In terms of KDE dependencies, you’re talking basically about QT. The amount of packages you download shouldnt be too much and likely used for other QT programs which are common.

However there is also GSconnect which is a Gnome extension and uses the KDE connect protocol.

I would say that your concerns regarding the KDE Connect dependencies should be balanced against the good Android and iOS support, and the wide use of KDE connect means it is well maintained, supported and responsive to security updates. These considerations may outweigh the installation of packages that you otherwise won’t be using? It may be better to go mainstream and accept the dependencies than hunt down a lesser supported alternative and deal woth the associated shortcomings.

It’s about short term vs long term costs, and AWS has priced itself to make it cheaper short term but a bit more expensive long term.

Companies are more focused on the short term - even if something like AWS is more expensive long term, if it saves money in the short term that money can be used for something else.

Also many companies don’t have the money upfront to build out their own infrastructure quickly in the short term, but can afford longer term gradual costs. The hope would be even though it’s more expensive, they reach a scale faster where they make bigger profits and it was worth the extra expense to AWS.

This is how a lot of outsourcing works. And it’s exacerbated by many companies being very short term and stock price focused. Companies could invest in their own infrastructure for long term gain, but they often favour short term profit boosts and cost reduction to boost their share price or pay out to share holders.

Companies frequently so things not in their long term interests for this reason. For example, companies that own their own land and buildings sell them off and rent them back. Short term it gives them a financial boost, long term it’s a permanent cost and loss of assets.

In Signals case it’s less of a choice; it’s funded by donations and just doesn’t have the money to build out it’s own data centre network. Donations will support ongoing gradual and scaling costs, but it’s unlikely they’d ever get a huge tranch of cash to be able to build data centres world wide. They should still be using multiple providers and they should also look to buildup some Infrastructure of their own for resilience and lower long term costs.

It does make sense for Signal as this is a free app that does not make money from advertising. It makes money from donations.

So every single message, every single user, is a cost without any ongoing revenue to pay for it. You’re right about the long run but you’d need the cash up front to build out that infrastructure in the short term.

AWS is cheap in the sense that instead of an initial outlay for hardware, you largely only pay for actual use and can scale up and down easily as a result. The cost per user is probably going to be higher than if you were to completely self host long term, but that does then mean finding many millions to build and maintain data centres all around the world. Not attractive for an organisation living hand to mouth.

However what does not make sense is being so reliant on AWS. Using other providers to add more resilience to the network would make sense.

Unfortunately this comes back to the real issue - AWS is an example of a big tech company trying to dominate a market with cheap services now for a potential benefits of a long term monopoly and raised prices in the future. They have 30% market share and already an outage by Amazon is highly disruptive. Even at 30% we’re at the point of end users feeling locked in.

So in terms of hardware, I use a Raspberry Pi 5 to host my server stack, including Jellyfin with 4k content. I have a nvme module with a 500gb stick and an external HDD with 4tb of space via USB. The pi5 is headless and accessed directly via SSH or RDC.

The Raspberry Pi 5 has H.265 hardware decoding and if you’re serving 1 video at a time to any 1 client you shouldn’t have any issues, including up to 4k. It will of course use resources to transcode if the client can’t support that content directly but the experience should be smooth for 1 user.

For more clients it will depend on how much heavy lifting the clients do. I my case I have a mini PC plugged into my TV, I stream content from my pi5 to the mini PC and the mini PC is doing the heavy lifting in terms of decoding. The hardware on the pi5 is not; it just transfer the video and the client does the hard work. If all your clients are capable then such a set up would work with the pi5.

An issue would come if you wanted to stream your content to multiple devices at the same time and the clients don’t directly support H.265 content. In that case, the pi5 would have to transcode the content to another format bit by but as it streams it to the client. It’d cope with 1 user for sure but I don’t know how many simultanous clients it could support at 1440p.

The other consideration is what other tools are being use on the sever at the same time. Again for me I live alone so I’m generally the only user of my pi5 servers services. Many services are low powered but I do find things like importing a stack of PDFs into Paperless NGX is surprisingly CPU intense and in that case the device could struggle if also expected to transcode content.

I think from what you describe the pi5 could work but you may also want to look at higher powered mini PC as your budget would allow that.

For reference I use dietpi as the distro on my server, and I use a mix of dietpi packages (which are very well made for easy install and configuration) and docker. I am using quite a few docker stacks now due to the convenience of deploying. Dietpi is debian based, and has a focus on providing pre configured packages to make set up easy, but it is still a full debian system and anything can be deployed on it.

Obviously the other consideration in the pi5 is an ARM device and a mini PC would be X86_64. But so far I’ve not found any tools or software I’ve wanted that aren’t compiled and available for the Pi5 either via dietpi or docker; ARM devices are popular in this realm. I have come across a bug in docker on ARM devices which broke my VPN set up - that was very frustrating and I had to downgrade docker a few months ago while awaiting the fix. That may be worth noting given docker is very important in this realm and most servers globally are still x86.

If I were in your position and I had $200 I’d buy the maximum CPU and GPU capability I could in 1 device, so I’d actually lean to a mini PC. If you want to save money then the Pi5 is reasonabkr value but you’d need to include a case and may want to consider a nvme or ssd companion board. Those costs add up and the value of the mini PC may compare better as an all in one device; particularly if you can get a good one second hand. There are also other SBC that may offer even better value or more power than a pi5.

Also bear in mind for me I have a mini PC and pi5; they do different things with the pi5 is the server but the mini PC is a versatile device and I play games on it for example. If you will only have 1 server device and pre exisiting smart tvs etc you’ll be more reliant on the servers capabilities so again may want to opt for the most powerful device you can afford at your price point.

I have played with Arch in a VM - I learnt a lot about how Linux works setting it up. But the tutorials and guides are good, and you end up with a lean system with just what you want in it, and pretty much all configured directly by you.

I can see why Arch is a popular distro and base for other distros (like Manjero and currently rapidly growing CachyOS).

But I’m not at the point I’d want to main it. My issue is the concern that because everything is set up by me, it’s a much more unique system so if something breaks it could be a whole myriad of my own choices that are the cause. I’m nervous about having to problem solve things when they break and solutions not working because of how my particular system is configured. It’s probably a bit irrational but I do quite like being on an distro that lots of other people have the exact same configuration as me, so when things break there is lots of generic help out there.

That said I would consider arch based distros like Manjaro or CachyOS as they are in that vain of mostly standardised distro.

I used to use Homeplug to get network from my router front downstairs of the house to the my office upstairs and back. It’s a small house, and I thought the homeplug was ok - I was getting about 150-200mbps of my 900mbps; not great but I thought it was a good as I could get. The electrics are about 10 years old but I could see there was a lot of noise and error correction when I looked at the software that came with the plugs. Simple direct wifi connection was atrocious as the walls are largely solid brick.

Then a couple of years later I read about how good they Mesh systems could be so I decided to try a cheap one. I was skeptical as wifi hadn’t worked for me. I got a Google Wifi system (not a fan of google but it was a cheap system compared to other mesh networks); it has no backhaul connection, just 3 wifi points (one in front room, one in hallway and one in office), and my speed jumped to 500mbps and low latency. I also hadn’t realised how bad the latency had been on my homeplug set up - it was night and day.

I have since upgraded to an ASUS XT8 system; 2 units only and I now get close to 800mbps on a good day, and 600-700mbps floor. My PC in my office is where I work (which involves high data transfers) and also game and chill, it’s been a huge boon.

So yeah, Homeplug does the job but it’s not great in my experience. It was cheap compared to a mesh network, but you get what you pay for. You can get some of the cheaper and older mesh systems 2nd hand on ebay - but unfortunately a good system is pricey. In my experience it was totally worth it.

I’ve not seen Euphoria, but drugs, drinking and sex plus underage clubbing were all things that happened at my schools between 15-18.

A drama like Euphoria is of course going to be way over the top regardless of setting.

I do agree casting 25year olds (zendaya is 29 years old) feels bizarre but that is what American TV has always done. Presumably it’s to do with experience given these are expensive shows that need to work to strict production schedules given how expensive these shows are. Its understandable they’d want a cast who have been proven to be reliable and experienced, and also are not restricted in the hours they can work. Also age consistency matrers - once you have one 25 year old cast member all of them need to be the same age or it looks disturbing with a mixed age cast set in a high school.

I suppose profile may matter too - Zendaya was already famous; the pool.of famous 18 year old actors is smaller than the pool of 25 year old actors. Certainly regardless of fame the pool of 18 year old actors with a big CV is going to be small. It’s risky to cast an unproven 17 year old but less risky to cast a 25 year old who has done plays, and maybe TV or movies, or completed acting training.

I agree they could just not set it in a high school but then the specific dynamics and stories they want to tell would not be available. High school is a strange time - in the US but also globally - where people are on the cusp of adulthood (16 in many places, 18 in the US), yet totally restricted by the law, family and school. It’s a perfect setting for conflict, which makes drama, and it is universally relatable as almost everyone went to school.

Meanwhile if you set something 19-25, it is no longer universal. About 50-60% of people in rich countries go to university / college. And those institutions massively vary from community colleagues, poorer universities, up to elite places. Meanwhile 40-50% do other things.

So yeah, I get that it feels bizarre that shows set in high schools are all 25 year old actors but I think it makes sense why, and setting things in high schools make sense too. These shows obviously make money and have a wide audience, even if it’s not really my personal taste.

They said “from what I know” which implies uncertainty, while the response made clear, no it doesn’t work.

If you want to try Pop OS, go ahead. The most important thing is back up data you want to keep - it’s not a bad idea to have a dedicated partition for your home folder and another for the OS to help with fixing problems or moving to another distro, but backups off your laptop are critically important. Then if you don’t like a particular distro, or you fuck up, you can install another and restore your data from backup.

Personally I use OpenSuSE Tumbleweed, I’ve tried quite a few distros and I think generally for gaming they’re much the same. OpenSuSE has a good user interface in YaST for tweaking and keeping the system how I want it. I like being on a distro with a big install base and linked into an enterprise distro as there is an incentive to test rigorously and also fix things when they break. But Tumbleweed is a rolling release so there will still occasionally be problems.

If you want stability and no headaches then I’d go for a decent point release distro with a big install base overall. I’d suggest OpenSuSE Leap or Fedora KDE over smaller niche/community distros. Go for Gnome equivalents if that’s your thing. I have gone off Mint in recent months as I think too much support out on the Web is out of date and provides bad solutions to problems (such as adding random ubuntu repos to install software). Mint itself.Is a decent distro.

I’d avoid Ubuntu due to Snap, I’d avoid Debian due to its slow upgrade cycle (very stable distro but may not be the best for high end gaming and tweaking), and I’d avoid Arch due to the complexity of set up (unless you want your system exactly right and are prepared to problem solve your way to what you want; it can be a very powerful and efficient set up of you’re willing to out he work in). I’d also personally avoid atomic distros as it can be a headache to tweak and run custom software although there are ways if you enjoy leaning new things.

Trying to rewrite history huh - they suspended the show because Kimmel criticised Trump, and the FCC threatened ABC/DIsney. Never forget.

Agree although surprisingly the About section is a little vague on some of what OP wanted.

OP, it’s an SVG editor so should be perfect for real world projects you allude to. You can set the canvas size and change the default units with relative ease; Pixels, points, millimetres and inches but also Parsecs if you want to go wild, and as it’s SVG it’ll scale as needed without issue. https://logosbynick.com/change-the-canvas-size-in-inkscape/

There are also measurement tools too and areas can be calculated (but objects do need to be converted to paths to measure areas).

Everything else is covered in the about.

A quick google search shows that many people have issues with the Intel Integrated Graphics on this particular PC (including on Windows) and this seems to be the solution: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=17021&title=solution-for-intel-graphics-freezing-system

The main solution is Windows based but someone does offer a Linux route to the same solution, although a linked file that sounds like setting it up may be easier is missing. Essentially it looks like the chipset needs tweaking to throttle the GPU slightly to prevent the flaw triggering.

Great to see another person moving to Linux and OpenSuSE. My only caution if this is your first time with Linux is that a point release like OpenSuSE Leap is probably a better place to start than Tumbleweed. I’m on Tumbleweed and it’s generally good but I have had a few things break over the last couple of years, often fixed at next update in fairness but it is frustrating even as an experienced user. I have also had to reinstall Tumbleweed on one occasion; it wasn’t a big deal as I’d set up a separate Home and System partition. Tumbleweed is great but it is a rolling release and even though it’s a well tested one rolling releases are always riskier in terms of things breaking.

Agree, a USB stick live install is a good way to test - users should just bear in mind it is slower than a real install as USB drives are not as fast as internal hard drives. Once the OS is loaded fully it will feel reasonably snappy but still every piece of software you launch will take longer to load than a real install, and the bigger the software the longer it will take to load.

I also tended to recommend Linux Mint for beginners although I think I’m moving more towards recommending OpenSuSE Leap. The reason being it ships with KDE which is a slick interface with a Windows like set up by default (although very customisable - users can create MacOS or Gnome like interfaces with relative ease if they prefer) and gives a better idea of what modern Linux is capable of than Cinnamon in my opinion. Also KDE’s Discover app makes it easy to install software, comparable to Mint’s software store. Mint still has many more guides online but they’re often around terminal use and APT based solutions, and I’m beginning to think that is actually a bad thing. Most stuff for mainstream users can be done via the GUI, and KDE offer’s a great GUI. Plus Flatpak is a far better way of installing custom software than the APT recommendations I still see widely shared, so I think it’s actually better to move people away from Mint. Personally I think OpenSuSE Leap is the better option (and possible Fedora KDE Plasma edition although I am less familiar with it).

Yeah absolutely, these things are cyclical! Hold on to those cabbage patch kids.

I wonder why they’re making a Linux native version? It is one of the ironies of Proton that windows native games are so easy to install it seems a bit pointless? But also making games for Linux is ironically difficult as it’s difficult to support long term as they can break as libraries change over time.

It feels like we need a Flatpak style set up for Linux native games which may help games launch stable long term versions that won’t “break” if newer libraries don’t work with them. Flatpaks “bring your own dependencies” approach is more similar to how windows games often work with their own dlls (even to the point of installing old versions of directx when needed) except without windows annoying set up of spraying dlls all over your hard drive making them difficult to clean up when you uninstall a game.

Although arguably Steam already deals with that on both Linux and Windows currently. But it is proprietary. And maybe Flatpak is already that solution? Maybe Appimage too although not sure how well a 30gb would run from a single file virtual file system? Is it native speeds or have some overhead?

It will depend on the drivers that Audeze Maxwell supply? I can’t see any USB drivers for Linux beyond the dongle but they may exist.

However if they have a 3.5mm port then I’d use that. I have a Sony headset and while I don’t have any issues with Bluetooth, I do like to use 3.5mm analogue conenctions to save battery (even with noise cancelling on the battery lasts way longer off Bluetooth). I bought a long 3.5mm cable online and plug it into the front of my PC. No USB or Bluetooth faff, it just works, and at high quality.

However note that if you want the mic to work too it will depend on whether the headset’s 3.5mm jack is set up for both audio and mic (if it’s good quality it should be), plus you will need a 4pin 3.5mm plug and cable to pick up the mic from the headset and cable instead of the common 3pin audio only plug. At the other end if your pc has separate 3.5mm audio and mic jacks you will need an adaptor that splits the audio/mic into two cables to plug in to both jacks. If it’s a desktop there will be separate jacks around the back although sometimes the front jack may be a combined mic/audio jack, or you may also have one joint jack if it’s a laptop. If you do need to split the audio and mic then you can find these adaptors and also 4pin 3.5mm cables on ebay or amazon.

Edit: Just in case you’re not aware - an audio only 3.5mm cable has 2 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 3 metal rings or pins). An audio + mic 3.5mm cable has 3 coloured bands on the plug (splitting it into 4 metal rings or pins).

Edit 2: sorry look for 4 pole 3.5mm rather than 4 pin; you’ll see the better quality stuff when searching as pole is the correct term!

They might need access so that widgets can work?

I use Lawnchair which is FOSS rather than some company scraping data (like Nova which was bought by an analytics company and is being shut down)

How familiar are you with Linux? If you’re new to it, pick something mainstream with lots of support and advice out there. I usually recommend Mint as a starter distro - it’s well supported, easy to use and doesn’t have the downsides of a distro like Ubuntu.

If you’re familiar with Linux then I’d recommend a point release distro and not a rolling release distro. Rolling release are cutting edge but that means much more opportunity for things to go wrong which isn’t a good thing to deal with if you’re new to Linux.

Beyond that, most distros dual boot well with Windows (although Windows is not well-designed and can occasionally break the bootloaders as others have said).

I’m on OpenSuSE and recommend it; it’s well designed with good tools in the form.of YaST. I’m personally not a fan of Fedora but I know a lot of people swear by it as a distro. Of the big distros I’d basically only really avoid Ubuntu because of how Snap is forced down people’s throats. I’m also personally not a fan of immutable distros due to the reliance on Flatpak and other downsides but your milage may vary.

Regardless, dual boot with Linux and Windows is a good solution. It’s how I got into Linux; my main PC still has a Win 10 partition which I don’t use but keep as a backup. My laptop and a living room.Media PC are pure Linux.

I’d say Win 11 in a VM is an alternative route for those few apps but I find windows is a bit laggy even on a decent PC. It’s perfectly usable - I’ve run Office and even windows at dual 4k without major issue, but there is a noticeable albeit small input lag and slowness in rendering the desktop that I found just annoying enough to put me off (even at 1080p single screen to be clear).

From reading it seems Win 11 does work fine if you pass through a discrete graphics card for it to use but that’s only doable if you have 2 GPUS. You might have that option if your laptop has a discrete graphics card as well as an integrated one. For me it reflects how bloated and poorly optimised windows is, but there are people who report getting Win 11 to work with high end games without issue although it takes some work. Meanwhile I can get Linux VMs on a Linux host to run at near native performance with ease.

There are free alternatives to Nitro Pro but if it’s an essential for you I’d try dual booting initially while.you test but don’t have to solely rely on VMs initially. If VMs do the job then wiping Windows will free up a lot of space and also stop it interfering in your Laptop set up.

Brave is being forced to use Googles version of Manifest 3 meaning ad blockers and anti trackers are crippled in favour of advertisers and Googles ad business. Brave will be including 4 manifest 2 extensions in its backend but that’s it. They’re stuck because Google decided to screw over the entire Chrome based ecosystem.

Mozilla is implementing Manifest 3 differently so the original techniques for adblocking and privacy still work.

So the only choice is Librewolf. Sacrificing privacy and security for smoother animations and Web translation of pages is not worth it.