Freedom is overwhelming.

You can change everything and anything… so that means a LOT of choices.

Author wish he was born in 1880 and is not going to give up! (context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photophone )

PS: thanks for the links, between this PIXHELL, GAIROSCOPE, or SATAn clearly air-gap is just a concept. Fascinating to go through his work basically using everything potential to go through. Great overview in https://arxiv.org/html/2409.04190v1

The fact that I’m having more and more discussions with non tech people about what even Linux is, that they heard of GrapheneOS or /e/OS, makes me thing that yes, it’s possible.

What also makes it potentially possible is that Microsoft is doing like NVIDIA alienating gamers. They are “just” gigantic corporations which only go where there is more money. There is no ideology except capturing whatever drives profit up for the next quarter. They currently see AI data center as they place to earn more so they are giving up on the rest.

Heuristic : if you don’t know, trust your distribution. If you don’t trust your distribution, pick another one, repeat.

I’m using a 10 years old Razer Blade Stealth 13 on Debian and so far no only minor problems with it.

Consequently my advice is :

• do you actually “need” a new one or do you just “want” one? if the later then could be 2nd hand
• if you do then share either what your “main game” is or what its requirements are, because e.g Slay the Spire runs on nearly anything
• do not buy something brand new unless you are ready to tinker, consider something a year old
• whatever you do, check online review specifically on Linux installations, that will let you know if something somehow (typically inconsequential, e.g. LED tweaking) requires proprietary software
• consider buying directly from a Linux pre-installed vendor, this way you are 100% sure it will work (but it’s typically not cheap)

I tinker with VLC using and… so far my “trick” is a bit dirty, namely I don’t “control” it as much as I killall potential running instances then I start cvlc again with the right parameters. If you want continuity though you might not want that.

Note also that if you plan to do scripting check mpv as it’s a bit easier to tinker with IMHO.

Python

Check https://pypi.org/project/python-vlc/ then for Python bindings, that should give you the affordances you need.

In theory yes.

What’s bad though is that it’s meaningless. Sure the OS can say you are 10 years old or 100 years old and you can’t change it… but then you open a page in your browser which runs a virtual machine and that VM now says you are, arbitrarily 50 years old. The VM is just another piece of software but put it in fullscreen (if you want) and voila, you are back to declaring whatever age you want to any application or Web page within that VM. If that’s feasible (and I fail to see how it wouldn’t, see countless examples in https://archive.org/details/software or https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ even though that’s running on another machine, so imagine that was a SaaS) then only people who aren’t aware of this might provide a meaningful information on the actual age but that’s temporary, the same way more and more people now learn to use a VPN.

now only few do

That’s the one you buy then if that’s what matters to you.

To be clear I’m not saying it’s “easy” or that the situation is “good”, only that there are choices and if we as consumers can support them, and as voted can support politicians that do make legislation to protect them (or at least not make others mandatory) then we are still going in the right direction, even if most people don’t care.

i dont like linux nor use it

What is this? Arguing with a 5yo? No offense but do you genuinely believe “I don’t like X” without even explaining why could lead to interesting conversations? Do better. At least provider argument on why you like Windows (there are actually some good reasons, even for people who don’t like Microsoft) and why you don’t like Linux (there also are good reason).

You’re not actually “intersed” otherwise you’d have at least bothered to link to couple articles, videos, etc arguing either way and would have at least taken the time to write 2 sentences properly.

Blocked as I have to assume it’s either engagement bait or just the laziest person on Earth.

Don’t buy computers with locked parts. Buy computers with non locked parts. Problem solved.

I have genuinely no idea how that could work.

I believe I get the genuine intent (protecting children) but I have so far never encountered any device or software or both that didn’t relatively easily bypass user authentication.

The closest I’ve tried are (expensive) XR headsets like the Apple Vision Pro or the Microsoft HoloLens both thanks to eye tracking. Basically for these you have to validate you are who you claim to be when you put the headset on. If you remove it, put it back (or on someone else head) you have to do it again. Nobody else (unless you explicitly share) can then see what you are looking it.

Every other devices I’ve seen, including mobile phones with banking apps, typically ask you to authenticate then assume than you are the one who keeps using the device. Meanwhile anybody else can grab the device from your hand and be “you”. Typically specific action (e.g. password change) do require to authenticate again but “normal” usage does not.

They pretty much all do and the Web apps typically can do everything, from account status to transfers, etc.

Unfortunately… most of those require the native app for login. Also more and more online websites, even on desktop, do mobile payment (e.g. QRcode scanning) as an efficient way.

So without the native app, no convenient login (if any, some still have physical card + card reader as fallback) nor convenient payments.

Tinkered with PinePhone/PinePhonePro and IMHO what’s missing (beside slightly more performant thus more expensive hardware) is a convenient way to run few, very few (basically just banking…) Android apps. Everything else has very rough UI-wise equivalents. Somehow WayDroid or equivalent might be the stopgap.

• picks up plushy
• asks plushy “Are you aware? Do you have consciousness?”
• make plushy nod and whisper “Yes… I am!”
• shouts “OMG, it’s alive!”

shocked Pikachu face

I’d be curious if using https://gist.github.com/davispuh/6600880 or configuration files for Steam that would be the kind of things fixed bypassing integration bugs in the UI. I didn’t try as I didn’t have that problem.

Duplicate post, please remove.

This will not be a fork of OpenRGB. While I plan to take a huge chunk of it (the reversed generiert device protocols)

How about opening an issue on OpenRGB asking what you need and why, maybe it can be abstracted away, headless, and that architecture change could be useful for them and other projects too then?

You can do that part yourself and let other use that new tool as their dependency but it means you’ll have to keep it up to date against OpenRGB itself as it supports more devices just because of its popularity.

Why fork OpenRGB rather than make it a dependency?

I’m sorry but I might be totally out of the loop here, do gamers use Mesa? I thought proprietary drives from NVIDIA and AMD, sadly, was what most people actually used nowadays. Again to be clear I’m NOT saying it’s a good thing (it’s not!) just wondering what’s the actual share of users relying on it.

Edit: oh, looks like Mesa is now the default for AMD “AMD promotes their Mesa drivers Radeon and RadeonSI over the deprecated AMD Catalyst” (via Wikipedia), then yes it’s a big deal. Still makes me wonder what’s the current share but mostly out of curiosity.

Glad to hear! I’m also no expert but if you have more specific questions, please do ask. I’d be happy to try to help.