Dual-booting, modding, or debloating Windows. And anything but the LTSC edition. It'll all fall apart within a year given the nature of Windows 10 updates. Projects like Ameliorated, while well-intentioned, are a security mess waiting to happen since you have to disable any and all updates.
So I bit the bullet on an extra laptop, exiled any Windows-specific projects, files, etc. to it and slapped on a copy of LTSC. I consider the machine compromised and only use it for what absolutely depends on Windows.
A few years ago, when I cared little about my privacy, I would fancy buying a new car. Thanks to privacy concerns, I became proud to have my old car, which also happens to be highly repairable.
Ideally:
- Well-organized set of frequently-used and recent files on my laptop
- Media and old documents on my NAS, synced to an external hard drive I can remove for travel
- Each device/non-backup drive/USB drive/SD card backed up to its own folder on a large external drive
- A duplicate of said drive from another manufacturer
- An archival copy of my documents and photos (encrypted on microSD ofc) that I carry with me
- Additional copy of the most important stuff on M-Discs
Reality:
- Controlled mess on my laptop
- Dumping ground of random YT videos and CD rips on my NAS
- A well-curated external drive prepared in my pandemic free time
- An external drive with somewhat periodic backups of my devices alongside every unsorted file. I worry that some file paths have grown too long
- Duplicate of the two above on one large external drive
- Another external drive with files and backups of dubious usefulness that I refuse to delete
- An outdated copy of my documents and photos on an everyday carry microSD
- A stack of unused M-Discs
“suicide linux”
Looked it up with quotes and the first update in the first search result:
Update 2011-12-26
Someone has turned Suicide Linux into a genuine Debian package. Good show!
:(
It's nice and easy on the eyes. I conjecture that glossy and matte (as seen here) styles of skeuomorphism gave way to more abstract design since:
- Skeuomorphism is hard to get just right without being excessive and tacky
- Saturated, simple blocks of color pop out more, particularly on the increasingly prevalent mobile UI
- And thus also have better shelf appeal
If it were up to me, the red line would be when buttons and interactive elements are indistinguishable from text. The stock Android settings is probably among the worst offenders in this regard.
What I really miss is light mode that isn't hated for blinding users and dark mode that doesn't plunge the user into the void. Those "toolbars" look lovely, perfect for any lighting condition or time of day. I've yet to understand why, at present, designers insist on pure white everywhere when it comes to light mode. Maybe everyone is using the night light filter so it doesn't matter? At least pure black dark mode makes sense for power efficiency on OLEDs.
- Debian stable (w/ XFCE). No-nonsense, excellent community support, well-documented, low-maintenance, and runs on anything so I can expect things to work the same way across all of my machines, old, new(ish), or virtual
- Just flexible enough that I can customize it to my taste but not so open-ended that I have to agonize over every last config
- It's been around for many years and will be around for many more
- I often entertain the idea of moving to Alpine or even BSD, but I can't resist the software selection available on Debian
Microsoft shouldn't revoke license keys unless it's a leaked VL key being spread around for piracy or the like. The semi-annual major updates seem to count as "versions" like Windows 11 22H2 (now end of service) vs Windows 11 24H2 (current). That said, it's a poorly worded error message and it doesn't help that Windows 11 will cry wolf at every opportunity.
Cannot adjust brightness via keyboard after suspending without a display manager
Decided to uninstall my display manager and use startx instead. But now when I resume from suspend, the brightness keys cease to work until I log out and back in. Backlight does still respond when echoing into /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness. But what kind of magic does a display manager do to keep brightness controls working after suspend and resume?
Using xfce on tty1 on an X230 if it matters.
Debian Stable. Predictable, low-maintenance, and well-supported. From time to time, I think about switching over to Alpine or even BSD, but the software selection and abundance of Q&A posts for Debian and its derivatives keeps me coming back. Having been a holdout on older Windows versions in the past, I'm quite used to waiting for new features and still amazed at how much easier life is with a proper package manager.
Graphing and familiar commands and syntax for those who grew up using TI calculators
Nothing worked for me until I designed my own planner. I like to take things one week at a time so every Friday afternoon, I print out enough sheets for the next week on semi-A4 paper, folded and stapled to a semi-A5 booklet.
One full page for each day with:
- Compact visual schedule of the day with a time grid (hours on the y-axis, 10s of minutes on the x-axis) and recurring events pre-printed
- "Today" box to write down reminders and tasks that don't go on a time grid
- Section to jot down miscellaneous thoughts and ideas
- Right half of the page entirely for a journal entry
Front cover has the weekly overview and back cover has upcoming and assorted tasks.
No monthly calendar, any entry that needs to persist for longer than a week or so goes in a separate hardcover A5 journal that is usually in my bag.
Mouse cord getting caught on things. Makes me want to yank it forcefully.
It's usually confined to mobile workstation-class ones, which have Xeon processors. The 3612QE was intended for embedded machines and is one of the few i7 variants to support ECC.
Observation: The X230 with i7-3612QE does not support ECC RAM
After learning that the 3612QE itself supports ECC RAM in contrast to the stock CPU options and that the QM77 chipset also does, I purchased a DDR3 SODIMM with unbuffered ECC. I have not been aware of any other attempts to test this combination.
The machine did not POST and did not produce any beep codes. Absolutely no response to any input aside from shutting down when briefly holding the power button. Everything returned to normal upon putting the original RAM back.
I suspect the BIOS lacks support, but whether this changes with coreboot remains unknown to me, at least until I learn how to prepare and flash coreboot.
This is purely an exercise in curiosity.
This stuff makes me grateful that my bank and your bank still maintain a fully-featured website. I would be quite upset if I were stuck with such an app and no website.
Would like to, but never figured out how to get the TPM 1.2 chip in my X230 to work with cryptsetup. Everything seems to be written for TPM 2.0 only.
same here but with hentai on searx.be
XFCE4. It's intuitive and predictable without sacrificing the ability to customize it exactly the way I want (with Chicago95 ofc). The built-in panel widgets are nothing short of amazing: battery, CPU, RAM, network, and disk monitors with labels toggled off to save space and a clock with only what I need on one line: MM/DD HH:mm:ss
Enough features so that it "just works" (no nitpicking through config files), especially on laptops, without being bloated in any way. Bonus of its lightweight nature is that I can keep my Debian/XFCE setup consistent across all of my machines, both old and new.
Can't wait for the finished xfwm4 port to wayland so I don't have to sacrifice some security running X11 and so I can do fractional scaling on hidpi machines.
QR code reader and generator on both phone and laptop
- Phone: SecScanQR
- Laptop: ZBarCam and Zint
But I'm glad to have learned about LocalSend here so I'm no longer limited to short text snippets
I miss print coupons. Hearing "get the app" or "there's an app for it" makes me flinch these days.
Ideally, 256 GB + microSD. 128 GB today gives me ample room for my offline maps, music collection, podcasts, and Kiwix libraries. No gaming, only the occasional video, and one photo per day on average, so 256 GB would future-proof it.
As for a minimum, 32GB. For several years, I had a phone with 4GB of internal storage. Didn't use the microSD slot since it seemed to drain the battery. Android takes up much more space nowadays, but I wouldn't be too upset having ~16 GB usable space for myself.
The SD card would be separately encrypted as a portable backup of everything important to me, accessible on-the-spot whenever I need it.
I'm curious, how did you build the BMS with a cheap controller? I won't judge. I've always wanted to build my own battery pack that reports percentage back to the machine, without worrying about killing the BMS if it loses power.
Some thoughts on the X230 with i7-3612QE upgrade
In an effort to keep my X230 snappy for a few more years until I find/make a newer laptop to my liking, I finally caved in and bought an i7-3612QE board. Posting some observations and thoughts based on the questions I had prior to buying. Previous CPU was the i5-3320M.
Setup
- Debian 12
- XFCE
- 16GB DDR3L
- Two SSDs
- Hyper-threading disabled
- 1vyrain BIOS with classic keyboard EC patch
Performance
- Not literally twice as fast, but the improvement is quite noticeable
- CPU no longer seems to struggle while loading Javascript-laden websites
- Rarely hits 100% CPU usage, even on Youtube (sadly bloated enough to be a sort of benchmark)
- Single-core tasks are only slightly better than before
Thermals
- High 40s at idle to mid 60s when busy
- Feels cooler compared to previous CPU, which I assume is due to the CPU usage being lower across all tasks.
- Did not upgrade to the AVC cooler. Toshiba cooler works well and is quiet as ever.
Battery
- About 4.5 hours of office tasks and light browsing from full to empty with an aftermarket 55 Wh 6-cell at 98% health
- Wattage in the mid 9's at idle with brightness at a comfortable level for a well-lit room. Increase from low 8's with the i5-3320M.
- When doing actual work, wattage hovers from 11 to 15 watts
- 16 to 18 watts watching Youtube videos
- SLT1 IPS display does consume ~1 W more than TN. I installed tlp but left it on default settings.
- 65W Lenovo charger only works when in sleep mode or shut down. In normal use, however, it will not draw the full 65 W. A 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN charger that the X230 believes is 90 W will both work (my 65 W GaN charger worked well and did not overheat, YMMV)
Other
- Make sure to enlarge the cutout on the black sticker on the underside of the cooler since the 3612QE die is larger
- EC flashing will require a 90 W charger or a 65 W GaN that the X230 believes is 90 W.
- Factory CPUs have BGA package underfill. I have not checked for myself, but it is likely that the upgraded CPU does not have underfill. This should not affect day-to-day use, but the lack of underfill will make the BGA solder joints more susceptible to fall and vibrational damage. Liquid may get trapped underneath in the event of a spill.
Value
- With shipping and taxes, the upgrade costs about 200 USD and takes 2 hours. The total cost-to-date on my X230 built from parts is around 500 USD.
- Do not think of this upgrade in terms of how much performance you get for the price. Think of it like upgrading and daily-driving a classic car. If it brings you joy to daily drive an X230 as it does for me, then it may be worth it.
"Deploying" images rather than installing from the official ISO?
I like my Linux installs heavily customized and security hardened, to the extent that copying over /home won't cut it, but not so much that it breaks when updating Debian. Whenever someone mentions reinstalling Linux, I am instinctively nervous thinking about the work it would take for me to get from a vanilla install to my current configuration.
It started a couple of years ago, when dreading the work of configuring Debian to my taste on a new laptop, I decided to instead just shrink my existing install to match the new laptop's drive and dd it over. I later made a VM from my install, stripped out personal files and obvious junk, and condensed it to a 30 GB raw disk image, which I then deployed on the rest of my machines.
That was still a bit too janky, so once my configuration and installed packages stabilized, I bit the bullet, spun up a new VM, and painstakingly replicated my configuration from a fresh copy of Debian. I finished with a 24 GB raw disk image, which I can now deploy as a "fresh" yet pre-configured install, whether to prepare new machines, make new VMs, fix broken installs, or just because I want to.
All that needs to be done after dd'ing the image to a new disk is:
- Some machines: boot grubx64.efi/shimx64.efi from Ventoy and "bless" the new install with
grub-installandupdate-grub - Reencrypt LUKS root partition with new password
- Configure user and GRUB passwords
- Set hostname
- Install updates and drivers as needed
- Configure for high DPI if needed
I'm interested to hear if any of you have a similar workflow or any feedback on mine.
X230 3612QE and 3615QE battery life and opinions?
Anyone here use an X230 with the quad-core mod? I'm looking into it and was wondering about the reliability and battery life compared to the stock i5-3320M.
searx.be and results in Russian?
Been using searx.be for a bit now and they had many results in Dutch and German, which can be expected for a site based in Belgium. But does anyone notice an influx of results in Russian? Did they change the server location or are users in Russia catching on to it? Yandex isn't toggled on in the settings either.
Not trying to judge security by language. I just kinda liked having results in a mix of languages I could read.
How crucial are banking apps? Your experience with them vs. browser banking?
Banking apps seem to be a motif among things that don't play well with privacy ROMs. My bank's website does everything I could want out of it. I think I might be ignorant to something.
- What about banking apps is especially compelling?
- How often do banks put must-have features behind an app?
- And should I be concerned that banks might move away from offering services through browsers?
What still requires stock Android and has no alternative way to access?
I'm about to degoogle my stock Android phone. For the past few years, I've used it to handle the non-open source apps that I don't want running on my main phone. As I've finally weaned off GApps, I realize that I might as well go degoogle the rom as well.
edit: to be clear, I'll be using sandboxed Play services on GOS
But since that phone is my compatibility guinea pig, is it likely I'll still run into an app that demands unmodded Android with no alternatives? In your experience, has any bank or other service required the app on regular Android, with no alternative for the desktop, browser, etc?
How Wayland handles security considerations vs MacOS Quartz or Windows DWM?
As I understand it, X11 has many inherent security concerns, including programs being able to read the contents of other windows and intercept keystrokes. Wayland addresses these concerns but at the moment breaks certain functions like screen readers, cursor warping, and the ability of a program to resize its own window.
I am curious as to how the display protocols of MacOS and Windows handle these situations differently. How does a program in those operating systems gain permission to read the contents of other windows, if at all? What is to be done in Wayland for these functions to be more seamless or are there inherent obstacles?
Anyone not glue the screen back on after a repair?
Bought a Pixel 4a second hand since it's the last Pixel with a headphone jack that isn't too big for me, and I'm hoping to keep it as long as I can.
Unfortunately, it's about time for me to replace the battery. I tend not to treat my battery too well (can't be bothered to keep it between 20% and 80%, but it's supposed to be consumable, right?) and I'm not sure if replacement batteries will hold up as well over the years. So I'm wondering if it's fine to just replace the battery and pop the whole thing back into my case without gluing the screen, so future repairs are a bit easier and won't involve the risk of breaking the screen while prying it off.
For reference, I'm using one of those cases with an interlocking front and back, so it ought to hold itself together and not fly apart if I drop it. (edit) I guess what I'm looking for is experience as to whether the newly introduced slack between the glass and body tends to make make the screen more fragile or put undue strain on flex cables.