• 0 Posts
  • 14 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: January 23rd, 2022
  • BaumGeist@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have you gone down any rabbit holes that gave you an existential crisis?
    6·
    7 days ago

    I dislike the conception of Free Will that asserts will is only free if it is not deterministic. Any system dictated by the law of Cause and Effect will necessarily be deterministic, given knowledge of First Cause. Together, those premises imply that the only way to be truly free is in a chaotic universe, i.e. one without a relationship between Cause and Effect, where decisions are completely arbitrary and have no predictable outcome anyway.

    The fact of the matter is that you’re already free to do whatever you want, even if that’s shooting yourself in the foot or refusing the choice entirely and running off to live in the woods, and that’s freedom enough for all practical meanings of the word.

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have you gone down any rabbit holes that gave you an existential crisis?
    7·
    7 days ago

    I went from a fundamentalist community to full blown antitheist to agnostic (after studying religious philosophy in college) to pagan.

    My experience teaches me there are many, many great arguments for the existence of the gods. You just have to accept that gods do not fit the conception the christian fundamentalists have: there is no sentient entity in existence that is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent (towards humanity).

    If, and when, you are willing to relax your criteria for what constitutes a god (mine are personifications of the forces of nature) and what your relationship with such a being should look like (I respect them, but worship no one), you too will realize that the “either god is perfect in every way and should be worshipped without a shred of skepticism or there is no god and everything is doomed” mindset is just another arifact of christian zealotry and brainwashing.

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•I'm trying to lspci > /sdc1 lspci.txt on recovery mode. What am I doing wrong? + help installing broadcom BCM4360 802.11ac network controller on debian
    2·
    9 days ago

    how do I install rpm fusion repos on debian? I only found instructions for fedora and rhel https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

    Stop. You do not want to do this.. While resources published on other sites may be full of information, that information is not always relevant to you. Don’t blindly follow bad advice.

    The “rpm” in “rpmfusion” refers to the filetype that Fedora’s built-in package management system, dnf, uses.

    You want to use Debian’s builtin package management system, apt, which uses the “deb” filetype.

    Here is an explanation of how to add Debian’s “non-free” repository

    Do not follow information for other distros unless you know how to extract the bits that are relevant to your distro.

    In general, I recommend following the advice from Debian’s wiki or website, then debian’s forums if you can’t find anything there, then debian specific forums elsewhere, then other distro’s wikis, then any other site in a last-ditch effort.

    Now that you understand the “why,” here’s the “how”: go back to Debian’s download website and download the appropriate installation image from the bullet point that says

    A larger complete installation image:

    Reason being: the smaller “netinst” images are made to work generally for most people who can plug their computer into ethernet. It’s made to only use the bare minimum of disk space and get the rest of the files it needs from the internet (the “net” in “netinst”).

    You need the installation image that come with the “drivers” (firmware) for your WiFi card already on disk, which should automatically detect your device, find the correct firmware for it, and set up the non-free-firmware repository for you.

    If that doesn’t work out for you, you can try manually installing using the guide on Debian’s own wiki, which I found by searching for your wifi card BCM4360

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What you do when you have TOO MUCH free time?
    0·
    14 days ago

    Volunteer. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s beneficial for everyone involved.

    I used to work on plays at the local theater, which was fun as hell, and introduced me to lots of weird and cool people, and got to explore my love for the Performing Arts.

    I’d also do work at small town festivals and faires, which was a great way to get fresh air and sunlight while being exposed to Culture™.

    Sometimes I’d volunteer at senior homes just to keep them entertained. Didn’t think much of it back then, except had fun putting on performances, but looking back it is nice to know that we were making people feel less lonely.

    On occasion I’d volunteer to do meal drives and the like for churches/charities. This one was masturbatory, but it did feel good to feed/clothe people who couldn’t afford it, or give out toys to kids on christmas. And it definitely felt nice to put in some manual labor.

    These are just some ideas, and some benefits. If you do ever decide to seek further employment/career/education, having stuff like this on your resume looks better than “hung out with friends and tried not to die for several years.” If not, you’ll make friends and memories and discover passions and help others and build community; it really is a priceless experience when you find the places you’re most passionate about helping at.

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.mltoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Desk workers of Lemmy, what are your tips for appearing busy in the office even when you might not be?
    1·
    21 days ago

    Seek more work. Find tasks you can help on, earn brownie points, don’t offer to do anything extra that takes more than 30 minutes to get done. Don’t overdo it, and make sure to also use the downtime to grab a federally required break, stretch, drink water, meditate, do some calisthenics.

    The first part boosts how you’re perceived by others: your bosses will take note of your enthusiasm, your coworkers will appreciate you more; this is why it’s important to not overdo it—you don’t want your extra effort to be the new baseline expectation.

    The second part boosts your health, mood and productivity.

    If you find you have more free time than these fill, consider asking your employer to sponsor certifications/continuing education in your field to further your career, or just talking with your boss about taking on more responsibilities for a raise. But still make sure to “leave room on your plate” to do the aforementioned breaks. If the money/career growth isn’t an issue, consider negotiating reduced hours so you have more free time.

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Any advice for a long-time Linux user, first-time Linux *desktop* user?
    0·
    1 month ago

    What do you recommend I do about disk partitions?

    I recommend using defaults unless you do disk-level backups, or plan on switching disks/partitions between systems (you can put your whole /home dir on a NAS, but should you?)

    I’m keeping a Windows install for the few things that demand it, does Windows still occasionally destroy Linux partitions?

    Yes*. Many such cases.

    *there’s always a reason why it was preventable (as the top comment on that post explains), but c’mon… Really?

    Do I need separate partitions for data and OS?

    Probably not, for reasons I explained above

    Is it straightforward to add additional distros as new partitions or is that asking for trouble?

    It’s straight-forward-ish. It will require deviating from installer defaults, and depends on how interconnected you want the OSes to be.

    This is actually a good reason to get into partitioning shenanigans, if you’ll use all the distros regularly, and you want them to have shared access to certain folders (e.g. /root, /var, /home, /tmp, /etc, etc). I recommend turning everything (except windows, /boot and /boot/efi) into logical volumes with LVS to avoid space issues when you can’t extend a partition sandwiched in between two others.

    By default, /boot and /boot/efi should be their own partitions–/boot should be created for Linux, and Linux will use the EFI partition created by micro$oft–and I’d recommend giving /boot N times the default amount of space (N being the number of distros you plan on keeping in rotation at any given time); this shouldn’t eat up too much space, Debian gave me 500 MB for /boot. The reason being /boot carries the kernel images for each and every OS, and often duplicates thereof for rescue backups.

    Is disk encryption straightforward? And is that likely to upset the Windows partition?

    Yes it’s easy with LUKS. Full disk encryption encrypts everything, and that will likely upset windows, idk haven’t tried on my dual-boot.

    Is cloud storage sync straightforward? It’s my off-site backup solution on Android and Windows (using Cryptomator with Dropbox, Google Drive, etc) but I don’t think that many providers have Linux clients. Is something like rclone recommended?

    Yes, if you use a DE with it integrated. Otherwise, it’s up to you to choose the right software, rclone looks like a good choice to me, but I have not used it

    Should I just use apt to install software? I know there’s some kind of graphical package manager (synaptic?), does that use apt under the covers or is it separate?

    synaptic is no longer used iirc. It’s just called “Software Manager,” but yes, I believe it’s just a GUI for apt. I personally prefer doing as much as I can with the command line. Not only is it the simplest, most straightforward way of achieving whatever I’m trying to do, it’s usually also the quickest and best documented. YMMV

    Is it recommended to install something like Flathub too?

    My experience has been to avoid non-defaults as much as possible. If there’s a software you can only get as a flatpak and you need that and can’t make do with an alternative, then do it. Otherwise, just see what you can do with the apt repositories

    Any other pearls of wisdom? … Any warnings about what not to do?

    I could spend a few hours digging up every mistake I made and telling you what not to do, but I’d rather focus on giving you the tools to clean up after yourself when you make your own. The one best piece of advice I can give is “keep at it.” There will be times when you shoot yourself in the foot and your options are to give up and lose the foot or do foot surgery right then on your own (with the help of the online community ofc). Don’t be afraid to ask questions everywhere or anywhere, don’t let assholes dissuade you from enjoying your Linux your way or seeking help doing so, and do read the docs. But most importantly, do keep trying; it’s such a rewarding feeling.

    Another would be to change as little as possible from a known working configuration at a time. Go with installer defaults as much as you can, change the stuff later. Want to try out new software? Try one new thing and get it working and looking how you envision before moving on. Read the docs so you don’t take any settings for granted, that way you’re not left with something that’s passable instead of exactly what you want.

    Make backups. Get a second SSD or an external drive and backup your system. Things like /usr, /etc, /root, and /home at the very minimum. Backups are the best way to unfuck your foot when you inevitably shoot it.

    Learn the coreutils. You might not use them daily, but you’ll be glad you know they’re there when you need them and don’t have to install extraneous software that isn’t well maintained because it’s a redundancy of the most common pieces of linux software.

    How do I keep everything tidy?

    Learn the FHS. As with most documentation, it’s a bit dry, but very enlightening and will automatically put you in the top 10% of linux users with your newfound special knowledge.

    There are some automatic file organizers, but you can recreate them yourself to suit your exact needs at 1/10th the resource cost using bash scripts.

    Sidebar: another good piece of advice, learn to script in Bash. It basically immediately qualifies you to be a *nix sysadmin, and it makes everything automatable. It’s so much easier than downloading new software or compiling a git repo for each individual task you want to automate. Additionally, it helps to learn to use cron, to run the scripts automatically, and to learn a command-line text editor (no, nano does not count)–but those’re mostly just for efficiency boost, the big timesaves are in learning to script first and foremost.

    As with any skill, the common wisdom is to “choose a project you want to make, then learn the skill by making it.” So it’s not a bad idea to learn scripting by, say, writing a script that detects files of a certain format in a directory tree and moving them elsewhere. E.g. check ~/Downloads and all of its subfolders for files ending in .jpg, then move them to ~/Pictures/JPGs (and make the directory if it’s not already there). This should give you a good chance to practice file operations and string manipulation/parsing. After that, learn how to have cron run it once a week or something.

    Should I use a particular terminal emulator or Firefox fork?

    This just falls under my “probably best to stick with defaults and branch out later” advice, but:

    I use terminator, purely because it has a logger plugin (which saves all input and output, including stderr, into a file if I’m doing something that needs that much documenting). I’d say learn to use tmux at some point as well, but that’s just because I like moving my hand between keyboard and mouse as little as possible.

    As for firefox, vanilla has always worked for me. It’s not private enough for some people, so they will recommend something like LibreWolf or even Tor. On my laptop (which is completely keyboard driven so I can avoid using a touchpad) I use qutebrowser; it’s not as full-featured (i wouldn’t use it for video streaming), but it avoids using a mouse.