My wife’s HP laptop does this as well (she is running Windows). A previous laptop did this and a BIOS update fixed it. For most laptops the official response from manufacturers seems to be: eat shit.

I mostly cut out the live news cycle from my life. There’s really no benefit in keeping up with the immediacy of the live news cycle.

I still have the guardian news app just for the breaking news alerts in case of something major. The only reason I use this is that they tend to send the least number of bullshit notifications (e.g. no shit about British royal family drama).

I’m finding the news experience is much better when I catch a summary of the news story a few days later when the situation is better understood and developed. I get almost all my news from the TLDR news YouTube channel.

If you are going to use a news site, then I would suggest using it through an RSS reader app. That way the news comes through chronologically. If you do this, you get away from the bullshit prioritisation of stories on news websites.

Yes

That’s Arch BTW

OpenSUSE family 🤙

Lemmy doesn’t have that much content. It is easy to get through relevant content of interest pretty quickly. Then there’s not much point in going back till the next day. I haven’t felt the need to uninstall the app.

The side effects of an amazing technology…but the technology is still amazing. I wouldn’t interpret it as overrated at all.

When something comes along that can be misused so easily, then it takes a conscious effort to avoid misuse. It’s the same with cars, processed foods, or any modern innovation really. Be the change you want to see. Reject social media. Turn off pretty much every phone notification. Have screen free time. Socialise without screens. I’m trying to do all these things. It’s difficult when no one else is interested in following suit and I just get excluded when I’m not on the platforms everyone else uses…but I’m trying to gather a circle of people who are aligned in this way of living.

I’ve heard good things. Would it be easy for friends to pick up quickly?

Single favourite is hard to pick.

Casual: I agree, Ludo is GOAT.

Invested: Catan… Maybe Scrabble

Dumb fun: Mad magazine game

“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

The only way to make sure Linux works like that is to have a closed hardware environment. But it has to play nicely with other hardware and services (e.g. printers, webcams, etc + office documents, etc). It has taken a very long time for MacOS to get to this point, but people put up with Mac compromises because enough things worked smoothly.

I’ve just commented about this in another thread…but I’m pretty convinced that Linux is not close to being ready for normies.

Lemmy is another form of social media, and bullshit that happens on social media will come here as more people come here. Your life will be much better if you make full use of blocklists and filtering.

I know it has the ability to, but I don’t recommend it. I’ve recently commented on this so I’ll paste it here:

DO NOT dual boot as a beginner. I did this when I started and would screw up something with the bootloader and be unable to boot one of the OSs (data can still be copied off, but installed app data isn’t easily recovered). Being a noob at the time, I even accidentally wiped the wrong drive during a distro hop.

For a beginner I would recommend you remove your Windows SSD and keep it safe in a drawer. Or clone the drive first. Then you can mess around all you want while keeping your original SSD safe.if the data and OS/app installs are valuable then don’t fuck around learning a new system with the drive in situ. Certainly don’t try to learn to partition and dual boot off the same drive. The noob risk is just too high.

https://lemm.ee/comment/13744698

In order to use dual boot, one must be able to set up dual boot. This guide is addressed towards people who have never used Linux.

If you’re lucky enough to have more than one device, then I’d just say use Linux on your secondary device. I used my Steam Deck as my PC for a month before I made the change.

I fully support people playing around and possibly soft-breaking their things just for the heck of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQX4FLrm9ac

Search is great?

One of my biggest issues with Thunderbird is that I can never find emails I want.

DO NOT dual boot as a beginner. I did this when I started and would screw up something with the bootloader and be unable to boot one of the OSs (data can still be copied off, but installed app data isn’t easily recovered). Being a noob at the time, I even accidentally wiped the wrong drive during a distro hop.

For a beginner I would recommend you remove your Windows SSD and keep it safe in a drawer. Or clone the drive first. Then you can mess around all you want while keeping your original SSD safe.if the data and OS/app installs are valuable then don’t fuck around learning a new system with the drive in situ. Certainly don’t try to learn to partition and dual boot off the same drive. The noob risk is just too high.

I used eBay so I could get a refund if the laptop wasn’t as advertised. I spent weeks looking at new listings looking for a good deal. I eventually found an amazing deal from a hospice that was selling excess stock. I’ve worked in a hospice before and know this would have only ever been used sparingly in an office and be very well looked after.

On eBay I would avoid anyone who hasn’t written out a complete description and detailed pictures of condition and specifics. Like the other comment says, the BIOS being unlocked is very important. Read descriptions carefully. People fall victim to buying expensive things that can’t be returned because it was mentioned in the listing (e.g. buying a box only for a very expensive price). For any laptop I find, I search for forum posts from other users about how that model works with Linux and videos for a teardown to make sure that RAM, WiFi module, etc can be upgraded. Make sure the charger is included.

Search eBay for “8th Gen 13 inch 16GB”, then sort by lowest price for buy-it-now. That’s what I did for a number of weeks. Got one for myself and a great one for my dad as well. Good experience both times.

I’ve just been through the process you’ve described and bought a laptop. Your budget is way overkill for your use (documents, browsing, video watching).

I recently bought myself a “like new” second hand Dell Latitude (5300, I think), 8th gen i7, 16GB Ram for £150 and it is amazing with OpenSUSE.

I got my wife a new HP Aero 13 (Ryzen) a couple of years ago and even that was £580 brand new and has been great.

Consider the secondhand market. A lot of laptops will meet your criteria.

Synology NAS, Wifi 6 router and Plex have been a fantastic life upgrade for me.