Arkhive (they/she)

Been meaning to swap to Niri, but I’m dreading trying to “convert” my Hyprland config to it.

I watched a lengthy video essay about this movie that really made me want to watch it. Was definitely shocked by the level of thought put into the symbolism within the film.

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’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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

I’m looking to leave behind the graphical Obsidian app for neovim and plugins as I already use it for most of my other text editing. What is your setup and what plugins you recommend for neovim for general use, coding, and writing?

Maybe check out a local internet or gaming cafe for those periodic sessions? I just found one near me I’m considering going to a few times a month for the “slop” games. There’s a couple I still get the urge to play now and then.

I use Tailscale instead of hamachi these days. I find it way better. Used to use hamachi in the early days of Minecraft multiplayer, was always so jank and maybe it’s gotten better, but Tailscale has the added bonus of letting me easily share other services with the people I host servers for.

For me it was Destiny 2. I genuinely enjoy the moment to moment gameplay, and no other game has really matched it for me. The story and characters were engaging enough, even at the games lows, that I wanted to see the saga through to the end. I did week one of the raid for “The Final Shape” and then I booted into my Linux install and have not booted windows since. I’m about to fully wipe that drive and reuse it in a different Linux machine. My desire to quit windows, and my acute awareness of how much of my life and money I had put into Destiny over the last decade or so, made the switch honestly pretty easy.

I still game a good amount, but it’s much more intentional, and I don’t play any live service games which frees up money I don’t feel guilty putting toward indie games.

I quit League in 2019 when I finally built my own PC. I refused to put any games from Riot on the new computer. I played enough of the game to enjoy following the competitive scene to this day, and every now and then I get the desire to play. I’d really only do it with premade scrims of people I know.

I’ve recently found a gaming cafe in my city I might go to a few times a month to play a couple of those games I either can’t or refuse to install on my Linux machine.

Yeah, Tailscale!! It’s a very nicely packaged front end for Wireguard, which is a “mesh vpn” if I’m remembering my terms properly. Basically makes all my devices think they are on the same network at all times, and provides convenient names to use to connect to them.

I self host sunshine and use the moonlight client on iOS for my remote desktop. It’s meant for in home game streaming, but using Tailscale I can connect from anywhere.

I’m working on building out a similar stack on Podman. Anyone know how much of this would be easily or directly transferable to that?

+1 for Doechii! Her tiny desk concert is a great leaping off point for her work!

Just felt the need to say our music libraries look very similar. You have great taste.