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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2396 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 5, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So I finally talked my wife into letting me put Linux Mint on her 10 year old laptop. She's been complaining about it for years. First I swapped out the HDD for an SSD because Windows 10 at some point stopped pretending people might still be running their OS off an HDD and it just ground to a halt. Then I upgraded it from 8 GB of ram to 16 GB of ram because Chrome is a gluttonous whore. Still, the complaints persisted, and I could see why. Random Windows processes were constantly eating up nearly 100% of her CPU. I'd play whack-a-mole with them, but every few months updates would further enshittify her experience. Right before I went to install Linux, I saw some Windows Telemetry service was monopolizing 100% of her CPU. So I kept telling her she didn't have a laptop problem, she had a Windows problem.

Had a few hiccups. It didn't want to boot off the USB on the first try, but the second was fine. Then the wifi didn't work, because it used a proprietary driver. Luckily I wired my office with ethernet, so I plugged in at my desk and downloaded that using Mint's driver manager. Unfortunately it wasn't signed, so I had to turn off secure boot for it to load. After that the printer didn't work. Mint thought it found a driverless printer on the network, but that was a lie. Installing the drivers using a script off Brother's support page worked wonders. Then it broke when I installed the VPN because it broke network discovery. Not a problem, just a config setting away. Last I loaded Brave onto it, and imported all her passwords and bookmarks.

Near as I can tell, after she opens a browser she can't tell the difference. I haven't heard any more complaints about her laptop being slow so far. Finger's crossed I won't be shelling out a grand for a new laptop any time soon.

I've generally had good experiences replacing waifu computers with Linux. They pretty much never have a problem, though they just use webapps. The most they struggle with is file management since a lot more Linux apps will drop stuff in Home and they don't know to check there if Documents and Desktop don't have it.

Unfortunately it wasn't signed, so I had to turn off secure boot for it to load.

I would think you could just self-sign the printer driver and tell Linux to trust that signature but it might be too annoying.

I would think you could just self-sign the printer driver and tell Linux to trust that signature but it might be too annoying.

If it were my computer, and I cared enough, it was a thing I could research. I saw it was presented as a more secure solution that just turning off secure boot. But turning off secure boot was the thing I knew how to do immediately, and thus was much easier and faster. Maybe one day.

I mean, I ran into this problem with nvidia drivers. They failed to update with signatures trusted by Ubuntu. Then I tried to self-sign it and failed. Then I just gave up and disabled secure boot.

I just wish we could turn back the clock and have all desktops run Windows 7... That was the peak of personal computing.

Latest Windows 11 insanity:

Windows locks the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. An application puts some UI buttons at the bottom of its window. The app automatically resizes its window to hide the buttons behind the taskbar if you try to make it full size.

I wouldn't mind using Windows 11 if they made it a feature-complete and reliable operating system. I don't think that'll happen before they kill Windows 10.

(Fun (unverified) Fact: If you pay extra, you can get delayed access to the latest Windows features, because being on the general upgrade path is a good way to crash your computer.)

I thought XP was pretty much the pinnacle of personal computing, before I switched to OSX.

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