nyan

To get rid of the vulnerability, just blacklist the Open vSwitch kernel module if, for whatever reason, you have it installed. As far as I can tell, you probably don't need it unless the machine in question is acting as a switch or router.

No need for an urgent kernel update this time.

Okay, so did they account for the bots that claim to be Windows PCs? (I'll bet there are still some running around that identify themselves as IE 6, although those may finally no longer be the majority of all bots.)

Try blacklisting sof-audio-pci-intel-cnl and see if you can get snd_hda_intel to load instead. The one time I tried the sof- driver, I couldn't get it to work.

As a Gentoo user who still compiles my own kernel for each machine, I say, Arch users have no idea what a distro that really doesn't hold your hand looks like. (Hell, even Gentoo pales in front of LFS.)

Now you got me curious, so I got up and checked:

2008 HP laptop: Appears to be a standard barrel with no center pin. (Also has yellow trim and is in-line with the cord.)

Circa 2013 HP laptop: Has the connector with the center pin. (Larger than the barrel on the 2008 model, and at right angles to the cord)

So it's era-dependent (and I used that 2008 model too long). TIL.

Hadn't heard about those, but a quick search shows those aren't standard barrel connectors, although they look similar. The Dell connectors have a third pin for data. Normal barrel connectors only have two pins.

For the OP, that means that if your laptop is a Dell from the period where they were doing this, you need a specialized cable and charger intended specifically for Dells.

Depends on the connector. "Kind of fits" and "isnt usb-c" makes me think you might be dealing with the type of barrel plug that's very common on pre-USB-C non-Macs.

Unfortunately, barrel plugs tell you zilch about the power supply they're connected to. They're a dumb connector with no data capability whatsoever, and I've seen the same size of plug on power supplies with output anywhere from 3V to 24V. You need to look for the data panel on the old power supply and make sure the new one has the same voltage, the same or larger amperage, and the same polarity.

Polarity on a barrel plug is marked by a symbol that looks like this or this. Make sure the old and new match. Nearly all barrel plug power supplies are center-positive, but better to get it right the first time and avoid any risk of damage to your laptop.

Depends on whether you're talking about additive or subtractive colour. Yellow is primary in a subtractive system, but not an additive one.

Most of its functionality is just reimplementing things that already existed, with an incompatible interface.

Still works once you can get it to connect, though. The catch is that connecting can take several tries. Probably better to use remmina unless there's a bug in freerdp that's causing problems for your use case (rdesktop is, I believe, the only Linux rdp client that uses its own protocol implementation instead of the freerdp library).

I like Aqualung. Works well enough for what I do. Has the slightly unusual feature of accepting LADSPA plugins. I don't do much tag editing, but the basic functions are there.

Any advice from people that already use Gentoo? Especially things that they wish they knew before trying for the first time?

This is more things-about-bootloaders I wished I'd known/remembered when installing more recent systems, but:

• If you want to use GPT partitions on a system with legacy BIOS boot, remember that you will need an additional unformatted small partition at the beginning of the disk (this tidbit of information used to be in the handbook, but has been removed)
• If you're trying to install GRUB on a UEFI system, and it looks like everything should work but the system fails to boot, read the troubleshooting section of the GRUB page in the wiki for information on how to handle defective UEFI implementations.
• Do not try to enable Secure Boot if this is your first rodeo. Get the rest working first.

How much time and effort should I put into fine tuning the global USE flags if my initial goal is to get a system up and running?

Not much, unless there's something you really want to exclude (-systemd, for instance). Most of the time the default USE flags will give you a workable, feature-rich system (and allow you to use more binary packages).

What you need to pay attention to is your choice of profile, which sets your default USE flags. Profiles in the desktop series enable a lot of USE flags. For the most basic command-line system, you're better off picking default/linux/amd64/23.0 (or default/linux/amd64/23.0/split-usr if you want the old FHS setup where /bin and /usr/bin etc. are different directories—if you don't care about this, stick with the default and ignore split-usr). Avoid no-multilib, hardened, and anything marked "(exp)" or "(dev)" unless you have some specific reason for wanting that profile.

With systemd, I enable --nowed that which I wanted to “autostart” (iptables and sshd, for instance). Is there an equally intuitive counterpart with OpenRC?

I think you want the rc-update command, specifically rc-update add [service] default (assuming you want the default runlevel, which you nearly always do). There's a man page.