BananaTrifleViolin

Part of this is just that the socially conservative pressure to fit in has eased. Time was you had to be "religious" to fit in to communities and it was seen as part of American identity.

I find it hard to believe 75% of Americans are religious. In the UK 37% identify as non religious. 45% identify as Christian yet churches have emptied our and most young people only end up in one for marriages or funerals. People say they're Christian but I have no doubt a large chunk of those people are just ticking a box on a census form as it's part of their identity.

PCs are generally based around the X86 chip architecture which is an open standard. PCs are basically modular and lots of manufacturers make components that are interchangeable, creating a huge variety of possible hardware. Hardware suppliers also sell to both big manufacturing companies and individuals. It's therefore in their interest to distribute their drivers freely even if closed source. If hardware breaks it can be replaced and the PC keeps going, and some components can be kept going for years as a result as people dot have to throw the whole machine out everything something breaks or becomes obsolete.

Mobile devices are closed standards. They use a more limited range of off the shelf components which are deeply integrated into a device, and the hardware suppliers provide their drivers to the device manufacturer or the device manufacturer builds their own drivers and custom version of the os. Hardware can have very long retail lives selling for years and still being functional, so the manufacturers have an incentive to keep drivers available and even update them.

It means mobile devices are more locked down, and the hardware drivers harder to come by. This makes it hard to build custom OS for them and therefore when the device comes to the end of its support from the maker there is limited options to keep it running securely.

It's effectively a type of planned obscelence that keeps the mobile industry going. Manufacturers stop supporting old devices (because it provides no income) and then consumers have to buy new ones as no one can provide the security patches to keep them secure.

So for mobile there is nothing to force Android or IOS to be kept up to date for old devices. The money is in new devices, and for Android manufacturers are responsible for the mobile device anyway. While for PC it's in Microsofts interests to keep updating and keeping devices secure via Windows becuase devices have long lifespans and old components can be in the PC ecosystem for decades. Similarly Linux is able to support hardware for a long time because drivers are more freely available and long lifespans to hardware incentivise people to put the effort in to write open drivers when they're not there.

Microsoft is trying to force an upgrade cycle at the moment with Win 11 though. And the laptop industry ia more like the mobile industry than the desktop pc industry with more propriety devices and locked down hardware.

We use it at work because it's intergrated into Office. I suspect that's why most people use it.

Typical Microsoft tactic for domination - bundle it in, integrate it and then people won't try other stuff. Anti-trust / Anti-monopolies laws used to be used to fine and stop this, but now they can do whatever they want.

There is quite a range of devices out there now with varying capabilites. Things like the Onion Omega2+, Oranage Pi, and more.

Raspberry Pi also remains good. While the Pi5 is expensive and more powerful - raspberry pi also makes the Pi Zero boards which are cheaper less capable boards which are closer to what the original raspberry Pi was but newer hardware.

I'd say the Pi5 is a heading more towards a full PC like device (hence the comparisons to cost and capability minipcs pepple are making in thia thread). But there remain plenty of lower spec machines out there now similar to the original cheap Raspberry Pi concept. And we've had high inflation recently - to some extent the cost perception avtually reflects money being worth less than it was and buying less for $10 or $20.

Laptops are not generally designed to run like that with a closed lid. Heat dissipation is designed around the idea the laptop is open and some of it is through the keyboard surface. The lid closed would change that.

Systems can of course be setup to power off the display but for server/service uses open laptops may not be efficient space wise.

Having said that if the scenario is low power use the heat dissipation may not be a major issue. But if there is an unremovable battery i'd still be concerned about heat dissipation with the lid closed and even just the battery itself regardless of heat dissipiation.

Low power and arm architecture are big differentiators between Pi and laptops.

I totally agree recycle laptops where possible, but they're generally noisier and less energy efficient plus the battery degrades over time and is a fire risk.

They're not necessairly a good fit for always-on server or service type uses comparef to a small board like Raspberry Pi. But a cheap or free second hand laptop is definitely good for tweaking, testing and trying our projects.

Ignore the drama, if you like the distro then use it. All the big distros are influenced by the companies that use them but should a distro make a substantial.change you don't like you can move.

However I would always have the mentality that you may one day want to move or reinstall so its good to be ready.

As a minimum its a good idea from the outset to ensure data you would want to keep and migrate is kept somewhere secure and separate to the linux OS itself. That might be having a separate home partition and root partition (not essential but its made migeation for me much easier). However regardless of that always do have robust backups of all your home folder data anyway.

If you do end up tweaking and getting more technical its also a good habit if you tweak your system files (like fstab files etc) to try and keep backup copies of those away from the root folder structure should you need to rebuild your system with another distro or even a fresh install. I also even save copies of webpages where i got specific tips and tricks to achive things i wanted so i can redo it easier in the future - has saved me a lot of time when i do make major changes.

Another good thing to backup from time to time can be your /opt folder. Some software you install may end up there and can contain custom files (esp if you needed to do something manually or customise it - Jellyfin for me sits in /opt and i always fins it a bit annoying to set up between distros - ffmpeg, firewall and file permissions are recurrent issues for me every time).

Finally I'd suggest it can be good to backup a list of your flatpak packages and system installed packages into text files from time to time (this is easily done but how differs between distros). This can be a helpful reference to rebuild your preferred set up when starting from afresh with a new distro or reinstall. You'd eventually reinstall everything you need without that but i've found such lists have saved me a lot of time.

A distro change or reinstall could be years away but your future self will appreciate it if you have regualar backups of all thet stuff - makes reinstalling or migrating to a new distro a doddle. Also it gives you freedom to do it whenever you want - if you know its already all there its far less daunting.

How much you should do depends on how deep ypu get into twealing your system. A minimum is bakc up your home folder / personal files, anything more depends on what you end up getting up to with your system.

I get the point they're trying to make but McDonald's is not a good example.

Whats changed for them is tastes and perceptions of fast foods. Marketing fast food at kids has becoming socially less acceptable, and McDonalds has pivoted towards competing with Starbucks and the like as more of an adult friendly food venue. They've pushed the coffee and cafe menu concept, and the pivot to a more adult style for the main restaurants partly started in the UK where it drove sales up when they refurbed restaurants and changed the menus, and also from longer term experience in Australia where the McCafe style subsidiary coffee shops continue to grow faster than the main business.

Of course kids are still important to them and they do the happy meal etc, but if you're out getting a coffee and a bagel as a 30 or 40 year old would you go into the McDonald's on the left or the right?

So the bit of the article quoted doesnt cover the salient points its making. It reads as if its saying "spending more on the homeless is bad" when actually its saying "bad policy can cost more and make things worse".

The death rate went up because Portland started aggressive anti-honeless techniques of sweeps to clear homeless encampments and a reduction of longer term stable housing in favour of short term shelters.

What the article is saying is Portland enacted bad and expensive policies that have made the situation worse not better.

Yeah its not a great headline. But in fairness Legion Go S extends SteamOS / valves reach so is part of Valves strategy. They make their money on the steam store - thats what matters to them most.

The Xbox device is the first time Microsoft has actually got involved to help improve the windows experience on hand held. I suspect the Xbox brand will confuse people though, as theyre still just Windows devices with an Xbox branded interface. I dont see it as a winning strategy. People will still want to be using steam and a system that doesnt put that front and centre is not going to have mass appeal.

An Xbox store would need time to catch on, and they havent managed it on windows. Steam dominates for good reason - convenient, aggressive pricing, and effective vendor lockin for many users who already have huge libraries of games.

I'm not hyped by the Switch 2: its expensive, its games are expensive and the launch titles are paltry. It also has competition in the form of the Steam Deck and a range of SteamOS and Windows handheld devices with a huge volume of games available including many at significantly lower prices.

Switch 2 needs exclusives to justify its price and its existence. Switch 1 games with slightly improved graphics (which you have to pay for) and a small handful of launch titles make the Switch 2 a bad proposition for anyone except diehard fans at this point.

At the moment there are no compelling 1st party games in the pipeline. 3D Mariocart and Donkey Kong Bananza seems to be it for now. No new Mario platformer, no Zelda, no pokemon at launch. Everything is old games with better graphics, and much of it available on other platforms like PC with better graphics already anyway (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077 - a 5 year old game which most people have played and is still better on PC or PS5/Xbox; why is that a compelling launch title?).

Nintendo has a lot of work to do - I think there is a real risk the Switch 2 will be a flop if they dont get 1st party exclusives out before the holiday season.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but the commands would apply within the zsh, which is a bash alternative, not within the programmes running themselves?

Or are you saying its sus because its illogical/confusing to have opposite uses for tgebsame shirt cut? I can see that as people using a terminal and launching vim would constantly be working against "muscle memory" each time they switch which would be annoying! Being familiar with keyboard shortcuts is what can make terminal based workflows so fast.