This is true, here is a brief list: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/who-uses-libreoffice/

But I’m sure it is a massive project you would need to have sufficient motivation at all levels. Not at all a trivial project.

I am curious how these changes feel on-the-ground to the affected workers who had no personal interest in linux or free software.

It is a question I’ve spent a lot of time trying to work out. Can’t speak to docker.

Some of the specifics of Keeps and Dontkeeps depend on details of your system. You have to find out where the distro, DM and other apps keep the following:

Dontkeeps:

• trashes
• temp files
• file indexes … IMHO these dont backup properly if you leave them in and will prevent you from completing the task
• device files

Keeps:

• list of installed packages — explicit and deps separate if possible
• config files: /etc, ~/.config, ~/.* on a case by case basis… I say remove the obvious large temp dirs and keep the rest by default for simplicity
  • for the system configs I’ve had a tool called etckeeper running for a while because it was highly recommended but I’ve never actually restored from it…
• personal documents and other files such as typically kept in the home directory
• /root occasionally has something you need

Ways to investigate:

• use a disk usage utility to find out where your storage is being used up … It’ll help you find large Dontkeeps
• watch for recently modified files
• dirs and files that are modified all the time are usually temp dirs. But sometimes they have something useful like your firefox profile.

Most backup solutions are ONE of the following:

1. User files
2. System files

Don’t spend too much time crying about needing two solutions. Just make your backup today and reach perfection later.

Remember: sync isn’t backup. Test your backup if you can (but its not as easy as it sounds). Off site your most precious files.

I have also been confounded by the situation.

It is even worse when you are on the secondary market. The company’s product pages are broken. Trying to compare across different release years is way harder.

I assumed the reason for this had to do with the production systems and supply chains. They can get a certain number of x parts at y price from a factory located in a given location. You get enough parts in proximity to each other and you make it a model.

Its one thing for a small company to have enough components to have only a few models but with the volume dell or HP moves, they would need to really invest in suppliers or actually make the components themselves.

I dont imagine the marketing people have come up with all the options, they’re just the ones who have to try to sell want they’re given.

The other benefit of being in highschool is many people have loads of time to spend.

I honestly don’t know if there is any advice I can give to someone with a fulltime job and care giving responsibilities that would be convincing.

No I’m one of those “think!” nutjobs

We’re trying to have an intelligent discussion here.

You think every Lemmy admin should be forced to fed with CSAM instances, and therefor host on their own servers CSAM? Wow great plan you have for expanding the fediverse.

It would be solved for people who are primarily interested in tech and gaming. How about bellow challenges?

Gaming is huge so presumably lots of gamers are interested in the wider world, which is not exactly well represented here compared to the major platforms.

And we can’t ignore the inherent complexities of federation. If a user signs up to another instance but for some reason that instance (or game 's instance) is blocked by others or even goes offline, then it will be confusing if not ruining of their experience.

In another subthread I came up with the below, is this what you mean? I haven’t tried it yet.

• /home/user/folderApple is always empty
• /home/user/folderApple-original mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple at boot
• then /mnt/drive/folderBanana also mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple when/if it becomes available (later in the order)

Ideally I’d like to avoid a script because my experience is they aren’t very durable. I make mistakes and they are difficult to troubleshoot. So I am trying to just use the tools that are already available in the system.

But maybe there is something in the idea of using a second mount, like if

• /home/user/folderApple is always empty
• /home/user/folderApple-original mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple at boot
• then /mnt/drive/folderBanana also mounts ontop of /home/user/folderApple when/if it becomes available (later in the order)

The results are the same no matter which order I do the mounts in.

don’t delete your post, people wrote things here.

For nonidentical devices you create additional packages prefixed with specific device name. You don’t need to link all packages at once with stow, pass a name of a package to link it alone.uuu

Sooo… I find some way to share the dotfiles directory across devices (rsync, syncthing, git, nextcloud, DAV) then make specific subdirs like this?:

~
  - dotfiles
      - bash-desktop
         dot-bashrc
         dot-bash_profile
      - bash-laptop
         dot-bashrc
         dot-profile
         dot-bash_profile

But what is the software doing for me? I’m manually moving all these files and putting them together in the specific way requested. Setting the whole thing up is most of the work. Anyone who can write a script to create the structure can just as easily write it to make symlinks. I’m sure I’m missing something here.

yadm is the one I liked the best and tried it a few times. fact is that I am unlikely to keep a repo like this even part way up to date. New files are created all the time and not added, old ones don’t get updated or removed. There’s not even a good way to notice in any file manager what is included and what’s not as far as I know. yadm doesn’t work with tools like eza which can display the git status of files in repos. (and it probably wouldn’t be feasible.)

Plus I have some specific config collections already in change tracking and it makes more sense to keep it that way. Having so many unrelated files together in one project is too chaotic and distracting.

It’s not realistic for me to manage merges, modules, cherry picking, branches all that for so many files that change constantly without direct intervention. Quickly enough git will tie itself into some knot and I won’t be able to pick it apart.

I used to use floccus and the thing I really liked is you can selectively share bookmark groups. So if you have certain links you want everywhere you can do that, but some sets you might only want in in specific browsers. I do not know if the others that have this.

Stopped using it because of unresolvable problems and not much Dev attention but looks like its picked up again so I plan to get back to it.

I agree. Chromebooks are a viable choice for those who want a web terminal. I used one for about a year. Got the job done.

thanks for all the details! I’ve fairly recently done an FS migration that entailed moving all data, reformatting, and moving it all back. Mega pain in the ass. I know more now than I did at the start of that project, so wouldn’t be as bad but not getting into something like that lightly.

Though it might be the excuse I need to buy another 12 tb hdd…

TBD

I’ve been struggling with syncthing for a few weeks… It runs super hot on every device. Need to figure out how to chill it out a bit.

Other than that I’ll look at both NFS and WebDAV some more. Then will come back to this page to re read the more intricate suggestions.

thanks I appreciate it. I’ve been around the block enough times to expect maximalist advice in places like this. people who are motivated to be hanging around in a forum just waiting for someone to ask a question about hard drives are coming from a certain perspective. Honestly, it’s not my perspective. But the information is helpful in totality even though I’m unlikely to end up doing what any one person suggests.

RAID is something I’ve seen mentioned over and over again. Every year or two I go reading about them more intentionally and never get the impression it’s for me. Too elaborate to solve problems I don’t have.

Thanks this comment is v helpful. A persuasive argument for NFS and against sshfs!

Forget NFS, SSHFS and syncthing as those are to complex and overkill at the moment. SMB is dead simple in a lot of ways and is hard to mess up.

OTOH, SSHFS and syncthing are already humming along and I’m framiliar with them. Is SMB so easy or having other benefits that would make it better even though I have to start from scratch? It looks like it (and/or NFS) can be administered from cockpit web interface which is cool.

Now that I look around I think I actually have a bit of RAM I could put in the PC. MacMini’s original RAM which is DDR3L; but I read you can put it in a device that wants DDR3. So I will do that next time it’s powered off.

Thanks for letting me know I could use an expansion card. I was wondering about that but the service manual didn’t mention it at all and I had a hard time finding information online.

Is this the sort of thing I am looking for: SATA Card 4 Port with 4 SATA Cables, 6 Gbps SATA 3.0 Controller PCI Express Expression Card with Low Profile Bracket Support 4 SATA 3.0 Devices ($23 USD) I don’t find anything cheaper than that. But there are various higher price points. Assuming none of those would be worthwhile on a crummy old computer like I have. Is there any specific RAID support I should look for?

I have only the most cursory knowledge of RAID but can tell it becomes important at some point.

But am I correct in my understanding that putting storage device in RAID decreases the total capacity? For example if I have 2x6TB in RAID, I have 6 TB of storage right?

Honestly, more than half my data is stuff I don’t care too much about keeping. If I lose all the TV shows I don’t cry over it. Only some of it is stuff I would care enough to buy extra hardware to back up. Those tend to be the smaller files (like documents) whereas the items taking up a lot of space (media files) are more disposable. For these ones “good enough” is “good enough”.

I really appreciate your time already and anything further. But I am still wondering, to what extent is all this helping me solve my original question which is that I want to be able to edit remote files on Desktop as easily as if they were local on Laptop? Assuming i got it all configured correctly, is GIMP going to be just as happy with a giant file lots of layers, undos, etc, on the Desktop as it would be with the same file on Laptop?