i fking hate computers lmao (... as i buy more exotic hardware)

[kradeelav]

recording for posterity, sites that no longer work on a 2010 mac/firefox: 

- gdrive
- inoreader
- tumblr
- wordpress backend
- bluehost
- deviantart
- archive.org's books ( :< ) 
- youtube, ish
- mastodon (u ain't even that complex, bitch. gg)
- discord (RIP, you magnificent bastard. i am still shocked that a site/app as complicated as this worked up until a day ago) 
- (there's likely a huge amount more, but those are the ones i visit once every two weeks minimum)

about the only things that do work are ... banks and dreamwidth? lol. this thing is basically a glorified drawing machine. in some ways i don't actually mind for unplugging reasons but it's a pain in the ass when i want to talk to the gf on discord and have to switch to the work machine until i get the asus back lol.

which speaking of - the IRL acquaintance that was gonna try loading linux in my asus ... gave ... up, so that's a strike for that cursed machine. i hate computers lol.

either way i just ordered a lemur pro (with ubuntu) off of system76 soooo let's see if this does the trick! \o/ there's a 30 day return guarantee so at absolute worst case scenario i find that i have a chaos aura that prevents me from ever mind melding with linux and maybe i'll limp along with the M$ asus until i betray my ethics get annoyed enough and exasperatedly get a M1 or some shit just to finally ... have a working machine.  best case scenario ... somehow gloriously get both paint tool sai and old school photoshop on the same laptop??

i'm finding i'm allergic to windows because i can't... do the zoom in magnifer thingy.... :'D  mac/kubuntu has a nifty tool where you can zoom in around your mouse cursor and move it and oh my god with slightly deteriorating eyesight it's huge.  no playing around extraordinarily shitty accessibility settings (how does windows enbiggen the text in literally the ugliest ways possible) when you can just zoom in on the whole screen.

the lemur is overpriced as fuck but I like the idea of 'it just fucking works' + screen magnifier!!! + SAI!!! +  having lifetime support/warranty as that seems to be half the issue with linux - i need somebody on standby to handhold me if i get into trouble with hardware. and i dig everything the company stands for (small biz, made in the US, supports right to repair, open source, not going to track all my goddamn shit...).  I'm also still old enough to remember when basic home desktops were in the area of 5k back in the mid 1990's (more like 10k in today's inflation), so my idea of 'expensive computer' is a bit...... warped lol.

Comments

[queenlua]

i've never regretted shelling out extra $$$ for anything in the category of "tool i use every day," even when money was tight, fwiw. comfort/utility/ease for that sort of thing is, in fact, worth it!

(also, i'd never heard of system76 before, what a cool little company.)

[kradeelav]

right with system76? i hope it works (should be getting the laptop tuesday ahhh) but it feels like the practical answer to getting "borderline tech folks" on linux in a way that still gives some kind of support service that they're used to with big companies.

also an excellent point with the shelling out for the things you use everyday ... goodness knows chairs and personal laptops are the big ones.

[queenlua]

the system76 thing reminds me a lot of older shared webhosting companies, come to think of it... like, i still have a pile of old RPG sites hosted on Arvixe, because back in the day you hosted your shitty PHP websites on places like that, with the nice little cpanel login, and there were hundreds of little hosts like that, and when you contacted customer support it was always some actual sysadmin who was very patient and helpful with all my questions, which over time went from "in-hindsight cringily dumb" to "actually very technical and we both geeked out for a while", lol. learned a lot! hope you have similarly good experiences with system76; want more smaller cos like that around

[armaina]

The prices aren't awful compared to what I've seen, computer part prices have inflated significantly with the rise of bitcoin and the pandemic also put a bottleneck on production plants and that's made prices go up overall. You're lucky to find anything with decent hardware that's priced below 800$

Also making a note of the site because these days it's really difficult to find anything with configurable specs for a laptop (that also clearly tells you the parts that are going into it.)

[kradeelav]

Very good point about the computer bottleneck + the chip shortage on top of that! And I'll absolutely report back on System76; it *feels* like it could be a really cool answer to a lot of tricky using-it-in-practice questions wrt linux.