Onihikage

Are we still talking about the OP? The idea that it’s wrong to curse someone out because you disagree with their take is not “politics that inherently goes against FOSS philosophy.” Foss grows faster when more people get involved and contribute. If the most vocal contributors treat everyone they disagree with like shit, they will demoralize their community and make others stop wanting to contribute. That kills projects.

You could try FreeFileSync. I use it for pretty much your exact use case, though my music library is much smaller and changes less often, so I haven’t tinkered with its automation. Manual sync works like a dream.

Up in the Hardware Information section of hyfetch, on the left.

Not them, but I do! https://youtu.be/s1fxZ-VWs2U

Try KittyToy (itch.io).

• Crash Course Pods: The Universe, with John Green & Dr. Katie Mack. Talks about how the universe came into existence.
• Volts, with David Roberts. Talks about electrification and the energy transition.

I don’t listen to many podcasts, but those two are pretty great.

Unfortunately I can’t even test Llama 3.1 in Alpaca because it refuses to download, showing some error message with the important bits cut off.

That said, the Alpaca download interface seems much more robust, allowing me to select a model and then select any version of it for download, not just apparently picking whatever version it thinks I should use. That’s an improvement for sure. On GPT4All I basically have to download the model manually if I want one that’s not the default, and when I do that there’s a decent chance it doesn’t run on GPU.

However, GPT4All allows me to plainly see how I can edit the system prompt and many other parameters the model is run with, and even configure multiple sets of parameters for the same model. That allows me to effectively pre-configure a model in much more creative ways, such as programming it to be a specific character with a specific background and mindset. I can get the Mistral model from earlier to act like anything from a very curt and emotionally neutral virtual intelligence named Jarvis to a grumpy fantasy monster whose behavior is transcribed by a narrator. GPT4All can even present an API endpoint to localhost for other programs to use.

Alpaca seems to have some degree of model customization, but I can’t tell how well it compares, probably because I’m not familiar with using ollama and I don’t feel like tinkering with it since it doesn’t want to use my GPU. The one thing I can see that’s better in it is the use of multiple models at the same time; right now GPT4All will unload one model before it loads another.

I have a fairly substantial 16gb AMD GPU, and when I load in Llama 3.1 8B Instruct 128k (Q4_0), it gives me about 12 tokens per second. That’s reasonably fast enough for me, but only 50% faster than CPU (which I test by loading mlabonne’s abliterated Q4_K_M version, which runs on CPU in GPT4All, though I have no idea if that’s actually meant to be comparable in performance).

Then I load in Nous Hermes 2 Mistral 7B DPO (also Q4_0) and it blazes through at 50+ tokens per second. So I don’t really know what’s going on there. Seems like performance varies a lot from model to model, but I don’t know enough to speculate why. I can’t even try Gemma2 models, GPT4All just crashes with them. I should probably test Alpaca to see if these perform any different there…

I actually found GPT4ALL through looking into Kompute (Vulkan Compute), and it led me to question why anyone would bother with ROCm or OpenCL at all.

I mainly recommend Universal Blue distros to newbies, like Bazzite or Aurora. The immutable nature more or less means users don’t have to worry about performing maintenance of system apps like they might on some distros, mostly don’t have to worry about dependencies, and are less likely to irreversibly break the system themselves or in an update.

That said, these distros are Fedora-based, and I think that’s fine. No idea who out there is recommending Arch of all things.

The ELI5 for Fedora’s atomic desktops is that if Windows had an Atomic Desktop version, Program Files and most of the Windows folder would be read only, and each program you installed yourself would go into its own folder in your user directory. That’s the basic idea. It’s harder to screw up an Atomic system as long as you stick to containerized app formats like flatpak/appimage whenever possible. It makes it easier for everyone to diagnose problems, and easier for users to roll back if an update has problems. Even if you were to install it right now, you could use one simple command to “roll back” to any image from the last three months.

The benefit of Bazzite is you have all of the above, plus a lot of gaming-related stuff preinstalled which, if you were to install them yourself in a normal Fedora environment, you’d likely have to spend a lot of time just learning how they’re supposed to be configured, how they interact, which versions have problems, and how to troubleshoot problems when an update to one app breaks a prerequisite for something else; eventually you end up in config hell instead of actually using your computer. With Bazzite, the image maintainers are the ones in config hell - they work out the kinks, app versioning, communicate with upstream to fix issues, all that, so your system should be in the most functional state that a Linux system can be, so you only have to think about using your apps.

tl;dr

• Atomic Desktops are more resilient to randomly breaking from updates or user error, and are easier to revert to a prior state if problems do arise
• Bazzite is a custom Atomic image with lots of gaming stuff preinstalled and preconfigured to work properly out of the box
• If you’re a gamer and wanting to try out Linux, Bazzite is going to be the least painful way to get your feet wet.
• Immutable distros are excellent for daily driving. I daily drive one myself!

All the cybersecurity in the world won’t matter if a handful of manipulated idiots people shoot a bunch of unguarded and remotely located substation transformers.

If “nearly every app” that people already use suddenly has a big warning on it, people will quickly decide the warnings are meaningless and start ignoring them, like Prop 65 warnings. Congratulations, we’ve moved the needle backwards.

You have to meet people where they’re at. I finally switched to Linux when MS introduced a feature I wanted no part in (Recall AI), but I would have given up within a day or two if the transition hadn’t been basically seamless. I was able to pick up right where I left off, using all the same apps I did on Windows except MusicBee RIP, but now I’m in a better position than before, on an open-source OS instead of closed-source. Now there’s a little less friction between me and better, freer software.

When I look at Firefox in Discover, it only shows the list of permissions the flatpak will be given out of the box, with no warning of it being “potentially unsafe.” This certainly does seem like the better way to handle it.

Also, the warning on the Flathub website is clickable - it expands into the full permissions list. Why it defaults to “no information except maybe dangerous” is beyond me.

As a fellow virgin, if you actually do want to not be a virgin, but see yourself as having “failed” then think deeply on what the reason is.

First of all, if you’ve “failed” then what did you actually try that failed? Do you constantly take steps to meet new people and find friends, male and female, whether in hobbies or online or anywhere? If not, why not? If you have, and therefore have lots of friends you speak with regularly, are you recruiting them to help you find a romantic partner? Meeting lots of people, making friends, and then asking those friends for help is a great way to accomplish almost anything. It’s much easier early in life, but it’s never impossible.

If you have taken steps to meet lots of people (and I mean a lot of people), but none of them or their single-and-looking friends wanted to date you, then did they give reasons? What is it about you that they don’t like? Are you taking care of yourself? Maintaining good personal hygiene? Dressing well? Do your peers find you unpleasant to be around? Are you simply boring? If you meet lots of people and all of them reject you, there’s likely something you’re not doing that you need to be doing. Work on yourself to be someone that people want to be around.

If any of what I’ve said here is relevant to you, even if it’s unpleasant to think about, it’s very important to be consciously aware of it so that you can accept that your current reality is one you’ve chosen, consciously or unconsciously… and that you can choose differently.

I’m one year younger than you, also virgin guy who would maybe like to have a partner, but through introspection and years of learning shit on the internet, I’m aware of the likely reasons I haven’t gotten one yet - I just don’t meet people, and when I do, even when we get along, I tend to fall out of touch immediately. I believe I likely have undiagnosed and unmedicated ADHD along with some steep but situational social anxiety, both of which I know have and will continue to keep me from forming and maintaining many social connections that I otherwise could have, which I could be leveraging to find people to date.

So, I recognize what my stumbling blocks are, and that if I decide I really do want to find love and get laid, I have to deal with those stumbling blocks. For me, that will involve speaking to a head doctor and learning more precisely how my brain works and what strategies I can use to overcome those blocks. It’s not about fixing me, it’s about being able to be more me. But until I do that, I accept that my current status of “virgin, but maybe wants to change that” is there because I have, in some way, chosen up to this point not to change it.

If you figure out what your stumbling blocks are, or even if you haven’t, tell a close and trustworthy friend or family member about where you’re at, where you want to be, and how you feel about it. They might have options, or be able to help you take whatever steps you need to be where you want to be. If you feel like you just can’t make yourself do the thing, get someone else to give you a kick in the ass.

The Billet Labs prototype water block being so poorly handled was a consequence of them growing too big for Linus to manage; he hadn’t internalized that they weren’t six guys working out of a house anymore, but a proper medium sized business that didn’t need to strain for every bit of content to keep from going under, and could afford to slow down a little to get things right. They ended up taking a break from the constant grind to reorganize after GamersNexus put out a big piece on all the things LTT was doing wrong, all the sacrifices they were making to quality and accuracy for the sake of pushing out more and more content to stay relevant, and how badly they mishandled the prototype.

Not sure Linus has forgiven GN for the “hit piece” but I think they really needed the shock of it in order to get them to actually course correct immediately rather than keep putting it off.

Not that I know of; Bazzite is completely based on Fedora Atomic Desktops, which are an immutable type of distro that makes the core OS a read-only image that all gets updated separately from system apps. The Ubuntu equivalent of Fedora Atomic Desktops is Ubuntu Core, but I don’t know if Bazzite has a Ubuntu Core-based equivalent. Bazzite is released by a group called Universal Blue, which makes prepackaged OS builds based on Fedora Atomic Desktops, with particular focus areas. Bazzite focuses on including all gaming-related tweaks, apps, configs, and optimizations out of the box, Aurora focuses on general desktop PC functionality, and Bluefin focuses on productivity, but in the end they’re all Atomic/Immutable distros based on Fedora. It’s worth poking through it all and picking one that best suits your needs.

I switched to Bazzite not long after the Recall AI announcement, shrinking my Windows partition to leave it for just VR stuff which currently doesn’t work well outside of Windows, at least on my system. It’s pretty great! Not perfect, but the problems I have on Bazzite are similar enough in quantity and degree to problems I had on Windows that I’ve basically switched out one set of weird OS quirks for another. The big difference is now I don’t have to think about the OS being disrespectful corporate spyware.

That’s wonderful, I’m so glad you enjoyed yourself! And I’m glad I was able to help :)

Remember that a dance party is a party - most people are there to have fun. I think the main thing to avoid, if you can manage it, is being so caught up inside your own head that you aren’t looking at the people around you. Keep your back straight, your head high, your eyes off the floor. Basically, avoid the posture of a shrinking violet and you’ll feel less like one. Even if you don’t feel confident, maintaining a pose that looks confident will keep some of your fear away, and it will passively invite others to interact with you, which boosts your confidence a little more with each person you talk to.

Even if you spend the entire party standing around and watching other people dance, as long as you are actually watching the event, and mentally present for what’s going on, you will gain something from the experience. Just remember that standing around and not talking to anyone is as much a choice as going up to someone and asking for a dance. Neither choice is wrong, but you have to live with what happens - or doesn’t - based on what you choose.

All that said, you can do this! We believe in you!