I want to create a minimal install for mpv playback through jellyfin-mpv-shim and macast. this is going to be a base for a FOSS media sink akin to a Chromecast. you attach it to your TV and it plays whatever you send it, like movies from your jellyfin server and youtube/vimeo/piped/etc videos. otherwise, there's no interaction with it, it doesn't handle input (remotes, mice, keyboards, etc.), it's controlled via apps (jellyfin android and allcast).

I've already made a proof-of-concept device running debian 12 with Plasma and it (mostly) works. now I'd like to trim the fat and install only what's absolutely necessary as I currently only have a 2006 macbook with busted screen and GMA950 with a mechanical HD. I'm gonna go with LAN only so I don't have to dick around with broadcom WLAN.

what do I need in terms of DEs and/OR WMs? do I need those at all? I seem to remember that I could run firefox in kiosk mode without anything else but X11, could I run mpv like that? or possibly wayland? what would be the absolute minimum package-wise to achieve this?

to reiterate, it's only going to display full-screen mpv when there's video to play, no menus, navigation, nada. possibly some slideshow-while-idle thingy in the future if it doesn't add too much in terms of software needed, but not right now.

I hate spending money on hardware when there's a software solution. like, I've got a subwoofer from a 2.1 system (without satellites) for free. instead of sourcing speakers for it, however cheap they might be, I'll just utilize the speakers from my monitor. pipewire to the rescue, it creates a combined sink that outputs sound to both DP and analog audio, et voila - a 2.1 sound system. people are like "your monitor sounds like that!?" and usually I play dumb: "yeah, yours doesn't? well that's linux for ya".

so, I have a desktop and a laptop and I'd like to share the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse. modern monitors have a KVM switch integrated, you connect your keyboard/mouse/etc. to it, one USB Type-C cable to the laptop, a couple to the desktop and you have a seamless switch; it even charges the laptop, how cool is that!

however, my monitor works just fine and I don't replace my hardware unless I really have to. USB KVMs with similar functions aren't cheap. also, the monitor already has multiple display inputs so I got to thinking, how do I re-create this with no money, or as little as possible, with DIY tech?

first, switching the display; this one took me no time at all. I have a USB Type-C to DP cable (with DP-Alt) and with the power of udev (detect a connection then trigger stuff) and ddcutil (sends commands to the monitor) I got it working as seamless as possible - I connect the laptop and it automagically switches the monitor over. when I disconnect it, the monitor falls back to an active connection, which is the desktop. awesome!

now how about switching the keyboard and mouse over? I'd like to do it in software, like barrier/inputleap does it but without having to move the cursor to the adjacent monitor. also, both machines are on wayland which isn't supported. eventual input lag to the laptop is unimportant, I game on the desktop. no idea if that can be accomplished or if that's even a thing...

that is a thing - it's called USB/IP, i.e. sharing your USB device over TCP/IP; it's a kernel module included by default for a long time now and that thing rocks! not only does the USB keyboard work without any perceivable lag on the laptop, it get's "disconnected" from the host, so your keypresses aren't disturbing the host. since it's a kernel module, no need to convince wayland to play ball! this also works for webcams, scanners, readers, etc., the client system thinks this is a local device and it just works.

so all we have to do is expand the shell script to bring over the keyboard and mouse along with switching over the monitor once the USB-C connection is detected annnd... success!

well, sorta. my wireless mouse is second-hand and I haven't got the USB receiver for it, so it connects over bluetooth. tried sharing with usbip and it works, but the radio connection gets interrupted or something and the mouse doesn't work there. maybe there's a workaround but I don't want to dig further.

also, how do I switch back to the desktop to shoot some peggies? I don't want to disconnect the laptop manually so I could come up with a slew of shell scripts and udev triggers and I'd also need a ssh tunnel, I don't want my keyboard input to travel over the LAN in cleartext, etc... kinda cumbersome. also, once the novelty wears off, the automagicallity gets tired, I'd prefer manually switching between devices with a keyboard combo.

enter rkvm. it's written in rust and as everybody knows that's super awesome. unlike usbip, comms are encrypted, so no sniffing possible, and hotkey switching is a default function, and it also handles the mouse!

now, rkvm currently doesn't support triggers, like "do X when hotkey combo pressed", but Plasma can handle running the monitor switch script on each device separately by listening to the same hotkey combo.

both solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, usbip requires more legwork but is more powerful whereas rkvm is simpler and easier to set up.

the final step, powering the laptop over the same cable. sadly, can't handle that in software, but there are power delivery injectors out there, some as cheap as $7. also, there's this cool project, looks easy enough to source and implement. not sure if I'm going that way or just go with a used dock station, as those can be had for a song for popular business ex-flagships, like the Thinkpad T-series, HP Elitebooks, Dell Latitudes, etc..

are there downsides? sure there are. numero uno, the host (desktop, in my case) has to be on all the time. not a big deal for me, it gets woken in the morning and suspended late at night. there are edge cases when rkvm geeks out, but for a thing that's in its 0.x version, this is more than usable.

so, I've been using this setup for the past week or so and haven't yet found it to break or have any negative side-effects. gaming on the desktop is as snappy (or shitty) as ever and using my mech keyboard and giant screen on the laptop allows me to easily compartmentalize my business and private stuff.

thanks for reading!

edit: edited title to clarify I'm talking about a Keyboard-Video-Mouse switch, not a Kernel-Virtual-Machine.

I'm considering upgrading to a Ryzen 5 5600, they've finally come down to $100 locally (tray version sans cooler).

currently, I have a 1600AF (lower binned 2600, so Zen+) on a B450 board. the upgrade should be straightforward, my board supports it (latest BIOS) and it has the same power rating, so my cheap-ass PSU and stock cooler don't need upgrading.

reason I want to upgrade is I have a number of issues with it under linux so I'd like to check if someone runs a similar setup.

first, I have Cool & Quiet and C-states disabled and Power Idle Control to "Typical Current Idle"; otherwise the machine freezes when waking from suspend after a short while. the second issue is, I have 3600 MT/s Kingston Hyper-X modules that I have to run at 2400 because both XMP profiles (XMP1-3000 and XMP2-3600) are unstable and cause apps to crash (the latter sometimes won't boot at all, can't unlock LUKS).

supposedly, both those issues are fixed in newer gens; old Zen/Zen+ had issues with faster RAM, and the C-state handling is also better in Zen3. also, I can use the new amd-pstate driver.

my PC is plenty fast as is, I'm only considering upgrading to fix them two issues. if it's the same on the other side of the fence, I'd rather skip it.

anyone had first-hand experiences with this?

edit: thanks everyone who took the time to share their setup, I'm way more optimistic about making the jump!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/11999240

anyone know what the last option does? I want to remove movies that were added by the list but were then taken off it. but the way it's written, it sorta implies that all movies that aren't on a list will be removed, which is what I very much don't want.

anyone know what the last option does? I want to remove movies that were added by the list but were then taken off it. but the way it's written, it sorta implies that all movies that aren't on a list will be removed, which is what I very much don't want.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/10113624

what's a reliable way to determine my device's battery health? something like Coconutbattery for macOS - charge cycles, health, factory/remaining mAh, etc...

tried CPU-Z, says health is "Good". gee, thanks... out of what, "Excellent" through "Shit" or what?

backstory, I got a Samsung Tab S6 used, wiped it and installed LineageOS 20 and I'm using for a couple of months. the battery kinda sucks. granted, I have like 3-4 hours SOT/day but a 7000 mAh battery should last a couple of days; pure guesstimation, I had an iPad some years ago and that thing lasted for eons.

if I leave it overnight with 10ish% battery remaining and battery saver on, it's dead by morning. that sort of drain can't be normal? on the other hand, I don't have google services so every app has its own running service - syncthing, KDE Connect, Allcast, Jellyfin Player, etc.

there's the stuff I can read from /sys/class/power_supply/battery/ but nothing useful in there; like charge_full and charge_full_design are the same (70400) and other promising sounding items are unset or nonsensical.

tried the same on my Redmi phone w/LOS, completely different files there and equally useless.

I don't wanna go through sourcing the battery, prying the thing open and replacing it, only to find out that's how it's supposed to work. any ideas?

what's a reliable way to determine my device's battery health? something like Coconutbattery for macOS - charge cycles, health, factory/remaining mAh, etc...

tried CPU-Z, says health is "Good". gee, thanks... out of what, "Excellent" through "Shit" or what?

backstory, I got a Samsung Tab S6 used, wiped it and installed LineageOS 20 and I'm using for a couple of months. the battery kinda sucks. granted, I have like 3-4 hours SOT/day but a 7000 mAh battery should last a couple of days; pure guesstimation, I had an iPad some years ago and that thing lasted for eons.

if I leave it overnight with 10ish% battery remaining and battery saver on, it's dead by morning. that sort of drain can't be normal? on the other hand, I don't have google services so every app has its own running service - syncthing, KDE Connect, Allcast, Jellyfin Player, etc.

there's the stuff I can read from /sys/class/power_supply/battery/ but nothing useful in there; like charge_full and charge_full_design are the same (70400) and other promising sounding items are unset or nonsensical.

tried the same on my Redmi phone w/LOS, completely different files there and equally useless.

I don't wanna go through sourcing the battery, prying the thing open and replacing it, only to find out that's how it's supposed to work. any ideas?

so, I have a weird problem with a Dell Latitude 5285, that's a 2-in-1 with a detachable keyboard akin to the MS Surface Pro 5. it has an i5-7300u, 16 GB LPDDR3 (on-board), 500 GB NVMe, 12.3" 1920x1280 3:2 touch screen.

I got it second-hand, unknown history, without a battery. they're stuck at 400 MHz without one, but Thottlestop in Windows and msr-tools in Linux fix the BD_PROCHOT throttling and the machine performed adequately for months.

I've sourced a replacement battery, removed the patch and my problems started. there's weird screen flickering, looks like bad video ram or a flaky connection. it's intermittent, sometimes it runs without issues for hours, sometimes minutes and sometimes it flickers from the start, so troubleshooting and checking if this or that fixed things takes days.

the artefacts are inconsistent with anything that is or isn't happening (load, temps, etc) or power source. the problem is mostly exacerbated when the battery is full and/or when waking from sleep, it's almost always super glitchy then.

here's a demonstration:

would be great if I could try a different battery or try this one in another device, but don't have that option.

at no point are there ANY glitches on the external display (tried DP-Alt over USB Type-C and HDMI over Dell WD19 Dock), regardless if the internal screen is enabled or not.

so, bad luck - faulty screen or backlight or RAM or something, right?

except, when I unplug the battery (but leave it in place) and connect it to power and reenable the BD_PROCHOT patch - zero glitches! it runs for hours - videos, GPU and CPU stress test, not one hiccup, tear, nothing!

if it were a normal laptop, I'd just leave it be and use it as a desktop. it feels like such a waste with the functional touchscreen though.

what I've tried:

• different USB Type-C chargers
• fresh paste on CPU, clean vent
• latest firmware, tried downgrading, no change
• memtest passed twice on thorough, all clear
• internal diagnostics also
• it never froze or crashed
• screenshot during glitches doesn't contain them
• disabling turbo, upping/lowering the max/boost GPU clock, forcing cores offline, limiting max frequencies with TLP
• the battery isn't deformed and doesn't exert pressure on the screen or any cables; also tried running it with the screen slightly lifted from the case, no change
• pressing, jerking, wiggling of the internal display cable/connector, no change
• same issues in Windows 11, Ubuntu 23.04 and Fedora WS 38; rarely but sometimes in BIOS/during boot
• sadly, can't undervolt the CPU/GPU (Throttlestop FIVER says it's locked) but some MSR writes are apparently OK (like disabling BD_PROCHOT works).

at some point, it had both charger and dock with PD attached at the same time to both USB Type-C ports; it's possible this fried something, although I have no evidence of that.

so, I'm sure this is NOT a linux hardware problem, but I would like to use linux to fix the problem. at this point, I am sure it's defective, whether it's age or physical or manufacturing defect or whatever; but since it definitely works perfectly without the battery, I'm looking for some tweaks that makes it perform with the battery the same as without it.

seriously doubt anyone's seen anything similar but are there any ideas what to look at? what to try?

edit: I'm not asking for free hardware troubleshooting, maybe I haven't expressed myself succintly. what I'd like is some sort of snapshot of all relevant registers with battery working. and then one without. and then have somehow the difference between those two computed, so I can see which setting I need to tweak. would this be doable?

I can't resolve (ping, ssh) any computer on my network from a newly installed minimal Gnome Desktop F39 on a laptop; since it's minimal, it's possible something's missing from the installation.

trying from the laptop gives:

$ ping server.local
ping: server.local: Temporary failure in name resolution

pinging .box static DNS entries as well as IP addresses works. all other computers can resolve each other and the new laptop (1 debian, 1 fedora, 1 macOS), some have static, some dynamic IPs. they all get the DNS IP of my pi-hole, which resolves everything fine. resolve.conf and all other relevant files are stock. avahi and systemd-resolve are running and report no issues. same behaviour with WiFi and LAN.

I could switch to static IPs and assign e.g. .box suffixes all around via local DNS but I don't want to do that, this setup is/was working on every other PC.

any ideas what I'm missing?

edit: just booted off of a live USB with F39, resolves server.local just fine. so I'm missing something in my installation, right?

edit II: installed it (minimal) on another laptop, same deal - no .local resolution.

I haven't had anything to do with windows in like 5+ years. I need to set up a laptop with it for someone tomorrow, I'm guessing W11 is nowadays recommended? what's currently the best option for a hassle free experience (no ads, no random game installs, no migrations to onedrive, etc)?

last time I did it, I used the W10 ISO from Microsoft, applied the hwidsomething and ran some debloater from github. back then there were some ~~ESR~~ LTSC ISOs available on torrent sites, is that still a thing?

the install is going to use firefox, chrome, skype, libreoffice, etc., they all autoupdate themselves, so it's going to be reasonably secure. what's my best bet for a set & forget situation? thanks.

is there some API or other mechanism that allows me to create a contact form on my site and have the messages delivered to my mastodon inbox?

just added a second cheap NVMe drive to my system and am in the process of moving my games folder to it. the folder has a coupla prefixes and individual game folders. presently it's ext4, my boot drive is btrfs and encrypted LVM, the ext4 drive gets mounted to ~/Games via fstab.

is there a better combination? like, would I benefit from CoW or compression for this use case? or even going with ntfs?

edit: went with btrfs. super easy to convert from ext4, just unmount the 2nd drive, btrfs-convert and change the UUID in fstab. also added the compress=zstd:1 option. looks like everything is working thus far.