intel-undervolt/amdctl for cpu, lact for amd gpu, gwe for nvidia gpu (although voltage control on linux with nvidia is not possible, you can get a similar result by overclocking+limiting power)

Undervolting is great on gaming laptops. Usually nets you a performance boost simply by reducing thermal throttling.

Even just a few mV has made a difference for me.

From what I’ve read, Kent expects others to just take his word for it, when he says his code wont break anything.

The kernel has long had practices around merging and releasing, specifically so that it no longer has to rely on contributors simply promising that their contributions have been tested and confirmed safe.

But Kent has repeatedly skirted or straight up ignored those practices.

This isn’t about not agreeing on code needing to be reliable. It’s about one person refusing to work with an established way of achieving that when contributing to an upstream effort.

He’s been told how to contribute again, and again, and again. And every time he takes it like it’s a personall affront to his credibility.

They mean other platforms like GOG or Epic, not stuff like consoles.

Steam games mostly work, with some exceptions. You can check out ProtonDB to see more precisely what games work, which ones straight up don’t, and which ones need a fix. ProtonDB will usually also tell you what that fix is, which is handy.

But most of the time, you can just hit play and not worry about it.

A note on dualbooting. Linux uses different filesystems from windows. It can access windows NTFS partitions, but it’s not a smooth experience.

A common pitfall is trying use your game library while it is still on a windows filesystem, from linux. Since you can see the folders, and even add them in steam, it’ll seem like it should work. But you’ll run into issues actually running the games. It’s technically possible, but not worth the hassle.

Generally you really want to either format your storage and redownload your games, or if you have the space, copy them over to a fully supported file system.

Been happy with nextcloud notes, lately.

I did a google takeout of my Keep notes, and just chucked the markdown files into nextcloud. Works fine.

What I do, is have a minimize keybind.

When I want to quickly do something with a window below the one on top, I hit that minimize keybind, do my thing, then alt-tab.

Unless I interacted with a third window, the one I minimized comes right back.

Or are you looking for something more like picture in picture? A pinned window you never interact with, only look at?

Edit: what if you flip this the other way around?

Make the windows you want to be interacting with transparent, and keep them on top. You’ll always see the window you want to see, through them.

Some of it, yeah.

All a distro is, really, is a preset. It comes with some package manager or other, along with a collection of pre-installed packages.

The reason one chooses one distro over another, is because it’s closer to what you need. I could install arch, and spend a day setting it up exactly the way I like. Or, I could start with Endeavour, and get to essentially the same state in an hour.

I’m familiar enough with linux that I could strong-arm any install into doing whatever I need, but at times, to get from preset A to preset B, it’s faster to just start over from a known preset that’s closest to what I want.

Rolling releases typically mean the software available is recent, but that’s only one aspect of what your starting point could look like.

“Gaming” distros are going to be a preset that contains a bunch of configurations, defaults and software, that gamers typically care about. That steam is usually already installed, is an example of one such thing. The same way my mention of GPU and CPU support is only an example.

Maybe instead of “They tend to make sure stuff that gamers care about are up to date and working” I should have phrased it “They tend to make sure things that gamers care about are easy to set up and supported, if not even ready to go, out of the box”.

This looks fine.

I have a massive library of various games, and three years in I haven’t really come across any cases where I want to tear my hair out.

If ProtonDB says a game doesn’t work, you’re not gonna tweak your way to having it run. If it says it does, and it didn’t run right away with no problems, you can usually just apply the fixes other users have found, and be off playing your game.

In fact things are often simpler than on windows, because all the fixes have been gathered on protondb. While on windows you have to google-fu your way to finding someone on reddit or the steam forums who has the exact same problem, and also figured out and posted the fix.

Sometimes.

They tend to make sure stuff that gamers care about are up to date and working.

You’ll likely need the newest kernels and software packages if you’re running the latest gen of GPU and/or CPU, to get the most out of them, or even get them to work at all.

My first one to switch did so recently. Gave him an open offer to help get going if he ever got interested, then proceeded to just go about using my linux system for our multiplayer gaming and couch gaming hangouts.

It took a little less than three years from when I first switched for him to follow.

My sister is also on linux, has been since she took my gaming laptop as her own, and she never felt a need to switch it back to windows.

Well, I’d start with physical buttons. Forget stuff like face ID. A button that scans your fingerprint is a lot simpler to “get”. Same goes for volume keys.

Automatic screen brightness is pretty good, but if it weren’t a thing, buttons would work there. That’s how laptops do it.

I’d add a feature that makes certain settings reset to “default” after a configurable amount of time (or never). Airplane mode or mute could turn off over night, so grandma can never “disable” her phone and become unreachable, or unable to reach anyone. (Except by turning it off, a concept almost no-one has to be taught)

Give me the ability to disable quick settings in the notifications shade, grandma doesn’t need to toggle nfc, wifi, her data connection, or start screen recording (I literally tried to remove all the quick settings, but there’s a minimum!). Hell, get rid of the notification shade completely and make it a physical button that just opens your messages from whatsapp, sms and email, all in one list.

I don’t think we need to dumb down everything a phone can do. And I think we can assume an elderly person can get help with changing settings or setting it up to begin with. As such, what I wish fir, is for the simple stuff to be even simpler, and for the complicated stuff to be hidden away and essentially have configurable child locks, so they can’t be touched, except by someone who knows what the stuff does.

It should be possibly to put a device in a mode where it is “senile-proof”. But it isn’t. My grandmother can, and has, put her devices in a state where they do not work, simply by turning on airplane mode without realizing. And our current solution is to use Life 360, so we can check that her phone is still “online” and have someone visit her to fix it, if it isn’t.

I’ve done it over phone many times. I have a system.

I have them read whatever is on screen until I figure out what they’re looking at.

Then I use one of my own devices to follow along, so I have an idea of what they’re seeing, so I can give extremely specific instructions.

Sounds ok.

But limiting. My grandma is still able to learn and think.

She currently uses a tablet and a phone. Android, set up by me, and locked down as much as possible.

One home screen, with the apps she wants on one half of the screen, and a widget that shows notifications on the other half. (Limited only to notifications from apps like whatsapp, etc., she doesn’t need see that the phone updated the OS during the night etc.)

This way, all I had to do, was tell her how the home button works, and how the back button works. No explaining quick settings or the notification shade.

From there, she’s slowly learned each app, always safe in knowing she can hit home/back if confused, and take it from the beginning.

The notification widget has been especially good, as it is always there showing her her messages, and she can tap them to go straight to replying.

It’s infuriating to me that all modern devices require extra steps, just to see messages you’ve received. The way a message would be shown on the lock screen and then be “gone” upon unlocking the screen was infinitely confusing to her.

I’ve never lost patience with my grandma like that. She’s old, a sweet person (most of the time) and perfectly intelligent if you let her be.

In fact when guiding her with tech, I hate the way she calls herself stupid and slow when she makes mistakes.

We just don’t make tech for old people the way we should. There are “accessible” phones but the ones I’ve had experience with are atrocious hackjobs with deal-breaking quirks, when the whole point is to be simple.

You can use VLC if you get the stream url via a web browser, first. MPV can do the same.

The problem is VLC/MPV don’t have a built-in way to browse and pick what you want to play.

They’ve already expanded it into a non-deck-speciphic thing for the other compatible handhelds.

I don’t know.

But it’s not all phones. I’ve had some android devices that take over a minute to start up, but my current Xperia 1V also only takes 20 seconds to ask for the pin, then another 2-4 seconds for the home screen to fully show.

I do want to point out that phones aren’t running blazing-fast ssds. Lots of android devices run fairly sluggish eMMC flash.

For a while now, I’ve been making sure the android devices I buy are running a recent standard of UFS flash, instead. The difference is noticable, just with stuff like opening apps and moving files around.

Op didn’t install anything on their system yet.

It sounds like maybe the usb drive is a bit crappy.

I’ve had trouble with cheap ones crapping out partway through being used, but be fine once you re-write the files to them. Twice now, yours worked, but then stopped working suddenly for seemingly no reason.

The drive might also be getting too hot. That happens with the Kingston DataTraveler drives I have. If I try to read or write continuously for too long, they shut down for thermal protection, and I have to let them sit for a bit before they work again.

Did you try re-doing that?

The EFI partition is something that exists on the storage device being booted, so if something is wrong with that, then the problem is something on the USB.

Since windows still works, the EFI partition on your computer must be fine.

You can also give Ventoy a go. It replaces the need for Balena Etcher/Rufus.

After you install Ventoy on the usb, it will continue to work like a normal usb drive. Now you just put the .iso file you want on the usb. Or multiple at a time, even. And you can continue using it as a usb drive without removing Ventoy or the isos. It wont care if there are other files on it.

When you go to boot from it, Ventoy will show you a menu of the isos on the usb, and let you pick one to boot. Makes it really easy to try a bunch of different distros if you want.

And it works with windows isos, too.