djdarren

Last time I went into a store was 3 years ago, specifically looking for an iPhone 13 mini as an upgrade to my iPhone XR. They didn’t have any in stock, attempted to sell me a few different, more expensive devices, then just told me to try online.

Ended up going with a different provider.

And all of them retractable.

I was a welder who was promoted up to quality manager, and I can tell you that while my current role is nowhere near as physically demanding, it is absolutely harder.

Perhaps it’s my ADHD, perhaps it’s because I’ve never really been trained for office work, but the thing I struggle with most is prioritising tasks, making sure I’m doing enough of all the things required of me. I never had to do that before. My foreman would assign me tasks, I’d do the tasks. Easy. Also, my current role intersects heavily with health and safety legislation, so I’ve had to study for (and pass) a NEBOSH qualification. I never failed a welding test, but I had to resit the NEBOSH.

As a recovering Apple user, I kinda straddle the two worlds. I’m still in a place where I like software to look tidy, with a decent GUI and workflows that make sense. With the best will in the world, a good amount of FOSS misses the mark on some of that.

But the more I use Linux, the more FOSS I use, and get used to.

It’s the feeling that ultimately what I do is meaningless.

Thing is, I work in quality management and health and safety. From a manufacturing perspective what I do is about as meaningful as it gets. I’m one of the people who makes sure that no one gets hurt! Trouble is, most people in the company seem to have offloaded their responsibility to our office, regardless of how often we tell them that isn’t true.

It should be trivial to roll out a new measure that will ensure a reduction in incidents and accidents, but that measure is only useful while the folks on the shop floor actually pay attention. And they don’t. Not until someone gets hurt, at which point we get asked why we aren’t doing more to ensure things like that don’t happen.

It’s demoralising

Heartbreaking.

The one thing I desperately want for Linux is BetterTouchTool. That one piece of software alone plugs SO MANY gaps in how to navigate macOS, but Linux has nothing like it. Not that I’ve yet found, anyway.

I’m lucky enough that my MD barely understands what a computer is, let alone gives a shit what we use to do our work. So I just said fuck it and put Kubuntu on mine. As long as I can do my work, no one cares how I do it.

What I don’t understand is how GrapheneOS runs on any Pixel because that’s the one device that lends itself to an alternative OS, but none of the various mobile Linux distros support anything past the Pixel 3.

Or am I coming at this from the wrong direction?

It’s a pizza, Harry.

I’m a recovering Apple user, and the Apple tax is absolutely a thing.

Yeah, the hardware lasts. In my little office I currently have a 2011 MacBook Pro running Arch(btw), a 2014 Mac mini running Mint, an M1 mini, and an M2 Air. That '11 Pro refuses to die. However I’m under absolutely 0 illusions that I’ll get the same lifespan from the M1 and M2. The hardware may well last as long, but them being effectively locked down right to macOS means that when Apple decide they’re done, they’re done. I could run Asahi on them, but that comes with a bunch of annoying compromises that aren’t the fault of the Asahi devs, but are as a result of Apple trying to lock down the Mac platform in the same way they have iOS.

And sure, the entry level hardware can be cheap. The M4 mini is an astonishing deal. But they’re betting on locking you in with iCloud Drive subscriptions, and the like. Then, after a few years, when your Mini goes obsolete, you’ll either upgrade to a new one or have to spend a bunch of time trying to work out how to shift your online storage to another provider.

And not to mention things that they’ve branded that are commonly available for free elsewhere. “Buy into the Apple ecosystem to get Universal Control!” or just install Deskflow on the shitty old ThinkPad you already have, because the function of the software is exactly the same. “Apple’s Continuity stuff is super neat!” Aye, and so is KDE Connect. Which is free and runs on any device this side of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine.

You pay a lot for Apple hardware, and yeah, that money gets you great hardware, but the value proposition is getting slimmer every year.

In my experiemce it’s not. Unless you’ve not got Mac hardware, in which case it’s your only choice from those two options.

Now, how is Mint better than macOS on older Macs?

Well. I used OCLP to run Sequoia on my 2014 Mac mini. It ran, but it was a dog egg. The fan was basically a continuous jet engine. So I used it to dip my toes in Linux and put Mint on it. 100% improvement. Mint doesn’t mind only having 8Gb RAM, and doesn’t really give a shit what it runs. It’s modern and up to date and not growing new security holes with every month that passes. Running Mint, that little computer has become the hub of my homelab. Sure, there’s better hardware for the task, but the best gear is the gear you’ve got, right?

However, if my M2 MacBook could run Mint, I’d still be running Sequoia on it, because there’s a swathe of shit that macOS does out of the box that it’s taken me a year of using Linux to give up trying to emulate with any level of success.

But not macOS 26 though. Oh Jesus fuck no. I’ve tried it on the M1 mini I have and it’s fucking awful.

I’ve put Mint, Kubuntu, and Arch on a few different Macs from 2011-14, and the Broadcom drivers are an arsehole every time. I wish I was smart enough to save a note on how I did it.

I have a 2011 MBP running Arch (btw). The thing won’t fucking die. Well, apart from the battery, which went spicy as hell a couple of years ago.

The 2018 mini is a wonder of a machine. It’s the last one with replaceable RAM, so max that bad boy out and go wild with the distro of your choice. I’m running Mint on a 2014 which is solid.

Word of warning though, setting up the wifi on Mac hardware can be a ballache initially. So make sure you’ve got a wired connection.

45yo here, and yeah, kinda.

I’m happily married (for the second time), and have a decent job that no longer requires back breaking manual labour that enables me to clock off at 4pm and fuck off home where I don’t have to think about. I have a grown up kid who’s just graduated with a law degree and is forging his own path in life. All things considered, I’m pretty chill. I try to take a more adult, considered view on things that affect me.

I don’t own my home, because my wife isn’t able to earn as much, so we can’t get a mortgage, but I’ve kind of made peace with that.

And I’ve accrued some of the toys I couldn’t afford when I was younger. I have a collection of computers that I can tinker with, an an iPod that I love.

I spent several hours trying to figure out how to install Arch manually, before discovering Archinstall.

I now have it running on two old laptops.

My main PCs are running Kubuntu though.

Obligatory you should use Arch btw.

(Good luck)

+1 for Winboat. As long as you’ve got the RAM and CPU cores to spare, it’s a really nice solution to the Windows software that you really can’t replace. My PC has an 8core CPU and 16Gb RAM. Much less than that and it gets pretty taxing.

WinApps is more complete, in that you can right click on a file to open it in an installed Windows app, which isn’t something you can (currently) do with Winboat, but WinApps is more of a bastard to set up.

God, Takk… is a masterpiece. Dammit, I’m gonna have to listen to it again.