This week I learned that context switching on an older Intel CPU (which I have) is really expensive, owing to all the CPU Security Mitigation Costs:
Look at the chart called “Context Switch Time” on that page (the last one on that page)!! Nasty! 
I think I’ve found my explanation as to why my video podcast recording sometimes has small breakages in the audio, even though I’m using Ubuntu Studio, with the lowlatency kernel.
this week I had to use fsck on /home to repair the partition.
which is similar to the word I used when my machine didn’t boot. I’m guessing that naming was deliberate.
This week, I recovered 50GB worth of old mp3’s from a 13-year old Ubuntu 7.04 install (on a Core 2 duo desktop, long lost in a basement). Ubuntu 7.04 was back from 2007! I had to copy the files onto an external disk formatted with ext3, as ext4 wasn’t invented yet at that time. This recovery was satisfying in a nostalgic way.
My daily driver laptop (2009 MacBook Pro) has a Core 2 duo. I remember thinking I was going balls to the wall with this beast when I bought it. Sometimes I pull out my old Ubuntu CD’s, which Canonical used to mail out for free, and run an install just to see how far things have come. Warty Warthog… those were the days…
This week saw the fruition of about a month’s worth of work migrating some legacy Java applications from RHEL 6 to 8 (not a trivial change, thanks to systemd). I’ve fiddled more with vhosts in the past month than I ever wanted to. But all 8 servers rolled out fine as of this morning. Cross your fingers and toes for me.
Last night I thought it would be fun to try out Haiku. I could just get the install going, go to sleep, and play around with it in the morning. I was surprised to see the install took about 10 seconds and booting takes about 5 seconds. It’s really cool! It’s not Linux but it is neat!
Last month I built a Plex server as a Christmas gift for someone with extremely limited internet service as well as limited tech savvy. It was set up to run headless – just plug in the RJ45 to the router and the power cord to the wall.
This week I got the feedback I had hoped for: “Plugged it in – all of the TVs found it. It was effortless.”
SWEET!!!
This week, I gave the brand-new Piwigo 11.0.0 release a try on a Raspberry Pi 4.
The Plugin integration I was hoping for, from Shotwell → Piwigo works, but with a caveat: the uploaded images must at present be <= 2MB. (issue in progress)
This week saw the delivery of a new raspberri pi 4, and the installation of Kodi.
To be fair.
FLAC isn’t exactly new.
If I recall correctly it’s FLAC’s twentieth birthday this year.
It’s just that memory is a lot cheaper these days.
The audio quality is quite poor in many cases, you’ve got me there.
This week I tried out Fedora 33 on an external SSD. I wanted to see if Wayland would bedazzle me. I wish I could report bedazzlement, but alas, there were no wows to speak of in store for me, compared to plain old Ubuntu 20.04.
What do “we” expect from Wayland? It’s a modern implementation of what X11 does right? It’s trying not to break everything along the way too so I don’t think there’s much room for bedazzlement until it has widespread adoption and it can stretch its legs properly.
I’m not sure why there seems to be a thread in some of the shows lately to move desktop users away from debian-based distros all the while complaining that the most lacking aspect of linux is convergence.
My LCD screen (on my 3-4 year old laptop) probably has a response time which is sluggish enough, that the increased speed of Wayland doesn’t really shine through. Perhaps on a newer, costlier gaming rig, with a monitor with a faster response time, Wayland might shine more.
Yes, if I had my druthers, tight-as-possible convergence around a Debian ecosystem would happen, because .deb-based distros have the most packages, and the widest adoption.
Both Ubuntu and Debian will eventually gain Wayland support in their stable releases, it’s just that Redhat is pushing out ahead with Wayland support first, to gain an edge.
Having said this, Manjaro is finding a great niche on the best SBC’s and ARM laptops which aren’t Raspberry Pi’s.
I too am a Debian fan, I run XFCE though, not Gnome, but from the quick check I just did, it looks like Debian Buster’s Gnome has already defaulted to Wayland.
Big fan of multifarious ecosystems here (though not the best for new user adoption) and that’s super funny. lol
Would i be right in saying there’s 3 major Linux universes… Red Hat, Ubuntu and Arch (btw) with their own major centers of desktop gravity being, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro, ect.
So by recommending a move from Ubuntu universe to Red Hat’s it still keep things relatively centralized? Just to those 3 universes and their major gravity wells?
I would include Slackware and it’s progeny, Open Suse, to the mix in addition to your 3. To me it’s not an issue if someone wants to bring attention to a broader swath in the Linux field. I’m saying that when you do this, you should not at the same time complain about the lack of convergence and how that scattered efforts in the Linux community lead to limited market share.
Noahs excitement for Matrix finally got me to try it out this week. Its really cool so far! I managed to switch my SO over as well. We were using Signal before, but their ipad app crashed every time she tried to send images. Element on the other hand works quite well on all our devices which is nice.
The only thing missing would be the ability to rename contacts on your end, rather than having to see the username they signed up with in direct messages. Would be nice for personal contacts that you know irl. Dunno if that’s just an issue with element though rather than the matrix protocol.