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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I think I have a simple function in my .zshrc file that updates flatpaks and runs dnf or zypper depending on what the system uses. This file is synced between machines as part of my dotfiles sync so I don’t have to install anything separate. The interface of most package managers is stable, so I didn’t have to touch the function.

    This way I don’t have to deal with a package that’s on a different version in different software repositories (depending on distribution) or manually install and update it.

    But that’s just me, I tend to keep it as simple as possible for maximum portability. I also avoid having too many abstraction layers.







  • I expected something more shocking when I read “working with Russia”.

    Kagi uses multiple search backends, and of course it needs to forward search terms to these backends. These backends probably can’t trace the searches back to the individual Kagi user though, but Yandex could still analyze search trends for example.

    What’s worse is that - unless they use Yandex’ API for free - customers indirectly (and likely unknowingly) support a Russian company with their paid Kagi subscription.

    Kagi should at the very least release a statement about this claim.


  • Understandable.

    What I will say though is that I personally wouldn’t mind regular spec bumps at all. The Deck isn’t exactly a cheap device and to get the “latest and greatest” for your “investment” at any given point of purchase would help longevity.

    But as I said, in this case it makes a lot of sense (for Valve). SteamOS is still under heavy development, even more basic stuff such as the update mechanism and also power management is something they’re still working to improve.

    They also use a custom APU designed in collaboration with AMD, and these designs cost a lot of money. It’s not just a rebranded 7840U like the Z1 Extreme for example. This custom design makes a lot of sense in terms of focusing on gaming performance and efficiency, and it clearly shows in (very) power limited scenarios.

    Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a new Steam Deck based on Zen 5 and RDNA 4 with another custom designed APU sometime in 2025 or early 2026. Zen 2 is really starting to show its age and Zen 5 is a solid leap even over Zen 4 (not talking about desktop CPUs here, but Ryzen AI 300). RDNA 4 will likely improve quite a bit over RDNA 3(.5) (with the current Deck having RDNA 2) and include some type of hardware-accelerated machine learning upscaling with FSR4, which could make a lot of sense on the Deck as long as enough games support it.

    I’d also like to see a few other improvements. The OLED display is great in many aspects, but VRR would be a great feature to have. Internally I’d like to see an easier way to swap the battery, maybe using similar tech to what Apple does with the iPhone 16’s battery. Currently, swapping the battery is one of the most complex repairs on the Deck, but it’ll also be the most common a few years down the line when all these batteries really start to show their age.







  • This being displayed as “Unknown” is likely just a bug or an app you (very) recently uninstalled. And you probably opened the camera app by accidentally swiping right to left on the lock screen. Even just a slight swipe will launch the app so it’s ready when you’re done swiping.

    And I’m not even sure what you’re talking about regarding your QR code.

    Android is not de facto superior to iOS, nor is the opposite the case.

    If you’re really that paranoid, even GrapheneOS on a Pixel shouldn’t calm you down because it also requires proprietary firmware by Google (and possibly other vendors) to run on these proprietary devices. In this case my advice would be to stop using smartphones altogether and rely on open source computers (couple of RISC-V options out there I think) for your computing needs.



  • It’s kind of in the word distribution, no? Distros package and … distribute software.

    Larger distros usually do a quite a bit of kernel work as well, and they often include bugfixes or other changes in their kernel that isn’t in mainline or stable. Enterprise-grade distributions often backport hardware support from newer kernels into their older kernels. But even distros with close-to-latest kernels like Tumbleweed or Fedora do this to a certain extent. This isn’t limited to the kernel and often extends to many other packages.

    They also do a lot of (automated) testing, just look at openQA for example. That’s a big part of the reason why Tumbleweed (relatively) rarely breaks. If all they did was collect an up-to-date version of every package they want to ship, it’d probably be permanently broken.

    Also, saying they “just” update the desktop environment doesn’t do it justice. DEs like KDE and GNOME are a lot more than just something that draws application windows on your screen. They come with userspace applications and frameworks. They introduce features like vastly improved HDR support (KDE 6.2, usually along with updates to Wayland etc.).

    Some of the rolling (Tumbleweed) or more regular (Fedora) releases also push for more technical changes. Fedora dropped X11 by default on their KDE spin with v40, and will likely drop X11 with their default GNOME distro as well, now that GNOME no longer requires it even when running Wayland. Tumbleweed is actively pushing for great systemd-boot support, and while it’s still experimental it’s already in a decent state (not ready for prime time yet though).

    Then, distros also integrate packages to work together. A good example of this is the built-in enabled-by-default snapshot system of Tumbleweed (you might’ve figured out that I’m a Tumbleweed user by now): it uses snapper to create btrfs snapshots on every zypper (package manager) system update, and not only can you rollback a running system, you can boot older snapshots directly from the grub2 or systemd-boot bootloader. You can replicate this on pretty much any distro (btrfs support is in the kernel, snapper is made by an openSUSE member but available for other distros etc.), but it’s all integrated and ready to go out of the box. You don’t have to configure your package manager to automatically create snapshots with snapper, the btrfs subvolume layout is already setup for you in a way that makes sense, you don’t have to think about how you want to add these snapshots to your bootloader, etc.

    So distros or their authors do a lot and their releases can be exciting in a way, but maybe not all of that excitement is directly user-facing.