- Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Raspberry Pi as a desktop or settop computer
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Jun '24

23 Jun '24

When the Raspberry Pi first came out, it was appealing to think of it as an ultra-inexpensive computer for your desktop (perhaps as a very secondary unit) or to play media on your TV. Note: this wasn't the intent of the Raspberry Pi designers. They wanted a totally hackable, cheap, simple (as possible) computer to encourage kids to dive into computing. They fondly remembered they youth spent hacking and mastering BBC Micro and other home/educational computers. There was little competition at the price point of the Raspberry Pi. But it wasn't powerful enough for a comfortable desktop (for most people). Since then, a few things happened: - a bunch of new SBCs inspired by the Pi have been released. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages compared with Raspberry Pi models. None has the depth of support of the Raspberry Pi. - Raspberry Pi models improved a lot but the price crept up. Note: older models are still available at roughly original prices. - streaming media players were introduced at RP prices. They play better with the many forms of DRM that infest the services. Oh, and new TV sets include embedded streaming media players. (This bothers me on a philosophical level.) - tiny x86 boxes have become a lot better and cheaper My current opinions: - instead of a desktop computer, consider a laptop. That market is much larger and the competition has produced some quite good option. - for desktop computers, x86 seems to be a more practical choice. At the low-end, I'd probably pick one based on an Intel N100. I'd select a brand like Bee-Link or models from a similar tier of Chinese brands. I actually want more performance on my desktop so I currently use a much more powerful Bee-Link Mini PC (a SER7). - for set-top boxes, first I'd get a dedicated streaming device. If I also felt the need for a computer, I'd pick an N100 box. We do this (except our mini PCs are much older). - Raspberry Pi computers are still a great choice for learning and for embedding into projects. Much more fun than x86. Note: all of these things run or can run Linux. Except for the Apple streamers.

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GPU in desktop
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Jun '24

23 Jun '24

| From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> | - Desktops can upgrade their GPU to enable gaming, video editing or AI | assist; laptops can't. Most off-the-shelf desktops have pitfalls that prevent installing a GPU - weak power supply with proprietary connectors, weak cooling. required specs are hard to find. - card slot too short for GPU care (thi hi me) These need not be problems if you designed your PC out of parts or it already came with a dGPU. Getting a gaming notebook or gaming desktop seems to double the price. You can add an external GPU is your computer supports ThunderBolt. The bandwidth to the PCI buss will be constrained. For AI, things are changing. Most of the next generation of processor chips include an NPU. I have no idea if the NPU is powerful enough to matter. You may still want a GPU for AI; I'd assume that you'd want as powerful a GPU as you can afford since there is no "enough". My desktop mini PC has a Ryzen 7 7840HS processor (designed for laptops). It includea an AMD Ryzen AI processor good for "up to 10 TOPS". I have never consciously used it nor do I know how.

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reasonably powerful RISC-V SBC
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 23 Jun '24

23 Jun '24

| From: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> | Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Raspberry Pi as a desktop or settop computer | | From: Evan Leibovitch via talk <talk(a)gtalug.org> | | If anything, I am hoping to see the next generation of commonly-used | | Raspberry Pi style experimenter boards to be using RISC-V instead of ARM. | | There are a bunch of them. So far, most are inferior at the same price. | I hope and expect that will change. Here's a Banana Pi BPI-F3 with SpacemiT K1 8-core RISC V SoC. You have to beef it up to be interesting but it starts with the bare board with 4G of RAM and 16G eMMC for (currently) $100. I think it is a bit of a prototype. <https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005006953292960.html> I don't think that it is as good as a Raspberry Pi 5. I like the idea of RISC V (heck, I'm a member of the organization). But the great thing about Linux is that you rarely care what the ISA is. The Orange Pi 5 might be a good alternative to the Raspberry Pi 5. Much less support. Not significantly cheaper (price is all over the place). Interesting processor: RK3588s. Has an NPU, I think. The Orange Pi 5 Plus is more expensive and has the RK35888. Evan: what SBCs look better to you than the various Raspberry Pi models?

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Reminder: GTALUG General Meeting
by Alan Heighway 09 Jun '24

09 Jun '24

Open Source Project Models <https://gtalug.org/meeting/2024-06/> with Evan Leibovitch <https://gtalug.org/> 11 June, 2024 at 07:30 PM >From Bathwater to B2B: 10 different ways open source projects operate We're going to use Big BLue Button for this meeting: https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl *Time:* June 11th, 2024 19:30 AM Eastern Time *Join us on Big Blue Button:* https://blue.lpi.org/b/eva-zjc-gjy-kgl. *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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static IPs are available with TekSavvy Fibre
by Val Kulkov 09 Jun '24

09 Jun '24

TekSavvy recently started offering Internet over Bell's fibre in the GTA. The great news is that static IPs are available over fibre as they are now over DSL. Apparently, TekSavvy uses PPPoE for the fibre connections. Also, I have been using a static /56 subnet from TekSavvy for years at no additional cost. They are saying that I can migrate my current static /56 subnet from DSL to fibre. I am extremely happy with that. They have been also providing one static /30 IPv4 subnet per residential customer at the cost of $5/month. I don't know if this is still the case now.

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war story: snag in updating old Fedora systems
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 09 Jun '24

09 Jun '24

I hit this, and the symptoms are sometimes mysterious: <https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f39-kernels-fail-to-install-when-boo…< If a Fedora installation dates back long enough, a directory with a name /boot/efi/$(cat /etc/machine-id) might exist. Note: the last component of the name is the Machine ID, hence the odd construction. If that directory exists, the installer gets confused and fails. Unfortunately, that failure doesn't stop the upgrade so the error message very likely will scroll out of view. Then when you reboot, problems will ensue. This happened to me on a couple of systems before I got wise. The fix is detailed on the linked page. I've not decided to execute this command before updates on my old machines: sudo mv "/boot/efi/$(cat /etc/machine-id)" "/boot/efi/$(cat /etc/machine-id)_disabled" This is a bug in Fedora 39 but it also seems to be in Fedora 40. For haters: this seems to be a systemd project bug.

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Federal agency warns critical Linux vulnerability being actively exploited
by Ron / BCLUG 06 Jun '24

06 Jun '24

News is out about a fairly severe Linux vulnerability. This is a new one: > Federal agency warns critical Linux vulnerability being actively > exploited > > Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency urges affected users > to update ASAP. > The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-1086 and carrying a severity > rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10, allows people who have already > gained a foothold inside an affected system to escalate their system > privileges. It’s the result of a use-after-free error, a class of > vulnerability that occurs in software written in the C and C++ > languages when a process continues to access a memory location after > it has been freed or deallocated. Use-after-free vulnerabilities can > result in remote code or privilege escalation. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/federal-agency-warns-critical-linu…

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[Lynx-dev] ANN: lynx2.9.2
by Karen Lewellen 31 May '24

31 May '24

Current as of 31 may 2024. Karen On Fri, 31 May 2024, Thomas Dickey wrote: > The current version of lynx is 2.9.2 > > It's available at > https://lynx.invisible-island.net/ > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/ > Development & patches: > https://lynx.invisible-island.net/current/index.html > > Files: > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/patches/lynx2.9.2.patch.gz > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/patches/lynx2.9.2.patch.gz.asc > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/tarballs/lynx2.9.2.tar.bz2 > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/tarballs/lynx2.9.2.tar.bz2.asc > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/tarballs/lynx2.9.2.tar.gz > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/tarballs/lynx2.9.2.tar.gz.asc > https://invisible-island.net/archives/lynx/tarballs/lynx2.9.2.zip > > 2024-05-31 (2.9.2) > * modify makefile.in install-help to only remove files, leaving existing > directories and symbolic links -TD > * in POSIX environments, check paths for external programs to ensure that they > are executable, non-empty files -TD > * adapt special case of gzip decompression in 2.8.9dev.12 to brotli, to handle > downloads from websites which support "br" (report by Rajeev V Pillai) -TD > * updated configure macro CF_ANSI_CC_C, to reset flags on test-failure, to > keep options from accumulating. > * build-fix for NetBSD and Solaris system curses libraries, removing an ifdef > added in 2.9.0dev.11 (report by Nelson Beebe) -TD > > -- > Thomas E. Dickey <dickey(a)invisible-island.net> > https://invisible-island.net >

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Power Mode: reducing fan noise on a notebook
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 31 May '24

31 May '24

Most modern notebooks throw off a lot of heat when computing hard. Too much heat can force the cooling fans to go faster and therefore make more noise. The notebook that I keep by our couch for casual use while watching TV sometimes gets noisy. What's the heavy computing doing? Mostly running ads in Firefox. Since I don't really care how quickly ads run, I've switched the "power mode" to "power saver" and there seems to be less noise. Power Mode can be set several ways. The way I used on Fedora 40's Gnome Desktop: Settings: Power: Power Mode: Power Saver There is a slightly faster way that is harder to describe - click on top right of the screen (the little icons for networking, sound and power on are really one button) - that pops up a window showing a lot of things. One is "Power Mode" - click on "Power Mode" and it will toggle between "Balanced" and "Power Saver" (at least on my desktop). - Alternatively click on the ">" symbol on the "Power Mode" oval to get all the choices displayed (including "Performance") Note: just how the fans behave under different Power Modes is specific to the hardware. YMMV. My suspicion is that vendors like their computers to have good benchmark performance so the "balanced" mode is more likely to run fans than I'd like. I'm going to try "Power Saver" on more of my computers.

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new class of Windows Notebooks: "Copilot+ PC"
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 26 May '24

26 May '24

These were just intruduced by Microsoft. As usual, a lot of smoke around this. - new ARM-based processor family from Qualcomm "Snapdragon X" - performance supposedly better than Apple's M series (for now) - like all new processors, it contains an NPU (for accelerating AI) - price seems to be Apple-like: <https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/copilot-pc/ci/40407> This is for pre-orders from a US discount store, in US dollars. - most models are from Microsoft so far. There is one Asus and one Lenovo. - my understanding is that they won't run Linux now. Linux support for the processor is being promised by Qualcomm but it isn't yet ready. It may be that the "Copilot+ PC" models lock out Linux anyway (my impression is that previous ARM-based Surfaces did that). - Microsoft is pushing these as being able to run LLMs locally and that the new version of Windows will delightfully exploit this. - A centrepiece of this is something called Recall that assists you in finding (computer) things that you used previously Summary: in six months or a year these might be interesting to Linux users. Right now they are too expensive and not compatible. Trivia: the least expensive models listed on BH Photo are US$999.99 These do not have enough resources to run Recall.

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