• 1 Post
  • 52 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 15th, 2023

help-circle

  • For someone to work it out, they would have to be targeting you specifically. I would imagine that is not as common as, eg, using a database of leaked passwords to automatically try as many username-password combinations as possible. I don’t think it’s a great pattern either, but it’s probably better than what most people would do to get easy-to-remember passwords. If you string it with other patterns that are easy for you to memorize you could get a password that is decently safe in total.

    Don’t complicate it. Use a password manager. I know none of my passwords and that’s how it should be.

    A password manager isn’t really any less complicated. You’ve just out-sourced the complexity to someone else. How have you actually vetted your password manager and what’s your backup plan for when they fuck up?






  • I have my own backup of the git repo and I downloaded this to compare and make sure it’s not some modified (potentially malicious) copy. The most recent commit on my copy of master was dc94882c9062ab88d3d5de35dcb8731111baaea2 (4 commits behind OP’s copy). I can verify:

    • that the history up to that commit is identical in both copies
    • after that commit, OP’s copy only has changes to translation files which are functionally insignificant

    So this does look to be a legitimate copy of the source code as it appeared on github!

    Clarifications:

    • This was just a random check, I do not have any reason to be suspicious of OP personally
    • I did not check branches other than master (yet?)
    • I did not (and cannot) check the validity of anything beyond the git repo
    • You don’t have a reason to trust me more than you trust OP… It would be nice if more people independently checked and verified against their own copies.

    I will be seeding this for the foreseeable future.



  • Grub can load booster images, the issue is about incorrect grub.cfg generation.

    What they’re saying in the issue is that grub-mkconfig will not create a correct “Arch Linux” menu entry for booster, but if you go to “Advanced options” and choose the “booster” menu entry it works. I can confirm this. It happened on the system I’m currently using.

    Specifically, the problem is that grub-mkconfig does not add the booster image to the initrd of the default menu entry. You can add it manually. For example I had to change this

    initrd  /intel-ucode.img
    

    to this

    initrd  /intel-ucode.img /booster-linux-zen.img
    

    If I recall correctly this issue was not present last time I set up a system with booster. It might be a regression or maybe it only happens in specific system configurations.


  • I use booster and it’s cool. I don’t see any noticeable difference in boot times but the image generation is much faster. mkinitcpio would take several seconds while booster takes about one.

    First time I tried it it didn’t boot because of something missing in the generated image. I tried a universal booster image (set universal: True in /etc/booster.yaml) and it worked. Technically this builds a larger image than necessary but it’s still only 34MB and takes a second to build, so I never bothered to troubleshoot what was missing. The universal image even handles luks encrypted root partitions without additional configuration of booster (you still have to configure kernel parameters).

    Another issue I noticed is that if you use grub-mkconfig and your only initramfs is booster, it will generate an incorrect main boot entry. It will add booster as an option in “advanced options” so your system is still bootable if this happens to you. The quick fix is to manually add the initrd entry under the main menuentry in grub.cfg.




  • By the time you’re ready to buy a new card, Nvidia might be working well under wayland. They’ve already made significant changes in the past couple of years, like implementing GBM and hardware accelerated XWayland. To my understanding, this MR will also fix some remaining issues in the future. I don’t know how much more work needs to be done after that, but just the fact they are cooperating with the free software ecosystem is a good sign.

    Perhaps more importantly, the free nouveau driver can now experimentally reclock nvidia gpus from the 2000 series and newer. With this breakthrough it is possible that nouveau + nvk will be able to compete with the proprietary driver in the near future. If/when we have a well-supported free driver, we will probably have proper wayland support as well.

    I’m not really in a hurry to switch to Nvidia. I’ve been quite happy with my AMD cards so far. But it’s definitely a good thing to have the option to buy from any vendor.



  • Clarification: In my previous comment I meant that the implementation was antiquated, which is why it was causing many problems.

    Although I do think that desktop icons in general are outdated because they’re designed around a desktop metaphor that is itself outdated. Our use of computers has changed vastly over time and the original metaphors are irrelevant to today’s newcomers. Yet most desktop environments are still replicating the same 30 year old ideas. It’s because we’re used to them (which I understand is a valid reason), not because they are necessarily the most pleasant or the most efficient.