Tootfinder

Top tip for improving openSUSE performance on somwhat-constrained systems (e.g. Ryzen 7 3700C/16GB RAM ex-Chromebook): get rid of btrfs. The constant fs housekeeping tasks grind it to a halt, and it's not the quickest to begin with. This thing absolutely FLIES with XFS. Oh no, no snapshots, guess I'd better just treat it like every previous Linux system I've ever had :P

Parents are pressuring LA Unified, the second-largest US school district, to reduce mandatory student screen time on school-issued iPads and Chromebooks (Tyler Kingkade/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/la-parents-kid…

LA Parents say school-issued iPads and Chromebooks cause chaos
Los Angeles Unified is the first district of its size to face an organized campaign by parents demanding that schools pull back on mandatory screen time.

My chromebook seems to be running a lot better since I turned off all of the Google tracking. It has been running on battery since yesterday and still has just under three hours of power. I have used it around 2 hours yesterday and over three today so far. I have not turned on the battery saver option.
Playing music, checking out Mastodon, reading news, checking my email and general web surfing. Even two 15-30 minute sessions relearning and trying to remember what I was taught for …

My nephew sent me this photo and asked if this means that his Chromebook has a virus. I told him that it does not. I'm glad to see him thinking critically about it.

Micron ending it's "Crucial" consumer DRAM brand is a sign of a larger issue:
Computation is being taken away from individual ownership and moved to data centers you have rent resources from.
See also steadily rising prices on new GPU cards and SSDs.
The future is a Chromebook and a $150/month data center bill.

Nvidia and Google launch the GeForce Now Fast Pass to let Chromebook owners stream over 2,000 games directly from an existing PC game library without ads (Dominic Preston/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/824940/chromebooks-nvidia-geforce-now-fa…

New Chromebooks will come with a year of Nvidia’s cloud gaming ‘fast pass’
Nvidia GeForce Now Fast Pass is an ad-free queue-jump for GeForce Now’s free tier, and it’s exclusive to Chromebook owners.

I have an MSI Prestige A16 laptop that only runs #Archlinux. Speakers stopped working suddenly last week, but headphones plugged in worked fine (Bluetooth audio - all the stuff up a wire plumber's rear end). Tried a few kernel versions to no avail (firmware package wasn't updated recently).
Flashbacked to the days of the Toshiba Swanky Chromebook and the audio issues I had on…

I didn't think it would make a huge difference. I turned off more of the Google tracking, diagnostics and advertising. Chromebook before I made the changes took around 2 gigs of memory doing nothing.
Now, it is running the base O/S and Mastodon in a bit over 700 megs and feels a bit snappier.
Did the same for my cell phone, wife's cell phone and her tablet. Hopefully she will wonder why they are running faster (and cooler).

I am at the point that a VPN is running even when at home. I pick one of the EU locations.
#vpn