linux pan out.

I need to do this with my gaming computer yet. I run Linux on my other machines (and have for many years), but this one is Windows. I bought the computer in 2021, but it doesn’t have the trusted computing module, so I can’t upgrade it to Windows 11 even if I wanted to.

Last night I tried to add an SSD that I had from a laptop that died, figuring I’ll put a fresh install of Linux on the second SSD and not touch the original drive. Unfortunately, the computer didn’t want to boot off the original drive any more - even when I changed the boot priority to the original drive, I still got grub from the new drive. I had to disconnect the new SSD to get the computer to boot Windows on the original drive (I wasn’t ready to do the Linux install and might need Windows in the mean time).

I know it’s a temporary issue at worst, as the installer will likely pick up that Windows installation and make it an option in grub. But it was a setback I wasn’t expecting. I figured I’d put in the drive and have it just idling there until I had time to run the Linux installation.

Looks like I’m on 1password 8 in Linux. For whatever reason, I just prefer the app instead of having the browser pop open 1password.com to edit records. I don’t know why, it just bugs me. I know part of it is that I want to use the native app to show support for it.

The plugin works fine, but it can’t call the separate program if you have that installed.

Because I wanted it to integrate with 1password full client.

Every time this is asked, I post the same comment. I used Kubuntu for years and liked it, but more recently they started doing things that annoyed me. The biggest was related to snaps and Firefox. Now, sandboxing a browser is probably a great idea, but I wanted to use the regular deb install, so I followed the directions to disable the snap install and used the deb. However, Ubuntu overrode that decision several times - I’d start browsing, then realize I was using a snap AGAIN. Happened a few times over a couple years. If it happened once, eh, maybe an error, but it happened 3 or 4 times. I came to the conclusion I wasn’t in control of my system, Ubuntu was.

I switched to Debian and am happy with my choice.

Same here. What especially irritated me was that even though I installed the .deb firefox and followed the directions to disable snap firefox, occasionally Ubuntu went ahead and reinstalled snap firefox for me.