ExtremeDullard

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/13880246

I have a terrible el-cheapo 14" HP laptop that I bought from a big-box store a few years ago as an emergency replacement for a laptop that died on me on the road while visiting a customer. I literally went to the store 5 minutes before it closed, bought any laptop they had, loaded Linux on it at the hotel and transferred my files from the dead laptop overnight, then did my presentation the next morning.

The trouble is, that laptop is VERY Linux unfriendly. I've put up with it for years because I don't like to throw things away, but I just can't stand the regular AMDGPU driver crashes and the broke-ass wifi-cum-bluetooth Realtek chipset anymore.

So I'm on the market for a good Linux laptop. I'm not a demanding user - I use that HP laptop to edit videos and do CAD and I'm okay with it - I'm very comfortable with anything Linux and I can code my way around problems.

I'm really tempted to get a MNT Reform laptop: I like the LiFePo4 battery cells a lot, it's solid, it's open hardware, it has a trackball and I love trackballs, it's highly hackable, and I'd like to support the MNT Research guys. And I'm old enough and the kids have been out of the house long enough that money is no object.

But a couple of things are holding me back. Maybe there are MNT Reform owners here who could shed some light on the following questions:

• I don't know much of the ARM ecosystem, and what to expect from what processor / SoC. So I'm thinking of going with the highest end RK3588 32GB / 256GB CPU module offered by MNT. Would this at least match the performances of my stupid HP laptop's Ryzen 5 CPU in terms of real-world performances?

  Or put another way: should I expect to take a hit when encoding my videos or doing big CAD models compared to this already slow laptop, or can I reasonably expect the MNT Reform to at least not be a regression.

  Side question (yes, I know it should be obvious, but asking is better than guessing): I assume the "32GB / 256GB" in the CPU module's denomination is for 32GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard flash. Meaning I'd have that much disk space without needing to add a NVMe SSD card. Correct?

• The keyboard layout looks all shades of terrible. I'm flexible with anything but not keyboard layouts - and especially those keyboard that don't put the left SHIFT and CTRL at the bottom where they belong, or have a split space bar.

  The Reform's keyboard ticks all the wrong boxes for me in that respect: I can tell rightaway that it's going to fight my typing muscle memory all the time and forever, because I sure ain't gonna get used to it.

  Can I remap the keys so I can at least I can swap CTRL and whatever that key is at the bottom left, and make the 3 buttons that replace the space bar act as a space bar? Then it's just a matter of putting a sticker on the keys and gluing the space bar keycaps together somehow.

• I seem to recall some years ago that if the laptop was left off and unplugged for long enough - like 2 weeks IIRC - it would drain the cells and kill them because there was no under-voltage protection. Less dramatically but equally annoyingly, you couldn't leave it unplugged for a few days and expect to find it fully charged when you needed it most.

  Does it still do that? Or has the hardware been fixed - or maybe there's a "Turn really off" option in the little side computer that runs the mini OLED display?

  Mind you, I can always drill a hole and add a physical switch to disconnect the cells, but I'd rather not do that.

• Is there an option to limit the charge? Keeping Li-ion cells constantly at 100% (or worse, charging all the time) when the laptop is plugged in isn't ideal. I'd rather it kept the cells charged around 80% . And I mostly use my laptops plugged in.

• Can I remove the cells and use the laptop plugged in? I might eschew the cells altogether, because I really never need them: I'm plugged in at home, I'm plugged in on the train, I'm plugged in at the hotel, I'm plugged in at the customer's. I can't remember a time when I needed to run this particular laptop on battery. If I can use the laptop as a luggable computer, I wouldn't need to carry the weight of the cells around.

• Has anybody tried to install Cinnamon? Does it work well on Debian ARM? I see no reason why it shouldn't, but maybe there are issues.

Well that's pretty much it. Sorry for the long post 🙂 There's precious little information about the MNT Reform out there - probably a good indication that there are precious few such machines in the wild, sadly - so I would welcome any real-world user feedback!

I have a terrible el-cheapo 14" HP laptop that I bought from a big-box store a few years ago as an emergency replacement for a laptop that died on me on the road while visiting a customer. I literally went to the store 5 minutes before it closed, bought any laptop they had, loaded Linux on it at the hotel and transferred my files from the dead laptop overnight, then did my presentation the next morning.

The trouble is, that laptop is VERY Linux unfriendly. I've put up with it for years because I don't like to throw things away, but I just can't stand the regular AMDGPU driver crashes and the broke-ass wifi-cum-bluetooth Realtek chipset anymore.

So I'm on the market for a good Linux laptop. I'm not a demanding user - I use that HP laptop to edit videos and do CAD and I'm okay with it - I'm very comfortable with anything Linux and I can code my way around problems.

I'm really tempted to get a MNT Reform laptop: I like the LiFePo4 battery cells a lot, it's solid, it's open hardware, it has a trackball and I love trackballs, it's highly hackable, and I'd like to support the MNT Research guys. And I'm old enough and the kids have been out of the house long enough that money is no object.

But a couple of things are holding me back. Maybe there are MNT Reform owners here who could shed some light on the following questions:

• I don't know much of the ARM ecosystem, and what to expect from what processor / SoC. So I'm thinking of going with the highest end RK3588 32GB / 256GB CPU module offered by MNT. Would this at least match the performances of my stupid HP laptop's Ryzen 5 CPU in terms of real-world performances?

  Or put another way: should I expect to take a hit when encoding my videos or doing big CAD models compared to this already slow laptop, or can I reasonably expect the MNT Reform to at least not be a regression.

  Side question (yes, I know it should be obvious, but asking is better than guessing): I assume the "32GB / 256GB" in the CPU module's denomination is for 32GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard flash. Meaning I'd have that much disk space without needing to add a NVMe SSD card. Correct?

• The keyboard layout looks all shades of terrible. I'm flexible with anything but not keyboard layouts - and especially those keyboard that don't put the left SHIFT and CTRL at the bottom where they belong, or have a split space bar.

  The Reform's keyboard ticks all the wrong boxes for me in that respect: I can tell rightaway that it's going to fight my typing muscle memory all the time and forever, because I sure ain't gonna get used to it.

  Can I remap the keys so I can at least I can swap CTRL and whatever that key is at the bottom left, and make the 3 buttons that replace the space bar act as a space bar? Then it's just a matter of putting a sticker on the keys and gluing the space bar keycaps together somehow.

• I seem to recall some years ago that if the laptop was left off and unplugged for long enough - like 2 weeks IIRC - it would drain the cells and kill them because there was no under-voltage protection. Less dramatically but equally annoyingly, you couldn't leave it unplugged for a few days and expect to find it fully charged when you needed it most.

  Does it still do that? Or has the hardware been fixed - or maybe there's a "Turn really off" option in the little side computer that runs the mini OLED display?

  Mind you, I can always drill a hole and add a physical switch to disconnect the cells, but I'd rather not do that.

• Is there an option to limit the charge? Keeping Li-ion cells constantly at 100% (or worse, charging all the time) when the laptop is plugged in isn't ideal. I'd rather it kept the cells charged around 80% . And I mostly use my laptops plugged in.

• Can I remove the cells and use the laptop plugged in? I might eschew the cells altogether, because I really never need them: I'm plugged in at home, I'm plugged in on the train, I'm plugged in at the hotel, I'm plugged in at the customer's. I can't remember a time when I needed to run this particular laptop on battery. If I can use the laptop as a luggable computer, I wouldn't need to carry the weight of the cells around.

• Has anybody tried to install Cinnamon? Does it work well on Debian ARM? I see no reason why it shouldn't, but maybe there are issues.

Well that's pretty much it. Sorry for the long post 🙂 There's precious little information about the MNT Reform out there - probably a good indication that there are precious few such machines in the wild, sadly - so I would welcome any real-world user feedback!

I know they're supposed to be good for the environment. But... Holy smokes they drive me up the wall. They really do!

I had no trouble adapting when aluminum can pull-tabs got replaced by push-tabs, because it was pretty much the same movement, and I could see the immediate advantage of not getting cut by a pull-tab.

But the tethered cap is fighting decades of muscle memory in me: I'm used to taking the cap off with one hand and keeping it there while taking a swig with the other. Now I unscrew the cap with one hand, but I still have to hold the cap so it's out of the way. It feels like drinking in handcuffs each and every time...

So unlike the pull-tab, the tethered plastic bottle cap is one of those compulsory eco solutions that constantly make you feel ever-so-slightly more miserable all the time, and I hate that because ecology only works when it brings something of value both to people and to the environment.

My company offers 3 days of unjustified sick leave for things like colds or minor health issues that don't really require seeing a doctor.

And sure enough, that guy - always that guy - got sick on Monday, then took a day off on Thursday, and now he's sick again on Friday. Strangely, his company car reports being at a ski resort 200 miles away.

Because you know, when you're bedridden, at least you should have a nice view out the window...

I'm not a true mechanical keyboard enthusiast. I mean I like a good keyboard for typing code, so I rolled with model-Ms in the 80s and 90s, then some expensive Cherry keyboard I only recently retired because it was utterly spent (and it was PS/2), and now I happily use a Wooting Two HE.

I'm so glad the mechanical gaming keyboard scene has developed so much: it means there's a plethora of really excellent keyboards for the rest of us who don't play games.

But something utterly baffles me: why are high-quality keyboards getting smaller?

There's a lot more keyboards without the numpad and the block of middle keys - whatever they're called - or with the middle keys reduced or squashed up awkwardly on the side, than full-size plain old 102- or 104-key layout keyboards. What's wrong with the numpad? Isn't more keys generally better?

Back in the days, I bought the original Happy Hacking keyboard because it kind of made sense to maneuver around in our server room with a small keyboard that took up less space. Typing on it drove me up the wall but it was convenient to carry. And I guess it was also good option for going to LAN parties with a smaller backpack. But other than that, for a keyboard that never leaves your desk, I don't get it.

Are there other advantages to smaller keyboards? Genuine question! I'm not dumping on smaller keyboards: to each his own and if you're happy with yours, more power to you. I'd just like to know why you prefer smaller.

Hey all,

I like etymology. When I see a word I don't know - or even one I know but I can't quite guess where it might come from - I look it up.

And so I do too with Finnish words. And there's something that has been puzzling me for quite some time: a surprising number of very common, everyday Finnish words, seem to have been coined very recently, in the 19th and early 20th century.

I'm not talking about words that describe new things, like automobiles or electric devices. It would make sense that words describing those things came about when those things first appeared. And I'm not talking about words borrowed from other languages. I'm talking much more generic words entirely made up in Finnish. For instance:

• Lihas: liha +‎ -s. Coined by Finnish teacher and linguist Gustaf Erik Eurén in 1860.
• Osake: osa +‎ -ke. Coined by Finnish author and journalist Pietari Hannikainen in 1847.
• Kahvila: kahvi +‎ -la. Coined by Finnish politician, historian and professor Yrjö Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen in 1861.

Now here's the mystery: I'm pretty sure muscles, company shares and coffee houses existed in Finland before the mid-19th century. So what were those things called before? Why did some people decide to coin new words for them? Why did so many new Finnish words seem to appear in that time period?

I've asked my Finnish friends but they don't know. They don't even seem to be aware that a lot of their language is actually quite recent.

Any linguist out there who would know?

I use Firefox and Firefox Mobile on the desktop and Android respectively, Chromium with Bromite patches on Android, and infrequently Brave on the desktop to get to sites that only work properly with Chromium (more and more often - another whole separate can of worms too, this...) And I always pay attention to disable google.com and gstatic.com in NoScript and uBlock Origin whenever possible.

I noticed something quite striking: when I hit sites that use those hateful captchas from Google - aka "reCAPTCHA" that I know are from Google because they force me to temporarily reenable google.com and gstatic.com - statistically, Google quite consistently marks the captcha as passed with the green checkmark without even asking me to identify fire hydrants or bicycles once, or perhaps once but the test passes even if I purposedly don't select certain images, and almost never serves me those especially heinous "rolling captchas" that keep coming up with more and more images to identify or not as you click on them until it apparently has annoyed you enough and lets you through.

When I use Firefox however, the captchas never pass without at least one test, sometimes several in a row, and very often rolling captchas. And if I purposedly don't select certain images for the sake of experimentation, the captchas keep on coming and coming and coming forever - and if I keep doing it long enough, they plain never stop and the site become impossible to access.

Only with Firefox. Never with Chromium-based browsers.

I've been experimenting with this informally for months now and it's quite clear to me that Google has a dark pattern in place with its reCAPTCHA system to make Chrome and Chromium-based browsers the path of least resistance.

It's really disgusting...

I've tried Lemoa: it's truly atrocious to put it mildly. Besides, I couldn't compile it on my GTK3 distro, there is no .deb, and using Flatpak means wasting hundreds of megabytes for what should be a simple, lightweight client. If I want to waste RAM, my browser is already running so I might as well use the web app from my instance.

I've tried Lemonade: the Python code doesn't run (again, GTK4 dependencies), and the Flatpak doesn't even display anything.

Liftoff is Flutter. No thanks...

NeonModem isn't complete.

Servitor is command line. I love the command line, but that's just the wrong environment for this.

Is there really nothing on Linux?

In 2000, I wrote a Linux device driver that "decrypted" the output of a certain device, and my company, which hosted open-source projects, agreed to host it.

The "encryption" was only a XOR, but that was enough for the maker of said device to sue my company under 17 U.S.C. § 1201 for hundreds of millions in damages.

The story got a lot of press back then because it highlighted how stupid the then-new DMCA was, and also because there was a David open-source enthusiasts vs. Goliath heartless corporation flavor to it.

Our lawyer decided to pick up the fight to generate free publicity for our fledgling company. For discovery, the maker of the device requested "a copy of any and all potentially infringing source code". They weren't specific and they didn't specify the medium.

So we printed the entire Linux kernel source code including my driver in 5-pt font and sent them the boxes of printouts. Legally they had been served, so there was nothing they could do about it.