personally, i have my system is completely off and i boot it up, i just use my luks password then the system is set to auto log into my environment (only one password required)–then if my system is asleep, when i wake it up it will just go to my lock screen where i can use my fingerprint or user password.

because it’s less work. i don’t have to strip out what a distro thinks i want. i don’t have to worry about major distro releases that might have changes that need manual intervention. if there are updates that need manual intervention, they’re small, easy to deal with and usually do not effect me. everything is well documented and standard. packages are installed with default settings/config (to my understanding), so i can easily read upstream documentation and not have to deal with weirdness. getting packages that are obscure is easier. i don’t have to worry about upstream having a fix, or supporting something that i need but my distro not having the update in their repo. it’s just simpler and easier to manage (for my use case)

ya but for me it was easier to mentally map ctrl-b + key for remote, ctrl-n + key for local. also sometimes i’ll use the prefix, then change my mind and esc out, and with the whole double prefix thing it broke my brain. everyone is different though lol maybe that was a bad protip.

some benefits to using tmux,

• When you switch terminal emulators your workflow and keybinds come with you.
• If you need to operate within a tty, you can still use tmux and it feels almost like using a wm but without a gui.
  • useful if you need to drop out of your desktop environment or maybe your DE/WM/compositor fails to load.
  • also if you DE/WM/compositor crashes, your terminal doesn’t go with it.
• If you ever end up working on servers it’s so nice to be able to have the same workflow that you already use on desktop.
• tmux in my experience is much more scriptable.
• running system updates in tmux scares me less–if i accidently close the running terminal window i won’t end up with a partial update.

One pro tip: on your local machine, set the tmux prefix to <C-n> (instead of <C-b>), that way when you’re using tmux on a remote server you can run tmux on the remote as well as on your local and the binds don’t conflict.

unbind C-b
set-option -g prefix C-n

baby steps though. don’t rush into things. don’t even worry about what i said… just learn to use man and --help (and/or install tldr) keep building on the knowledge you have as you go; and don’t be afraid to jump in when something interests you. good luck friend!

maybe using scrcpy is an option for you? like /u/paper_moon@lemmy.world said, using a password manager for 2fa is great (like actually so so great, and easier to back up/not lose access)–but also, a lot of services only use sms… in that case KDE-Connect is sorta the best.

another option for sms 2fa is google messages–but there are privacy concerns there for sure. I really wish there was something selfhosted/open source that was more light weight and similar to messages.google.com.

exactly, and jellyfin truly did just work… i procrastinated a long time on setting up navidrome, but it has also mostly just worked. it’s been nice that they can both point at the same nfs share. navidrome very explicitly operates in a read only fashion.

Sorta, I use both Navidrome and Jellyfin. I use navidrome primarily for music listening, but then point jellyfin at the same library so that I can play music on the TV easily. With Navidrome I use feishin as my client on desktop, and I use tempo on one of my android smart phones, ultrasonic on my daily driver flip-phone (cat S22 flip), and my partner has used amperfy and subsonic on their iphone–haven’t really been happy with any of the clients for iphone.

Navidrome built in webserver also works pretty ok for using at work etc. Feishin is really nice for being able to set up dynamic “smart” playlists with a gui.

I find that using something more dedicated to music like Navidrome is a little more feature built. Plus there are so many *sonic clients–so it just feels more flexible.

I think most of this works for me in zsh. But also tmux can help with selection; I believe by default you use your prefix then open bracket (Ctrl-b + [) to put your self in selection mode. I have some configs to use vim bindings in selection mode.

Tmux selection:

# Yanking
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi C-v send-keys -X rectangle-toggle
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-selection-and-cancel

zsh keybinding:

# Key Bindings
# set vim mode
bindkey -v

# create a zkbd compatible hash;
# to add other keys to this hash, see: man 5 terminfo
typeset -g -A key

key[Home]="${terminfo[khome]}"
key[End]="${terminfo[kend]}"
key[Insert]="${terminfo[kich1]}"
key[Backspace]="${terminfo[kbs]}"
key[Delete]="${terminfo[kdch1]}"
key[Up]="${terminfo[kcuu1]}"
key[Down]="${terminfo[kcud1]}"
key[Left]="${terminfo[kcub1]}"
key[Right]="${terminfo[kcuf1]}"
key[PageUp]="${terminfo[kpp]}"
key[PageDown]="${terminfo[knp]}"
key[Shift-Tab]="${terminfo[kcbt]}"

# setup key accordingly
[[ -n "${key[Home]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Home]}"       beginning-of-line
[[ -n "${key[End]}"       ]] && bindkey -- "${key[End]}"        end-of-line
[[ -n "${key[Insert]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Insert]}"     overwrite-mode
[[ -n "${key[Backspace]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Backspace]}"  backward-delete-char
[[ -n "${key[Delete]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Delete]}"     delete-char
[[ -n "${key[Up]}"        ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Up]}"         up-line-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Down]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Down]}"       down-line-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Left]}"      ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Left]}"       backward-char
[[ -n "${key[Right]}"     ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Right]}"      forward-char
[[ -n "${key[PageUp]}"    ]] && bindkey -- "${key[PageUp]}"     beginning-of-buffer-or-history
[[ -n "${key[PageDown]}"  ]] && bindkey -- "${key[PageDown]}"   end-of-buffer-or-history
[[ -n "${key[Shift-Tab]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Shift-Tab]}"  reverse-menu-complete

# Finally, make sure the terminal is in application mode, when zle is
# active. Only then are the values from $terminfo valid.
if (( ${+terminfo[smkx]} && ${+terminfo[rmkx]} )); then
	autoload -Uz add-zle-hook-widget
	function zle_application_mode_start { echoti smkx }
	function zle_application_mode_stop { echoti rmkx }
	add-zle-hook-widget -Uz zle-line-init zle_application_mode_start
	add-zle-hook-widget -Uz zle-line-finish zle_application_mode_stop
fi


# History - use current line up to cursor to search through history with arrow keys
autoload -Uz up-line-or-beginning-search down-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N up-line-or-beginning-search
zle -N down-line-or-beginning-search

[[ -n "${key[Up]}"   ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Up]}"   up-line-or-beginning-search
[[ -n "${key[Down]}" ]] && bindkey -- "${key[Down]}" down-line-or-beginning-search

I recommend navidrome to anyone who wants to own their music, but still be able to stream. It was quite easy to set up, and has worked fairly well–though I haven’t been super happy with ios clients for my partner. Buy your music on Bandcamp. Torrent everything else. Buying records on Bandcamp is sweet cause then you get DRM free digital versions as well.

I recommend giving the manual install a whirl… it might take you a couple tries, but it will help with your overall understanding of your system–this will be useful if anything ever goes sideways. It really isn’t that hard. What you learn during install (how to read the wiki effectively, partitioning layouts, how to set up a boot loader, what filesystems are available and how they’re different, what you need to install for firmware or build tools etc etc) will help demystify the system, and put the power to manage your system in your hands. Also if you ever run into an issue like your /boot or / partition being full and you want to resize your partitions, or your compositor won’t launch/is freezing and you need to use a TTY–you’ll be better equipped… even if that means you’re just a bit better at reading/searching the wiki.

What issue did you run into? Wiki makes it seem like it should be easy to change your username.

Not much. There are some tech communities that I still monitor there to keep up with the general public. and then i check my local city subreddit sometimes.

But mostly use rss, and then lurk lemmy.

sorry if my reply seemed too negative towards you. I was mostly curious about the issues you had and sorting them out… It’s good you enjoy it! like I said, I think for specific people… these types of issues are much more interesting than dealing with issues that come with other platforms.

I wonder if your system update/hyprland issue was when they moved away from wlroots?

AUR isn’t really recommended. Because it’s managed by users, you’re essentially running install scripts that may or may not be maintained by randos (of course, i’m simplifying–but i think this is a fair way to look at it). Personally, if possible I’ll always choose flatpak > AUR–and AUR only when necessary. That being said, I do install from the AUR, and I love that it exists and is available… I just avoid it when possible.

Updating once a year is rough. But even then with your issues, imo i’d weigh those to how difficult a windows update for 10 -> 11 or going from Debian 12 -> 13… If I was only using my computer once a month or so, I’d likely run Debian. But I do have a second laptop that I rarely use, but it runs arch with DWM and almost nothing else GUI besides a web browser and “it just works”… even after a month or so there isn’t much to updated, cause it only has like 500 or packages installed lol

if you haven’t already, i recommend maybe trying to set up a systemd timer for refreshing reflector? I run it manually whenever I find that downloading updates is slow or fails… in the past I had a bash script in my $PATH called update.sh that would run reflector, run yay, and then update flatpak (I put it in my $PATH, because at the time I was testing the water with different shells, and didn’t want to have to update .bashrc, .zshrc and fish config etc).

bummer that you’ve had issues with arch. but i don’t really understand the issues you’ve had. like setting up reflector should solve the mirrors, and checking the newsfeed before updating will solve a lot of other issues. In the last year I think there was only one, maybe two times that there was manual intervention required from me–and they were both trivial; and the convenience of never having to worry about doing a distro upgrade is so nice… Other than that, hyprland is changing frequently so sometimes you need to update your config–but again, just read the release notes or use a wm that updates less (like sway, dwm). But the changes have never taken more than 20 seconds to fix, and they’ve never been breaking for me. Maybe some of your issues were due to the DDOS attacks that have been going on? Also how much do you use the AUR?

My take on Arch after almost a year is that you have to either be super good at Linux, or be nerdy enough to waste time on Linux nonsense and menial maintenance tasks.

while i think this is overstated, i do agree that you need to be a certain kind of person to enjoy arch.

true. but in my experience, most code redemption downloads don’t require info though… besides the usual collection of your data via fingerprinting and cookies.

where do you source most of your music? for music i really only pirate large artists/bands, so torrenting is pretty easy. i haven’t bothered with soulseek–a centralized network doesn’t appeal that much, and i’m not desperate. if i really need something, and can’t find it, i just use yt-dlp.

this sounds nasty… how recent? i haven’t experienced any issues using calibre to strip drm and back up books from my kobos. works for library books from overdrive/libby as well. from my cursory glance, it seems like they have been using ADE linkfiles for this for a while? But maybe I didn’t look closely enough.

I love my kobo so much, and I love being able to own my digitial books, keep back ups and not have to deal with DRM (once removed lmao).

are you only a windows user? what is keeping you there? what is keeping you from moving to linux? one thing that is wild for me, especially when it comes to technical users–is that holding onto windows, and dealing with the windows work arounds is often more complicated or tedious than dealing with linux’s quirks–which to be fair, there are a lot of quirks, but it feels different when the quirks are well documented and it’s more a process of learning. to me, windows feels like you’re fumbling around in a dark room, and someone is moving around the furniture every 3 months.

I use a flip phone as a daily driver, and do not have any banking apps–and things are just getting harder and harder. I primarily do my banking on my laptop, but I do have an old pixel phone with GrapheneOS that plug in and charge when I “need” a smart phone.

Most banking apps need the banking app installed to a smart phone because MFA is handled through the banks proprietary app. Some banking apps aren’t even possible to install on GrapheneOS due to the app requiring google play integrity API–making these banks impossible for me to use.

I use three banks, one works perfectly and supports traditional 2fa totp–which is seamless for me. My second bank supports MFA through their app, and will fallback to SMS 2fa–less good, still relatively convenient (i hate using my phone, having to find it etc), but also much less secure. The third bank (which I may drop) only supports MFA through the app, but still supports graphene. This is more secure than the second bank, but a huge pain to have to charge my smart phone, and go through the process.

Banks are not incentivized to have web/computer access be painless. It feels like soon we may not be able to bank without paying for spyware.

…wait… you aren’t paying your monthly antifa membership dues?