Arkhive (they/she)

I realize you’ve already made your switch, but I wanted to toss in my 2 cents. I had a very similar, though shorter term experience with Arch, and I still love it dearly, but over time some jank began to creep in around the edges. The time came to make some sort of change when I finally decided to wipe the windows boot drive I had in the system. I took the opportunity to upgrade the m.2 ssd and decided on NixOS for a handful of reasons, and it’s honestly been super refreshing. I feel even more in control of the stability of my system than any OS I’ve used before. If something is going wrong, it is most likely something I did in my config, or the config isn’t even valid and the system tells me exactly what is wrong before I even get to a point where I’m trying to boot into a broken system. I ignored a lot of the online recommendations to use flakes and home manager and whatever. Just a single text file with all the details of my system in it. I find it incredibly digestible compared to tracking down issues with Arch.

Anyway, I also have a Bazzite system, and like it. Sounds like you’ve found a nice new home!

I use Finamp with my Jellyfin library for simplicity’s sake. Other things probably have better UI and such, but it’s nice to just dump all my media in my Jellyfin folders and move on.

I’ve used it for a fairly niche case. I check out audiobooks from my local library through an app called Libby. There is a “desktop” version, but it’s just a wrapper of the webpage and you cannot do any offline listening. On android the app downloads its data unencrypted and simply tries to hide it in a big folder maze broken up into smaller files. With Waydroid I can download an audiobook and then automate the finding, formatting, and merging of all the files to get a proper audiobook I file I can stream from my home server to my various devices.

Art imitates life.

It really just comes down to what you know. Moving from MacOS (from OS9 through like 10.12 or something) to Windows made me feel like Windows was the bent spoon. So many small things that to this day infuriate me. Just a couple that really stuck with me even after ditching both for Linux.

• if you have highlighted text to select it, and hit the right arrow, where should your cursor end up? MacOS decided the cursor will be after the last character within the highlight. Windows places the cursor after the first character outside of the highlight. Why does this matter? The reason I noticed it was trying to edit file names quickly. I would like to right click, select rename from the context menu, which selects the text in the editing field, tap the right arrow once to move my cursor to the end of the string, and begin deleting whatever amount of text I need. If I try to do this on windows I end up deleting part of the file extension unless I tap an additional time. Not a huge deal but it legitimately messed with my muscle memory in just basic typing on windows.
• the other aspect of MacOS that really is far and above anything windows has is ‘Preview’. Not QuickLook, which is a detail view of a file triggered by tapping space with it selected. I mean ‘Preview’ the graphics viewer utility. It’s one of those pieces of software that “just works”. It can import from pretty much any scanner, print to any printer, do basic image editing, open and edit PDFs. It’s really a phenomenal piece of software that feels like such a basic set of features that should exist in a default install of a flagship OS. Even the best free option of anything similar on windows doesn’t hold a candle to it.

These are two VERY cherry picked examples, but I also feel they exemplify the “what you already know is more comfortable” dichotomy. Like having to find a functional PDF tool is kind of just “normal” for windows. Few windows only users I know actively miss the inclusion of that by default, and a whole industry has formed around the need for PDF editing, and yet humble Preview still puts Adobe Acrobat to absolute shame.

Yeah this is where I’m at. I’m educating myself and working on my self hosted offerings so once all the people around me start caring I’m here with all the knowledge and tech to make the switch really easy.

This review honestly sold me on trying it more than I already was. Assuming it gets actively maintained, this is a great roadmap feature/bug list. Perfectly presented constructive criticism. The internet needs more of this.

I really like LocalSend as well, but it’s very inconsistent with me. I think it has to do with one device being on a VPN, but I’m not totally sure. Basically I have some “one way” connections where one device can see and send to the one connected to a VPN but not the other way around. Is there some way I can specify LocalSend connections to ignore the VPN? I’m on NixOS and installed LocalSend in my user package declarations in my Nix config.

Imagine if all the space between the primary radial arms of trains was filled in with street cars and pedestrian/micromobility centric spaces. Like the problem you are saying cars solve just doesn’t exist in the first place and people can still get around very easily. Even more rural folks can simply drive to the edge of this style of urban design if they need access to something. The reason bus rides are 45 minutes is because of the number of cars they have to put up with. The density of people that can be moved with shockingly good area coverage if cars are not a factor is incredible.

“Let’s invent metal boxes with wheels that follow lines on the ground automatically to get you places.”

“Oh, you mean like trains.”

“Ew, no. They’re nothing like trains, these are ‘self driving cars’. They’re fool proof!”

tesla hits someone in a dense fog because it doesn’t have lidar

Queue surprised pikachu.

Yeah when I went down a terminal config rabbit hole I landed on JetBrains Mono with all the nerd font symbols. Can’t really provide a particular reason I like it over many other fonts, but I just do.

You could maybe setup a SMB share targeting your download location, mount that on the computer you’d like to install on, then point the setup.exe at the SMB share for the bin files.

Yeah. I rock climb as my job basically, and my finger health is in the bin most of the time…

I use Sunshine with the Moonlight client for Remote Desktop. With my computer running Tailscale I can connect to it from anywhere. It’s designed for game streaming on a local network, but tweak the bandwidth settings down and it works a treat for remote work.

Some other books that handle time travel in fun ways and play with explicitly making changes to the past.

• Asimov’s The End of Eternity (might have gone without saying)
• Jack Finney’s Time and Again (read it as a kid, so might not actually be that good, but it’s illustrated which is fun!)

I use Tailscale for the virtual LAN setup

I don’t really play Minecraft anymore, different block game has taken over, but I used to be big into modded Minecraft and map editing. I believe a tool called Amulet is kind of the “modern MCEdit”. Might do what you’re looking for.

Getting to put time into smaller, slower games has been lovely!!

I don’t know the vibe of the cafe I found yet, if it’s only super competitive I probably won’t frequent it at all.

Yeah I just used the one I keep handy in text expansion shortcuts in my phone. Didn’t even think twice about needing to escape the character. Oops ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do this a lot too, and most of my friends are very understanding, which has also prompted me to get better about remembering what they were saying so I can recenter the conversation on them once my tangent is over. I had an ex (both of us non-binary) that really couldn’t get past that and see it for what my other friends do (the ‘tism) and only perceived as my (amab on feminizing hrt) talking over them (afab not on hrt) in a “domineering man” kind of way, even though they have way more traditionally masc traits then me (competitiveness, impatience, over confidence in their understanding of things to a point of stubbornness…). I really liked them and thought they understood because they’re also neurodivergent, but just couldn’t get over it or learn to work with it, or even give me the time to improve on it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Glad your friend seems to be on board!!