In fairness to the register they also ridicule moving to a dedicatdd ERP in the same article.

You’re r absolutely right there is nothing wrong with Excel. Its powerful software and ultimately it cones down to human and organisational processes about whether its being used to its best or not. You can also have the most expensive top end dedicated ERP in the world and still be a total mess. Similarly business used to run on pen and paper and could be highly efficient.

Software is just a tool, and organisation go wrong when they think it alone is the solution to their problems.

Also I doubt Health NZ overspend has anything whatsoever to do with excel. Instead it’ll be due to rising demand, and inflationary pressures on public finances. We have the exact problems here in the UK with the NHS just scaled up to a £182bn.

You can convert using Evernote as an intermediary: https://github.com/zadam/trilium/wiki/Onenote

You’d need to hunt down a copy but there are mirrors since Evernote ended legacy version, and it’d need to be set up in wine to run in linux but it should do the job.

Most services are forced to carry DRM only versions of Ebooks by the book publishers. But there are ways of legally removing the DRM - it’s a faff but doable. I buy epubs and don’t use Kindle (haven’t for a long time) as it’s much harder to remove the DRM and actually own your books.

But way I look at it - if I bought the Kindle version of a book, I can just download a DRM free version by sailing the seas. Fuck Amazon.

It doesn’t mean they are pushing flatpaks, but rather for whatever reason they decided to package their own flatpaks.

Flatpak can support different repos, so of course fedora can host its own. The strange bit is why bother repackaging and hosting software that is already packaged by the project itself on flathub?

One argument might me the security risk of poorly packaged flatpaks relying on eol of dependencies. Fedora may feel it is better to have a version that it packages in line with what it packages in its own repos?

I have some sympathy for that position. But it makes sense that it is annoying OBS when it is causing confusion if its a broken or poorly built repackags, and worse it sounds like things got very petty fast. I think OBS’s request that fedora flag this up as being different from the flathub version wasn’t unreasonable - but not sure what went down for it to get to thepoint of threatening legal action under misuse of the branding.

Fedora probably should make it clearer to its users what the Fedora Flatpak repo is for.

Yeah I have a Ser5 as a living room PC, wiped windows and have Nobara running on it. Linux is great - browse the web, play games, stream videos, and all with interfaces that actually work on a TV. I don’t miss Windows at all.

I’m not aware of an alternative TV App for android tv. On my android TV live tv is also wrapped within the android interface but other sources like HDMI inputs are not.

If you can switch to HDMI sources outside the android apps then maybe the best thing to do is get a separate basic satellite tuner device?

It seems shitty that google are effectively hiding your inbuilt tv tuner behind an app with all their advertising and other crap.

For your second question, a window manager is the specific system that controls the placement of windows on an X11 desktop.

On a X11 based system, X11 is the windowing system (interacting with the video card) and a window manager is a system sitting on top of that laying out the windows and interacting with the user and other programmes. It is a separate programme on top of the X11 system, and communicates with X11, and X11 is the programme that communicates with the graphics card.

On Wayland, instead of 2 separate systems there can be 1 combined windowing systen that is both the window manager but also directly communicates with the hardware in a standardised way using the Wayland protocols. This is called a Wayland compositor.

Meanwhile a desktop environment is the whole desktop - that includes a window manager or compositor but also lots of other tools and software that together make a full desktop experience.

An example is KDE - KDE is a full desktop environment. It uses its own x11 window manger called kwin (and also able to be a wayland compositor), but it also uses a whole range of other tools alongside that to give you panels, widgets, desktop icons, a clock, menus, settings etc collectively forming Plasma desktop. And then on top of Plasma there is a whole range of bespoke programmes that form the full deskop experience - like Dolphin (file manager), Kate (text editor) and so on. All that software is designed to work seamlessly with the KDE family of tools and systems. The window manager, the desktop tools and the other programmes together form the whole desktop environment. But other desktop environments software will also work - for example Gnome based software can also run with KDE without issue and vice versa.

Gnome has its own window manager/compositor, and it’s own widgets and tools to make a desktop, and it’s own bespoke software to make a whole desktop environment.

And there are many others.

So in summary:

• Window Manager - the specific system that controls the placment and look of the individual windows talking to X11 which then talks to the hardware

• Wayland Compositor - the system that controls the placement and look of windows, using wayland protocols to speak to the hardware

• Desktop Environment - the whole desktop including the Window manager but also lots of other programmes and tools that form the basic desktop (such as a panel, menus, desktop icons) and the whole environment (other software like a file manager, text editor, calculator etc). KDE and Gnome are examples of popular desktop environments

I use a Boox Note, and I like it a lot. Its an android based eBook reader so you have full access to android apps including side loading apps from other stores.

By default it does not have Google services set up but you can use the Play store should you want. But its not integrated to googles services. Obviously there is some integration to Onyx Boox services which is based in China. However infindnit is unobstrusive and you dont have to use their store or any of their tools.

Personally I use Calibre on my Linux PC to manage my books on the device, and I use fbreader as a reader (closed source) but you can install open source software if thats your preference. KOReader certainly works but I’m not a big fan of the interface personally.

I use ebooks.com to buy books (and calibre to remove DRM so I can use my preferred software), and you can install the Kindle app to access a kindle library if you haven’t liberated your books yet. Ebooks reader works on the device too. Obviously DRM free books from any source and format can also be used.

My device - the note - has an nice crisp screen, is well made with a nice aluminium chassie and is comfortable to hold. I read books in portrait mode so you have 2 pages visible at a time. Its also good for a4 size documents. They do also have smaller sizes that match a kindle paper white.

So this isn’t shrinkflation, this is a small size pizza that they’re trying to claim is still as tasty as a full pizza?

Like, if you wanted a full pizza it should be pretty obvious it’s a small 4.5" pizza from the box?

KDE config files can be changed on the command line using:

kwriteconfig

And viewed using

kreadconfig

Power management is in:

~/.config/powermanagementprofilesrc

And

~/.config/powerdevilrc

You can feed changes to the file via kwriteconfig via the command line OR create a duplicate file with different settings and use rename commands in a script file to switch back and forth.

E.g. rename the file to “powermanagementprofilesrc.backup” and create and rename a custom file with the settings you want like “powermanagmentprofilesrc.one” to “powermanagementprofilesrc”. Rename them back and forth via a bash script to switch “profiles”

To apply changes you’d need to then run qdbus:

qdbus org.freedesktop.powermanagement /org/kde/Solid/PowerManagement org.kde.Solid.PowerManagement.reparseConfiguration

And then to load the new config in your current session:

qdbus org.freedesktop.powermanagement /org/kde/Solid/PowerManagement org.kde.Solid.PowerManagement.refreshStatus

So either use kwriteconfig and qdbus in a script OR make duplicate config files and a bash script to copy or rename the configs as needed plus qdbus to apply the changes to the current session.

There may be a much simpler way of switching profiles already actually defined within the exisiting config files (e.g. battery saver vs performance) using qdbus but I’m not sure how to do that myself. Possibly using:

org/kde/Solid/PowerManagement/Actions/PowerProfile

EDIT2: Sorry this is a very long post! Just to say if you’re new to linux and want to understand a bit: qdbus is a tool for QT based applications (including almost all of KDE which is build in QT) to interact with DBUS which is basically the messaging system in linux between processes.

So when you run qdbus on it’s own you’ll see a tree of processes that are interacting with QT processes. Then if you run qdbus & the name of a process like “org.freedesktop.powermanagement” you’ll see what QT processes are running with/under it. Then if you run dqbus and add that connected process like “/org/kde/Solid/PowerManagement” you can see what strings and options are available. Then you can run qdbus to see more detail or change a setting/string.

Hope that make sense!

Kbin was forked to Mbin which is community run. Kbin seems to have stopped development while Mbin continues. Most kbin sites have moved over to Mbin I think.

Not sure what’s happened woth kbin.social though. Maybe its moving to Mbin? Still seems yo be running kbin currently judging by the landing page?

Is there enough space on your filesystem? That includes your home folder and main root file system?

If so then i’d deletenor rename folders associated with bottles and try again. If its a user level install check ~/.local/share/Flatpak/app and ~/.var/app and deleteor rename the bottles folder. If its a system wide install look in /var/lib/Flatpak/app

Then try and install it again. It will create a new set of folders.

Its worth saying a GPU dock is just an eGPU. Often they use mobile GPUs and will make something more streamlined or portable. They often include a USB hub.

Most eGPU chassis are the same tech but often larger so you can install a larger desktop gpu, and have more space for cooling and even a dedicated PSU.

GPU docks have their own usefulness but you are likely to get more performance for the price by getting your own chassis and card, but less mobility and more bulky.

There are plenty of chassis available if you go looking. Some haven’t been updated to newer models but remain available.

A chassis is fairly simple - its basically a bit of mother board with pcie and a thunderbolt 3+ connection. Thunderbolt 3 remains powerful enough for most uses, and ones with dedicated PSU will work with newer cards. I think the lack of new products reflects the lack of needing to change the products at the moment.

I haven’t seen much about thunderbolt 4 reducing the overhead. It might do, but there are fundamental constraints in these devices as this is basically converting pcie to thunderbolt and transferring over a distance - thats not going to ever match a direct pcie connection into a motherboard no matter how fast Thunderbolt 4 or 5 are. Thunderbolt 3 may not be the main bottleneck.

The Razer Core X is still available for example. And there are loads of smaller companies woth offerings.

I think just the highest end cards would be out of reach for the popular existing chassis but there is not going to be much market for pairing cards costing 1000s with a laptop when you are far better getting a desktop. So there may not be the market to make lots of new thunderbolt 4 chassis with PSUs.

The most important consideration is your laptops ports and it’s cpu. You will need Thunderbolt 3, 4 or 5 or USB 4 to get high enough transfer speeds and bandwidth between your eGPU and the laptop. You also need a decent CPU to get the full benefits - an eGPU paired with an old or low powered CPU may mean you dont get the full benefits of the eGPU as your CPU is still a bottleneck in running the software or games that would make use of the eGPU.

Then the eGPU chassis you choose will have specific limitations in terms of size of card that will fit. You need to check these carefully to ensure the chassis can fit and support the card you want. The bigger and better the chassis the more expensive it will be. Were talking a couple of hundred pounds / dollars on top of the card price.

But in theory there isn’t a limit on the cards you can use. Any GPUs that fits the chassis would work as its a standard pcie slot. However i would contend that if you want to use a top end card like a 5090 youre better off getting an actual PC to enjoy the full performance. If youre spending 1000s on a GPU it should be paired with a high end laptop or far better in an actual desktop to get the benefit. You also need to ensure the chassis can provide enough power to the card you want.

You lose about 10-15% of the cards functionality in the overhead of the eGPU. Thats because as fast as thunderbolt and usb4 are, you are transfering that to/from a pcie slot in the eGPU chassis and also transferring data over an distance via a cable compared to a gpu plugged directly into pcie on a motherboard for a PC, with direct connection to the CPU and rest of the motherboard. Newer thunderbolt and newer chassis might have lower overheads but they will never be able to completely match direct plug into a motherboard.

So yes eGPUs work, if your device can support it, and you can get big performance boosts. There isn’t a limit on the GPU but you should probably not go too high end as you’d be wasting money. A low end GPU would likely out perform any integrated card or graphics for most laptops and a mid range card would likely give excellent performance if paired with a decent specced laptop. But any eGPU set up cannot match the Max performance of the card in a dedicated desktop set up.

Edit: I know you have a surface but in case others read this and have a Mac - eGPUs wont work with Apples M1/M2 CPU chips. There is no way around this. AMD and Intel chips do although newer is better.

Amazon are getting bad about refunds and replacements plus have a major problem with counterfeit goods due to how they mix 3rd party and Amazon sourced goods in their warehouses.

They can’t refund your house if it burns down because Amazon sold you fake electronics.

EBay is fine for the smaller cheap Chinese tat that you can find on amazon, and PayPal provides consumer protection. Go to other retailers for electronics - any site or shop that does not use third party sellers.

Yeah and anything of value I would not get from Amazon due to the risk of counterfeits. Amazon pools its stock for an item with that provided by 3rd party sellers in its warehouse - either can be delivered to a customer based on which is closest not who you think you’re buying from.

So you can easily receive dodgy goods from 3rd party sellers that may he counterfeit or refurbished rather than new, when it says “sold and dispatched by amazon”.

Get your expensive items from other retailers that dont have 3rd party sellers. Get your cheap random Chinese manufactured crap from EBay or Aliexpress. Get your digital content from other stores like ebooks.com where you can legally remove the DRM and keep your content forever.

Fuck Amazon.

I have a linux desktop with dual 4K screens and I don’t have problems with high DPI? The only problems I’ve come across is with Wine which is easly fixed within the winecfg.

I’m on OpenSuSE, using KDE in X11. I DID have scaling problems with Wayland which I avoid until it is fit for daily use.

Of course 4k is 4 times 1080p (or twice in X and Y dimensions) so maybe it’s much easier to scale to? 2K on the Framework is an odd resolution so maybe scaling would be more troublesome? 1080p to 1440p would be 1.3x scaling.

The Economist is a superb newspaper. They are clear about their liberal position and their free market economic position.

They also are willing to do journalism that others dont bother with. This is a great article - its not about wether its right or wrong, its about what is going to happen and how it will affect the world.

You can read NTFS drives; I still have shared drives from my Windows install despite barely using Windows at all.

You can generally import steam libraries, and then steam can do the proton work.

And you can sometimes run other programmes in Linux from the windows install - i.e. it can have it’s own Wine prefix in Linux and use the installed files on the NTFS. But this doesn’t always work - if the programme’s or game’s installer makes significant system changes or installs other software then they won’t exist in the Wine prefix and the game may not work. It’s better to install windows games fresh so everything is installed into the wine prefix.

And Lutris is well set up with scripts for installing a wide range of games from their installers; it will avoid problems reinstalling games fresh.