• 0 Posts
  • 46 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: November 25th, 2024
  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•Part 3: They said a phone can’t run without a battery. Unfortunately, Pettyl didn’t get the memo.English
    4·
    10 days ago

    AFAIK it depends on the device. I believe it’s simpler to have a battery management system which keeps the battery charged when power is attached, and then a second separate system which powers the phone from the battery. That does lead to more wear on the battery though, so the better solution is to have a power management system which monitors the battery and keeps it within a set charge range, and additionally can supply the voltage needed to run the phone. Only when power is not connected does the battery power the phone.

    From a quick google though, it seems that’s only part of the picture. High-end modern phones will often require a battery present, as they use it to smooth out the power coming from the adapter, even though most of the power for the phone when the charger is attached comes from a direct power path.

  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoLinux@lemmy.ml•Looking for a durable and repairable Linux laptop for business use
    7·
    18 days ago

    What do you mean durable? As long as you are careful, and don’t use it as a frisbee, any laptop can last for 10 years. If you travel about with it, get a proper laptop shoulder bag that fits it well and has a soft padded interior. Then keep the laptop in that when you travel, and don’t squash it into a bag or suitcase.

    Beyond that, simply look for the laptop that you like best. The Thinkpad is a meme laptop IMO. I had one for work, and yes it worked fine with Linux, but so did both the laptops I bought for myself, neither of which were Thinkpads. If you like the look of the Thinkpad, then go for it. Personally I don’t really dig that clunky 90s aesthetic, I prefer laptops with a sleek minimalist aluminium look.

    My advice is to make a checklist of everything you need and/or want in your laptop. How long do you want it to run on battery? What size screen do you want? What connectivity does it need - USB-C ports, a couple of USB-A as well? Do you want it to use a USB-C charger (this is very convenient when travelling)? What kind of touchpad, keyboard layout, how much RAM, what speed WiFi etc etc

    Then simply start looking, and build a shortlist of laptops that appeal. Create a spreadsheet, with a column for each of the features you identified as being important in the last step.

    Regarding Linux support, the best thing you can do is check reviews. Even if you buy elsewhere, Amazon reviews are great for this - you can search reviews for keywords, so when you see a laptop you like the look of, search for reviews that mention Linux, and check that everyone’s happy and not complaining about unsupported devices. This is not the lucky dip that it used to be, but there are still problematic components like network adapters that may not work out of the box.

    I have only had two laptops, the first of which I bought in 2018. It was an Asus, very midrange at £600. I prepared a live USB, booted on to it and checked everything worked OK, which it did, and then without further ado I installed Linux. The sensible thing to do would be to have left the “Windows rescue partition” intact for a couple of weeks until I was sure I was happy with the machine, but I just wanted all trace of Microshit purged from my shiny new machine, so I deleted it and set the entire disk as my single Linux partition (plus of course a small boot partition), and I never looked back.

    The computer worked great, did everything I needed from it and was still going strong last year when I finally got a replacement. The laptop I have now is a Lenovo IdeaPad 5. It was also £600, and its performance is way better than expected, being way faster and more pleasant to use than my old Asus. it has an integrated Intel Arc graphics card, which is surprisingly capable. While my old laptop could only run vintage games, such as KOTOR, this new one is able to run current games on medium-low settings. I’ve currently got addicted to ARC Raiders, and it runs perfectly acceptably. Nothing like as smooth and pretty as it runs on my desktop PC at home, but perfectly good enough for me.

  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoLinux@lemmy.ml•A replacement for dolphin that can look just as pretty?
    3·
    4 months ago

    Copying my comment to OP below - it might be worth checking:

    Check your inotify maximums - this is the system which monitors directory contents and notifies applications of changes. These maximums used to be pretty low, but should be high enough for most users these days. Do you tend to work with multiple directories containing lots of files?

    See what you get when you run these two commands:

    sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches
sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_instances

    You can increase them temporarily like so and see if it helps:

    sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288
sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_instances=1024

    If it does help, add to /etc/sysctl.conf (or a file in /etc/sysctl.d/).

  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoLinux@lemmy.ml•A replacement for dolphin that can look just as pretty?
    4·
    4 months ago

    Check your inotify maximums - this is the system which monitors directory contents and notifies applications of changes. These maximums used to be pretty low, but should be high enough for most users these days. Do you tend to work with multiple directories containing lots of files?

    See what you get when you run these two commands:

    sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches
sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_instances

    You can increase them temporarily like so and see if it helps:

    sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288
sudo sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_instances=1024

    If it does help, add to /etc/sysctl.conf (or a file in /etc/sysctl.d/).

  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•Alternative to Gmail? I currently use my own domain for email, but i miss the priority inboxEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    I’ve been using Zoho for about 6 months and have no complaints. I pay about $12 a year for a couple of gigs of storage - not a huge amount, but enough for personal email as long as you delete stuff fairly regularly.

    You can create up to 30 email aliases, which I use a lot. For instance, I have an email address for newsletters, a couple for generic web logins, and then some specific ones for important accounts such as banking.

    It’s easy to make filters to sort email as it arrives. This is how I handle the “priority inbox” situation. Any email from my family or other important senders is all put into a single folder, and I have an email app on my phone which checks this folder and notifies me of new mail. All other mail is either moved by other filters e.g. newsletters or just left in the inbox.

  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoTechnology@lemmy.world•What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge WindowsEnglish
    8·
    9 months ago

    compatibility layer upon layer

    I can understand the sentiment, but don’t ignore the real advantages to the proton/wine way of doing things.

    For instance, some old games won’t run on modern Windows but will run on Linux under proton/wine.

    It’s also just a lot easier for game companies to target a single platform i.e. Windows. When Valve first released their Steam machines, a few AA games were released natively. For several of those, the native builds no longer work and you now need to run the Windows version under proton/wine.

  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoLinux@lemmy.ml•What software do you use to aggregate email in a single interface?
    2·
    11 months ago

    yes I’m using my regular email and messaging family members using theirs.

    It’s working fine, except for the occasional issue like I mentioned, i.e. sending multiple emails for one message.

    I don’t know what it’s doing about encryption - it seems to use it when it knows the other party supports it, but that’s not my priority at this point, my aim is to encourage people to move off WhatsApp (this is what all my chatting takes place on). I’m kind of using the family chat as guinea pigs really.

  • MouldyCat@feddit.uktoLinux@lemmy.ml•What software do you use to aggregate email in a single interface?
    1·
    11 months ago

    Nice, I’ll give it a whirl. Their their website says, “ArcaneChat is a Delta Chat client” so maybe it deals with the issues I’ve had better.

    bug reporting

    I’m looking for projects I can contribute to in some way, so definitely not averse to bug reporting. From some discussions on the forum, the way I’m using it isn’t really supported and they’re really aimed at people who want to chat securely without being tied to proprietary networks. But I’m certainly not the only one who would prefer not to use proprietary chat protocols like WhatsApp, but there’s just too many other people I’d have to convince to switch to yet another chat app. Delta Chat / ArcaneChat really seem to offer a way forward for people like me, but the chat experience for people using regular email clients has to be very good - people get annoyed quickly if they receive 5 emails in a row each containing a single picture followed by a 6th email that just contains text (which is how my attempt at a message sharing some photos came through for email users)