Phrases

This is an amazing graph.

That’s an older version rendered by the GitHub project that does those.

https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline

Their releases page has current ones:

https://github.com/FabioLolix/LinuxTimeline/releases

Oh, okay, the Garand uses an eight round clip, and the rounds aren’t inline. I thought that they were inline, and that each clip in the image was two four-round clips sitting atop each other. Well, today I learned something. Thanks.

EDIT:

.30-06 ammunition for the M1903, 1903A3, and M1917 rifles and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) was issued in five round stripper clips

That may be what I saw and confused it with, because those look pretty much exactly like the clip that I had thought went in the M1 Garand.

Confused the clip on the US issue rifle for WW1 and WW2.

Can someone here more in the know explain this one for me? I see a clip, and I think that this is some kind of ludicrously hacked-up M1 Garand, but I thought that the Garand used a five-round clip, and those have four rounds.

GNU cat

You mean GNU cat?

Sharing is okay too.

It’d theoretically be possible to run a straight GNU/Linux tablet or laptop

“GNU/Linux” is the full way to say what sometimes gets shortened to “Linux” — a family of operating systems based on the Linux kernel and a lot of software from the GNU project. This explicitly distinguishes it from Android, which also used the Linux kernel.

The former is not, in 2025, typically used to run smartphones. The latter is the most-common smartphone operating system in the world. If you buy a smartphone that isn’t an Apple smartphone, it almost certainly runs Android.

with a 5G cell modem for data

5G is the current generation of cell phone radio protocols. Communicating directly via voice over this protocol is not something that I believe is available to GNU/Linux in 2025. However, it can send non-voice data.

, use SIP service

SIP is a protocol for running voice over a data connection to the Internet. If you have an Internet connection, you can use SIP. There are companies, SIP service providers, which will, for a fee, provide a phone number at which one may be called or call others from a computer that can make use of SIP.

and a GNU/Linux dialer,

A dialer is the piece of software that on a smartphone, a user would probably call something like “the phone app”.

and then run Waydroid for any specific Android apps that one has to run.

Waydroid is a piece of software to run Android apps on a GNU/Linux system.

Idle power usage is gonna be a lot higher than on a phone, though.

Phone hardware and software has had a lot of work put into optimizing it for very low power usage. A larger device, like a laptop or tablet, will probably also have a larger battery, but it will consume more power as well.

And a lot of Android apps are made with a touch interface

Smartphones, due to physical space constraints in one’s pocket, typically have an entire side be a touchscreen. They do not have a keyboard. In general, software optimized for this works somewhat differently from software optimized for use with a keyboard and mouse.

Most GNU/Linux software is written with the intent that it be used on a system that almost certainly has a mouse and keyboard available. Most Android software is written with the intent that it be used on a system with a touchscreen available.

This means that even if one can run GNU/Linux software on a phone, much of the (large) collection of GNU/Linux software available will not be designed with an interface ideal for use on a phone.

and small screen in mind and are aware of things in a cell environment, like “only update X when on WiFi”. Not really common for GNU/Linux software to do that.

Smartphones have two widely-used mechanisms of accessing the Internet — connecting to the often slower cell network, or to a much-shorter range, but faster, WiFi network. Many people connect their smartphone to a WiFi network at some times and a cell network at others. Because this is so common, a lot of Android software has behavior designed to support this and act more-appropriately, like having an option to only transfer lots of data when on a WiFi netwprk. This is not the case for most GNU/Linux software.

I mean, you can restrict stuff with only a few customers by controlling trade tightly.

But for common parts — to use a past example that I saw in a report, voltage regulators — they’re everywhere. You can’t do much about that unless you’re willing to economically partition the world. Even then, other countries could make them.

I’m talking about stuff like pulling down new podcast episodes and such.

I dunno, man.

Android and all its apps have had a lot of work done on keeping stuff low-power.

The GNU/Linux laptop I’m currently typing this on is drawing about 10W (granted, with the screen on, which is larger). The Android phone in my pocket is drawing (checks) a little under half a watt.

Granted, I didn’t choose the laptop hardware to try to minimize power usage; you can certainly get laptops that will draw less. But there have been a lot of engineers banging on Android power usage for a long time.

And stuff like auto-suspension of background apps using CPU time and stuff doesn’t have a GNU/Linux analog that I’m aware of.

There’s a GNU/Linux phones community here on the Threadiverse at [email protected]. Even the phones they talk about there — where the hardware is much less powerful than typical current Android hardware — don’t have amazing battery life as phones go.

It’d theoretically be possible to run a straight GNU/Linux tablet or laptop with a 5G cell modem for data, use SIP service and a GNU/Linux dialer, and then run Waydroid for any specific Android apps that one has to run.

Idle power usage is gonna be a lot higher than on a phone, though.

And a lot of Android apps are made with a touch interface and small screen in mind and are aware of things in a cell environment, like “only update X when on WiFi”. Not really common for GNU/Linux software to do that.

My understanding is that the core appeal is that they provide free private VoIP service, which was something that a lot of people wanted for multiplayer games.

I don’t use that, and like you, I have not been very impressed with their chat stuff.

Ehhh.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/lcars-system-3/

LCARS (Library Computer Access and Retrieval System) is the GUI from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine. This is a rainmeter suite that transforms your Windows GUI into LCARS.

I have no hatred in my heart for our BSD-using Star Wars-watching compatriots.

The [email protected] artist is a BSD guy.

It’s okay to dance to the beat of a different drummer.

https://lemmy.today/post/30379016/16636854

According to a quick search I did, there is (was?) an issue causing excessive memory usage by Wayland compositors with Nvidia’s driver; there’s a manual fix listed at my link. Is there any chance that you’re using Nvidia hardware?

I tried to try llms but my 4GB VRAM is just not at all enough, what’s the minimum you need in your opinion?

For just using Wayland, 4GB should be fine. I’m using, uh, 801M right now, and it doesn’t change that much. I think I’ve seen it get over 1GB, not to 2GB.

For current 3D games, yeah, I agree, 4GB is very much not enough. If I were getting a card to play 3D games on in 2025, I’d probably aim for 16 GB. Could live with 12GB. 8GB is IMHO not what I would go with for PC gaming in 2025. Lots of stuff can run, but games might need to have texture resolution turned down or something.

For LLM stuff, the sky is the limit. I mean, right now, I have image generation models on my computer that will blow past that, need to live partially in main memory. And I can certainly do things, like generation of images at the full resolution of my screen without upscaling using more-memory-intensive models that will exhaust 24GB of VRAM.

If you’re running into problems with 4GB just running normal Wayland apps, something is wrong.

kagis

I see several people using Nvidia GPUs claiming that various scenarios cause their VRAM to be consumed under Wayland. I’m using an AMD GPU on sway myself, so maybe that could be a factor.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/multiple-wayland-compositors-not-freeing-vram-after-resizing-windows/307939/12

https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-wayland/issues/126#issuecomment-2379945259

This is talking about reports of two separate problems that Nvidia is working on related to VRAM usage under wayland. The guy here, one of the NVidia Linux driver guys, is working on one, says that there’s a manual fix for one of them, Wayland compositors using a lot of VRAM, and gives it in his comment.

He also says that there are reports of some other issue with Xwayland apps (X11 apps running under Wayland) using a lot of memory, and he hasn’t been able to identify that problem.

He made that post nine months ago, so I’d think that they may have rolled the fix he was talking about out to users. I do see several users saying that the manual fix solved their issue at the above links.

Also, most laptops aren’t at the 100Wh battery ceiling — in 2025, it’s exasperatingly difficult to find a non-gaming laptop that has a 100 (or 99) Wh battery.

You can use a USB powerstation with USB PD. The computer won’t know about its remaining charge on any powerstation that I’m aware of, but that’ll let you functionally untether for as long as you want, as long as you’re willing to carry the powerstation, plug it in when the internal battery gets low, and remember to charge it.

I keep a small 100Wh USB powerstation in my backpack, and a larger powerstation in the car.

Here’s an 1070Wh powerstation:

https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-Explorer-Portable-Generator-Emergency/dp/B0D7PPG25F/

This is considerably larger (and comes with a lot more electronics), but also ten times that amount of juice. powertop says that my laptop is currently drawing 10.6 watts as I’m sitting here. That thing could run my laptop at the current power usage for 4.2 days, assuming no idle screen powerdown or anything like that.

Today, though, Linux doesn’t have the ability to have a USB power station and treat it as another BAT /sys/class/power_supply device, and there aren’t USB PD power stations that report their charge out there that I’m aware of. If you have a laptop running on USB PD power, it simply acts as if it’s connected to an infinite source of AC wall power.

I have a 24GB VRAM video card, and the only time I’ve noticed it using over 16GB is when I’m doing LLM stuff. I don’t think that just running under Wayland has ever used much — it’s games that ask for video memory.

Though for LLM stuff, I agree heartily. If I could get a video card with 128GB of VRAM (well, for a not-completely-insane price) I would. You can always use more VRAM there.

But that’s not really due to Wayland.

I strongly suspect that the overwhelming majority of people who use Windows are going to use the OS preinstalled by an OEM, and won’t ever install Windows themselves.

Blade Runner was made in 1982 and set in 2019 Los Angeles. I think that in most ways, real life 2019 was closer to 1982 than Blade Runner 2019.