I don’t, I didn’t do it back then and I ended up using this system for much longer than I thought I would(4+ years). I want to do it next time but I don’t feel like reinstalling just for that.

I always shut it down every night, so usually not much more than 12 hours at best.

My terminal doesn’t “scroll” at all. Page up and down is all I need. I also don’t smooth scroll in my browser usually. Does it add anything? Isn’t smooth scrolling just worse actually (just like any other animation ever)?. The sooner the screen stops moving the sooner your eyes can lock on, focus and read. I never payed attention to it but you say it’s not widely supported, and that kinda makes sense to me. I can’t think of any reason to have it. I do lots of things in the terminal, I don’t even have a file manager. Smooth scrolling would make me slower and I would go crazy. Also you could scroll and end up with half a line visible on the top or bottom, which is just kinda weird and wasting space.

• I build software that I changed or patched
• When the bat version in the repos was broken I just installed it with cargo which compiles the latest version
• You can get a compiled version with a ‘-git’ package from the AUR if you need the latest features not yet in a stable release
• Some pieces of software I use I made myself so they are compiled by me
• Maybe you want to install some software that is not available precompiled
• The XZ backdoor didn’t work if you compiled it yourself: https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4

Personally I wouldn’t call that replacing. But that’s probably because I am a deranged minimalist. I can’t answer this thread because technically I didn’t remove anything that my installation started out with.

Do you really replace bash though? I also use fish but even as a relatively deranged minimalist I haven’t removed bash as it has so many dependents.

I don’t know of any. I do like keyboard based workflows so I have VimiumC in firefox which does what you want. A tiling window manager is the solution for the desktop environment part. The tricky part is navigating existing GUI apps.

They all work using macOS’ accessibility API which exposes UI elements for programmatic interaction.

Because linux doesn’t have a unified framework because of our freedom, things like this are very tricky if not practically infeasible (at least as far as I know).

edit: There was also a thing where you divide up the screen recursively with keyboard shortcuts and when the intersection hovered over whatever you want to click you could hit a key and it would generate a mouseclick there. I forgot the name, never tried it either. But a plus is that it doesn’t need applications to implement a certain API to work so it would work system wide.

Man I used to do SketchUp all the time in middle/high school, so nostalgic.

It is possible that the previous owner flashed firmware that doesn’t bind that key to anything. So the first thing to try would be flashing firmware that does bind the key. If that doesn’t work, the switch might be the problem. You could check on the back of the pcb if the soldering looks any different from the other keys. Even if it doesn’t you could reflow the key. If that doesn’t work you can unsolder the key and pull it out, open it up to see if anything is messed up like the contact leaf. You could try a different switch in that spot. If you put in a fresh key that works in the old spot and it still doesn’t work it might be the pcb. Maybe you need to reflow or replace the diode. If that doesn’t work it might be the contact pads on the pcb for the switch or the diode. When unsoldered and with the solder removed you should see a metallic ring around where the switch pin goes. If that is (partially) missing it will be trouble. It could also be the ‘wire’ that is etched into the pcb that goes from the pad to the controller. Either fixing the pad or jumping the wire is a bit more advanced (and a pain in the ass). I don’t have experience with that. Hopefully the problem is earlier in the chain. Good luck!

I’m not a thinkpad guy, but I thought one reason for people liking old thinkpads is that the old ones came with cpu’s that predate the intel management engine.

As a “sicko” (lol) I must say I don’t really futz around much if at all anymore. There are some differences but all in all I don’t think the Artix experience is much different from the regular Arch one.

Interesting, I never heard of setting your shell in the emulator config. I just used ‘chsh’ once when I setup the install.

Vim uses these commands like di" (delete everything inside “”) instead of chords (holding multiple keys down at once). Both work fine. The reason vim does this is that many regard it as more ergonomic. You don’t stretch your hand/fingers out and you can keep your fingers at homerow. You might have heard about people getting an “Emacs Pinky”. It’s basically down to preference. I don’t use emacs but I know people use vim bindings in emacs (emacs is very scriptable after all). That way you can try or integrate vim like bindings without leaving your comfy emacs.

I use fish abbreviations. Unlike bash/zsh aliases, they expand when you press space or enter. This way you see the original command every time you use the alias, and you can edit as well. This should lighten the concern you have a bit. Your concern is something that sysadmins keep in mind e.g. default vim bindings so you are always comfortable on any server. However for desktop use I don’t think leaving the speed and comfort on table is worth it. Most desktop users only use their own systems anyway.

• set a good tty font (it’s almost all you’re gonna see)
• be comfy with basic core utils (mv, cp, chmod, …)
• choose a shell (bash, fish, …) and set up some useful aliases/abbreviations
• fzf or something similar does wonders (also replaces things like dmenu)
• terminal multiplexers are used instead of window managers
• some applications allow you to do some graphics (like mpv to play video)
• there is more advanced stuff you can do with frame buffers
• there are terminal browsers like w3m or lynx
• a good extensible text editor is essential (vim, nvim, emacs, helix, …)
• research some cli applications for your usecase (cal (calendar), neomutt (email), …)

Over time your collection of aliases and scripts will grow to make common tasks you do easier.

Are universities automatically “elitist brain-rot” when they participate in rankings? When it comes to privilege, yes, rich kids that don’t deserve it are accepted into ivy league universities because of the connections they have. This is not a good thing obviously. Most researchers receive the privilege of working there because of their good research done at other universities. That is why they stay on top: a lot of excellent researchers want to join those universities. Obviously MIT has a very good standing when it comes to CS. The dick-measuring contest is but a small part of the university ecosystem. Also, neo-caste system is a quite strong. Most ivy league researchers are probably not rich or powerful. For that you have to look at our “friends” in the C-suite. I understand the sentiment, but I find “hate”, “elitist brain-rot” and “neo-caste system” way too strong.

It kinda sounds like some kind of driver issue to me. The fact that it doesn’t detect modes other than a single super basic one sound like not having a proper graphics driver. However, I have no clue why it would work again on reboot and maybe even more importantly, why the other monitor does have a proper mode detected. I wouldn’t expect that if the driver was messed (you would expect all monitors to be assigned some basic mode).

As I understand you take in some stream video akin to /dev/video0 and want to enlarge it so you can look at your monitor while playing? Whenever it is something with video ffmpeg can probably solve it. FFmpeg flags like -vf also work on the video player, ffplay.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Scaling

At the bottom they talk about choosing scaling algorithms, try some out to see what combination of quality and speed you get.

If google had a baby she would drop it on its head.

very glad indeed