Can you tell me more about that? I was able to see this thread on those links but not familiar with Photon. I searched a bit but a few different techie things came up.

You had me at “don’t even bother with most apps any more…” 😁

I can’t unsee that now. 😫

OK I have you. You dont need the internet because you have the internet in your terabyte farm. Pretty cool.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

One final question, I’m sure its dark at the bottom of the deep rabbit hole you are in, what do you do for batteries for your head torch?! 😀

I love the sound of this but can I ask, if the net goes down and you hardly notice, where do you get your ‘net’ from? Or is it that your intranet doesn’t need internet as such and everything is just local?

I might have answered my own question there but I’m interested to understand it a bit more.

Thanks!

Ireland hopes it goes well for you. 🇮🇪

Yes indeed.

As far as I know, if you have a dual boot setup, when you choose what OS to go into, it will use the 8GB available. You dont have to split it 4/4. You’re only using one OS at a time, so whichever you choose on booting up will use the 8GB you have.

Yes it is “undoable” as such. There won’t be a button to undo it just like that, but there will be plenty guides out there I’m sure.

You can usually boot from a USB stick as long a sit has enough space and you prepare it properly by writing the correct file to it.

For Mint you have to write the image file (called an ISO) to the USB, restart the machine, go into boot settinhs, choose “Boot from USB”, and then away you go.

Further deets here: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

It sounds like you will be buying the laptop and that it won’t have loads of college security stuff on it, which is good for what you want to do.

Depending on your needs in terms of bespoke software, Linux Mint OS might solve a lot of your issues. Piece of piss to install and way better option than Windows. As a former Windows user since W95, I moved to Linux Mint this year and I will never go back.

I had an old Windows 10 machine that was unable to run Windows 11, so I installed Mint on it and its like a new machine. The OS is quite similar to Windows in a lot of ways.

You can even try it out live from the bootable USB before you install. I tried it like that and within about 30 seconds I was hammering the install button.

Having said all this, if you are required to give the laptop to the college to install stuff on, you might be a bit limited.

Libretube, smarttube and the like. You realise the amount of bloated shit there is on YT when you use one of those. They are like a front end on the infra I suppose. Not familiar with Loops, must go digging!

Yet the FOSS alts are still free. Hot damn.

Good point, I have hears of people having issues with Aqara stuff like that. Good flag.

Winning at protocol mastery. I commend thee.

eYou, you are simply too late to the party. As the piece highlights in the early paragraphs, its already being done by Mastodon and the Feds (the good Feds).

I just discovered Mastodon and the Feds (that should be the name of a band) and I’m utterly thrilled to have control of what I see. Its a breath of fresh air. I look forward to my feed every day. I know its not going to be full of bollocks about Trump and other toxic stuff. Its a game changer for me.

The future is FOSS and data sovereignty and I feel a little bit closer to it today that I ever have.

🙏🏼

Speaking of devices, I’m actually still using an ancient Conbee II and it’s rock solid. I thought about changing it recently and ordered a ZBT-2 for a more up to date product, but then I realised I was insane and set it up as a Thread Border Router instead, so I have both now.

Do many companies let you use their hubs to connect to devices from competitors? I always assumed of you bought X brand, you could only connect to X brand.

If you are gettng a refund, would you consider using Zigbee2MQTT with a suitable dongle from Home Assistant, Sonoff etc.? Then you can connect your Aqara stuff and pretty much any other brand you want, without any of their hubs.

Apologies if I’m missing something subtle here but it seems normal that Aqara would want to tie you into their products only.

Am I right that it is not for Spotify despite what it says in OP? Git page refers to YT music only?

Pi4 w/ SSD.

Yeah maybe so. I’ll have a look at the entity names bit I think the loop.is being caused by something in my code. Will report back!

I have this set up to launch SmartTube instead of YouTube. Its working but there is a 1sec delay during which yhe YouTube screen flashes up. Also theres a looping issue if you use the back button to get out of SmartTube.

However, nice to have a way to remap the buttons without installing an additional app.