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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Its a fascinating election when you look at the stats. Labour vote share barely changed, Tories collapsed and Reform took most of their votes. In many of the conservative constituencies lost the Tory + Reform vote combined would have won.

    Of course the Tories will make the mistake of trying to be more like Reform or even merge with them. That will be a huge mistake and they will probably turn off their remaining core vote.

    This is really just another example of how broken the first past the post system is. I’m glad labour won but they’re kidding themselves that they somehow broke through to the public - they benefited from a split rightwing vote, just as Boris Johnson benefited from a split remain voter base when he won his big majority with just 43.6% of the votes in 2019.

    Labour won a huge majority with just 33.7% of the vote! Only 1.6% higher voter share than in 2019 and way off the 43% Blair got in his landslide election in 1997.


  • Then I’d definitely set up a test system in a VM on your own PC (I.e. not the actual server machines). Even if you don’t want to use Docker, you can set up a complete version of your new server and practice deploying Jellyfin and Plex, and then test accessing it “remotely” to manage it. You can then decide whether switching away from Win11 is worth it.

    If you’re not familiar with the process of setting up a linux server then I’d actually suggest Debian instead of OpenSuSe. Looking at the Jellyfin guide for example it specifically covers the steps for installing directly onto a Debian host (while OpenSuSE set up means using the Fedora RPM guide). There are also straight forward guides for setting up a Debian server.

    Personally I’m not a fan of Ubuntu (because of Canonical and Snap etc) but there may also be a good choice just because there are so many guides out there for setting up Ubuntu server.


  • Docker is pretty easy to use, and is easy to play with either on your own system (linux or windows) or in VM guest system. The learning curve isn’t that high and Jellyfin for example has a clear set up guide for docker on their wiki.

    But radarr, sonarr etc can be installed directly within linux without docker. The Servarr wiki (that these projects use officially to share information as they’re so similar) has lots of straight forward guides for set up on Linux, Windows, Mac etc as well as Docker.

    I have a Linux guest VM set up with a Radarr, Sonarr etc set up, VPN and torrent set up. It was easy to do and means its network activity is all securely contained away from my host system. The tools let me set naming rules and file preferences. The library is a shared n folder in my host system, and that is included in my Jellyfin library. So all I have to do is subscribe to something i am interested in and it will just appear in my library once downloaded. The servarr tools are extremely convenient and worth looking at if you’re adding to that 30tb library over time.


  • OpenSuSE is a good distro with nice tools like Yast that have a decent CLI interface, and has server releases. The leap edition is stable but relatively up to date.

    But there are lots of viable alternatives, and if you’re going to use Docker then the host distro is probably not as important as you think.

    Simplest route may be to set up a demo server within a VM and see which one chimes the most with your style of use and maintenance. You could have a functioning demo server with docker and deploy both jellyfin and Plex in 20mins.


  • Most as in SteamOS + Arch = 49.25%.

    It’s interesting how fragmented the Linux user base is in the survey. Excluding steam deck from the equation, the visible versions of Ubuntu are getting roughly 18.6%, Arch is getting like 14% of the desktop and Mint 21.3 getting 8.5%. The Flatpak version does put confusion into the data (hiding 11% of desktop versions) and the missing “other” 22.94% group accounts for 39% of the desktops so there may be lots of other version fragments hidden away, but regardless no single distro version seem to dominate.

    It’d be nice to see the whole list.



  • The boost in support in the far right is concerning in Europe however it is also over reported and the media often fails to understand the political systems.

    Most European countries have proportional representation.

    In Germany AFD won 16% of the vote. They came joint second which made headlines but 16% is low. Worst case is they could conceivably join a coalition in a split Bundestag. But AFD are not currently realistically close to power.

    In France, the far right was 33% of the vote, again making headlines and troubling. However that is in the first round. France has a second round where the 67% can coalesce around candidates. It’s troubling but the far right is not getting a majority in the French parliament, and it remains unlikely they would won the presidency as the left and centre out weigh them.

    In the UK Reform is polling around the same level as the Conservatives at about 18%. In the UK’s system its first past the post so it looks like they’re get a few seats at most - literally 5 - put of 650 seats. The UK is looking very likely to elect a centre left party to power with a huge majority, mainly due to the implosion of the conservative party.

    While these are all concerning and reflect lots of local trends, there is a huge difference with the US. In the US the republican party is viable for the presidency, the house and the senate and already hold the supreme court.

    The US is in a far worse position than almost any European country when it comes to the extreme party being at the doors of power. Europe has much work to do, but the US is fucked because its much vaunted electoral system and constitution has been shown to be extremely weak and fatally flawed, and seems to be unfixable.



  • Atomic systems or rpm-ostree is an interesting concept and may well be the future of distributing linux, but it has a lot of compromises. It may not be the first place to start when leaving windows.

    The problem is all the apps and things you may wish to do with your OS. Flatpak is the preferred method of installing apps as it doesn’t interfere with the OS, but that is a compromise that means more overhead for running apps including memory and disk space, and less integration with the host OS than traditional apps.

    You can overlay native apps but the more you overlay onto the immutable os, the more complex upgrading gets and the risks of breaking stuff.

    I’m not sure I would be starting with an immutable OS when switching away from windows. While it has a lot of theoretical benefits, its a work in progress and with significant compromises at the moment. Your VPN may just be the first of many programmes you find you need to overlay.

    I personally would look at a more traditional install, get it working how you like and if you find Linux works as a permanent home then think about how you might recreate that with an immutable OS base. If your needs a re very simple then maybe it’ll be easy, but if you’re using lots of software and tools (particularly if its not available Flatpak) or custom OS config you may find atomic desktops are not yet quite ready for you.

    It could be frustrating and off putting if you try linux immutable, find loads of problems and attribute that to linux when its actually the immutable OS that’s the cause.





  • Unfortunately for many, even in this day and age, there is not much choice. I main linux but also keep Windows on my PC as there are still tines when something will only work in Windows. Usually work related or gaming (VR in particular for me) and in fairness its increasingly rare.

    Many other users aren’t motivated to change. For Microsoft, its a bit like boiling a frog - if you turn up the heat slowly the frog just puts up with it. That’s what Microsoft is doing to its customers - a slow constant enshittification, seeing what it can get away with. Try something and it causes outrage? Don’t worry, just undo it and just try again in a few years! Many are already used to no privacy and being sold as a commodity that they don’t even question it happening on their own personal computer.


  • No one seems to have actually read the article, just the headline. This is the ultimate click bait title - kudos to the headline writer in 1939.

    The tl/dr: It’s saying Hitler’s authoritarian actions were galvanising other countries to step up and protect democracy after the failures after WW1.

    In the final paragraph:

    It is one of the most interesting phenomena of Hitler’s political activity that it has resulted in bringing about so soon such an overwhelming and unprecedented manifestation of defensive solidarity amongst the democratic peoples.

    And the final line of the article:

    It would be the height of paradox if Hitler, of all persons, were destined by his statesmanship finally “to make the world safe for Democracy.”

    The article is surprisingly prescient.


  • Unless you’re specifically wanting to play with a different OS then Debian again. Makes much more sense to be using the same version of Linux and all the software ypu use rather than potentially different versions.

    Also it will be simpler to maintain as everything is the same.

    If you do want to play / test another distro then Mint has a low learning curve. FreeBSD is more different but you could easily try it and switch to something else if you don’t like it. Its different but not so much that linux users would feel totally lost.

    Probably the most confusing thing for linux user trying FreeBSD is that Bash is not installed, and BSD uses sh instead by default. Bash can be easily installed and set as the default shell which will give a lot more familiarity. But otherwise it’ll feel like a familiar modern complete system, and you can use the same desktop environments you’re familiar with already in linux.

    EDIT: You did say “backup” in your title. If that’s the main use case then definitely Debian again. If your laptop breaks or is stolen it makes sense to have a familiar system to pick up. Also important to sync and backup your data so it can be picked up on the other laptop. If backup machine is your focus then I’d say same OS and look more into data retention and retrieval between the two laptops, and ensure your important data is continuously backed up.


  • Yeah its just not a good show.

    I just watched a scene where Michael and Mol were working together, then suddenly Michael decides to attack Mol, then they have a kung fu fight and finally Michael asks Mol stop and says she needs to trust her, as if Michael hadn’t just violently assaulted her. The writing is nonsensical.

    Unfortunately that is symptomatic of the show as a whole and just one of many problems.

    Also the constant deus ex machina, with the characters having a conversations where everyone finishes each others sentences. Its tiresome to watch. I really wanted to like the show but never could.





  • Skyrim was fun which is why its endured. Starfield is unfortunately fundamentally a bit boring and feels dated - they didn’t learn from the RPGs that came after Skyrim and moved things forward (Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 spring to mind).

    I doubt it’ll be fixed. Its not like No Man’s Sky -the developers only game and their number one priority. I think well get the usual small DLCs and Bethesda moves on to its next big project.

    I hope they learn from Starfield and make the next elder scrolls something special.