Thanks! I’ll keep that note about the XTX in mind. I have a 240Hz monitor, but I only play at 1080p, so that might be just the ticket.

I have a 302mm card in my case now, but I think it can accommodate a max of 330mm (with some maneuvering). Gotta keep those things in mind with ITX builds!

I recently had the power cut off suddenly, and the computer subsequently couldn’t find the boot drive. I went into the UEFI and tried selecting different partitions, hoping that some kind of boot process was stored there. I found one that seemed to have a boot record, and it dropped me into a Windows recovery prompt, despite me having nuked Windows long ago.

I was able to use a Linux install drive to mount the boot partition, drop the necessary boot files in the respective folder, and I could even clean up the leftovers from Windows. Drive now boots fine, and I learned something.

Let’s see Windows do any of that. Moving to Linux was the best thing I’ve ever done for my computer.

I read the “Why Odyssey” section, and the dev talks about wanting anonymity, then goes on to say that they accept donations on Patreon. I assume they also have that domain registered under their name. And while you say it’s a “team,” that section sounds like it’s a lone dev with patrons; that does not instill confidence in the long-term viability of the project.

On top of that, they sound like an edgelord (probably young). They talk about “no telemetry,” but then that means no Steam, no internet browsing, and certainly no taking payments from strangers.

And if that wasn’t enough, they hit us with this gem:

Artificial intelligence is an unavoidable tool, powerful and extremely useful, and it will shape the future of our species for the next thousand years. So yes, I use it, and I use it as an intelligent human being and, above all, a conscious one.

Unavoidable? Fuck right off. There isn’t some employer holding your paycheck hostage in return for “seeing what you can do with it.” The data consistently shows that it makes us dumber, and acting like it is inevitable (which I think is what they actually mean) is one of the most brain dead takes people say when pushing AI. They are choosing to use AI, and even if it’s local, the core functionality was built upon the mass theft of people’s work.

They do go on to say that they have an issue with who controls AI, which I agree with, but unless they built their own ML algorithm from the ground up or use one that wasn’t built with venture capital, they’re just reinforcing the same capitalist system that is ruining everyone’s future for the benefit of a few.

Overall, I think this is a very young person with a desire to do something good but who is ultimately naive. Coupled with the fact that they use AI without restraint, I expect this project to eventually flounder.

Yep, I agree with all of that. The original source here is specifically using LoRA, which is why I focused upon it, but Reticulum is certainly more than that.

I think we may be talking about different things. When I originally said “emergency comms,” another way to say that would be “ad hoc communications in a disaster scenario.” I was imagining coordinating teams and disseminating information in a scenario where typical radio stations might be damaged or otherwise unavailable.

It seems that when you say “emergency,” you’re imagining a person who needs immediate medical intervention. For that purpose, I agree that I wouldn’t rely upon LoRA technology unless it was literally the only viable option.

I’m actually interested in your reasoning why you feel that way. Care to expand on that?

Reticulum is a great project, but it’s not a replacement for the internet. LoRA (a potential piece in that chain) has very low data throughput; it’s fine for messages, but you’re not delivering web pages or streaming media with it.

Unless and until the throughput can be increased, Meshtastic/Meshcore is really only a replacement for text messaging, which might be perfectly fine for setting up encrypted comms or rapidly deploying communications in an emergency scenario.

I will not be using this workaround, even if it works perfectly. However, if this gets people away from Windows, that’s a good thing as a step towards getting them away from Microsoft in general.

The fewer data points Microsoft can exploit the better.

Oh, thank you! I would have absolutely missed that little detail.

Thanks, and that’s what I was thinking might be the case. CachyOS has an easy tool for switching kernels, and I have a vague memory of needing to blacklist certain parameters during boot, but I’ll have to look into that more. Somebody kindly shared a migration guide link elsewhere to look at, and I bet it talks about some of the things you’ve mentioned.

Hopefully I can get away without a reinstall!

Thanks, but NixOS was a bit too esoteric for me. I love the idea, but I could not wrap my head around the syntax no matter how many videos I watched or how much documentation I read.

Handy to know! I would have had an XFX card, but the Nvidia card dropped in price first.

Perhaps I can do the installation just before making the swap. Good to know!

Oh nice, so you swapped from a 3080ti to a 7900XT?

I tried MX Linux, and it didn’t work with my hardware at all! Something was broken with the desktop shell or window manager that drew everything in the wrong places

That’s not to say it’s bad, but it definitely isn’t as plug-and-play as some other distros.

They’re virtually comparable in features, but there’s no denying that the more open nature of AMD naturally leads to fewer pain points. I haven’t had any significant ones (and not ones I know would instead work with AMD), but there could be things that aren’t working well now that I’ve just taken for granted, since I only have the one GPU.

Generally speaking, either GPU should work great for most people for common workloads.

Thankfully, I don’t do much GPU computing outside of simple video editing and games. Cuda was never a selling point for me; it was mainly raytracing, and generally speaking, I don’t use it much anymore now that I’ve experienced the wow factor.

They also did not “inject malicious code into AUR packages” because of some insecurity that needed fixing. They simply took over orphaned packages then modified them.

I agree, but I wanted to clarify this point for anyone: they didn’t “take over orphaned packages” themselves, they took over the individual install processes, provided by the AUR for packages, that have likely been abandoned by the maintainers. The AUR doesn’t host the actual code for software itself; it’s just a set of instructions that tells the client where to grab code from and what to do with it.

Sure, but “works with nVidia” isn’t the same as “works with everything,” since there’s a lot of other hardware to consider, though I’d imagine the latter case would be mostly easy for an end user to work around.

That’s all I’m really pointing out with that part, and if I’m wrong, then it’s only good news for the rest of us.

But the benefit of SteamOS is going to be marginal at best since lots of distros are already highly capable for gaming. Waiting isn’t going to bring with it some magical improvements that makes it the default choice over CachyOS, Bazzite, PikaOS, etc.

I suspect you’ll be disappointed or frustrated by SteamOS, since Valve isn’t really all-in on maintaining a universal distro like other projects (and that’s okay); more likely, it will always be Valve-hardware-first that just happens to work on some other hardware configurations.

IMO, you’re better off jumping into whatever distro interests you rather than expecting SteamOS to fit your use case. My personal choice was CachyOS for daily use and gaming, and it’s been great, but PikaOS would be one I’d consider for another build. I also run Bazzite on an older laptop for some light gaming and HTPC stuff, and that’s been rock solid.