tmdb link for upcoming docu, in case you wanna add it to radarr.
dingdongitsabear
joined 2 years ago
Imma take issue with those "reasons".
#7. the red nubbin
I know what communtiy I'm in but still - it's the doghittest pointing device. when you add its additional button group IN BETWEEN the keyboard and the touchpad, you're left with irritants your fingers bump against while trying to actually use the laptop.
they come from a time when it was the only sensible way to navigate a 800x600 GUI. its competition were trackBALLS (remember those fucking things?) and stamp-sized touchpads of the negative precision variety. today, they're just an irritating anachronism.
#6. repairability
that persists even today. it's no framework, but I can upgrade and replace almost anything on my T14 and T480s with just standard tools and the replacements are plentiful and cheap. six or seven generation older upgrades aren't adequately cheaper, it's often the inverse.
#5. imagine not needing a docking station
the docking station is the greatest thing ever! instead of manually connecting/disconnecting 5+ cables, I connect one cable or i just click the laptop in place and presto - all my shit is connected. if I had to connect my PSU, external monitors, mechanical keyboard, mouse, LAN, sound, etc. one-by-one, I'd go insane. because multiple gens share the same expansions, they are ubiquitous and cheap.
#4. the good, old keyboard
granted, it feels good. the main reason is there's like a kilo of metal underneath it - no wonder it's a superb typing experience, moving from that to a consumer grade laptop is verily torture. not so on any reasonably modern thinkpad, the keyboards are better than unibody macbooks, which were the yardstick then.
#3. the upgrades
yeah, you can upgrade your 2nd gen i5 in ridiculous ways - CPU, screen, storage, RAM, cards, etc.. but the question is - upgrade it to what? and for how much? by the time you upgrade all those items, you're still stuck with an ancient device, that's bulky, heavy, double-digit idle W/hr, etc. as to prices for such activities, don't even bother.
#1. linux support
is exceptional even on modern devices.
bottom line: when you can have a base modernish thinkpad in the $100ish region that outruns, outbatteries, outdisplays, outconnects even a heavily upgraded device, you're left with a shitty value proposition. so the only reason you'd be into this is as a hobby, and bear in mind it's an expensive one. the best analogy I've seen is it's like working on a classic car - the time and expenses and the result are acceptable only to hobbyists.
good messenger for what?
if you want a solution for you and a bunch of your henchmen to coordinate and discuss totally-not-crimes with ephemeral comms, practically any E2EE solution will work; once the not-crimen is done, burn your accounts and toss the devices for good measure and you're scot free.
if you want a secure messenger that's part of a widely used communication platform where you can also do normal people shit and also convert normal people to actually use it (think getting contact deets from cute boy/girl at a bar or giving yours to a business correspondent without an elaborate powerpoint presentation on how to use it) and you want to enjoy the fruits of 20+ years of continuous IM development, like having top-notch UX, battery efficiency, network resiliency, quality voice/video calls, etc., without being spied on then such a thing doesn't exist.
how come? meredith baxter recently stated that it costs signal $50MM/yr to run their infra. that money has to come from somewhere. if there are no advertising dolts dumping cash on spying on your social graph and convos, the remaining avenues for financing are few and far between.
in closing, there aren't any super awesome messengers you weren't aware of, everything is shit.
not to trample on your experiences, but you can make it work. it's true it's super cumbersome and involved though.
I've had/got it working on a T420s, T480s, T14, MBPr 2012, on debian, fedora, and arch. it helps if it's not your primary/only workstation so you can tweak it without pressure. keep at it, it's worth it, I can't imagine using my laptops any other way.
maybe do I write-up one of these days.
you should enable suspend-then-hibernate instead. laptop suspends normally and if not woken in, say, an hour, the RTC hibernates it to disk.
you're obviously not a golfer
correct, no idea how I managed to do that.
you're overcomplicating it. get a separate $20 SSD and install the OS to it, dicking around with wine and tools within virtualbox is a headache you don't need. set it up as desired (I recommend using flatpak versions of lutris and friends because of freshness) and then install the games one by one, followed by transferring the game data/settings/etc. you can experiment to your heart's desire because you always have the fallback solution of your original drive.
then, when you know what's what and where's what you can make the transition. good luck!
thank you very much for sharing. sadly, the doctor route isn't in the cards right now, but I'll try some topical ibuprofen and inserts for the time being.
same thing with lemmy clients, manually clicking through 100 check boxes of supported domains... can't the app ask to do it on first launch? or is my setup to blame?
so I found a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite Wifi, one of the few tablets that have official LOS support. the specs aren't too bad either, 10" 2000x1200 screen, 4/64GB, 7000 mAh battery (remains to be seen in what condition); for $120 with some shitty cover/stand and dubious charger, one hell of a deal. only problem is, it can't be reset or it'll lock itself.
thought on passing, but the dude assures me it's not stolen as he has a bunch of these, so most likely scenario is some corporate client dumped these and upgraded to newest and best without unenrolling them from this knox bullshit. either that or there's a crew ripping exclusively gta4xlwifis all over Germany.
although I can endure Samsung's OneUI for basic shit, I happen to know a little bit about Android, bootloaders and stuff and I'm fairly confident I can wipe this crap and install LOS without issues. what is the saying, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing? so let's start.
first off, LOS instructions say you gotta have the latest firmware on the device. this one's on Android 11, so launch software update. update, reboot, hold breath - will it lock itself, annnd... booted just fine, we're done!
except, no we're not. inspecting software properties shows it's on A12 and the update process is already downloading another package. current LOS ROM is 20/A13, so we need A13 and latest patches, looks like it's gonna take a while.
well we're finally done. all in all, FIVE different upgrades, one after another, and then each does some "optimising" shit, took hours. dios mio, you couldn't just ship a cumulative update, it had to be piecemeal?
anyhoo, tried each of the versions for a couple of minutes - sluggish, stuttering, occasional single-digit fps animations, boatloads of G and S services running in the background, each one is sending you Super Important Notifications All The Time, can't wait to be rid of this crap.
alright, A13 and latest patches in the house. now comes the step I'm dreading - according to LOS instructions, I have to boot in download (proprietary fastboot) mode where I should unlock bootloader and thus erase user data. this equates to doing a factory reset which, according to the seller, should lock the device. although I've tried to educate myself on what this knox business actually is, I've come up short (chip busts a fuse when tripped, what?!?) so in lieu of succinct info I guess I'm learning by first-hand experience.
so, power off, disconnect USB cable. press both volume keys and connect the USB cable. one disgusting turquoise screen appears, instructing you to press vol up once for download mode or to longpress vol up for device unlock; not what LOS instructions say.
so press volume up for a couple of seconds and the screen asks for confirmation you really wanna unlock it, calls you a bad person and an even worse user but it acknowledges your intention. reboot and... it stays for eons on the samsung loading screen. I'm fucked, right?
eventually, the system boots up, says it's knox locked and wants access to the wifi. it connects and the onboarding process begins. I've tapped "Skip" everywhere I was allowed and eventually the desktop appears! we're off to settings, re-enable developer mode, USB debugging and check the unlock bootloader switch is on. then we have to turn off this bixby whatever-the-fuck-this-is popping up when we wanna shut the tablet down.
alright, tablet is off, disconnect cable. press both vol keys and connect the USB cable. ugly screen appears. this time, press vol up once and we're in download mode. heimdall detect and... not detected. wtf. ~~different USB port?~~ that works, flash successful! edit: turns out, you have to disconnect the USB cable after ugly screen appears and then reconnect it after launching download mode.
now to rebooting. as this tortured soul found out, LOS instructions are kinda off, so what's needed is keep the tablet connected to your PC the whole time, press vol down and power until the screen turns black, let go for a split second and immediately press and hold power and vol up and don't let go until you see the LOS recovery. you mess up any of these steps, a) you won't get into recovery and b) your recovery will get overwritten by the stock recovery and you have to start over with heimdall.
so, finally in the recovery, we select factory reset and then adb sideload. first comes the LOS zip. when it's done, select adb sideload again and send magisk (you have to rename .apk to .zip before you do). done, reboot. here we go...
and it works! no knox nothing, no google, no samsung crap, I have a beautiful, fast, thin device, bereft of any bloatware. without dicking around with animation scales, the UI is infinitely faster and more responsive.
now getting f-droid and installing essentials.
have to research these questions:
- the annoying nag screens while booting (you're a bad person for unlocking it, press power if you agree, etc.) can't be removed?
- does LOS support the pen? I haven't got it, but might consider getting one if it works.
thanks for reading!
snagged one for $60, busted screen AND torn out hinges, guess someone was having a really bad day... honestly, was hoping for just the board to work so I can turn it into a ghetto AiO.
however, everything works - i5-8350u, 8 GB soldered + 1 empty slot, 93÷ battery health, keyboard and touchpad work, unlocked BIOS, super decent condition... I guess I'll restore it instead.
need to get me a cheap nvme and 8 GB expansion. I reserved a panel for monday (found a basic 250-nit model) and then check if I can repair the panel's housing or get a replacement.
edit: guess jerboa ate the bottom part of my post... so I'm looking for an alternative panel, preferably one with 300+ nits and/or 8-bit color (stock ones are 250 nit and 6-bit) specifically ones that can be sourced from junkers (people who disassemble laptops to sell parts); ordering new panels from Ali or wherever is not an option for me.
as to the display housing, I'm not sure this would be solid, even if I could glue this together with epoxy or something similar, it seems superflimsy... anyone been down that road?
edit 2: so, apparently this is a well-known issue with T480s specifically; the T480 have plastic display covers whereas T480s have some carbon mix that is layered and is prone to crack if the hinges are too tight.
in other news, covers from T470s and T490s should fit as well, so I have that to fall back on if my epoxy attempt doesn't succeed.
edit 3: clean and repaste
edit 4: added 8 GB DDR4 3200 (running at 2400) and a 1 TB NVMe. dirt cheap, works fine. only bummer though, the memory runs at single channel. fuck you very much lenovo, this ain't a $200 budget netbook, you couldn't spend the extra 13 cents for this!?
lubed the hinges a bit, don't want to overdo it. going to get the panel mañana and then attempt the epoxy patch job.
edit 5:
epoxy holds, cured in like 10 minutes. with the lubed hinges it feels solid, doesn't look like it's coming off.
the new screen! well, new to me, came off of some unknown donor. was super-scared because of the specs (250 nit, 6-bit) but in use it looks gorgeous, angles are good, colors OK, brightness has a sensible range, no complaints here.
routing them cables, what a chore though... and the antennas on the wifi card, madonn' - took like half an hour.
as to optics - honestly, looks like shit, especially with the lid closed. but this is a temporary arrangement until I can source a display cover for normal money. some local junker is asking $40 for a "slightly" used cover; by his metric I'm slightly not a teenager. even if it's an accurate description, I'm not paying that for a piece of plastic.
the final product! everything works, sleeps/wakes, fan turns on rarely... haven't dicked around with tlp yet, let's see how it works without it. presently runs debian 12, plasma desktop with flatpak apps.
I'd like again to extend my sincere fuck-yous to lenovo for making this gorgeous thing single-channel only. this is why nobody likes you, you hacks!
so I'm gonna pick this as a runner in Lutris, instead of e.g. wine-ge-8-26-x86_64 or whatever? sorry to reply to you, but I've read the initial github "explanation" what this does, reread it several times over the months, and now for the final time when it got official and I still don't understand how this fits into my use case.