technology

Abridged version

This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and I suspect it won’t be the last.

Seven product lines (or is it eight; there’s an extra one in the sidebar not shown in the main view) and 330 distinct models! How can a normal person who isn’t a laptop enthusiast find anything in here? Even my eyes glaze over when I’m trying to distinguish the differences between the models and product lines.

HP further complicates things by having separate sites for consumer laptops and business laptops.

You might think that this level of choice should provide anything one could want, but that’s not true. Most of the models differ by like 1% and make all the same mistakes, copy-pasted across the while product line. Maintaining so many product lines at a reasonable level of development and quality is impossible, even for companies of their size with billions of dollars to throw at the problem.

These companies are clearly trying to micro-target specific market segments to match prices to buyers’ budgets, but offering so much choice is foolish. Most buyers — even big commercial buyers — are not informed enough to be able to pick the perfect device from among a massive blob of options presented at the same level, causing choice paralysis and lost sales, disappointing purchases that reduce brand loyalty, and expensive returns.

There has to be a better way!

The author is a high level contributor to KDE (read: nerd), and even they can't figure this shit out. Honestly the laptop market is getting more shit by the day with every company taking a leaf out of apple's book (no upgradeability, repairability, glossy design) but they don't have the credentials to back it up. You end up in a market where everyone's chasing the macbook pedestal but are shipping hot, plastic devices with no ports and soldered components.

Hey comrades, I've just purchased a new motherboard and an MP44L SSD to put my OS and my currently-playing games in. The thing is, I also thought that this would be the perfect time to finally make the switch into Linux and a more FOSS-based approach to the time I spend using my computer.

I tried Linux like twenty years ago and did not adapt to it at all. Nowadays I'm much more knowledgeable about computers in a general way but I have a massive blind spot when it comes to Linux. I want to ditch Windows but frankly don't even know where to start the switch.

So I have the following questions, I hope you can help me figure things out:

1 - Is dual-boot a plausible thing? Like, having a Linux distro installed for everyday usage, and Windows for gaming only?

2 - Speaking of which, I've heard good things about gaming on SteamOS. What's going on with that? Honestly, I'm completely clueless and I thought it was a proprietary OS for the Steam Deck. Is it already available for PCs? Also, is it safe? I don't want to just switch the company that has me under their thumb from MS to Valve.

3 - Are there any pages / youtube channels / other kinds of resources you would recommend, so that I can do some learning?

Thanks!

Context elsewhere shows that he was conscripted by Ukraine. In this message, they leave some plausible deniability.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33243317

An app that helps users track ICE agents

"This is the third time I've done a password reset! WTF is going on?"

I'm not usually for capital punishment, but...

I tend to use DuckDuckGo most of the time, but its quality has collapsed considerably. Google is terrible now and only worth it for reverse image search. I haven't tried Brave much and SearX-NG was a pain to set up for being a de-facto Google and Bing wrapper. There's Kagi but I don't really have $120/yr for a search engine, nor do I want to deal with how they handle logins and session management.

Soooo after a month of trying, I have given up trying to get my 7900xtx setup back from my ex.

I have been grinding at work using a ryzen 5500U handheld with a smashed display and a usb-c dock as my stopgap system.

This is what I have settled on as the replacement:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GGrhwY

My primary usecase is g*ming, although my most played titles are HEAVILY cpu bound to the point that an Arc B580 would do in the counterfactual world where Intel did not operate factories on destroyed Palestinian villages.

The 9070xt is a gambit that ML hype keeps prices inflated through the launch of UDNA in 3 years.