Libb

Joined, purely out of curiosity I must say as I had no idea such a community existed (in that other place) ;)

What do you do with those low power machines though? Outside of being a text editor or maybe a low powered audio server i cant think of anything one would do. They definitely cant play games, I suppose they could emulate nes games.

I don’t do anything with any of them. I just shared how I select and keep working the machines I need for my own use. I don’t collect them and I don’t own a repair shop. I say that but I sometimes ‘fix’ old computer for people looking to get rid of Windows or macOS… They often are surprised by how well their old machines or an used computer can work under a modern version of Linux to let them do exactly the same things they were doing previously, just without spywares and without all the crap.

Like I think I mentioned already, it all depends what one needs out of that machine.

I don’t play much games beside chess, which I mostly play over the board (irl) and sometimes online, on lichess.org and chess.com, two platforms where one doesn’t need a powerful computer in order to play. I don’t use my computer that much and mostly I use it to write, browse the Web, listen to music and play DVD or video files. The sole video game I seldom play (WarThunder, I played it 2 days in a row last week but had not touched for maybe a year, maybe more) works good enough with my old GPU.

And then one should not forget that there is a wide range of secondhand machines available in-between what I would qualify as ‘obsolete’ computers (barely able to browse the modern shitty-scripts-filled Web) and the machines able to play the latest & most demanding games. It’s always a question of finding the right compromise between what one may want to have and what one really needs. At least, that’s how I consider it ;)

Well, I don’t use Windows, I use the latest version of my Linux distribution (that just updated… today) and ‘the Internet’ works just fine ;)

Im glad linux gives us a space to exist!

+1 to this, and that is only because I can’t upvote a lot more as your post deserves ;)

Just in case you or anyone reading your post had not already considered the option: one can still easily tinker with older electronics. Provided ones doesn’t need the most powerful CPU/GPU (I don’t), one can easily find (for cheap) older computers (desktops and/or laptops) that are easy to open and whose parts can easily be replaced. I do that with my computers, only buying used models I know I will be able to upgrade/fix when needed, and they’re more than powerful enough for my needs.

Also: craft & DIY outside of consumer electronics is still a great way to tinker and it too can be done for cheap.

Has been my daily driver for 5 or 6 years now. Loving it!

Welcome back, btw ;)

i believe that “far-right” sentiments are a natural defense mechanism against a perceived threat.

if your tribe is in danger, you start kicking the foreigners out, you start going back culturally to what you perceive as “safe”,

Correct. In a less obvious way we can even see it at play here, in this (interesting) discussion.

So far, in the comments trying to design a culprit, I have yet to read one that doesn’t blame some ‘other’ group, be it the far-tight, the rich, the boomers, the US, Russia, and so on. Forget the names and the personal preference: each one is that ‘foreigner’, someone that is not us on which we put teh blame. The issue is among us, with all our differences and contradictions (even sometimes our hatred of one another). It’s not ‘them’ causing the issue ‘we’ are the victims of.

As long as we keep looking for someone else than us to blame, well I don’t see things getting much better anytime soon. Which is sad because if they don’t start getting better soon they will get real worse, real a fast.

Posting that from France, a country that once valued freedom so much as to make it one of its three core principle. But that was back then.

100%.

They don’t give a crap that only large corps can ‘absorb the cost’ of checking age and/or ID, they just want to control/limit what we say and to whom, and what we can do online. And if that requires to kill small non-corporate-owned web (and make everything subscription-based, in the process), so be it.

When they’re not being dishonest, they’re incompetent and proud of it. The few that are not incompetent (and that are honest) they are not numerous enough to make a difference, which is sad. And not just in the UK. I mean, here in France it’s quite interesting too, we’re following steps to the UK, btw, and, what not a surprise, VPN usage has skyrocketed the second they introduced their own version of that stupid age-verification.

Next step seems obvious: make VPN use illegal for the average user (I mean people like us not, say, journalists, NGOs, lawyers and, obviously, politicians—and their families).

I wish that people would stop using kids for their own gain.

But what use are kids, then? /s

You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.

That’s not true. I just need to click the ‘x’ next to the tab. Why should I be bothered with waiting for some JS to be able to read text?

They are one of several signs of LLM writing. That said if you’ve always used them then you do you

Not the person you replied to but allow me to chime in: I’ve been using em dashes for decades and I will not stop using them because AI has started playing with them—no more than I will stop writing because AI can write too ;)

You lost me at ‘Fuck’. As a potential new member, how could I be willing to engage in a community putting forward rudeness?

I would suggest you may want to consider to calmly explain the issue at hand (my Lemmy feed is tightly curated and I do not think I noticed much of what you mention), without insulting anyone and without using doubtful dirty tricks to grab people’s attention, maybe sharing some real world examples?

If I understand the license correctly: no, if they completely rewrite the code for thei new non-open source version and get rid of any line that were developed using AGPL license.

We don’t lack easy to use distro… I never had to fiddle with the one I’m using and I’m not an expert, far from it ;)

Wouldn’t be surprised if it has a flux capacitor somewhere in there too

Wasn’t the last (working) one destroyed in a train accident somewhere in the 80s? Not that I’m old enough to have first seen this movie back when it was released. Absolutely not.

Thx a lot for sharing.

I’m a 50+ non-geek Linux user myself, and selfhosting is the one computer ‘thing’ I would love to be able to setup one day but I’m too afraid to seriously start doing as I’m way too afraid of being that ‘low hanging fruit’ you mentioned in your post.

I said I was not a geek in the sense that, after almost 40 years using only Apple computers, I’ve switched to Linux to use it like I used… my Mac. Sure, I’ve learned to understand a little bit of Linux workings and I would not want to go back to the Mac, no way, I can also write simple bash scripts (with a lot of trials and errors) but that’s about the full extent of my computer ‘expertise’.

So, even though your post is well written and informative, it was still way beyond my limited skills, I’m afraid. I’m not saying that as downer, it was a really interesting read and very informative with all those useful links, but hopefully as away to let you know there are… extremely… odd users like myself that are very much interested in the idea but also are as clueless as an oyster comes the time to buy a pair of sneakers :)

In regards to self-hosting, my conclusion so far is that it’s a much safer choice for someone like me to not do it. The risk is too real to get into some serious issues. And that I’m better off using the few paid services I rely (all in the EU, many of them small companies I can have have direct/human discussion with) as I know by experience I can trust their expertise a lot more than I woudl ever trust my desire to ever become not completely in competent in those fields ;)

That’s nice! After that, we will only need a better/optimized epub export tool to be able to easily self-publish using only dear LO Writer :)

Looks interesting to me, as a (no-ads, no-tracking) Hugo blogger myself that has been considering trying Gemini too… at least if it means I would be able use it without having to configure Gemini by myself, as if I’m a privacy-aware user I’m also not really much of a geek ;)

May I ask why use the US Microsoft owned Github and not a more privacy respecting FLOSS alternative like, say, the German Codeberg?

I too am quite surprised so few people seem to have been reading that book. I’m not even American but I’ve read it.

So much of what has been happening recently is explained in it.

I may have missed something, here so to make sure:

1. Do you want a wiki specifically, or are you looking for a tool that would allow you to easily create and manage some worldbuilding bible, be it a wiki or not a wiki?
2. Isn’t LibreOffice able to export to MediaWiki (Wikipedia)? I have not checked, and never used it, but I think it’s there somewhere.

the best thing it can do is just make a document look good,

It can also help you write the actual book, worrying about the document ‘look’ aka its formatting is optional (and if done properly, using Styles, it’s almost 100% automated) ;)

Wouldn’t a word processor do trick? you can add links, images, refs, notes,… and have as many pages as you need (edit: and search them, add a table of content, and so on). LIbreOffice is most certainly already installed on your Linux distro and is also available for Mac and Windows.